I need Help!

[Silver Knight]

Can anyone help me? I would love to get started in this business, but need a artist, I have some cool ideas, but need some one to publish my work, can anyone help me?

[Egg]

Can anyone help me? I would love to get started in this business, but need a artist, I have some cool ideas, but need some one to publish my work, can anyone help me?

Silver Knight,

If I may offer this, the three best types of places to find an artist are:

1) http://www.digitalwebbing.com/ - by placing an ad for an artist under "Talent Search" or hunting through their forums - http://www.digitalwebbing.com/forums/

2) Online forums from art dedicated sites such as http://artxilla.com/forum/ OR http://www.ledheavy.com/forum/

3) Conventions. Going there and accosting an artist that is walking around with his giant, black portfolio in hand is a good route! (And by accosting, I mean walking up and politely asking to examine their work.)

In each case, it helps to have done some work before you approach the artist. I would recommend going in with the following strategy in mind:

1) Have a proposal ready for what you want to do. Series idea, outline, and what company(ies) you plan to pitch it to. Since you say you want to be published by another company, then you need the artist to fully render the first 5 to 8 pages of your comic for different publishers to look at. (That is all most publishers need to know if they want to see more.)

2) Have a sample script so they can see that you can write and are ready for them.

3) Because art takes time to do (one page of pencils/inks/colors/letters can reasonably take anywhere from one day to a whole week for an artist or an art team to complete) it means a lot if you offer some payment for those 5 to 8 sample pages. Reasonable payment (based on skill and assuming the artist is previously unpublished) is $25 to $150 per page for pencils/inks/colors/letters (with most reasonably good amateur artists/art teams hitting somewhere in the $50 to $80 per page range). So, if you are serious about this then go in with the idea of offerings (for 5 to 8 pages) anywhere from $125 to $200 on the low-end to $750 to $1200 on the high-end.

Finally, pitching to a company. Here are some simple rules:

1) Make the series three to four 22-page issues in length. Or one 48-page one-shot.

2) End each issue on a cliffhanger.

3) Focus it toward a particular publisher.

4) Once you have the finished pages, go the extra mile and put together a professional looking pitch.

One sentence proposal with the one paragraph proposal with a one-page series proposal with your sample pages with a series outline with a brief character bible. Take all of that and lay it out like a magazine – WIZARD, TIME, WIRED, etc. Put your pitch together like they put articles together and it will turn more heads.

Anyways, I hope this helps!

Thank You,

Egg Embry
Editor – www.ArcanaStudio.com & ANT from Image Comics

[Silver Knight]

um um, uh you are a editor for a comic magizine? Dude I could use ur help, I said I needed some one to publish my work. Can you recomend a decent artist? Can you take a chance on my work. The first part is a five part series The fifith part climaxes in an epic techno battle. Its somewhat medevil, yet ultra modern. Lots of tech, but it has roots to old fighting styles and ideas. The lead charecter shares the same name as my username so you get the Idea. Come on what could it hurt?

[Egg]

um um, uh you are a editor for a comic magizine? Dude I could use ur help, I said I needed some one to publish my work. Can you recomend a decent artist? Can you take a chance on my work. The first part is a five part series The fifith part climaxes in an epic techno battle. Its somewhat medevil, yet ultra modern. Lots of tech, but it has roots to old fighting styles and ideas. The lead charecter shares the same name as my username so you get the Idea. Come on what could it hurt?

Silver Knight,

To be clear, I do edit for Arcana Studio. And Arcana Studio does produce comic books. I also write and draw from time-to-time.

But now comes the tough part – having to be an editor. You're asking me to do the following:

1) Recommend an artist.

I'm sorry, most of the artists that I know are currently attached to projects or charge X amount per page of work. Now, if you can offer a reasonable page rate then an artist/art team could easily be secured (for that I’d recommend posting an ad at http://www.digitalwebbing.com/ so you can choose an artist that fits your tastes). Otherwise, I'd again advocate searching http://www.digitalwebbing.com/forums/ OR http://artxilla.com/forum/ OR http://www.ledheavy.com/forum/ for an artist that is willing to work on a project in which payment will be rendered on the backend.

2) As for taking a chance on your project, I most certainly will once you've secured a talented artist and trimmed the series to no more than four issues (five books is just too long for a smaller publisher such as ourselves). Once you have an artist with 5 to 10 pages of finished art, create a one sentence pitch, a one paragraph pitch, and a series outline plus character bible and send it to me (I’m available at the Forums for www.ArcanaStudio.com). With that together, I’ll happily look at your work and see if Arcana can use the project in our line of books! :)

One final thing, and I hope this does not come across as too harsh, but you’re hoping to become a professional writer, correct? As a writer, you need to work on your spelling and grammar since those are important parts of your trade. As a potential employer, I worry that poor use of grammar, spelling and punctuation will cause a lot of unnecessary work should we take on your project. As an example, I’ve edited your last message below:

um um, uh You are an editor for a comic magazine, correct? Dude, I could use your help, I said I needed someone to publish my work. Can you recommend a decent artist? Can you take a chance on my work? The first part is a five part series. [What does that mean? Does that mean issues one to five form the first part of a larger tale?] The fifth part climaxes in an epic techno battle. [What is an “epic techno battle”? That doesn’t conjure any images in my mind.] It’s somewhat medieval, yet ultra modern. [What does that mean? Medieval and modern?] Lots of technology, but it has roots running to old fighting styles and ideas. The lead character shares the same name as my username so you get the idea. Come on, what could it hurt?

Please do not take any of this as condemnation, I’m trying to help and hope that I have. Keep up the work as I'd like to see you succeed and become a great writer!

Thank You,

Egg Embry
Editor – www.ArcanaStudio.com & ANT from Image Comics

[Silver Knight]

No I dont think that what you said is too harsh. Grammer was never my best subject in school. And the answer to your question is yes. The series starts out as a 5, scratch that 6 part series. Then if it is liked it will go on to be a monthly series, hopefully. Also I might be able to trim it 5 if I cut a few things out, I'd hate to do it but it can be done. But four I cannot do, that would cut out a entire charecter. You see the first five show the origin of all five hero's in the comic and their evil counterpart. Because this is somewhat of a group comic, the lead and some of the members of the group fo things indivdually, (grr I know I spelled that wrong) I thought their should be a force to counteract them, their arch foes if you will. Anyway each comic will give the origin of the hero and the villian. And the sixth is the one where they all come together and fight as a group for the first time to fight their villans. I have been talking to artists for a little while so I might be in contact with you shortly. If my idea interests you feel free to say so, if you are unable to do my project due to money, I will understand. But I will also try to meet your demands.