Hello! I am an illustrator and I've been offered to illustrate a graphic novel. The people who will be hiring me wants to know if that's something I can do alone. I don't know much about how to illustrate a graphic novel, and they don't either. Is this feasible? I'd like to learn more about the process before agreeing or disagreeing to work on the project. If you've got any advice, I would appreciate it so much! Sincerely, Maggie J.
Hey Maggie,First off congratulations on the gig! We might as well dive right in... I’m not sure if I can tell you whether or not you can do it, only you can figure that out. However, I can give you some general hints and tips to help see how much work you have ahead of you. I’m going to get payment out of the way and assume it’s a paying gig, if it’s not a paying gig and they’re only promising exposure: Don’t do it. There’s nothing wrong with working for free, but a graphic novel is likely going to take 6 months to a year out of your life, chances are you don’t want to put that much work into something for free unless you yourself are the Writer/Creator/Artist. And no publisher or writer worth their salt is going to ask you to do a book for free, for exposure, or solely for a percentage on the backend.More to the point: A publisher only promising exposure = a publisher without money to pay you which = a publisher who won’t actually expose your work because they don’t have the overhead to properly market a book. Save yourself time and stress and avoid this. It’s easy enough to say “Yes, I can do it, for X amount per page :)”Time tables. First off, you need to know how long the book is. Most OGN’s are anywhere from 90-120 pages. In standard comics that’s 4-6 issues (or 20 page chapters) in length. Speaking of chapters, you might want to divide it into chunks like that if it’s not already split up that way. This will help you keep track of your work flow.Hire help. Most people can’t do a full graphic novel by themselves, some can, but most can’t. This is completely normal so don’t beat yourself up if you can’t. If you need to, hire or tell the publisher to hire a Colorist and Letterer. Taking on those two responsibilities on top of having never drawn a graphic novel is likely too much work for your first time. It’s almost too much for me! Plus there are really talented professional letterers and colorists who are far more adept at that kind of work than I am. Think about it this way too: The better your team, the better you look in the end. It’s a weird but wonderful truth in comics.Communicate honestly. Part of this goes back to time tables. Figure out how many pages you can finish a day, a week, a month, and be honest about that with your writer and editor. One of the most important parts of this job is communicating with your editor and being honest. If you can’t finish X amount of pages by Friday, let them know so they can plan accordingly. Don’t feel too bad, you’re only human and it doesn’t impress anyone or help you at all to kill yourself pulling all-nighters to get the book done.If you want tips on art and that sort of thing, I highly highly highly recommend the books: Framed Ink, Framed Perspective Vol. 1&2 by Marcos Mateu-Mestre, all of which are available on Amazon and are some of the most helpful books I’ve ever purchased.I hope that helps!