I would be interested to hear how the collaborative art experience at 2draw has changed how people go about their art. I, for one, really enjoy collaborative art. I haven't used the site too extensively yet and for the time being I am more interested in studying the different kinds of artistic interactions on the site, but I wonder how it has differed from any collaborative practice you have apart from the internet.

For example, I often enjoy passing around my drawing book with a group of friends to see what results. I like to observe how different personalities shape the piece. I tend to think about this collaboration in terms of a conversation in which one party makes an artistic statement, and the other party may agree and build on a theme or disagree and start a new theme. One can agree and make a line that complements the contribution, or disagree, and make a contrary line that starts a new 'conversation topic.' This is just one metaphor I've developed for thinking about collaborative creativity, and I was just wondering if any of you have a different view or metaphoric conceptualization of collaborative creativity, or of your creative process at all.

Oh shut up.

and that's how it works here

I don't think that it changed the way I draw thaaat much. I guess I adopted some visual elements and work flow from others.
Collaborations for me are about interpreting what the other person started in unexpected ways. As soon as you discard your partner's work it's not a collaboration anymore.
I think live collaborations are the most fun. There is much more interaction going on and you reflect more consciously about what to draw next.

There's alot of luck involved.

How have most of the posts on the collab board been started?
Did one person post something and say "whoever wants in, post a reply" ?
Is it more common for a collab to be discussed between two folks before it is ever started?

Some of the more interesting collabs I have seen are:
Collabportrait - structured in quarters
Samenwerkingsverband - stunning Flubbs and Roy collab
Hopscotch - structured
foooooooohhh - lineart and colorer
Where in the World.... - community
no title - two faces only a mother could love

Theres a ton of other tag team works by the most talented realists(you know who you are).

I normally just memo the person I want to collab with, and then discuss the progress in memo aswell. I've done shitloads of collabs, I probably hold the record.

Oneironaut: Those are really cool collabs. They remind me of a distinction between mosaic and blended creativity that I have been thinking about. Some projects take a mosaic approach where multiple people contribute one solid block, like the collabportrait, or hopskotch, but in other approaches people really blend their styles.

In that regard, I definitely agree with Dr. Moony when he says that you when discard someone else's work the collaborative effort is lost. It would surely be interesting to here how people start up their collabs and how that affects the progress. For example, Flubbles discusses the progress in memos versus the more public thread. Some people may just work without commenting much, whereas others may comment on the public thread. I imagine this changes as you get to know another artists style and become more comfortable working with them.

I find it interesting to compare the collaboration strategies of visual art to that in another domain, say digital film collaborations at newgrounds.com. The successful collabs at newgrounds have this pre-planning quality that oneironaut brought up. Based on a study by Luther (2008) about leadership in online creative collaboration, collabs at newgrounds are organized and held together primarily by the person that came up with the idea. The amount of pre-planning this leader does determines how successful the collaboration will be. The leader defines the story and roles for each individual artists, and they work independently on their own chunk. This is an example of mosaic creativity.

From what I have seen, 2Draw may be more blended and the drawing is co-owned by individuals that have equal say in the trajectory of a piece. I wonder though, if their is a direct correlation between the amount of pre-planning and the degree to which the collaboration is blended. Thoughts?

Do you typically discuss the idea for a collab or just let it happen? And what methods do you use for discussing it with the other individuals involved?

"Mosaic" doesn't really work I'd say, because of the differing styles and especially color tones each one prefers. It most likely ends up looking inconsistent which also might hurt the overall composition. But of course sometimes it's wanted to have the styles visibly separated.
I don't think that there is necessarily a correlation between clearly dividing up the work and pre planning.
I highly doubt that there was ever a lot of pre-planning involved with the works on here. Like for example designing characters beforehand and tossing concepts back and forth. Collabs here are more straight forward...sort of like a jam. And in that sense maybe lack polish and depth.
I've done some planning on collabs and analyzing of the composition from time to time, but that's always done outside of the 2Draw toolset. Because it's too limited with just one canvas. As I've said 2Draw lends itself more to jamming sessions.

I'm someone who enjoys to plan out things beforehand but it didn't work out to well on here so far when I tried it, so my collabs are mostly freestyle/stream of consciousness stuff. So yeah a lot of Luck involved as Flubbles said. But my take on that is, that you can trick luck by doing multiple tries. Sometimes I don't submit my revision and give it another try until I'm satisfied...or too tired.

