20 / 43
Jun 2016

Yes indeed. Sometimes, they just changed to make the workflow smoother or simply "practice makes perfect" =)

I thought about redraw the old page but the work is too great. I would suggest going back to redraw only some of the art that's too crappy for first impression. So that people won't go "Erk, what's that?" and left disgusted.

My art is still crappy what are you talking about? lol

Seriously thought, my art has improved a good bit between the start of Chapter 1 and near the end of Chapter 2 of my comic Life of an Aspie3 though that could be because of the comic slipping in and out of hiatus several times throughout its first year.

OMG YES!!! I hate going over to the first installments of my comic BioHazard3 because it's SOO BAD! in the beginning. It makes me laugh though! When I first started I was a bit worried of my style changing drastically from update to update but that's natural, it happens to everyone. I want to eventually go back and redraw the first pages to my current style but if I did that I would never move forward with the story, so I just let them be, as a testament of how far I've come as an artist!

Psh, I didn't even know how to make a proper dialogue globe xD
But now I changed everything in Final Light4 after I got my own style, but took A LOT, now it just hurts my eyes seeing my old art xD.

Not really at the start, but towards the middle I started rushing and failing at experimental stuff. So I'm in the process of redrawing.

My art was pretty crappy in the beginning if i say so myself. The second version is kinda better but the colored one is definitely the best smile

@mrjonzap just keep swimming! It's been tempting a couple of times, but my comic doesn't even have buffer pages so I have to force myself to look away 😅
@maxzaguishi I don't understand a bit of Spanish but even I smiled at that page's humor. Good job using images!
@BraveHeartTatsumaki your building and people skills really improved!
@trivialtales I experiment as I go wink but sometimes I have to push foreword even if I fail.
@jerreaudriessen I like both the third one and the second one

This is in a span of a year. A couple of months ago my old tablet stopped working. I had to get a new one and it might've been a blessing in disguise because the pressure points are so much better than the old one. The character model for Lento back in 2015 is pretty much outdated.

My comic is pretty new, but I still think the art in all my earlier episodes sucked. Such is the life of an artist – perpetually cringing at your older stuff haha. It's totally normal though, everybody has to start somewhere and it's impossible not to improve along the way. Don't worry about it!

I pretty much agree with what everyone else has already said here. I wouldn't bother redrawing your older stuff right now. You're better off focusing your time on improving your skills and moving forward with new episodes. As others have said, sometimes it's actually pretty cool to see the evolution of the characters as the comic style continues to develop.

The art on my comic Illusions and Rabbits sucked at the beginning. For some reason I gave them ridicuously long ears at first and I had a hard time keeping their look consistent. It looks a lot better now after getting advice on how to improve their look. Like what a lot of people on the forum say, it's all a journey.

Depends on whether you are content with your number of readers, or you only have a handful and really want more. Either way you should probably wait a bit before doing anything. I did redraws for my first comic only months after a started (since I'd already improved a lot since I was just starting out) and by the time I finished, the first redraws were already outdated. Wait till you start improving more slowly or need more time to plan out the next chapter of your continuing comic.

Yep, my comic started terribly too... not just art-wise, but also generally comic-wise... paneling, dialogue (so much textwall and unnecessary rambling...), jokes/story flow ect. I don't really worry a lot about it, because my comic (on my main site) has the main page set at the last comic anyway (so first thing they see is where my art is at now, if they look further back in archives they'll know I have evolved from that). and my comic isn't a long-form where you have to read from start to end, but more gags and shorter 4-8-page stories you can read in any order (and for the news, well, I imagine many of them are less relevant at this point anyway...) Doesn't mean there aren't pages I want to redo at some point... especially ones where the joke is still good but the art is bleh. I actually redid a whole story a while back... because the old one was just bad, not just art-wise but also comic- and storytelling-wise.

For longform comics, they'll probably have to stick with the "bad" old art for a long time, but I imagine many webcomic readers will expect a comic, especially one that's been going on for a while, to constantly improve its art. If they see your newer update first, there might be a better chance they won't be discouraged by bad old art because then they KNOW this will get better after a while? For tapastic, maybe if you have an image in your "current style/level" in the comic banner, they'll at least see that and see what level they can expect and look forwards too later on. I really like to compare older pages to new ones and see just how much the artist has improved...

Plus, everyone is going to improve no matter what, meaning everyone will have "worse" art at the start. Unless you literally just copypaste the same character (ect.) bases over and over for years, you WILL improve, even if just slightly and slowly - and with that, your older pages will look worse in comparision either way.

Oh yes my first pages are horrendous. I actually started drawing The Angel with Black Wings on 2013 then I hated how I drew it so I put it in the backburner. Did a remake on 2014 and the first couple of pages are still horrible despite the overhaul.

So just to show it.

2013 (old version)
1

Current version
2
Even this page makes me cringe a little.

Also here's my character's progress per chapter:

It's normal for the drawing style to change. I actually enjoy seeing progress of other artists. It's totally inspiring. So I won't worry about it too much if I were you. smile

God yes! I was just starting out with tablet-based drawing, so it was scratchy beyond belief. I really hate looking back at Book 1 of The J-Man Web Series and I'm afraid that a lot of people who like to start at the beginning will stop after the third page because of the art. All we can do is improve.

TJWS #1 p3 - 09/05/2014 (left)

TJWS #4 p17 - 06/21/2016 (right)

The ironic thing is that Books 1-3 of my webcomic are actually an improved reboot of the mini-series I made in high school. If you wanna see what I'm talking about.....

Oh, and another option could be to just redraw the first few pages of your comic, so new readers will know what level you're at now and "expect" it to get at least to this point later on. I've seen a few artists do this. Of course, when your art gets even better again you might be tempted to redraw them yet again...

My comic1 started out being drawn using my trusty computer mouse! I lucked out and got myself a drawing tablet, and it took a while before I got the hang of it, and it shows.

Here's the first strip:

The first one after I got my pentab:

And here's my current style (the gagstrips I've drawn in this style are yet to be published, so this is a strip from my longform series)

Ooooh yeah. The left is from issue 1 and the right is from issue 5

TBH I'm still getting used to my digital formatting and the use of my iPad as a tablet (hadn't really don't much digital work prior) so I feel my comic Wait...What is still lacking in many areas, Its gonna take a lot of time using the tablet to get used to the new style of drawing and so for now my art isn't the best it can be but It has lost of time and love in it and hopefully will only get better from here on out.
BUT looking back my art was like this
AND IS NOW LIKE THIS