Collective groups are a fun alternative to going it alone, and there are a few options around and new ones cropping up. They used to be a used to be a little more popular than they are today, but it’s still worth revisiting what they are and how they work, because they can be a source of support among artists, especially in situations where social media platforms might scatter your friends and colleagues to the four winds.

What experience do you have with groups like collectives with your own work?

Why did you look into them, and is there anything you didn’t expect going in that you were surprised by?

How is a collective different than a publisher?

What kinds of things do collectives focus on that are helpful for webcomic creators?

What is your advice to someone looking to join or start a collective?

What are some bad and good reasons for looking to joining or starting a comic group like a collective?

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Episode Release Date: April 17, 2024

Episode Credits:

Christina Major (@delphina2k) - she/her, sombulus.com

Ally Rom Colthoff (@varethane) - she/they, chirault.sevensmith.net wychwoodcomic.com

Phineas Klier (@tentacledeity) - they/them, heirsoftheveil.fervorcraft.de

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The Intro "DO IT (feat. Shia LaBeouf)", and the Outro "It's Good To See You Again!!", both by Adrianwave, have been used and modified in good faith under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Licensed. Edits include: Fade IN/OUT, and a repeat added to the beginning of "It's Good To See You Again!!". For more information on this creative commons use, please reference https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.

Transcription

This transcript is auto generated by our recording software.

00:00.50

Delphina

do do do okay hello and welcome to screen tones where we talk anything and everything web comics today. We're going to be talking about collectives and peer groups focused around comics or art what they are what they can do and why you. Might want to be involved with one I'm Delphina I use she her pronouns and I make the web comic sombulous.

00:26.70

Phin

So I'm fin I use Theyam pronounce and I make the web comic as of the veil. So.

00:34.50

Thane

I and I'm verthane I use she they web ah sorry um, ah yes, my pronouns are web and comic. Um I.

00:38.70

Delphina

She they web comics. Ah.

00:43.50

Phin

Ah, the coveted web pronouns.

00:50.82

Thane

Ah, Redo I'm verethhane I use she they pronouns and I make the web comics teralt and which would.

00:55.23

Delphina

I excellent. Okay I'm so happy to have everybody here. Um, we're going to be talking about collectives. Um, ah, full disclosure. We're all part of a collective together. So I really wanted to get this group specifically talking about it. Um collective groups used to. Be a little more popular than they are today. Um, but we still have a few options around and new ones can crop up. Um, that's worth revisiting what they are how they've worked historically and how they work now. Um because they can really be a source of support among artists. And especially in situations like right now where social media platforms might scatter all your friends and colleagues to the four wins. It's it's really important to kind of have that support. Um and come together in in maybe a more structured way than just a follow list. So we're going to talk. About it today. I'm excited. Um and I'm just going to throw the question out there to to everyone. Maybe we'll start with you fin like what experience do you have with groups like collectives with your work. Um, why did you look into them. Is there anything that you didn't expect. That you were going in that you were surprised by like kind of talk us through the history of of how you felt about collectives. Yeah.

02:21.64

Phin

And um, so yeah I think um, Spider Forest was like my first proper collective I was a part of um, back in the day where I was like more active in the. German manga enemy scene I was also like part of a smaller collective. But um, that was run a little bit weirdly I would say um, it was more on the line of um, someone. Was like um managing the thing and when they had an idea about like 1 a comics ontology or something that they wanted to publish. They asked members of the collective and everyone had to kind of like fro money. Onto the table to get that financed. So um I don't know that was like a little bit chaotic and also very much like.

03:21.21

Delphina

You withsstep like pre kickstarter days or like did you have.

03:30.31

Phin

I think Hickstater was like already a thing but it wasn't really like utilized by a lot of um german artists at the time and I think like in Germany for smaller collectors like these it was. More of a given that you would like invest your own money to help or get something to print. But yeah because um, yeah. Because 1 person was kind of managing that on their own and nobody else and that small collective really had any like say in what was happening. Um, it wasn't the most pleasant. Um.

04:26.68

Phin

Kind of like experience I would say and it also took me a while until I looked into collectives again after that. Um and that was basically when I got into webcomics because beforehand i. Was basically um I don't know publishing comics um in print and so when I actually got into web comics. Um a few years after that I was like. Finding a lot of comics that had that little spider forest banner. Um, and I thought a lot of the comics were really cool. So i.

