Good for One (1) Free Assistant!

[djracodex]

Scooby's thread on artistic woes got me thinking: If only I had someone to do X for me, comic-ing would be so much easier. Coloring, backgrounds, advertising, web site reamping, just one thing could make me update 2, maybe 3 (Gasp!) times a week.

If you got a coupon for one free art assistant, what would you have that poor soul do?

I love doing line art but lose all my steam when it comes to laying down flat color/tones. It doesn't make much sense, because it's rather easy and straight forward, but I find it to be my most dreaded part of the process. I would have an assistant in charge of coloring, and I would make him wear a party hat, but I would give him free pizza with up to 3 toppings.

[VeryCuddlyCornpone]

Erasing my pencils, and scanning. I don't mind the editing, but I loathe putting the paper in the scanner and scanning it ._.

It's tough! I guess I have a love-hate relationship with my work. There's parts I don't enjoy very much but I don't think I'd want anyone else to do it for me. I mean, what if they did it wrong?????

[Cope]

Could I get an assistant to draw everything? Or would that be cheating? Okay, I guess it would be.

Erasing my pencils

Thiiiis. It's just bloody tedious, and to top it off, I'm always afraid I'm gonna rip the paper.

[Peripheral Descent]

Cleaning up my lineart. Good grief, I'm quite the fail-tard when it comes to making beautiful line work. Mine looks like third grade scribbles.

[Humbug]

I don't trust anyone to help me with my work because only I can get my art to look just the way I want, but someone to help with the post-comic stuff would be extremely helpful, like managing the website or saving all of my pages in a certain format, etc.

[Yeahduff]

If someone could pay my rent and feed me every few days and do my sleeping for me that'd be perfect.

[LibertyCabbage]

I'd say a colorist to see how my comics would look in color. I mean, I like B&W art, but color can add a lot sometimes, and I just don't really have the time or skill to do it myself.

[Sortelli]

I'd also love a colorist, but I've learned a lot in the time where I've just buckled down to do it myself. Still I know there are people who are better than me out there, and sometimes I'd love to see what they could do with my art.

Then again, I'd love to see what a team of pros could do with me just giving them scripts and shit and kicking back, sippin' drinks. I can churn out scripts all day lonnnng.

[djracodex]

If someone could pay my rent and feed me every few days and do my sleeping for me that'd be perfect.

*Insert 'your mother' joke here*
*Wonder if it was a stupid thing to say*
*Awkwardly assume you just offended person*
*Feel crippling self-consciousness*
*log off forever*

[djracodex]

I don't trust anyone to help me with my work because only I can get my art to look just the way I want, but someone to help with the post-comic stuff would be extremely helpful, like managing the website or saving all of my pages in a certain format, etc.

Like someone to handle Project Wonderful/advertising stuff, like a bookie or agent or something, would be really nice. Or to update the several social media sites for your comic when you've updated.

[VeryCuddlyCornpone]

Like someone to handle Project Wonderful/advertising stuff, like a bookie or agent or something, would be really nice. Or to update the several social media sites for your comic when you've updated.

Ohhh good one.

[RobboAKAscooby]

I'm thinking maybe someone to hide my Swifty/Disney/80s anime DVDs and poke me with a stick when I stop working.
Oh, and also skip music in itunes for me.

But seriously I could use an editor - both to cut my art together and for my writing.

[Humbug]

Like someone to handle Project Wonderful/advertising stuff, like a bookie or agent or something, would be really nice. Or to update the several social media sites for your comic when you've updated.

Exactly. I always did find posting updates on all those social media tedious.

[VeryCuddlyCornpone]

No. I found a thing I would gladly have someone else do. Inking my dialogue and the bubbles for it. IS THERE ANYTHING MORE TEDIOIUS? THAN WRITING SOME WORDS? AND THEN HAVING TO WRITE THEM AGAIN? WITH A PEN? THAT IS DYING? HELLO?

[McDuffies]

I agree with Cuddly that scanning and erasing pencils are the worst hassles in webcomic business and I wouldn't mind someone doing that for me. I also agree with djracodex that someone doing promotion for me would be a perfectly wonderful thing.
Following that, I could do with someone drawing panel frames with a ruler, where appropriate. Much of the rest seem to me like a too important task to be handed over.

[RobboAKAscooby]

Much of the rest seem to me like a too important task to be handed over.

Yeah, no matter how tedious it can be at times.

[JSConner800]

Like someone to handle Project Wonderful/advertising stuff, like a bookie or agent or something, would be really nice. Or to update the several social media sites for your comic when you've updated.

I thought I would hate that aspect of webcomicking. In fact, the Black Hole Collective used to have four members, and one guy was pretty much just the PR guy, but he didn't pan out, so it became my duty to update the Facebook page and promote the comic and whatnot. As it turns out, I don't hate it that much. We've only been going for a few months, and I've managed to make a few connections and get a little bit of exposure. Not much (barely anything, really) but better than if I hadn't done anything at all. And that's kind of exciting, considering how hard I expected to fail at promotion and advertising.

Now what we'd really need an assistant for is tracing. Currently our graphic designer traces over our artist's pencil lines in sharpie, puts those lines into the computer, uses Adobe Illustrator's livetrace to vector the lines, then he does the coloring and the shadowing and the dialogue and all of the website stuff, so he's got a lot on his plate. If we had someone who could do the tracing, that would take a lot of weight off his shoulders. We also had our fourth member try his hand at that, and he promptly gave up on the comic altogether, so we may have a tough time finding a free assistant for that job