Crowdsourced Creativity

If you like supporting creative projects directly, whether by donations or giving people ideas, see if there's something of interest here. It's a collection of projects that caught my eye, particularly fiction Fishbowls where you leave prompts for someone to use as basis for writing. At the end you'll find links to stories written to my prompts in February, as well as my activity last month.

Networking on Twitter

If you run a project - writing, drawing, anything else - which involves asking people for prompts, and you plug it on twitter, consider including the hashtag #promptcall

Updates of last month's projects

With a bit over two days to go, Plunge, the ezine for queer women in genre literature, is fully funded.

The Pueblo of Acoma Storytelling Studio on the other hand isn't close to its goal yet, though there are two weeks to go still.

Planned Prompt Calls

• 6th - Elizabeth Barette's Poetry Fishbowl, theme "commoner heroes and second fiddles" (general information about the Poetry Fishbowl)
• 7th-14th - Eliza Gebow's Character Art Jam - you can request images of your characters, or of animals, etc. (results of a test-run)
• 8th - Ariestess has a Microfic Fishbowl, theme to be announced
• 17th - Lyn Thorne-Alder has another Giraffe Call - theme to be announced. (general information about the Giraffe Call)
• 18th-19th - Crowdfunding Creative Jam (open to anyone as both prompter and creator) to the theme "Respect"

Most dates were drawn from start-of-the-month posts in the crowdfunding communities on Dreamwidth and Livejournal

Based on my prompts

• Eliza Gebow drew an owl for me.
• Rix_Scaedu wrote the unrelated flashs Custom Made and Mirrorwall based on my prompts.
• Shurhaian wrote Wild Growth, Restoration and Frostfire
• Tango wrote On a Mountain's Summit
• Lyn Thorne-Alder wrote
  • Cleaning House (a follow-up to What To Do About Auntie X)
  • Productive (a follow-up to The Grey Line which is a follow-up to Preconceptions)
  • Exterminator
• Clare K.R. Miller wrote Dream House

I don't think any of those stories need content warnings, though I can't vouch for other content you might find looking around.
Hopefully I didn't forget anything; I need to get more systematic about the bookmarking.

My Activity

Fishbowl stories posted publicly in February:

• Phantom Pains from a prompt by Eliza Gebow.
• Fairy Godparents from a prompt by Rix_Scaedu
• Half a Life Taken from a prompt by Clare K. R. Miller
• Falling Behind the Changing Times from a prompt by Elizabeth Wordsmith
• Cravings from prompts by Tango and Ellen Million
• Bearing Witness from a prompt by Tango

The Law & Order Fishbowl I ran in February will probably end up with relatively few stories; there is a pattern of someone's general prompt working together with someone else's more concrete one to create one story idea. I'm not as far along as I wanted to be by now, partly because I spent the last three days getting my computer to work again. While I did not lose any actual writing, I'm not sure I'll be able to recover my organised notes with the prompts and ideas based on them. (More frequent and thorough backups in future for me.)

The file with the stories from the Horror Fishbowl is at the editor's.

And lastly, five of the requests from the last Small Art Call are finished now.

That project is going more slowly than I'd like, too, but I'm picking up the pace and hope to get most of it done before March is over.

This round was quite a success. Thanks so much to anybody who took part!

Special thanks go to Lyn Thorne-Alder, who got several of her friends to take part, and Meeks, who plugged away without having requested anything herself. (Meeks has a standing offer for sketching story illustrations whose refinement can be crowdfunded.)

21 people asked for art, and tipped enough to get us past the third tip threshold, meaning:

• All images will be coloured unless otherwise requested. (1 each for 21 participants)
• Anybody who tipped at all can request two additional files of different sizes.
• Anybody who tipped at least $5 will get the original mailed. (That's 15 people)
• Anybody who tipped at least $10 will get a second image. (5 people, including one who got boosted here by a smaller tip plus multiple referrals.)
• A random participant gets a 5x7 request in addition to their regular one. (This one goes to jjhunter)

That's 27 images for my to-do list.

So far work has been done on 20 - the first requested images for all comers but the one person who is still gathering references. Most are only rough pencils at this point. For the very curious there are badly lighted, grainy cellphone photos I posted to my Twitter account:
last batch - second batch - first batch

I'll first work on the images for two people for whom I have other things to mail (Eliza and ysabetwordsmith), and later on the rest. It will take a while to go through everything.

UPDATE 2012-01-07: Summary of this call is available now.

This call is closed, please don't leave new requests.

Want me to draw one of your characters, or anything else?

You can request it here, and I'll draw a postcard-sized sketch. This project is crowdfunded, so I accept tips via paypal, and if you tip, or even if you don't but other people's tips crack a certain threshold, you may get an inked or coloured image instead. If you'd like to request something, please don't refrain from it on because you can't or don't want to tip. :)

Requests will be open for a few days at least; I'll change this message when I close them.