05:14.53

Phin

Looked into it and I actually applied with um the first comic that we published which in hindsight I'm kind of glad that we didn't get interest by their forest at the time because the comic was not very good. But. Like my main incentive for trying to get into spider forest as a collective was I kind of wanted to like I don't know how do you say it? Um I don't want to say profit of of the community. But. I think it's more like I wanted to like be part of a community and maybe kind of help build a community at the time and like find connections to other artists. I think that was like 1 of my main incentives because. But comics can be kind of lonely and a lot of the times you're just like you don't know what you're doing and I think collectives are just like a great place to. Find like-minded people who can help you in your endeavors or which with whom you can maybe organize cool webcomic related activities.

06:35.85

Delphina

Yeah I Definitely hear you about like where it's a little different when it's It's like somebody's the leader and you're kind of going along with whatever they want to do and they're making the decisions about what anthologies you're going to or what? yeah. Places that you want to go for conventions or or whatever. Um, and that can be really good because you get things done that way you like there's a focus. But if you're not completely aligned with whatever they're doing that can be a kind of wobbly structure and you know eventually you might not be satisfied with the direction. It's going. So um, so I Yeah I much prefer like having those. Those peers knowing that we're we're all on the same level. We're all working together and all of our voices kind of matter I think that's one of the strengths of a peer group to be honest. So yeah.

07:36.23

Phin

Yeah, yeah, like the problem with collectives that are mostly structured around one person can also like lead to even the person taking on too much of the work and. Burning out by trying to keep the collective alive or in the case of um, the person that was leading or collective like at the time it was like after a while it became pretty apparent that she. Basically when we did antologies and stuff like that that like she would basically give herself the most space with her stories in the antology so she basically kind of used the collective as like um. Someone to give her money so she could like publish her works and.

08:26.70

Delphina

You Oh no, Yeah I you have to keep that in check if you're going to be part like leading a group or something like that you do have to sort of be objective and that's hard. It can be very hard to be objective because we're all working our butts off here and we all want to like showcase. The hard work we're doing with a collective but ah, you have to kind of take it in Moderation. Um, yeah, what about what about youthhane like what kinds of experience. Do you have with comic groups Collective groups. Um, you know why did you look into them initially. Um, what did you find tell us the stories and.

09:09.54

Thane

Um, I feel I've been in Spider Forest for a long time I think I applied in 2009 and at the time I had been ah the comic had been going for about 2 years and when I started it. I was posting it mostly to an audience that I assumed consisted mostly of my like real life handful of friends and a couple of family members and a couple of co-workers who asked about it and the idea that there were more people out there who could be reading these things ah came to my awareness and I started looking at um. Forums and things like I found ah a web site called the web comic list which is still around as a web site now. Their goal was just to have be a list of all the web comics that existed which is ah even at the time it was pretty ambitious. Ah, so they had like a website they would track like what was updating on what day so people could use it as kind of a reading list assistant ah to check like oh this updated today I'm going to go read it? Um, and they had a forum attached to the site. Which had a pretty big community that was pretty active about posting about things. There were a lot of ah, a lot of folks on there who are now like really active in web comics or comics in general ah who were regulars on that forum at the time so I was checking it on the daily.

10:33.10

Thane

And I saw announcements that Spider Forest was open for applications and I was like what's this spider Forest thing. What a funny idea. Um, and I didn't apply right? A collective ah a group another forum like this one.

10:44.30

Delphina

Spidders and forth.

10:51.90

Thane

But like slightly more exclusive kind of exciting but also kind of scary so I didn't apply the first year that I saw that ah those ads but I think the next time I saw a post about it like a year later I did apply and and I got in with my first comic charl and just kind of started. Poking around and I think the main thing that I was after at the time was really just that community. Ah, which I kind of had gotten a taste of through the the web comic list forums like those were. Completely public so it was a mixture of like regulars who were making web comics but also like people who would pop in and make an account one day just to be like has anybody heard of this web comic I read it three years ago. It had a girl who turned into a bear or something like that and like people would try to guess. Like just posts like that and then they would disappear and never come back. Ah so the idea of a group where like it was a little tighter. Um and just having kind of access to that space ah was really was really important to me. Ah, and ah yeah, once once. Ah. Once I got to kind of knowing everybody. It was really nice just having like a social circle of people other creators who were all a bit more like on the same page and ah sharing resources and doing cross promotion and the cross promotion itself is like also pretty valuable when you're like starting out with a comic like.

