Rumbelle Big Bang interest survey
Rumbellers! The possibility of running an art/fic bang for the fandom was brought up last night. If you’re not sure what a Big Bang is, keep reading the info that I copied and pasted from last night’s post:
A Big Bang pairs up fanfic authors and fanartists to work on a joint project. The goal is that by the end, each fic has fanart of some kind to go with it, and each piece of artwork has a fic to go with it.
In a ‘regular’ Big Bang, the writers go first, by submitting a brief summary of the fic they plan to write. (This part is done anonymously, so it’s not just a name-recognition popularity contest.) The artists name their top choices of which fic they want to create art for, and the mod(s) match everyone up as fairly as they can. Some people won’t get their first choice, or even their second, but I’ve been in the situation of not getting my first choice, and still had a great time with the Bang.
After the writers and artists are matched, the mod puts them in touch with each other, and they collaborate to create fic and art that complement each other. Usually the matches are kept secret until the works are posted.
A Reverse Big Bang works in much the same way, except that the artwork is created first. The artists submit their artworks (anonymously), which don’t have to be finished at that point but need to at least have enough done so viewers can see where they’re going with it. The writers state their top choices, the mod matches them up, they collaborate.
Word count requirements can be whatever the mod sets for that particular Bang, but 5,000 words of betaed, finished fic seems to be a common number.
For purposes of a Bang, fanart isn’t defined as just drawn/painted/etc art. It can also mean gif sets, aesthetics, photo manips, or a playlist with cover art. Basically, anything visual that can be reblogged on Tumblr. I know that the Bangs I took part in at the height of Glee’s popularity sometimes had trouble finding enough artists to pair up with the writers. But every fandom is different and maybe it wouldn’t even be an issue for Rumbellers. It would depend on how many writers and artists sign up for it.
On an assigned day, the artist and writer both post their works and the fandom gets to roll around like excited puppies in all the pretty new fanworks. If it’s a big event with lots of participants, typically the posting schedule will be spread out, with one team per day posting.
This type of event usually stretches over months, to allow time for the multi-step process. Whoever’s going first has to produce a fic summary or rough WIP art, then everyone needs time to look over the choices and submit their picks, time for matching, and then the second half of the team needs time to do their work after discussing it with their partner. So yeah, it all takes a while.
If what you’ve read here intrigues you, please click the link above to take the survey. It’s only six questions and should take a minute at most. I want to find out how many people are really interested in something like this, and if the writer/artist ratio is equal.
I plan to run the survey through next weekend. It will close at midnight EST on Sunday, June 24th.
Please signal boost, so as many people as possible have a chance to see this!
Ahhhhhhh! I’ve talked about this kind of thing with .. I don’t know if they would like me to name them, but yeah anyway (my friend! heh) and the trouble we always had was thinking of a place in the Rumbelle calendar to put it. Between all the events we have now, it was like how?
I’ve sworn off events, waaaay too much stress and pressure BUT BUT yeah I can’t resist if this becomes a thing. I have to do it! Consider me 110% signed up, and ignore me if I moan later. It’s just too cool not to participate 🙂
galactic-pirates
replied to your link “Rumbelle Big Bang interest survey”Should have read the questionnaire first…. I’m a little confused by the whole Big Bang/Reverse Big Bang thing. Maybe it’s just the ones I’ve seen advertised recently on tumblr but I thought both were a thing? Like two rounds I guess. First round artist and author, second round swap. So art and fic start off, and follow-on. Am I even making sense with that?Also I have no clue who else but you is behind this but if you need anything, feel free to hit me up 🙂
Interesting… I’ve personally never heard of a two-round Big Bang. So do the pairings remain the same for both rounds, in your experience?
This is probably a good moment to insert the disclaimer that all my knowledge of Big Bangs and how they work, is based on participating in them in the Glee fandom. So that’s my template, and I’ve never actually run one. But no one else was offering to run an event like this, so I figured I’d step up. Thanks for offering to help! I may take you up on that!
In my experience a ‘regular’ Big Bang (story comes first) and a Reverse Big Bang (art comes first) are run as two separate events. Nothing’s stopping us from having another event after the first one, if the first one is a success. I think I’d rather take it one step at a time, though.
I’ve never taken part in a Big Bang of any kind. It was just on my dash very recently, I think it was for Philinda? spelling out how it was going to work, and they ran both the Big Bang and the Reverse Big Bang concurrently, so artists got their work turned into fic, and fic got turned into art.
I don’t know whether it was a straight swap. I’m guessing probably not because otherwise it would lose the anonymity factor.
I didn’t really know they were two separate events tbh. I thought it was so everyone got a fair shake at having their work transformed. I totally see the sense in what you are saying about not biting off more than one can chew, so now I understand the questionnaire a bit better heh. Seeing what way round people want to do it – makes sense!