Audience growth with a long-form fantasy adventure. Not a joke-a-day or romance

TeddyLemon 2019-10-03 04:38:30 UTC #12

My comic is definitely still in its early stages, I’ve uploaded until a part of episode 3 so not much has yet happened. Its’ genre is fantasy/adventure/action/romance, theres going to be lots of arcs and probably more than a hundred episodes in the future. I hope I’ll be able to finish since its my first comic. It’s also quite the challenge and training for me, we’ll see.

monotone_ink 2019-10-03 04:58:29 UTC #13

The grind is long and without mercy.

My biggest fear regarding long-term comics is finally completing the whole story, looking back on it, and thinking: "Well damn, that was a waste of time."

Related to this fear would be the comic not catching on very well. I'm afraid that the audience of the webcomic I'm making is already kind of niche, in a medium that is already in itself quite niche.

However, if I stopped here, I think I would regret it even more. I'd rather just keep going with it.

In terms of getting people to see it, I have no idea how to go about doing it effectively without looking obnoxious.
I'm planning to make an animatic trailer to promote the webcomic, but that in itself is already a challenge. Life will find a way.

monotone_ink 2019-10-03 05:02:47 UTC #14

Ayy, I've seen this around.

I've gotta be honest, for someone who's just starting out, you're doing magnificently well. Ride that wave and don't let that inertia die.

yondoloki 2019-10-03 07:25:26 UTC #15

The past four years I've chipped away on a "smaller" project, my fantasy, psychological horror story The Changeling's Sister.

I think the trick is to find where the readers are, and go there for long-forms. We just have to be more vocal and visible about our stories, which means more work unfortunately I don't think there's an easy fix.

On the upside I feel that the readers de DO get are a lot more loyal than on gag-a-days

lorphis 2019-10-03 07:33:24 UTC #16

Oof, yes. I can relate to that. Spending so much time on a project and no one cares is just... Uuugh.

TeddyLemon 2019-10-03 07:35:25 UTC #17

nani. really.. o.o

thank you...but tbh its not really my "starting out", it may be my first comic but its a new, redrawn version

darthmongoose 2019-10-03 08:10:01 UTC #18

As @yondoloki said, the key benefit of working on long form storytelling is the reader loyalty. It's the payoff for all the hard work you'll have to put into designing and drawing all those unique props, characters and locations, setting up character and story arcs, wading through exposition, choreographing fight scenes etc. In the end, it's worth it to me.

And the thing that's great if you're doing Fantasy with loyal readers is definitely that the generally pretty distinctive character designs lend themselves to fan art. The comic I'm drawing now is pretty new:

But it's sort of a reboot of an older comic I did years ago, which had a small, but really dedicated base of readers, resulting in... FAN ART. Glorious Fan Art!

A big thing that spurred me on to reboot was a pro artist friend drew the main character last November just on a whim... like years after the comic had gone on hiatus, he randomly did this:

And I thought.... "These characters mean something to people. Even now." I was an idiot in my twenties to not realise how rare and valuable that is.

So yeah, long form fantasy... it's a slog, but it's so worth it.

GabiWolf 2019-10-03 11:21:07 UTC #19

I do feel that I have an uphill battle. Even though my comic in not high fantasy it is a Fantasy, and needs a lot of set up. I think people have a hard time waiting for the action, but I have to set things up. It’s very story driven so it might seem like nothing is happening but it is. It’s really hard to hook people when there is a lot of exposition, that along with my struggles of juggling time probably doesn’t help in building my readership.
I am actually taking the time currently to think about how I want to manage my comic in the long run. So there will be some changes in how I color, and I worry that will have an impact and slow my already slow trek down. But I am optimistic and am even thinking of another fantasy story I would like to write. I just love fantasy and I would create nothing else!

Chita 2019-10-03 11:35:49 UTC #20

I relate so much to this. I'm on my way of making a long term fantasy comic (not super epic high fantasy to be honest) and I'm struggling a lot on the "pacing" of some sort. Like not the actual comic pacing but the overall feeling of the comic itself. I've grown so used to chill "short" fantasy comics in here so when I compare them to mine as plot development in X pages I always feel like I'm going sooo slow and I'm afraid that might put potential readers off... I don't know. Also having it done in a traditional page format doesn't help as well .
Either way I'm happy with the supporting base I have right now, they all are amazing, but it takes so long to make it grow.

Iris-Grimoire 2019-10-03 14:55:42 UTC #21

It's never going to be a waste of time - you'll take the stuff you learn with a comic with you forever. Of course, don't just throw yourself at it when it becomes unbearable, sometimes even a long hiatus can be better than slogging to a conclusion as fast as you can.

TheBlankScroll 2019-10-03 15:07:06 UTC #22

I hear you on getting the pacing right. I'm 5 chapters in as well and it's been a long road of learning.

Mine also posts weekly and early on I basically wrote the next page based on what happened in the last page. Especially season 1 was almost a joke-a-day presentation, with a 3 panel format and focused heavily on a chuckle, but always in the service of the story.

