If You Can Do It All Yourself, Why Wouldn't You?

If You Can Do It All Yourself, Why Wouldn't You?

One of the arguments I made in my collaborative comic response earlier this semester for why the collaborative effort was a success was the fresh diversity of ideas that came about during brainstorming our comic. While I may have had ideas that I liked and wanted to implement, having other group members to build off of and improve my ideas, and vice versa with theirs, returned a result that I, and I hope they as well, ended up being far happier than with than any of our original visions for our comic.

While I am very much for the collaborative effort, I would like to argue that the sole-authored/artistic process can be as equally, if not more successful. For someone like myself, who has very minimal artistic ability, the DIY system has little chance at success. However, with some who is as artistically able as Windsor McCay, or Hergé, there is much less reason to seek a partnership. Did Picasso or Van Gogh ask people what they should paint? Of course not, they were talented enough to depict their own profound ideas themselves, and so they did. Personally, I deeply envy those that have the ability to accurately portray the images they envision in their mind. Having just finished my DIY comic, I anticipated from the beginning that my biggest challenge would be illustrating my ideas as I had imagined them, and as expected it was.

As I mentioned earlier with respect to the positive results that the brainstorming process brought during my collaborative comic project, this effect is completely lost for those that produce the entire comic themselves. Though these artists/writers have the ability to do it themselves, bouncing around ideas with others often brings out the best. While many may argue that the issue with sole-authored/artistic comics has to do with the separate talents that individuals can bring together that does not occur, I would argue that it's the melting pot of ideas that is lost.