12:21.57

Thane

We all are posting these on the internet because we want people to read them and to get people to read them. They need to hear about it first. Ah so groups like that. Ah Lake spider forest which is a collective that also has a link share where everybody will have a banner at the top of their page which randomizes. Ah, randomly goes through other banners of other members so that you'll be linked on multiple other websites that can be useful as well and spider forest isn't the only group that is doing that even today ah because in 2009 there were a bunch more collectives. Ah, that used to be kind of the main way people would find comics was through link pages on web comics or through groups like Spider Forest or at the time there were like several other collectives out there. There was one called sage comics that isn't around anymore that was pretty ah large. Um, unfortunately Spider Forest is now the the sole survivor. Um, but as as far as collectives go but there are other types of groups which are just link or banner exchanges and there are still a few of those out there like there's one that I was just I just heard about ah which is literally. Just called webcomic ring dot org and if you go there, you can see like a little a little dropdown with all their comics on it and ah the link to each other on the page There's also a knife beetle which is the same kind of thing like you join it just to have access to the web ring function but it doesn't have.

13:55.90

Thane

I Guess all the all the bells and whistles of a full collective where they run like different projects and stuff because Spiderfor has the anthologies and they have like the big community hub and a lot of other like outreach going on. Ah yeah, that's kind of my thoughts.

14:12.56

Delphina

And yeah I think it's important too that like it's It's not like a publisher. It's not like a a business or anything. It's just a supportive environment for for people to kind of grow and teach and build each other up. Um. And like there are a lot of bells and muscles. But those like came over time for sure like Spider force didn't start off doing. Everything under the sun and it kind of um you know you'll see it wax and wane depending on how you know how many people are Active. What's going on in people's lives and I think that um the fact that we do have regular applications seasons to get new people in and and. Kind of engage people on a regular basis kind of helps it keep you know helps keep the membership wanting to innovate it and like figure out. Ok. Well let's do another convention. Well, let's start doing anthologies. Let's start doing bubble bla Bla Blah Blah Blah blah but it like. I Think the takeaway there too is just it didn't happen overnight. It doesn't none of this is going to happen overnight and I would love to see more collectives again. But like you know, just take it one step at a time start with a webring start with a you know.

15:34.68

Delphina

Just link exchange. That's that's simple and a little discord where you just chat about stuff and like it can grow from there for sure. Um I think that's just there's a lot of strength in that. Um, for me I I Definitely um.

15:54.27

Delphina

I liked comics I was doing them on my own and it's kind of a similar story where ah, you know and I just wanted a community I wanted to like I I was passionate about being an indie creator I wasn't really sure if I wanted to approach a publisher or anything like that. But I didn't know if there were any other groups out there that were just for you know organizations to like make comics and kind of talk with other people. Um I was listening to the paper wings podcast way back in the day which was kind of more art-centric and. Hey. Well you know let's let's talk about let's let's do inspirational things and 1 of the guest posts on there was a member of Spider Forest and they talked about being involved with Spider Forest I you know I got familiar with their work I saw that they were saying hey our application season is open. Um I think it's a pretty cool place if you want to try to check it out. Go ahead. Um, and so I I didn't really know what to expect? other than that. But I knew that I liked this comic and I liked the the person running it I'm like well yeah I would I would be in company with that I think that's a cool thing. Let me just ah. Why and see what happens. Um and I did get in um and it was it was a little different than I was expecting I wasn't really sure what to expect. but um but it was big it was a lot bigger than I thought it was gonna be.

17:27.62

Delphina

And I I don't think I realized like how many people and how much history it had until I got in there and I'm like Whoa. There's some seriously cool stuff going on here and um and I have volunteerism I I am. Chronically trying to stick my nose into organizational um Roles. So It didn't take me too long to like get involved and and start like hey we should do this and that and the other thing and it was just so cool to have like a body of people who were on board with that like yeah. Yeah,, let's do things and um, because because it's hard to do alone like how am I going to make an anthology by myself that seems like a lot. But if somebody else knows how to like do the you know the artwork if someone can make a cool like cover if somebody else. Can you know, figure out the crowdfunding or however, we're going to do this and if somebody else can do the um, the ah print um production part in ah in design or whatever. Like you're kind of assembling Voltron At that point you're just yeah, bringing together. Everybody's strengths and and doing something that no none of you could do like on your own and that part is really cool to me. Um, also recently I think in the last year um car.

