Are webcomics in the 'manga' format welcome?

Luminosophy 2018-12-18 18:16:36 UTC #5

I'm not sure if you mean "format" as in book style pages vs long form scroll, or "format" as in art style. In any case, manga styles in both page and long form are largely appreciated and sought after. I think 99% of this site is either directly manga or otherwise a derivative art style based on it. I would have to search hard to find Western cartoons.

Roka 2018-12-18 18:25:21 UTC #7

I see. Thank you for the reply

Roka 2018-12-18 18:26:54 UTC #8

I just joined today and checked out a few webcomics and didnt see the 'book style pages' of manga and i was kinda worried because of that. Thanks for clearing that up! And as for readability? Is it confusing because of the non long format?

Luminosophy 2018-12-18 18:27:23 UTC #9

Not really. I made 2 series in the past like that which were 5-6 panels a page (one colour and one B+W) which were both well received. Clarity is just down to a matter of knowing how to storyboard/ panel properly. Format is just more like a medium of how you chose to tell your story. There's things you can do with longform for storytelling that you can't with book style and vice versa. Long form is more suitable towards audiences on mobile though.

Roka 2018-12-18 18:27:55 UTC #10

Ohh, then i will check yours out. Because i am not sure about the scrolly long formatty thingy and manga lol
Thanks for mentioning it!

Roka 2018-12-18 18:31:27 UTC #11

Oh! Well then its gonna be rough for me because i am a panelling newb. (Still working on the panelling for my first pages lol). Yes, thats true. I wanted to try the long format but i found that it didnt fit the 'story' (more like oneshot). Hmm then i think its considerable to change to the long format because i think most read on mobile (or not?)

simplykit 2018-12-19 06:12:33 UTC #12

i hope so , cause im doing manga style

monotone_ink 2018-12-19 06:43:51 UTC #13

Roka 2018-12-19 07:04:20 UTC #14

Really motivated now thanks xd

amortelito 2018-12-20 13:55:24 UTC #15

Sure, my "manga" type of page did pretty well with my readers and I personally love this type of comic. I must say this, My first chapter was traditional manga type of page, it has about 80 pages but now I changed everything to vertical style and I can see how this format has an advantage over a traditional page in readability and how it looks on a mobile device.

But of course, at the end what matters the most is the story and the heart you put into your art. Lets us know when you upload your comic!!

This is how the comic looks like now: Amorte
And this is the past version: Amorte Zero
In case you want to see how both types worked for the same comic.

Roka 2018-12-20 16:51:31 UTC #17

Thank you for your insightful message! I checked out both and read a bit from the new one! Will definitely follow it and read the rest later!

As for the format, I am really rethinking my decision to make it the 'manga' way but i have read far more manga then webcomics soo panelingwise I am better with manga pages i think. So i am basically stuck now ahaha..

But when i make my decision and (post my comic will definitely let you know!

kip 2018-12-20 17:07:34 UTC #18

you probably didn't see any because you're looking only at premium comics, which are scroll-formatted by request as far as I'm aware (*well, some of the older ones aren't)

i've found most people perfer "manga style" (pages) formatting -

Anywho, as always when I hear people use the term manga-like I do wanna raise the question: LTR or RTL?
Because if you're going to make your story RTL... please consider the reason why. What does this achieve for you? Because it does break reading flow if you're reading counter-intuitive. Just something to consider if you're going to go that way.

Roka 2018-12-20 17:25:52 UTC #20

I am going with LTR because Tapastic has an english audience so theres no reason to make it RTL.
When i say 'manga' style i am actually talking about paneling and the page format.
And thanks for the info!
Makes deciding things a lot easier lol
And i saw ppl saying that the scrolly format is lazy. And here i am like but its much harder 0.0 I cant even sketch out the first page with that format lol
Manga it is...

Cavechan 2018-12-20 20:13:59 UTC #21

A few things I have observed... I keep hearing "scrolling is better for phones", "scrolling is better for phones", "scrolling is better for phones"... but I haven't REALLY seen that it is. I feel at most there is a slight advantage to scrolling on phones, so I don't really understand why there is a push to do ONLY that type. You will not get any recognition by Tapas or Line if you do page format which boggles my mind and frustrates me as a creator of page format comics.

I think it might be more so that it's more likely for amateur artists to not format properly and thus it looks worse on phone than on computer. When I have viewed my comic on my phone, it always looks great! Very legible and easy to follow and scroll back and forth or up and down and in the case of Global Comix, you can even scroll panel by panel!

Maybe it's also because I've been an avid manga reader for 20 years now so I'm just more used to it. There's also the fact that I can scroll through most scrolling comics in seconds which would take minutes to read in page format. I suppose they would rather take the Netflix model of binge watch as much as you can and quickly get to the next thing as fast as possible.

But I post here because there's an audience here and I would like to reach more people. If anything, I'd rather just get rid of Line because I honestly can't stand that website, but my comic has the most subs there. ;_;

kip 2018-12-20 23:51:28 UTC #22

I think that just has to do with trying to set a new norm, honestly.
People find it hard to change habits, that's why page-by-page is still dominating the hobbyist 'market' even though most people read on phones and scroll-format is more fitted with phones as you mentioned (it has pros over page-by-page which aren't just reading comfort, too).
Trying to expedite a natural shift towards a new format, building a new standard, probably means the companies have to show extreme bias towards those comics so that creators will try and match their expectaitons.

This applies to working page-by-page too, though? It's not easier and an amatuer artist can totally mess it up.

Cavechan 2018-12-21 01:16:40 UTC #23

That does make some sense, but I just dislike being forced into standards. Just my personal preference.

I'm curious, what other pros are there?

Ah, of course! Sorry, I don't think I was clear enough in what I said. I meant it more like since artists are first viewing and working on a computer generally, they might not take the size of the phone into account as much. Since they're viewing on a computer, it's more likely to make mistakes for how it looks on the phone (e.g., text or panels being too small).

Roka 2018-12-21 07:05:35 UTC #24

Yeah, i also don't see much of a difference. Both are very readable to me but as you said a lot of people say that the scroll format is better. So that was the main reason for the question.

And theres also the thing with Tapas and Line pushing the scrolly format. If you want it to reach a wider audience, you would naturally have to follow what the platform wants ;-; but i dont think i have to stress about that at all because the first one is never that good lol

And i dont necessarily agree with you on the fast read part. The scrolly format has a few good things to it. Like compostions you cant pull off with manga. I have read a quite a few great webcomics like I Love Yoo or H&H Roman Company. And imo Line and Tapas want the scrolly thing to be a thing. Manga is the japanese format. So i am guessing they want something different to that. I dont think the format should be devalued just because its different. Every format has its pros and cons and its up to the artist to compose it in a way that the story gets through to the reader.

daeofthepast 2018-12-21 07:27:46 UTC #25

Manga format is fine. Just remember to check that the text is big enough to read on phone, too. Since you're trying to fit so much in one page, artists can easily make speech bubbles too small to read, so watch out for that :3

kip 2018-12-21 12:14:03 UTC #26

Surprised to hear you ask this since there’s so many debate threads about this, including one opened by you.
The ‘classic’ pros are controlling pace much better, and being able to put the speech bubbles outside the page so people have a better view of the panel. It’s also much easier to do high-action scenes without falling into the trap of having 200+ words of text in a single page, making the page incredibly long & annoying to read.

Cavechan 2018-12-21 18:55:38 UTC #27

Thank you for the info. To clarify, that thread I made wasn't really concerning the points you're making. It was about my own comic and if changing to scroll format would work better (in the end, I decided it didn't and switched back).