Perfidy & Pain

For those of you who pay attention to these kind of things, I normally post my articles on Wednesdays.  Today is Thursday (afternoon I might add) and my article is just now going up.

I have a reason, I have a massive toothache and I hate the dentist.  Now I could start a whole big debate here about health care (or lack of) and the self-employed but, that really isn’t my point today.

My point broaches a larger problem.  What happens when you are sick, you have to be out of town, your dog dies, whatever as a self-employed colorist?  If you work on your own you’ve got big problems.  The deadline is the deadline no matter how close to death you feel.  Obviously, this is true for many jobs but if you work alone as a freelancer you don’t have anyone to help you out.

If you email your editor and say “I feel like crap today can these pages wait until tomorrow?” What will they say?  Sometimes they can give you some wiggle room, but as a colorist you get stuff last and closest to the deadline–sometimes there isn’t wiggle room it’s got to go today.  But what if it can’t?  What if (for whatever reason) you just can’t make it, where does that leave you?

Missing deadlines is a big deal in any job but as a colorist you end up holding up the whole print run.  When you do that a couple times the editor or publisher tend to not call you back for the next gig.

(I could spend about 4 paragraphs discussing the fact that writers and pencillers get 3 months and colorists get 3 days but I won’t digress.)

So, what to do when you are sick or want a freakin’ vacation… if you work in a studio setting there is usually someone else who can take up the slack and help you out.  You’ll just get a smaller paycheck next month because you did fewer pages but overall things remain the same.  If you are working on your own you may be able to call in a friend to help you out.  But then you have another dilemma.  Do you tell your editor that you aren’t really doing that work and give him/her credit?  Do you give your friend contact connections to the editor?  Good business sense says heck no!  If you set up your friend with contact info for your editor then what?  What happens if the editor likes them better?  You’ve just lost yourself a job ‘cause you wanted some peace by a beach.

This (finally) brings me to my larger point… why are we such a secretive industry?  Seems like we are always keeping secrets from each other.  Contacts, pay scales, if we use help, & sometimes even which projects we are working on.

Wouldn’t it be nice to just call up someone without worry and ask “Can you do X pages for X price,” and they just say yes or no.  It then wouldn’t show up on gutterzombie next week that you are a slacker or a cheapskate or whatever.  Instead it shows up that you need help and we were glad to give it.

Now, of course, many people will do just that, but mostly we are too busy “protecting” our income to really help each other out.  When Brian & I started writing “Hi-Fi Color for Comics” many people were actually angry that we were “giving away our secrets.”  Seriously? It’s not like coloring ranks up there with world domination or anything.

I know it sounds a bit hippie-like but I think the overall world view has changed lately and not for the good.  We have become a very negative society instead of helping your fellow man (or woman) we almost find ways to impede them out of jealousy or fear.

Pretty heavy for someone with a toothache huh?

Kristy Miller

VP, Development

Hi-Fi Design