Currently working on comic. May I ask for Advice?

[aurorasuicune21]

Hello there everyone ^^

My name is James and I'm currently working on Untitled Fantasy Action-Adventure Comic. (The story and characters are handled by myself. The art and illustration will be handled by an artist known as "xrobinonpaperx"

As of now, we are at the sketching stage for the pages of Chapter 1 and are working at a steady pace.

Since I am a bit new to this, I've been doing my best to research as much as possible. However, I was wondering if it be okay to ask some advice. Any advice would definitely help.

• So far, I have made a Twitter and Tumblr account regarding the upcoming comic project
  https://twitter.com/AurorajamesCat
  https://aurorajames24.tumblr.com/
  Mostly for frequent info and updates. Is there more I can do with this for now?

• This may be a tad bit early, but I have been thinking about what could I do regarding marketing for this and what should I do for a start that could help.

• This is also REALLY early to worry about, but I've trying to figure out how to go about possibly of publication. My goal with this comic project is to have it published in some type of way or form. I'm very new to sort of thing. xrobinonpaperx and myself work with each other remotely, through discord means. I've mostly been wondering if making this a potential webcomic would be best. I would like for this to potentially be a physical or digital product, yet I'm still unsure if reaching out to a publisher would be a future possibility since I'm trying to figure out how to go about all this.

Though this probably too early to worry about, any advice on these topics would help tremendously and I would very much appreciate it~

[Llyrel]

Hey there and welcome to the forums! ^_^

Sooooo, a few suggestions:

• If you haven't already, consider also making an Instagram and maybe a TikTok account. Instagram works really well to promote your art, especially if you make good use of tags. For IG (and Tumblr, too), use as many tags as you can and look around to find tags that might be related to your work. I see you're going to have anthropomorphic characters, so tags like "anthro", "furry" and any variation of the theme might help more people find your work TikTok is a whole different beast, since it's based on videos, but the good thing about it is that you can pretty much recycle the content you make on there to create Instagram reels and viceversa. Fun little scenes (including just a bunch of slides showing funny scenes from your comic with some catchy music in the background!), mini-tutorials and process videos seem to be pretty popular on both TikTok and Instagram. Alternatively, "art reveal" videos also seem to do pretty good: first you show a white page (a white layer placed over a digital drawing), then you use the rubber tool to erase the white layer and reveal the drawing underneath.

• As for ways to promote your comic, here's a pretty awesome video by Steve Conley on the theme some additional suggestions: if you want to post online, make sure to use as many platforms as you can. Tapas, Webtoon and ComicFury are all pretty good places to get your work seen. Lately, more webcomic platforms are popping up, but a lot of them are still in beta and/or don't have that much traffic, so those three at very least are a pretty good options. Also: make sure to have a good buffer (aka produce a number of pages in advance), so even if life gets in the way at some point, you'll still have content to post. Pick a reliable schedule and try to stick with it: it'll make it easier for people to know when to come back to your comic. On places like Webtoon, might be a good idea to post 4-5 longer episodes in vertical format for the first 4-5 days in a row: that would increase your chances to get featured on their homepage and thus get more readers. After that, you can switch to a slower schedule, like one episode a week, or even one every two weeks. Speaking about getting featured and online publication, however, let me get to the next point, which is...

• Publishing. Make sure to know what the main comic publishers in your country want (genres, style, whatever... different publishers will look for different things) and if they're okay with content that has already been published online. In my country, for example, the great majority of publishers will NOT take a work that's already been published elsewhere, not even on an online self-publishing platform. Which is one of the reasons why, for instance, I'm posting the comic in English and not my native language: hopefully, since the comic has technically never been published in my language, publishers would still take it in consideration. Also please keep in mind that, even if a publisher were to accept your webcomic, they may want you to remove any online version of it. Which means that you should be extra careful about posting your completed comic pages to sites like Tumblr, since anyone can reblog your posts and at that point you'll lose any control over your image: should you ever need to delete your pages, you would have to ask every single person who reblogged one of your pages to delete it, which... may not be very feasible. So yep, make sure to post your stuff only on sites where you can retain full control over what can be deleted.

Hope that helps!

[darthmongoose]

Well, it looks and sounds like you're doing pretty well so far. It's not a bad idea to bag your promo spaces early, but I'd advise not putting too much work into promo during pre-production. Focus most of your effort on making pages, and don't tip your hand too early by showing all the good content before release; you need there to be some freshness and surprises when you actually release. Release some bits and bobs to build hype and a fanbase, and to help keep yourself motivated, but try not to overdo it. Leave some big juicy stuff for launch week!

With regards for aiming for publishing, this art looks very polished, so it's not out of the question. Generally publishers won't show interest until you have at least 10 pages of sequentials as a sample plus script for about 50 as a minimum, so try to rein in your enthusiasm a bit, BUT there is one thing you can do to "future proof" at this stage for publication, which is always making sure you have print resolution 300dpi versions of your files (typically should be in the region of 1500 pixels wide). Making sure you have high resolution art files from the start means you'll have options down the line if you want to go to print.

So basically for now, focus on getting nice quality pages done that look good online but you also have print versions waiting in the wings, and try to build a fanbase by creating quality content on a regular release schedule.

[malu_lara]

I was gonna say the same about Instagram - more than any other platform (at least in the West) is a fantastic place to post and promote art. Its also where a lot of creative gatekeepers look for talent!