From solo to duo.

Collaboration is an interesting exercise in creativity.  It’s very new for me and Garth, since prior to Star Power we were the solo creators on our webcomics, Dominic Deegan: Oracle for Hire and Finder’s Keepers, respectively.  For each of us to give an important piece of the comic-making process to the other was both exhilarating and frightening.  We’d heard countless horror stories about failed collaborations, where projects and even friendships were ruined over irreconcilable creative differences.  But for me, after eleven years of the same creative process, it was time to do something that challenged and terrified me.

When a collaboration works, it gives birth to ideas and images that you never could have imagined.  When I was working alone, I had an idea, I put it on paper, and then it went online for everyone to see.  Now when I send Garth a script with an idea, it bounces off him and he sends me back something that both complements and enhances that idea, turning it into a concept that my solo creative process could never have produced.  It’s exciting for me, because I see how another creative process interprets what I’m imagining.  It challenges me to give Garth scripts that are challenging and fun for him to interpret, and for me to not get married to specifics.  A collaboration is a fluid, ever-changing process, and each person involved needs to keep their minds open to vastly new ideas and perceptions.

Garth and I are lucky.  We click on a lot of ideas and have a lot of the same goals in making a webcomic about a space superhero.  We don’t always agree, and sometimes ideas need to be scrapped altogether, but in the end the process helps us grow as creators and produce the best story we can.