18:56.28

Delphina

The cartoonist cooperative um popped up and I applied for that and so I'm also a part of that too. it's ah um it's a little different. Um, they're kind of um, a member driven organization. Um, that like is a little more career focused I think there's a lot of like high profile names in there that like wow I'm I'm in this this place with this person. Wow okay, um, and the scope is a little more broad. It doesn't seem to be um, genre or. Format based I think you can have web comics or print comics or whatever. Um, and and also you know just spider force kind of tends towards genre fiction. This is not exclusively genre fiction. Um, but um. The the membership is decided by the founders. Um, there's actually a lot of people. Um and how they do it is they have um, structured promotional campaigns is 1 of their main features. Which means if you're a member you can submit a campaign. Through a form and if it's approved it runs for two months and it's basically your chance to ask the rest of the members for help with stuff like making flyers or getting editorial feedback on drafts. Um, someone went in and say said hey I have this.

20:23.90

Delphina

Video can someone chop it up and make it ticktock size um like reaching out to comic stores to get them to order print copies like all this like marketing outreach stuff. We wish Publishers would take our comics and do for us but like the. The cartoon is cooperative doesn't make your sign away your rights to get access to that stuff. Um, so it's It's also kind of run on this many hands make light work philosophy and I think that's just so Cool. Um, they're they're not. I Think they're they're pretty New. We'll see how it holds up. But I Really hope it works out. Um because that kind of ah Mutual Aid Approach is just very very intriguing and attractive to me. Um, so ah, with that I mean I just wanted to ask because I think this comes up a lot. How is a collective different than a publisher like what kinds of things like it. Why would you want to be part of a collective versus trying to get your work published like what? What's the dichotomy there I'm gonna. Throw it to you then.

21:37.47

Phin

And yeah, so um I think they're very different from each other because um so a collective you have like your building Community. No matter what the collective is actually for if they're like. I Don't know just a community that helps each other out or if it's like people that help each other market so you have an active community that for the most part will be there for you if you have like problems questions you can reach out to them and with. Ah, publisher. Well do you have your publisher. Um I mean depending on what kind of publisher it is if there may be a little bit small if it's an indie publisher if it's mainstream publisher you might. Get into contact with other people that are published by that specific publisher but it's not really community building. Um. And for the most part I guess you approach a publisher to get your works out there and you hope that if they do they will market your comic um to a degree that you do not have to put.

23:02.34

Phin

As much work into that. Um, so the main difference for me. It's like that one is like a business relationship. So Each party is like contractually obligated to fulfill. Their side of the deal while in a collective. It's a group of peers I mean there can be business related things. Especially if you do projects like antologies and run Kickstarters together. But for the most part it's. Way more chill I would say um and of course the expectations that you have to go into um I don't know approaching a publisher for your work and going to a collective with your Work. Should be different because if I go to a publisher I Want my work published I want um, editing for whatever I'm publishing. Um and I want marketing even though.

24:18.89

Phin

Nowadays We all know that especially in the marketing department that can be really lacking. Um and a lot of like artists are kind of forced to do the marketing themselves but with a collective my expectations are like way different. I Basically only expect the community and the community aspects and depending on the collective and how the collective is structured. Um, ah maybe also some sort of. Marketing help. But I Also think that with a collective. Um, there's also kind of this part that you have to be constantly a little bit proactive to like um, be um. Ah, productive part of the collective like with publishing for the most part. It's like you draw your comic. It goes into editing and like with having the comic Done. You're basically done you fulfilled your part of the deal. But with a collective you kind of have to like if you want to receive something. You also have to give something you cannot just be like okay here's my thing ah please share my thing with others please give me all the like um positives of the collective without.

25:52.60

Phin

Having to actually invest something and I guess that kind of like makes it sound like work. But I think that actually like interacting in a community is incredibly Fun. So It's not really like I don't know something Stressful. It's just like. If you're in a collective and you like the other members of the collective and you like other people's comics then you will probably already be incentivized to like go and interact and do your part and try to help. Other people in the collective. Yeah.

