For writers looking for an artist
I’ve been seeing a lot of people looking for artists to help them make a webtoon. And I’ve seen a lot of the same things pop up over and over again. As someone who has been working alone trying to make some of my own, I have a list of questions and things you should have before trying to search for an artist.
You have a great idea? A really good concept for a story? The overall story written down in a page? Congrats! You have the plot summary of your story. That the really first step, there’s a lot more that needs to be done before an artist can get to drawing.
You have been working on the world building? Great! How many pages of that do you have? How many maps and moodboards you have? Have you delved into how it shapes the plot and characters? How it shapes the aesthetic and style? Do you have any visual references or just a couple sentences here and there?
Have you fully fleshed your characters? Do they have a personality, a past, a motivation? Do they have a visual design? It’s your characters, only you know how they should look like. Any dress up game, avatar creator or game with character customization works to get the overall appearance of your characters. [Picrew, HeroForge, the Sims, etc…].
Do you have the full script? Do you have full story boards and thumbnails? At least for the first episodes. Do you know how long to make each episode? The pacing? How long is the story going to be? How many episodes it’s going to be? These are decisions that belong to you, the writer. It’s your story, you get to decide how it’s told. No need to be able to draw good to make some bad stick figures for the story board and thumbnails, those are meant to be quick and bad anyway. Bad Ink Studios have really great videos, they do more traditional western comics, but the principles are the same. Specially for the writing part.
Do you know how to letter? Or were you expecting the artist to do it? It’s the writing part of the comic, how the characters talk, how much exposition there is. Do it yourself. That way you will also be able to make changes on the dialogue that might work better with the panels. Again, Bad Ink Studios has a lot of great tutorials. And there is no need to have art panels to practice, you can use movie scenes and screen shots.
Have you got enough money to pay the artist? 50% of your imaginary future revenue is basically the same as asking for free labour. Depending on the style the price will change, but expect something from 2 to 5 dollars per panel at least.
Unless you want a collaboration with an artist, where they have a huge input with how the story is and is told, everything above relies on you.
If you already have all of that, congrats! You know what you are getting into. If you don’t, what are you waiting to start? This is work that you are going to have to do. You don’t know how? They are all skills that you will learn is you start practising them. Start small, don’t jump in directly into the 200+ episodes epic masterpiece. You will do that, but get the hang of things first with a little project.
This is not to discourage anyone. Having an idea is easy. Everyone has them. Executing it is hard work. It takes time, effort, learning and dedication. Do the work first and then find an artist. That way, if it works, and you enjoy the process and can keep up, great. If it doesn’t and you can’t do your part of the work? You’ve learnt (and lost no money), and no artist has wasted their time in a project that wasn’t going to work.