Now I write the entire story out for each chapter before I start any art thumbnails. The pages are comic-page format (stacked on tapas and webtoon) and it seems like the story telling has gotten a lot better.

TheBlankScroll 2019-10-03 15:08:45 UTC #23

I agree about not wanting to spend the time promoting. As a hobby I want this to be about creating. I have no interest in promotion and the little I do already feels soul draining.

That said, man I wish more people saw and commented on my stuff, and the only way to get that is with volume. So I'm often torn between desires.

TheBlankScroll 2019-10-03 15:12:18 UTC #24

Interesting pov, thanks. I would say it's not that I don't WANT to put myself out there, it's just not relevant to my interests.

As a hobby I enjoy creating and posting my work, but I get no enjoyment out of the act of promoting. Sure I love the results when it works, a boost in readership, more comments etc. But DOING it just sucks for me. I'm not a good hype-man and it takes such a mental toll on me.

So yeah maybe eventually I'll feel the need to really buckle down on it to get the rewards but for now Im content to do the art and just kinda sulk about lack of exposure

BlueWorldComics 2019-10-03 16:12:03 UTC #25

I tried (and personally feel I succeeded) combining the accessibility of a joke a day comic with a long-form adventure narrative. Every page is designed to stand on it's own. Sometimes they end in cliffhangers that lead to the next page, sometimes they just end, but they all fully address a specific point in the story.

But all that is for naught because I have 15 subscribers and have had 15 subscribers for a long time... Only thing I can do is keep trucking. Maybe when Year One (season one) is finished, while I'm working on Year Two, people will appreciate it more as one long, complete story. I don't know...

Cronaj 2019-10-03 16:30:08 UTC #26

Still early on in the story, but here's mine. It's going to be very very long.

I feel like I've been struggling to find readers, but I also have been on hiatus for a long time. I think for similarly minded people, who want a serious adventure to embark on, they will eventually find the story even if it takes time.

Another great long-form fantasy that I enjoy is Heart of Keol:

liann 2019-10-03 16:47:52 UTC #27

I'm doing great, I think. It makes me really happy especially because of how no one other than like, the same ten people cared about my art for the longest time. I thought I wasn't bound to get an audience with whatever I do. I couldn't commit to anything. So many OCs that I've forgotten about and stories that I never was able to draw because I wasn't too into it.

Of course it's still kind of a hard climb. I'm lucky to be gaining an audience here on tapas but I'm very anxious that maybe they won't stick around or I can screw up an update and lose like 50% of them lol. But it's even harder on Webtoons... where I actually stopped checking. I thought, being black and white... maybe it won't get me anywhere when others are fully coloured and update weekly. ( Also, the damn site doesn't notify me and I'm too scared to check on purpose lol) And, I'll be honest, vertical format.... feels weird. There are just some scenes that look better in traditional.. but whatever, it's no biggie.

I just feel like there's no future on Webtoons for me because they're kinda more strict when it comes to format and fonts and colours... but idk. Not like I want to get big there. If I can have it my way, I'd wanna stay here.

But yeah, I think I'm doing great and I'm actually pretty happy. I'm just really scared of a lot of things but I'm trying to do my best.

TheBlankScroll 2019-10-03 16:54:00 UTC #29

How long were you going before it took off? Did anything change that tipped the balance in your favor?

liann 2019-10-03 16:58:01 UTC #30

To be honest, not that long. I was actually pretty surprised myself. I got staff picked last month during my third update (I think) I think that's what helped me gain an audience because that was also the part where I kind of got into the meat of the first chapter... and I guess people were interested.

kaetana 2019-10-03 17:25:26 UTC #31

Longform fantasy is both what I make and one of my favorite types of comic as a reader, so I'm gonna have to check out some of the stuff being posted here that I haven't gotten a chance to read yet! ^_^

Anyway...I started my comic at the beginning of May and I've actually been pretty happy with my growth. I haven't had any spikes of it like some people see, but it's been pretty consistent growth each month, and it's kind of reassuring in a way. I started out doing updates of two pages minimum twice a week (I now alternate between two updates a week and then one the next, still same size, to give myself a little more time to put extra effort into the art) which I think definitely helped a lot in terms of regularly showing up on Fresh.

I also do some promotion in the forums, I have an Instagram I try to post at least twice a week to, and I make use of TopWebcomics to try to attract new viewers. It's hard to say how much benefit those things provide (and seconding the folks saying it would be really nice to have analytics showing where people are finding the comic from!) so I can understand not wanting to bother. But I do think overall it helps simply by virtue of increasing the chance that any given person who might enjoy my comic gets the opportunity to find it.

keii4ii 2019-10-03 17:47:48 UTC #32

This actually happened to me, lol. "Only" 100 or so unsubbed, but views on newer episodes dropped by half after a certain point. It sucks, but you know what, it wasn't the end of the world.

And TBH I think the point where people dropped the comic is when the comic started getting BETTER, getting closer to what I wanted it to be. What it was always meant to be. So while it still blows that I lost so many readers, maybe they weren't my audience in the first place.

@Cronaj omg