26:32.95

Delphina

And that's such a good point too about like it you you already kind of have that disposition right? because if if you have friends who make web Comics. You're already kind of rooting for them So in a collective relationship like that that. Follows Naturally that feels so natural. Um to to kind of like yeah I I want to give back to them I Want to be proactive and you know here's a structure that I can work within to do something that I know will be meaningful to them. Um, and I do think like it. Being published or going to a publisher is completely valid. Um, if like that that's just not your jam If you're just making your thing and you don't want to have to you just don't have the bandwidth to be you know, pushing other people's things or reading it or keeping up with. With things I think um, that can be just really tricky to balance. Um, if if you just don't have the energy for that. Um, So definitely no shade to people who um, who aren't like oh yes I Want to be involved with. Every other comic person in the world like nobody has the energy to do all of that. Um, but if you do if you're already like feeling that vibe just go with it I think there's just so many cool options for you in terms of either joining existing collectives or um.

28:04.60

Delphina

Or you know I don't know making your own it could happen. Um, how about you thane like what are the key differences because yeah, do you work with publishers and you also work. Um with the collective. So I'm really curious to hear your thoughts. Yeah.

28:18.10

Thane

And um, yeah I'd say I mean you you got you guys have covered most of the the big the broader differences between the 2 in that like ah the the collector will be much more of a reciprocal social relationship. Um whereas ah a publisher is much more of a binding kind of a. A legal business relationship that you enter into and the nice thing about the collective approach is that I mean in addition to just having access to a social circle that feels like a bunch of friends who can be like supportive of each other. Ah, it can be a lot more flexible like whenever life gets in the way if you need to go on a hiatus or something like that. It's just as easy as being like hey folks I'm going on hiatus um, whereas if you were in a publisher relationship and you need to take like a month or a few months off of like working on new pages for whatever reason accident. Family situation whatnot. Ah you may have to answer to to them legally speaking. Um, if deadlines start slipping then suddenly there's like money involved and it's a whole it. It becomes a problem. Um my publisher involvement has been kind of a bit more limited. Ah so. Which would is in ah a publisher called hiveworks which is ah a web publisher and they're kind of a hybrid publisher model that like on the outside. It looks an awful lot like a collective in that they have a hub website with a listing of web comics and if you go and visit it.

29:46.44

Thane

It It can look a bit similar because you'll be like oh here's all the members and like here's banners for their comics and you can read about the the little blurb and then go click a link to take you to the page itself. Um under the surface. The the publisher aspect kicks in ah where there's a um. There. There's an ad ring that ah the contract gives you access to so all the comics that are a part of Hiveworks will have these ads on their pages and ah and that's kind of the the main financial Incentive. Um. When it when it comes to that circle. Um, and ah yeah, it's just it's it's a bit of a different slightly different vibe like.

30:32.26

Delphina

And yeah, I mean it. It sounds interesting too because um I think there's a lot of print publishers out there. There's not a lot of like web publishers out there. Um, unless you're talking about like webtune or or tapest or something like that. Um, but there is money involved you you are like selling a product basically which is your work and so you do have to show up for the job. Um, so it's it's important to kind of keep track of what's going on there. Um. I'm going to pos it. Ok I mean and and yet publishers are are really interesting. But um, you know if you're still feeling like you know the collectives. That's the vibe for me. Um, what is your advice to. Someone looking to either join or start a collective like what are some bad or good reasons for trying to to get involved with ah a group of peers. Um, you know, maybe a collective maybe a webring just like anything like that. What do you think? Finn.

31:38.22

Phin

I. So um I think for bad reasons I would say if you only hope to find a place where your work I'll do that again because super.com so um, for bad reasons I would say if you're looking for a place. Um, where you can um like but to only promote your work um without like investing a lot I think that would be like. Ah, bad reason to join a collective or even start a collective because like um, yeah, the second one I mean I've I've already experienced someone starting a collective to kind of try. And promote their own work and get money together to get the stuff printed. Um like I've also seen like a lot of small indie publishers like popping off out in Germany which were mostly like single people who. Try to benefit from the publisher status to get like their own comics out and to get ah isbn numbers like Sheper. So I think like that's for the most part, not a very good reason and i.

