File under “I have no idea what the heck this is about.” This came in from a webcomic artist. I do not know who it is.
We were supposed to collaborate on a project where you would be lettering a few yeas ago. However you sent me a concise, and somewhat rude email stating that you had been offered a coloring gig, which would impact your free time and not allow you to letter the comic, and I paraphrase, that I should “Be more considerate asking people to do work for free”.
While I was not asking for free work, but looking for a WILLING collaborator, I just want to thank you because without that rather rude, yet understandable remark I would have never made an attempt to professionally letter the book myself, a learning experience that has uplifted my comic’s creating skill.
I have since taught myself lettering and in a professional manner as far as I can tell, and if you hadn’t been so rude, demeaning and insulting in your response I would have never had the gumption to letter the majority of it myself.
So thank you. I will not be asking of or requiring your lettering services anymore. Best of luck to you, and hope you succeed in the future.
I do not know who you are. I did not agree to collaborate with you or anyone else as a letterer or colorist.
Not only am I not a letterer, I am not a colorist, either.
I have never lettered or colored anyone else’s work in my entire life. EDIT: I did the colors for Lynn Johnston’s “For Better or for Worse” limited edition prints. Ghost art job as hand painted watercolors. This was almost 20 years ago. I have not been approached to letter or color anyone else’s work on anything else. I do not do this craft for hire. I have no idea what this is about.
I have been booked solid for the better part of four years doing drawings and paintings for Marvel, DC, Houghton Mifflin, Topps, Image, and Harper Collins.
However, it is true I do not work for free. Thank you for your note.
Have a nice day.
FYI: A few months ago, a colorist accused me of plagiarizing their work on a coloring gig from back in the 1980′s.
I was the pencil artist on that book. I did not plagiarize their coloring (and I’m not sure how you do that,) because I did not color the book.
And I probably would have told this fellow who claims he came looking to me for my meager lettering skills that I do not work on spec, and I am happy he learned to letter. But a little creeped out that he is carrying a grudge against someone who told him no. I pity the girl.
No one comes to me for lettering. The only lettering I have ever done in my life is on my own A Distant Soil and a couple of self published short stories. I pay someone else to do it, as a rule. And since I didn’t have a webcomic “a few yeas ago,” can’t think why anyone would approach me about doing a webcomic as a “collaborator”. Because I am just dying to letter other people’s work.
Not.
I have not been offered any coloring gigs since sometime around, oh, 1991. I think the last published coloring work I did which was not a cover painting was on Clive Barker’s Hellraiser. I do not know how to do comic book style coloring or lettering, which, today, requires computer skills I still have yet to learn to professional level, and sure as hell didn’t have “a few yeas ago”.
I repeat: I never agreed to collaborate with this person. Ever.
Since I put my work online, I do get an inordinate amount of this sort of thing. Over the past week, I have been hammered with emails from someone who insisted I look at their project. PDf’s clog my inbox. After I put his email on block, he got another email address.
The emails seems to have stopped for now.
(Slight edit for clarity.)