Samples

What I will draw
I'm best with humanoids and portraits, but I also draw furries and animals (or plants, objects, abstracts, whatever). Full figures are likely to be semi-chibified, like so.

Topics/requests for a character doing something are welcome in general, as long as it's not too complicated.

I'm not comfortable drawing sexual themes or gore, and may default to a vanilla portrait if you ask for another theme I find I'm not comfortable with.

Format
I'll default to drawing on A6 cards (the size is close enough to 4x6 inches that in my experience it works in pre-cut mats for 4x6 photos). Requesting other small formats - exactly 4x6, 4x4, tall and narrow "bookmarks", ACEOs, etc. is no problem, either.

For colouring I use markers, possibly combined with coloured pencils. "Coloured" may mean greyscale if what you request is naturally grey (or if you tell me you'd prefer that).

I'll upload scans 450 pixels on the longer side, default "delivery" will be via reply to the comment in which you made your request.

Rights
I retain the copyright to the image. When I post it in an online gallery, I will include your name and link to your website (or LJ or DW account), unless requested otherwise.

You may repost the scan wherever you want and it doesn't break site policies, if you credit me and link back to ankewehner.de.

You may also crop and shrink the image to use as an icon. In places like LJ or Dreamwith that provide a space to do so, please credit me as the artist, but you can use it elsewhere.

Tip- and Link incentives

Progress (updated by hand, so it will lag)

I'm leaving the button up since someone wanted to tip later, but please don't leave new requests, this call is closed.

If you tip, please don't tip less than $1 - Paypal keeps too much of those small payments. Please also make sure that I have some way to identify which request you're tipping for, and that your address is up to date.

If you spread the link and someone mentions they found this page through you, I'll count that as a $2 tip from you, but not towards the total.

Default

• Anybody who tipped at all will get their image inked, and can request one additional file of a different size (eg original 300 dpi scan, or a cropped and shrunk icon) superseded
• Anybody who tipped at least $10 will get their image coloured, and I'll send the original in the mail. superseded
• Everybody else will get a pencil sketch. superseded

Total tips over $30 - MET

• Anybody who tipped at all will get their image coloured superseded
• Anybody who tipped at least $7,50 will additionally get the original mailed. superseded

Total tips over $60 - MET

• Anybody who tipped at all can request two additional files of different sizes (for example both original 300 dpi scan and a cropped and shrunk icon)
• Anybody who tipped at least $5 will get the original mailed.
• Everybody else will get their image inked. superseded

Total tips over $90 - MET

• One random participant wins a 5x7 (13x18 cm) request/commission.
• Anybody who tipped at least $10 will get a second image. (Level of finish is up to me. I may go more experimental with the style.)
• All images will be coloured.
• And my next order of marker refill inks will be paid for.

Total tips over $120

• One random participant wins a full format (A4 or 8x10 inches) request/commission.
• Anybody who tipped at all will get a second image. (Level of finish is up to me. I may go more experimental with the style.)

Request

One request per person. I'm making no promises when I finish images, because I think without such a promise I might finish them faster. If you'd like to request something, leave the following information in a comment:

Whom or what would you like me to draw? (Please note that with characters, it's really helpful if you don't only give an image reference and/or physical description, but also mention something about the personality, to avoid getting an image of a stern/serious character grinning like a loon, or the like.)

Any style or format preferences?

If you tipped, or are planning to tip, what bonus would you like? (dimensions of additional file, text on icon, different request for second image)

If you found this through somebody else spreading the link, who was it?

General information about the Flash Fiction Fishbowl

This Fishbowl is closed for further prompts

You give me prompts, I write flash fiction based on them - Stories based on prompts from the first Fishbowl.

Prompts can be a keyword, phrase, and idea, a random fact, and image. I if you know my writing, "more of X". Just leave a comment.

I'd be particularly interested in prompts that fit the general theme of horror or dark fantasy, but if you have something else, do leave it, anyway. I'm not terribly interested in writing romance and erotica, or fanfiction, though.

Leave as many prompts as you like in a comment. I will try to use at least one prompt from each person.

I will send a finished story based on a prompt to the person who left the prompt, via email if the comment is left on ankewehner.de, via internal message if it's left on Livejournal or Dreamwidth.

They will be published at my discretion. On Friday I will post at least one publicly, and more if I receive tips. Please don't let the fact I'm open to tips stop you from leaving prompts if you are not going to tip! :)

Anybody who tips will receive a link to a Google doc where they can read all stories written for this Fishbowl. They're also guaranteed to receive a story (though if they only left prompts that I find I can't work with, I may ask for re-prompting.)

If I receive a total of at least $20 in tips, I will make up an ebook (epub and mobi format) of the resulting stories, and everybody who left a prompt or donated will receive a copy.

[Tip button removed] Resulting stories are listed here

Progress so far:

• Received prompts from 11 people (33 prompts total)
• Finished 5 stories
• Received $30, so there will be an ebook for prompters and donators