We've got our character bios up on our website3 which I think are quite fun and I'd love to have a place for them my Tapastic comic section, however, i'm not sure if there's much use in having them in the forums beside self-promotion?..
Yeah I would actually really appreciate a separate section like that for characters, extra art/sketches as both a reader and a creator.
From my point of view as a reader, when I'm a fan I'm really into character profiles and extra sketches and sneak peaks on the side. To be able to easily get that on tapastic (separate from the comic to avoid interrupting my reading experience, or attempting to scroll that dreaded mess of backlog that can collect on the wall) would be absolutely great, as to get those extra tidbits for webcomics as it is now I need to follow the artist outside of tapastic on their artist social networks, which more often than not, gives me a whole bunch of shit I don't want instead of the stuff I do want. The most prominent examples being reblogs of memes, funny pictures or other none art related things, or when artists I watch join in on some friggen twitter chat. I just want to see the extras and and sneak peek sketches, I don't want all this other shit! I just want the stuff related to your project or your artwork. (Don't get me wrong, I have no problem with artists doing whatever they want on their social media pages, I mean it's yours, it's just frustrating when I want those specific things and there are no other options for me to get them.)
From the point of view of webcomic artist, yes, I would love to include this optional side stuff, (concept art/sketches/sneak peeks, character profiles, FANART) but don't really want to (or have to be careful when) throwing it into the comic because it could both break the flow of the story (even at the end of a chapter depending on how much stuff you put in there) Right now the best option is to make another comic series dedicated to extras of your current series, and I a just HATE those, because there's really no way to organize all your extras, and making separate comics for all your different kinds of extras is pretty damn excessive and well... messy.
I agree with what a few others have said, that it would be good as an extra page on the tapastic main site, but not super useful in the forums as it's more creators here than readers.
I do have a character page4 on my own website, as well as an extras page for fanart and stuff.
I don't know if adding options to have pages like that on Tapastic would make the site too clunky though...
I don't feel like a forum category for characters is really necessary... if it was actually ON the tap comic, sure. but it doesn't have much sense to have it int he forums - like cyroclaire said it's just another self promotion thread, no different than the several ones here that people drop their shit there and then never look at the threads again.
As for the discussion of what's in it, my character page3 gives some pretty basic info and a link to the character's debut. I don't like character infos that give away everything about the character - that's why you read the comic, to know more about the characters.
Unimportant shit like height or weight that would be useful to fan art or cosplayers would be good to put on there though.
I'd really love to see a tab for Extra content, and not exclusively for character profiles... Like an extra page which you can fill up with any info you'd like to add to your comic. I can imagine it'd be something on the comic's page, like under the description and above the episode list, just a little extra button
Having a way to display more character information on the site outside of the comics sounds great, but if it's in the forums my thought is that it'd become too hard to find anything and may just end up really cluttered. Something more comic specific that makes it easier for fans to jump to it would probably be better. Simplicity and ease of accessibility are really important for something like this.
Yeah, having a character profile/cast page is nice - I have one on Grassblades' main site5 - and when you've got a comic with a big cast, it's neat for readers to be able to refer to it.
But like a lot of others in this thread, I don't think the forum is the right place to do it in - that would leave us all scrolling endlessly through a forum thread, past all the comics we are NOT reading, to find the info we're looking for. Not ideal. IF it was possible to add a tab to the main comic page that readers could click on, to find the cast page, that would be a neat feature. But if it ISN'T possible, I can live without it.
I was thinking about suggesting a Character Profiles category for the forums so each person could make a topic for their own comic, but I'm worried that might get obnoxious to see new topics of all the time? Agree? Disagree? Maybe we should just wait and hope for a possible Character/About page for Tapastic comics later....
This sounds like a great idea, I'd like to have a character page on my comic here too! And for the comics I'm a fan of, I like reading about the characters (since characters are often one of my main draws to a series) and find out more about them.
Maybe there could be an option for "spoiler" parts which are hidden by default, but can be clicked to reveal?
I recently finished my cast page for Demon House. It's fun sharing tidbits about the characters that would otherwise not be brought up in the comic. However I have it on DH's tumblr site. I might add screen shots of them to my extras comic or I'll just settle with an external link. I think the forums are a little too detached from our series for readers to notice.