Starting a Webcomic

[TheStranger]

I guess, but you cant really expect anyone to work through sickness. Hell, even Gabe from PA had to take a break when he got the friggin swine flu, though he is surprisingly resilient when it comes to injury. Hell, I only update my own comic about once a week, because I have no expectations for it, its just a comic I do for fun.

[AwkwardSkeleton]

Now I need help thinking of ideas, what's a good process for that?

[TheStranger]

Booze

[Tatzel]

When you do video game parodies, think about what appears odd to you in a game, or what's fun, or what happened what made you laugh. Approach games from a more logical point of thinking, what would happen if this was in a 'real' setting? When you have dialogue options or other controling options for team members, you can be a smartass/dick to them.
Another option, think about crossovers. Which elements of games fit with each other? What would happen if X meets Y?

Hope those suggestions help you.

[Dire]

I guess, but you cant really expect anyone to work through sickness. Hell, even Gabe from PA had to take a break when he got the friggin swine flu, though he is surprisingly resilient when it comes to injury. Hell, I only update my own comic about once a week, because I have no expectations for it, its just a comic I do for fun.

I don't expect an artist to draw when they are sick, or when they have real life commitments, but I also don't expect an audience to continue reading old content indefinitely.

[AwkwardSkeleton]

Another problem: I'm not good at drawing.
I may post some comics, but don't expect them to be that good. Remember, Katie wasn't good at drawing from the moment she was born.
Yes, I'm looking for critiques so I can improve my pretty-bad drawing. We're here to learn, right?

[Dire]

Practice drawing because you want to be better. Not because you want to be Katie.

[TheStranger]

Yeah, take it from me, do NOT try to emulate someone elses style. Its okay to be inspired by it, but you always need to find your own way eventually.

[Tatzel]

I'm thinking about offering a German version to my comic, to get more traffic and stuff. If Great Handsome Oppressor helps me, I could even get a French version going.
I might know someone to help me with a Spanish version even, but then a couple jokes would get lost, because one character in there talks a lot of Spanish, and no one can understand him. So yeah, you see what I'm getting at here.

[[Citation Needed]]

In Spanish, the Spanish-speaking character can speak another language, like French or German?

[Tatzel]

That's what a lot of shows and movies do, but the problem is, that the character is very obviously Mexican. As in, well. Just look for yourself





So not only would I need to change the language, I'd have to change the whole appearance too.

[AwkwardSkeleton]

Practice drawing because you want to be better. Not because you want to be Katie.

Remember, Katie wasn't good at drawing from the moment she was born.

I meant that nobody got better without practicing, not even Katie.

[DoNotDelete]

As far as submitting whole chapters go, I still think it's necessary to keep a tight and frequent schedule. Bi weekly is quite acceptable for a multi page thing, a month might still be okay. But whatever happens it's gotta be regular enough that someone can go, 'oh it's the first, time to check for DND's latest update'.

Also it's good to have a set date for when people can expect the next chapter to come out.

That seems a reasonable proposition - I think it's unlikely I'll be able to illustrate a twelve or eight-page chapter every month though.

I suppose it's a bit of a confession on my part, but I only really got into doing webcomics when I was unemployed for almost half a year - and even then I wasn't able to churn something out every week.

I've been fully employed for the past few years now and I've found it difficult to find the time or focus to get back into getting anywhere near doing weekly comics - tbh that kind of output seems unachievable for me - and I don't think I want to be that kind of comic writer/artist.

I tried doing fast comic turnarounds but the artwork suffered and I realised I was writing the comics less to be funny and more to be 'easier to draw'. So on reflection I can honestly say that I didn't like what tight deadlines were doing to my attempts at funny comics.

It's quite possible to do a chapter based work and post one page at a time. John Allison's Bad Machinery is an excellent example. The reason why it works is because it isn't wasteful, every page moves the story along or provides insight. Genre might have something to do with that though. A battle manga like Bleach would be terrible page by page because whole pages are dedicated to people 'powering up' and action lines, and to be fair, battle manga need their action lines.

I personally turned off of Bleach because of how lacklustre the background art became - especially during the 'Hueco Mundo' arc. I know that 'Hueco Mundo' bodaciously translates to 'hollow world' and that it could be argued it was supposed to look sparse and empty - but I get the feeling Kubo chose that environment as a base to allow him to churn out artwork more quickly.

Personally I don't want to sacrifice the quality of stuff like background art for the sake of deadlines/turnaround - I want to produce stories and artwork pages that are full of life and vibrancy, interest and inspiration.

I haven't done web comics because I don't think I can keep up with the update schedule. I much prefer the print format, but I think I'm gonna have to get over myself and do a web comic because it's pretty impossible to sell (self-published) books to people who have no idea what they're about.

My thinking nowadays is that I'm less looking to submit weekly comics and build up a fanbase in that regard - I'm more thinking of using my website as a way to exemplify what I can do to the world - as a way of advertising what I can do. If I have a website that demonstrates my abilities I can use that as a way of getting into a more creative field or trying to publish a graphic novel off the back of my 'freebies' posted on the internet/my website.

I have thought about shutting down my webpage and closing my account with my web host because it's been sitting there for over a year and I haven't really done anything with it yet - but I keep reminding myself how important it is to keep that option on hand; With each passing week I get a little bit closer to achieving my goal of submitting - something - graphic-novel-based in nature to the internet.

I'm not the same kind of creature as Katie or these other weekly webcomic artists - I'm really not interested in meeting the fickle and petulant demands of an internet fan base; First and foremost I'm interested in writing stories and arting pages for myself; Secondarily I'm looking to improve my career potential off the back of that.

[Tatzel]

There's a thing that came up in my mind a few days ago, and I'm still not sure how to solve this problem.

It's putting my signature in there. How should I do it? Every panel? Only at the end of the page? If so, outside of the panels or inside? Or one huge watermark which covers all panels?

Usually I would be fine with signing my work at the end of a page, like Katie for example. But what with people stealing art and removing watermarks from simple spots and whatnot, I got a bit paranoid. If I ever get known, sure I can ease up because people will be "oh yeah that's from Tatzel!", but that's not going to happen until a good while passed, so yeah, gotta secure my stuff.

[Tetrunes]

You could watermark inside one of the panels, I've seen that before.