I gave a talk at Metatopia on Sunday on talking to the talent and promised to post my notes, so here they are in all their semi-comprehensible glory. That said, on a lark, I recorded the bit of advice I got from Fred, so I’m throwing that up here as a bonus (warning – hugely amateur sound – this was me in 15 minutes between calls on my laptop).
Writers
- This will be hard because you are probably also a writer
- Giving people work that you could do yourself requires you to conciously let go and trust
Artists
- Tips From Fred
Make sure that when you say something like a quarter page, define that in inches
discuss resolution (300dpi minimum)
Size weenies
If you’re working in print, you want CMYK, not RGB
Have some expectations for the image, communicate them clearly, but don’t be married to your vision. You’re paying them for their expertise.
Do the reference image research for them if you can.
If possible, do an art reference of These characters in these places, esp if you’ve got strongly recurring characters or places.
If you don’t have the images, you may want to do a round of references images first.
Make it clear to the artist what stages of the process you want to be involved in
Pencils
Maybe even roughs/concept sketches
Inks
Colors
Try to get ONE intermediary step, just for course corrections - Blog: The Art OrderDifferent process, but informativeWOTC Guy
- theartorder.com http://theartorder.com/
- FIND OUT HOW MUCH DETAIL YOUR ARTIST WANTS
Editor
- Editor Blogs
- ryanmacklin.com http://ryanmacklin.com/
- www.ayvalentine.com http://www.ayvalentine.com/
- You don’t need to communicate a lot with editors once you get going BUT
- You need to communicate your vision to them to help them help you achieve it
- When in doubt, blame the editor.
Layout
- Go read Robin Williams “Non-Designers Design Book”
- Very solid crash course in understanding what the layout guy is talking about.
Marketing
- Yes, it’s marketing, even if you don’t call it that
- Social Media
- Evangelizers and engagement
- Demo Teams
- Demo Kits
- Benefits and dangers of empowerment
Business Partners
- Distributors
- Shop Owners
- Printers
Customer/Fans
- Benefits and drawbacks of transparency
- No bad reviews
- Don’t be a dick – let the other guy do it
Collaboration Tools
- Dropbox
- Wikis
- Basecamp
- You WILL use MS word
- Update schedule
Also, A hat tip to John, the editor who came up and helped me out at the talk byt talking about, well, talking to editors. You can check him out on twitter at @awesome_john or at his blog.
