Collaboration - An Unexpected Love Letter

Time for a change of pace! I don’t usually like to do a lot of these types of articles but this topic might benefit from a touch of experience. So bear with me and my small trip into self-indulgence.

Some of you might know that I am actually part if a collaboration! Whilst I write and wander around here as my anointed status as honorary admin, Emma_Clare, I am also known as EMI the illustrator of Team Emevsa! This collaboration began in 2017, officially anyway, but really it goes back a lot further than that.

SJ and I met many years ago on an RP forum when our characters hit it off. Eventually we did too. As time went along and we began to spread our creative branches, me going back to my comic roots and her leafing the pages of a Master's degree we decided to come together and create something.

A collaboration is always bit of a gamble because it can change the nature of your friendship. You become close workmates now and it can sometimes be hard to look past that aspect of your relationship. You’re balancing expectations and results now and if something goes wrong, you are potentially holding another person besides yourself accountable.

For me, well, I got extremely lucky. SJ and I started with goals beyond our first work. We approached our collaboration with the solid intention of finishing not just our first comic, The Constellation Chronicle, but other works as well. There’s also the added bonus of us being very similar in our personalities and patience level. When an issue arises we talk to each other with the intention of working out a solution that suits us both. This strong belief in “compromise” has helped us maintain not just a functional working relationship but friendship as well.

Early on, we also took the time to set up procedures and responsibilities and have stuck to that. As a result, things tick over fairly well. We balance each other out.

At the end of the day, SJ keeps me grounded as a creator, making sure that my tangents eventually circle round.

This turned out to be a bit of a love letter didn’t it?

Collaborating has been a fantastic experience so far. How about you guys? Have you had a good experience working with another person or did it go horribly wrong? Let us know in the comments below! And join us on Sunday evening for our Quackchat at 5:30PM(EST).

Till next time lovelies!