This post contains rough guidelines on working with someone to bring your idea to a development executive. Sometimes you need help and that might cost you. How much it costs and how painful the lessons of that cost is best addressed at the start.
You are one half of a creative team and you're looking for your soulmate. Okay, that's a little extreme so maybe you're just a writer looking for someone to illustrate your pitch with cool pictures. Or you're an artist with fantastic ideas for cool characters and stories but when you write them down they lose all their life. You need someone. So here's a little relationship advice.
The absolute best way to enter into any partnership is with a contract drawn up by a lawyer. And the contract should be written as if your idea will turn into the biggest animated hit of all time.
But realistically most of you are not going to do that, are you? It means spending money and besides you guys are buds, right? Go ahead. I'm not going to spend time telling you not to do this. Handshake agreements work best with people you really know.
Worst case, you will learn a valuable lesson, hopefully at not too great a cost. Best case, you not only sell something but both of you are happy with the financial results. So I have some basic advice:
First, KNOW WHAT YOU WANT. What do you expect from the other guy? Let me start with a writer's needs. Do you want someone to capture the spirit of the show or produce finished character designs?
Often the best way to go in a pitch is with just an illustration or two. Your characters will appear in the illustration but don't have to be as simplified as animation production models.
Or you might be looking for more of an animation package (despite my previous warnings!) and want some color art that looks like a frame of your show: character design, layout and background style in one shot.
For an artist: Are you sure you need a writer? You don't HAVE to leave anything written so if you can describe your series and characters with passion and excitement, that might be enough. The advantage of this is that the network can assign a writer that they really like to work with you which helps your idea on the road to acceptance. When do you need a writer? If you have cool looking characters, a notion of their stories but can't think of one with a beginning, middle and end. In this case, you're looking for a partner that will create the show with you.
Next, BE CLEAR ABOUT WHAT THEY WILL GET. Don't "call in a favor" to get work done on a project; expecting something for nothing is never a good way to go. There are three things that you can offer, separately or in any combination: 1) some percentage of ownership, 2) money, 3) a chance to showcase their work to network or studio development execs. What you can't offer is a position on the series. Why not? Because that's the network's/studio's call. Obviously, you say "either take both of us or nothing" but unless it was a joint project all along, that position can lead to great bitterness.
BE CLEAR ABOUT WHAT THEY WON'T GET --before any work is done. If you pay an artist for illustrating your pitch, be clear that it's "work for hire" and that they'll have no rights or ownership of the art or the idea. If you're an artist who hired a writer to come up with story ideas or gags, pay the guy and explain the same thing. But before you have that conversation, consider my next bit of advice.
BE FAIR. Stan Lee stated on record, reluctantly, that he considers himself the creator of Spider-man. He was talking about working with Steve Ditko and what great things the artist brought to the table but when pressed, he felt the creator is the guy with the idea. If he had done those early issues with Jack Kirby or Don Heck or Dick Ayers, it would still be his Spider-man but just a different Spider-man. I guess it depends on your POV. My feeling is that it would be a different Spider-man, especially since Ditko worked with Stan in the "Marvel method" which gave the artist incredible leeway in the storytelling.
And yet, I consider myself the creator of Darkwing Duck. I did rough sketches all along the way but it was Bob Kline who did the first presentation drawings, Toby Shelton who gave him Roger Rabbit cheeks and expanded his hat brim to impossible proportions and although I picked purple, I believe it was Jill Stirdivant who picked his colors. I wrote the bible and the first episode but Doug Langdale, Kevin Hopps, Duane Capezzi and a host of others contributed the scripts that built his world. Heck, half his name was the idea of Alan Burnett (I just added the "Duck").
The point is that animation is a more collaborative medium than most. Back up every once in awhile and look at what the "other guy" is bringing to the project. Is he truly a worker for hire or a partner? Could you sell the project without him? Should he be there at the pitch? If you sell the project and he walks away for another job, are you going to be "up a creek without a paddle?" If so, talk it all through and come to a new understanding.
Good Karma is its own reward. --Tad
PS: Yes, I know I was going to talk about ways of finding people. Next time for sure.
PPS: Artwork by Sean "Cheeks" Galloway. Check him out on Deviant Art.
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