Anyone else notice their comic updates becoming longer as time goes on?

[Missapogee]

I started my first webcomic back in July, and I had very little experience drawing or consuming webcomics, particularly in the vertical scrolling (I think it's called infinite scroll?) format. My first pages were sizes like this:

Now that i'm drawing update 32, the sizes have been slowly creeping upwards, until they became like this:

Purely out of curiosity, has anyone else experienced something like this? I'm pretty sure my wrist is going to kill me in my sleep soon for constantly creating more and more work for myself

[Phantomlight]

I definitely noticed I have made mine a bit longer than when I started, but it sometimes varies with each episode idea. Like my longest episode is probably "The Sweetest Thing" I think? And the shortest is "The Bug That Eats Bugs" xD But on average I think my episodes are pretty long. I have to learn how to break them in parts like I did with "Remembering" but sometimes I just want to have it all in one episode or I cannot create a proper break like I did with "Remembering." Either way, you and me both are probably going to be murdered by our wrists for this xD

[rifftiff]

I totally get it!
My episode last week was the longest one I've ever written. I usually upload in panels of 800x800, but my last one was over 50 panels so I had to combine them into 800x1600 for Tapas to even accept it.
And I'm slowly making more into multiple part episodes as well (which is good in a way, because I can stretch my ideas out a little bit further).

[Rhonder]

I've seen a little of this with my current comic! This is also my first attempt at vertical scroll so I've been learning as I go but... at first I found myself wanting to limit the number of panels somewhat, so I was cramming a looooot of stuff into each panel sometimes. As I've gone along I've started letting myself add more and more panels to tell the story more clearly and... now I've gone from my first episode which was like 12 panels to the most recent one which was like 40 and I had to break in half xD

[LostSpirit]

As a reader, I think it's a good thing if episodes are longer with each successive update. I remember back in the day, a few publications would release one chapter a month, but they would have like so much content that it was always worth the wait! Same with weekly releases as well.

When you start as a reader, and you see short updates, it's like an appetizer. So I'm like, "Okay! This is good. I should keep reading this." But at high points, I get really restless when a short chapter doesn't conclusively deliver on a particular result. I usually end up avoiding a few chapters and binging them later in such situations. But it definitely helps, I guess? I know how much effort it takes to build a page. But just thought I'd put that out there!

[bear1]

Same here. My main comic is a strip, and since we stick to the Newspaper strip width there is no significant change when I convert those into the scrolling format.
However, my second comic, which is kinda ‘whatever goes’, started with 6-12 panels per episode/joke.
Nowadays my episodes have on average 20 panels, even if I try to keep the panels low.
In order to keep up my schedule I have to chop episodes into half (which is not always possible ;A;)
Really weird phenomenon....

[BrambleberrySquirrel]

I got to a point where each update was getting longer and longer. It was exhausting. About 6 updates ago I made a significant overhaul to my style and formatting. Part of this was limiting myself to 4 panels per update. It creates a creative challenge for me to move the story and character development along in only 4 panels each update and saves my sanity a bit. I think doing this has enabled me to really improve my art as well.

Each week since I only get to make 4 panels I treat each one like it’s own standalone work of art. I think this mindset has really improved the overall quality of my comic from both a writing and art perspective. Making fewer higher quality panels vs lots of middle quality ones makes me feel better about what I’m making. Also it’s a nice bonus that it’s way easier to share a 4 panel format comic on social media like IG. I’m able to reorder the panels fir either scrolling or traditional page set ups. Thi seems to have increased my audience quite a bit.

[rajillustration]

Yes. Absolutely. My comic I did before I started working on the one I'm doing now (which I won't post for a long while) was page format and I did one page per update. That was it. But, I feel like if you're doing something that you want to do well on Webtoon you kind of have to go long. They like huuuge ass episodes over there and will wait if it means they can read more per update (at least my readers seem to want that).

So my last episode I made was 3 parts that will be sewn together (because I can't possibly work on a file this big since it was initially 8.5 inches wide and I shrunk it later to 940 px wide) and this is the specs...

so if you add it up I guess that is an episode that is 29,741 pixels long. I'll probably have to split it into separate updates for Tapas. Either way, I'm not updating that puppy every week once I start updating. For webtoons they'll probably get updates like once a month while on Tapas I can chop it up more and do bimonthly.

[malwdark]

No, because I draw traditional comic format, so each page haves the same size, but I've noticed I add more detail and make more complex scenes so its harder to finish the pages

[DualDragons]

No xD
My updates became shorter actually. But I don't do vertical scrollling so that may play a part in why my updates aren't as long

[TheGentleArtist]

My updates has been pretty consistent. I believe my paneling has recently changed a small bit where I have one big box follow by two panel boxes split evenly compared to some of my earlier episodes.