Although it has it's limits (static and fixed number of layers the most notable to me) Sketcher, the 2draw Live applet has an edge for collaboration. Multiple parties can work simultaneously and coordinate real time through voice and text chat.

Instant feedback while collaborating is an asset that I can appreciate. This is also useful in an instructional environment.

This feels like a chance to plug something I'm apart of, hope ya'll don't mind.

Fellow 2drawer and real life friend thefuturesteve and I have a collaborative art showing in Portland, Oregon coming up for the month of February. He and I have so far worked on 15 oil paintings out of 36 planned. We're trying to make it seem though that only one person created these images, so it's difficult to notice specific characteristics about our differing styles. I guess I said that wrong...it's not so much a goal as it is just how we work naturally. It happens the most I've notice with just about every collaboration I've seen flubbles apart of. There's others as well, but his jumped in my mind first..maybe because sheer number of them like he was saying.

Here's some WIP photos of our work. You may recognize a couple since we decided to recreate a few of our existing collaborations form 2draw.
treegirl
treegirl2
treegirl3
treegirloriginal

handsgirl
handsgirloriginal

birddude
birddude2

great looking work.

Impressive sideburns.

@TheCrimsonKing You two share a pretty similar style to begin with so maybe that's why it's harder to tell your contributions apart.
Ever had a moment afterwards where you weren't sure yourself who painted what?

Flubbles collaborates a lot with his alter ego Bobstained...

At one point I actually thought Thecrimsonking and Theusualsteve were the same person, I just thought Thecrimsonking was being all mysterious.

I thought the same with solve and saprophilous
...still not sure

and Axil62 and hounie

Flubbles likes to do everything in the picture and leave you a little deer butt to do and thats it.
Nice Crimson.

Collaborations are a nice mix of pushing yourself to think and paint in a different more challenging way, and to get all the ants out of your pants.

Thats because you've had no time to do any drawing on it, if you remember the other collab we did we shared the work on it.

just worked on it

You got rid of the deers leg, now the other deers will call him old limpy.

careful which leg or buck becomes doe.

you made it look like a tree.
so i got rid of it.
hah.
limpy the gimp.

I'll do collabs, but first I need to be bribed with root beer and loits of purple sticky punch.

@TheCrimsonKing: Do you ever consider video recording your process? I know that you said your imperative was to make it as if there was only one person, but I think it would be neat to somehow make it look like it was one person, yet provide the viewer with details showing otherwise, such as a time lapse movie clip demonstrating the painting live. I just have this desire to make the process a part of the final product and I was wondering if other people did too.

Also: To everyone, I am conducting some research on the animation and collaboration aspects of this site. I would be forever grateful if you could spare a few minutes and help me with some art research: http://www.surveygizmo.com/s3/407435/2Draw-Artist-Survey

This is the only site I've ever seen for collaborating on the same painting,only others are "chibi paint chats"and even those people do not really collaborate much.No one draws on someone else's painting, anywhere else,I notice.Not in real life, not on web life.

Only time I ever did it, successfully, was years ago, doing a job, painted an entire room(conference) walls,with another painter,and we knew each other pretty well, so we did an ocean, ships,and a whole landscape. Otherwise,I never see artists collaborate. Mostly, they stay in their own little holes,do their own work,and worry about their own egoes,and progression (???)in the art world.If you can collaborate,that's great.

I find it hard to believe that Portland Oregon is your site of endevour,and I suggest you try Los Angeles,and NYC. At least, try NYC!! The opening cocktail parties are fun,even if the show is a bust-failure.They think the Pacific Northwest stuff is "quaint",and you never know what they'll like; they just might give you a good welcoming(i.e.,buy a lot of yer stuff.)Yeah, if you're that good, why stick it all in Portland?Get yer agent to try and set you up in galleries in NYC,and Los Angeles. ---places where the art-audience does not leak rain all over the floor. Yeah, your collaborative art is that good, fine, just skip Portland,and go where the money ACTUALLY IS. Your paintings on Dev are great, you should push for NYC or Los Angeles, go for it!!

you can collab on Queeky too http://www.queeky.com/

Fo sho.
Nicholas I think we enjoy the painting and social aspect of it more than anything else. I feel like if we were to try and document to process it would loose our interest.

Dorothy, we would try anywhere else that would have us but we live in Portland and this particular place had a slot open in February so we're taking it. One thing I've realized after my time in Chicago and now here is that gay people usually have a lot of money, not all, but most. And it just so happens our showing is at a gay bar and there's a shit ton of gays in that area and daddy needs some cheddar dammit.