Spec art

Once again I'm posting about working on 'spec'-speculation-that is for free. Work for free? Sounds great! I was on craigslist in the creative section and there are 2 non-paying, waste-of-your-time-and-talent jobs posted in the last couple of days:

"Looking for a creative person with interest in helping develop a hilarious, innovative comic strip. The idea is in place, all that is needed is someone with the ability to draw and bring to life the characters. " "all that is needed" is for someone to spend a month of their life drawing out my ideas that I worked on during lunch break for a whole week.

"I am putting together a comic series, I am looking for artists who want to be involved. there is no money in this project, so it needs to be someone interested in doing it for experience, fun, and the art of it." WTF? They really think we sit around and hope for someone with 'ideas' to tell us what to freaking draw? This is practically saying we should pay them for the privilage of working on their great idea.

Please all you young aspiring artists out there do not ever work on spec (free/deferred payment/royalties etc...) for anyone. If you plan on making art your career don't f-over the industry you hope to make a living from. All these people with their supposedly great ideas for you to draw for free are at best clueless about the realities of getting an IP produced. At worst they are casually interested in seeing their idea visually and are willing to waste your time knowing nothing will ever come of it. If their idea was really that great they'd find a way to PAY for it to get done. With nothing invested on their part they will quickly discard the whole project as soon as a little bump in the road slows the project down. And the project will slow down and completely stop many times and need to be jump started again and again. It's the nature of the business. But by then you'll have invested how much time doing their art? Art that might or might not be useful to you in the future.


Example: My artists buddy has a great idea for a daily newspaper cartoon, he's worked on it for years, submitted it multiple times. The art is great, the characters funny but the reality of the business is this: The 2 big syndicates get over 5,000 cartoon submissions a year each and almost never take on a new strip. How often do you see a new cartoon in the paper? Once every 5 years? 10? And a cartoon submission is a full month of dailys and sundays which is a month of work for a pro without even designing the characters.

Animated shows? I've done work for 2 people to help pitch their shows. A few meetings later they are completely rethinking the whole project and asking for completely different art because of what they were told by the studio. Lots of bumps in the road and complete road blocks. Lots of reasons to take your work, your weeks or months of art and chuck it, never to be seen again. But if you make them pay you $500 for a weeks work (cheap!) they are less likely to quit on the project.


If working for someone else for free is the only way you'll get anything done to put in your portfolio then you should pick another career. You should be doing art that you like to do for your portfolio so that you can get those types of jobs that are best suited to you. And don't bring down the wage for your future industry by working for nothing or for $5 an hour. EDIT: "pick another career" is a bad choice of words and I realize that it may put someone off from art because they don't do enough art for themselves. Maybe don't realize that they should be doing art for themselves. I shouldn't be saying give up art for any reason, my bad. Keep at it, keep learning and growing.

Artists are not common, continually need to train to acquire and maintain their skills and deserve to be paid like other professionals. I encourage you to reply to people soliciting free art something like "If you really believe in your idea you'd find a way to pay a professional artist for their skill."

I don't care how new and hungry you are to work on a project, don't work on spec. You aren't helping them realize the reality of getting a project produced and the chances of you actually getting anything out of it are about the same as winning the lottery or getting hit by lightning. Work on your own projects for your portfolio and act like a professional and you'll get paid work.