33:04.55

Phin

Don't think I've ever seen like a collective or a publisher build on that basis actually like survive them like for more than a year or anything. So I think that a better reason would be actually to want to build a community. And to want to interact with community to actually like create a space where people can help each other um and one of my tips would probably be if you want to start a collective. Then I would first look for people who you know are actually reliable people where you know that they have like resources that they can add to the collective because there's like. And lot that has to be taken account when like starting an endeavor like that. Um, yeah, and ah people that you know will stick with the collective at least for a while to get it going and not. Like flake on the project. Um, as soon as stuff starts to get difficult because I think that there's like.

34:30.78

Phin

And the past there have been like so many collectives and like a lot of them. Don't exist anymore for 1 reason or another and a lot has to do with like time and ah people being unable to put as much of their time. Into those collectives. Um as they've used to. So I think like if someone wants to start a collective It's also like there's no shame and just like going slow with it and slowly building. Um, ah it up and not. Like investing too much into it because you could like run the risk of getting burned out if you like put too much into it like in the beginning.

35:23.26

Delphina

Yeah, absolutely.

35:27.94

Thane

I feel like that is ah a pattern that I've seen in in a lot of other ah like collectives that start up and then don't last super long there. There's kind of a few a few things that can go awry like. Ah, if they're leaning too heavily on just one person for organization like even if they're the person who founded it and is the most excited at first I feel like that can also be kind of unsustainable ah including for them because even if you're super excited about this thing at the beginning it can actually be a lot of work keeping this kind of. Ah, they that there's kind of operation going for like for more than a year or so. Ah so if you spread around the responsibility and also to make sure that like all the members feel some sense of agency and involvement within like the way that things are run. I think 1 thing that Spider Forest does that's really cool is when there's a round of new applications coming in everybody will vote on it like every single member and it's very democratic in that way. Which has ah a couple of functions because it makes sure that the the new people coming on board are folks that the majority of the existing members of the collective like they like their work or feel like they vibe with them. Um, but it also helps everyone kind of feel I guess a sense of ownership.

36:45.94

Thane

Over what's happening like oh I'm involved like I'm a part of this and I have ah I have a voice in what's happening here and.

36:52.71

Phin

And yeah, I totally agree I think something that I also think is really cool about Spider Forest is that there is like the possibility of starting your own project within the group. So I think like. What you've mentioned having agency is actually like a really important point that you actually feel okay, you're doing something within your collective. You're involved um and like your. Getting something like off the ground and people are actually excited or participate in like your ideas or what you're doing for the collective. Yeah.

37:38.60

Thane

And yeah, it's that sense of like my cool big idea has like just as good a chance of getting off the ground as like as anyone else's within within the group and within on on kind of that that topic there's like. There's a lot of cool big projects that a lot of creators just get very excited about like anthologies and kickstarters and stuff like that. Ah and being in a group where there's people with experience in all those things whether it be they were published in another anthology previously. So they kind of have seen that process from the inside. Or this person knows how to run a kickstarter and this person knows how to lay book lay a book out in Indesign or is really good at wrangling people. Ah you can kind of have folks step into those roles with with no actual pressure because it's not like ah there's no formal relationship here forcing people into it but like. When when you get like how many members are in Spider Forest it's like 70 or 80 when you have that many people around who've been doing comics for a long time. Ah some some folks just have these skills and are excited to use them to help out like their friends and their community and.

38:47.34

Delphina

And yeah, absolutely I think one of the admins at Spider Forest was like a spider has eight legs and that that's the metaphor for like how it walks and how it moves and how how it goes because you need like all 8 legs to to keep going. Um, some people are going to get tired some people need to take a break for life reasons and it really kind of sucks to feel like oh no I'm ah like I'm going to let the entire group down the entire thing is going to die if I am not one of the legs that's moving and that's not the case. And I think that's kind of one of the secrets to our longitivity that I would like to share with like anybody else who wants to start a group just like get some friends um to Finn's point make sure they're reliable and and they're they can you know do the work and step up when they need to but like you know, just. Ah, take advantage of everybody else's skills like make sure that comes together in a way. Um, it can really be something beautiful and cool. Um I'm going to pause and um, so. Tell me too. Um, like what is your advice to someone looking to join or start a collective like um, what? what should they be thinking? What? What's the mindset going in what are some bad reasons to do it like yeah, what do you think yeah.

40:19.91

Thane

Ah, well to get this out of the way I think a bad reason to do it is for money. Um there, there's not money in web comics I'm sorry um so don't have that as your guiding star. Um, otherwise I guess ah when like.

