Rael

uniformshark:

ladydragon76:

Yup, reposting! We only have one tf capable artist signed up. If you are willing, please check the links.

It’s that time of year again, SFBB is underway, and TF fandom is kinda the red-headed stepchild. Everyone is cool over there, but no one wants to draw us authors robots (smutty or otherwise).  Last year it landed in just one sweetheart of an artist’s lap, and she drew for 3 or 4 fics, bless her aching hands.

So I’m crawling out here on my knees, begging the wonderful artists here on Tumblr to please check it out, and if you’d like to be involved, please sign-up to be an artist.

…

Where I usually scroll past such things very quickly If it does not magically draw my attention like WOAH THIS IS WHAT I ALWAYS WANTED TO DOOOO. I feel like explaining to you desperate people who search artists FOR FREE why this is so unappealing. We have a couple of lovely TF artists on tumblr and well everywhere also too it doesn’t matter whether it is tumblr or deviantart or whatever.

It is 98% Authors searching for artists to draw THEIR HEADCANONS for them and 2% of artist who are like ‘man I don’t have ANY imagination and idk shit maybe someone wants to promt me something so I can draw for the next couple of months because I don’t have a liife’.

Of course we sometimes ask for requests just to get some stuff drawn but a *draw me character x will take 1-3 hours of the artists time because he simply FEELS like drawing anything and still they simply can refuse to draw whatever people ask for. Or the artist wants to practice whatever is not a “draw me a giant bunch of stuff for our project which will take you a month.”

The point is we have enough OWN ideas most of f the time which we don’t even manage to draw out and if there is no payment involved most artist will do exactly the same as me; scroll past in annoyance.

 I don’t even feel like spreading such things because you always have ppl who in the end will make it for free. Which result is; making everyone else look like greedy bastards and fueling  the “good artists are arrogant” myth. Once more  they are ruining the other artists reputation because apparently drawing isn’t worth your money since you also can get it for free , why do we even  want money shouldn’t we feel HONORED that you like our style enough to want art form us? Uhm no?

There are professional artists wording these things a lot better than me but for once I just feel like ranting too.

And Please don’t see this as a personal attack. I just mean this in general. Also don’t tell me you are all poor students and can’t pay anything well I’m a poor student too  and maybe I try to get some commission sometimes to change that and don’t feel like wasting my entire free time on lifetime projects of visions from other people.

Do I sound like a jerk? Idk I just urgh *rant rant rant*

[Not addressed to Kashi in particular. I’m with her on the issue of people in general actually demanding/expecting free art for themselves.]

This kind of feels like the Amanda Palmer music debate all over again (except in this case the authors aren’t making money, this isn’t just an individual person asking for personal services, etc.). Is a big bang a community coming together to share in something awesome, or is this unpaid labor?

There is a definite creative imbalance, since the author writes first, but this imbalance is the whole reason “reverse bang”s exist. Authors get their turn to create first and then get thousands of words of fic inspired by their art. Still, this deals with overall balance and not individual match-ups.

Something I see missing from the big bang set-up that’s present in real world professional dealings is the strong obligation (outside of guilt) to finish the project regardless of whether or not you enjoy it. It starts out voluntary (and there are often, as in this case, story summaries available for an artist to peruse), there’s not a contract, and the structure takes into account that not everybody will stick with it—that’s what pinch hitters are for. There also isn’t a set standard for the level of detail and work involved (or even the medium—you’ve got photo manipulators mixed in with painters, etc in many fandoms) and the “client” doesn’t get to dictate when a piece is done or to their liking.

Overall, yeah, there are a bunch of people out there looking for what amounts to free commissions, both with art and with writing. I love ladydragon76 to pieces, but I can see where artists sensitive to people not appreciating their time might read some of the post as a little guilt-trippy. However, a whole bunch of people choose to see bangs as community-wide creative collaborations. Should people who see it as something else be faulted for doing so? Of course not. But neither should people be put down for participating in and talking about something they do for fun. And hell, why shouldn’t TF fandom have a proportionally large presence in a multi-fandom event?