40:25.80

Delphina

You There's no fort bunny. No no no I.

40:36.23

Thane

Do lean into the ideas that excite like everyone who's in the group that keep the expectations kind of mitigated and stick to things that you know immediately out of the gate that the people who are involved right now are definitely experienced with. Um, so like if you don't have someone who's really good at building websites or something like don't worry about offering hosting or building like a super like fancy site like if it needs to stay on Wix or Weebly or something like that like maybe maybe that just has to happen. Ah, you don't need to jump straight into. Big exciting like crowdfunders and like ads and like all kinds of crazy bells and whistles. Ah because that can burn people out very quickly. Um, and ah I think getting getting that starting momentum. And going from that kind of honeymoon phase of like cool new shiny project into like making it actually last a long time. Ah that first like after that first maybe three or six months or so when the initial ah hype about getting started wears off like what's going to keep this group. Going and sticking together. Um, and if everyone is like if it's a tight circle of friends then like that can kind of work out on its own hopefully but you want to make sure that the things that you're promising to one another are like within scope and don't let that get away from you when you.

42:06.80

Delphina

Absolutely it's just ah I've seen so many people with so many big ideas and it's just like do what you can do the small things because like the. Act of finishing things. The act of completing things is kind of its own like endorphins like you you get excited about what you've achieved and and yeah, what you can do and then you can build off of that. But if you keep like trying and and going for the moon and trying to be a. Big like name or a big splash and like it doesn't work out initially like that. Yeah, that kind of damages morale. You kind of have to figure the the morale piece out to to make everybody feel like yeah, we're doing something and it's cool. I know like 1 of the projects we have in spider forest right now is we all make a group Spotify playlist every month and people can contribute their songs and somebody puts it on Spotify in a playlist. That's it. That's the only involvement and there there always little themes about you know? ah. You know drawing grass like what what kinds of things would you listen to you while you have like a repetitive thing that you're drawing what kinds of things would you listen to while you're waiting for the train or whatever and like it's so simple and it's so easy that anybody can do it.

43:31.55

Delphina

And at the end you get the product and like that's the key you have to do things that you can accomplish because that's what makes people feel like they're they're contributing. They have agency and and you know, just um, making things that that other people can appreciate. Um, I think another thing that comes up in Spider Forest is people try to apply because they want to see if their comic is good enough. They want to see if like ah the the merits of their comic are are the best and and and stuff and that's a kind of tricky one to like to to be. Going into a collective mindset like for that validation I think that can be dangerous because every group is different. Every group is going to have its preferences and um, you know, even though we are very democratic in spider forest in my personal opinion like that's ah. We. We do have our preferences. We do have our biases and um and you can be doing something amazing that just doesn't like we can't figure out how other people who like our stuff would necessarily transition into like your stuff and like and we don't want. To be a situation where we can't genuinely endorse somebody who joins Spider Forest if it's just like well this is kind of a a thing that somebody else is doing. But yeah, so that's the thing too like you. Whatever you're doing whether you're part of a group or not like.

45:04.46

Delphina

That has value you are learning. We're all learning and nobody is perfect. Um, so joining the collective expecting to be like part of this upper echelon of like top tier comics like that's not necessary either. Um, what you want what you want to be cultivating is that relationship with your peers with your friends and really saying like you know we're all the same here where we all have different experiences but we all have this in common. And we want to be able to work together as peers to make some cool stuff and that's what it's all about to me. Um, so unless anybody else has anything else I think we're going to call that a wrap here. Um, thank you both for joining me. And um, yeah I've been delpha you can find my web comic sombulous at sombulous dot com and our collective at Spider Forest Dot Com

46:06.50

Phin

I I've been thin and you can find my the comic as of the veil at airsofthevalil.com and yeah, check out spter for this.

46:15.35

Thane

I and I've been verethhane, you can find my comics at cherat dot sevensmith dot net or at wiitchwwoodcomic.com

46:24.20

Delphina

So go read webcomics and go join collectives. But only if that's your thing whoa.

46:30.60

Phin

Go make your own. But.

46:34.50

Delphina

Are go make your there's I want to see more collectives for sure. Go we're gonna do it. We're gonna make it go make collectives everybody. Yes.

46:36.41

Phin

If yeah, it would be so we need another golden age of our comic collectors.

46:44.29

Thane

Start This trend.