Do you redraw old pages?

[nekocoa]

I've made a lot of improvement since the beginning of my comic and I find it quite nice to go back through it to see how far it has come. However, I can't help but wonder if the rougher start to my comic is keeping me from getting new viewers.

I've been against the idea of redrawing it, as I feel you can get caught in a cycle of redrawing because you are always improving and also because I would rather have the comic finished and not worry about every little detail.

I know even professionally produced media improves as it goes along, but I worry that no one will see the improvement I've made because the beginning makes them stop reading. I personally like my comic, but I'm worried new viewers won't.

Do you go back and redraw old pages? What are your opinions on it?

(also a link to my comic if you want to judge the improvement for yourself)

Wishes of a Star's Heart | Tapas

[IndigoShirtProd]

I went back a redrew my whole first chapter (and some panels of my second chapter). I did so because there were story issues that needed fixing and I wanted style consistency for the furture when I print the comic. It was fun for me but I wouldn't recommend it, mainly because of the time sink. It took me a year and half to finish since I still had to work on new pages during that time. Like you said, you might fall into a vicious cycle of continually redoing pages. But if you lay down some boundaries and goals for what you want to change, then it should be fine. That's what I did, and it kept me going too overboard with the redraw. Though, I still wouldn't recommend it though.

[Dialusion]

I plan on redrawing the entirety of my dual prologues once I start reaching the end of the story overall (2-3 years from now). Took a lot of shortcuts that, when I get much better, I won't have to take. Plus I'd like to expand and refine them. I'm happy I got myself to make them, but every single stage(story arc) afterwards has been a gradual improvement both on a technical level and on a management level.

I'm having the same concerns. My opening chapters aren't the best, but I've been improving gradually. I'm of the mindset of "Get it done", you can always make an updated version later, but to keep engagement, I'd say keep it consistent.

I'll definitely give yours a read and some love since I can relate to this a lot, throwing in my own as well if you're curious.

SUMMON! The Nameless Relic | Tapas

[Rhonder]

My stance is that drawing new content already takes too long, so I certainly don't have time to go back and retread old ground

I fell victim to the redo loop for like 10 years on one of my early middle school comics- I kept working on that same series that I conceptualized in middle school all the way until I was up and through university, redrawing and rewriting throughout but never really having much to show for it beyond like 15 versions of chapter 1. After I finally cut myself off from working on that project, I decided to move forward with my new perspective as described above.

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This is not entirely related to the question at hand but related: I do think this is something to be thought about when starting a long series when one's art and writing skills still have a lot of room for improvement. Comics are an awesome way to improve both skills rapidly, but as a result it can leave a lot of newer creators unsatisfied with their earlier work- especially if the rest of a multi-chapter comic hinges on the opening to be strong. I talk about this in some additional detail in this video starting at 7:55, if it's of interest (Again, though, it doesn't matter so much for an in-progress comic )

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For your comic, I took a look at the 3 or 4 first episodes and the 3ish newest ones, and I don't think there's cause for concern! You've definitely improved a lot, but the early panels are clear and easy to read, and that's the most important thing for a comic the only thing I might consider editing would be implementing your newer font for the earlier speech bubbles, but the writing is neat enough to read without issue (for me at least) so even that's not really necessary~

(the only other thing to be careful about even in the newer episodes is semi-transparent speech bubbles. They're fine most of the time but can sometimes be challenging if they overlap an image. Generally opaque is the way to go, but it seems as though you mostly try to keep them in the gutters anyways which works!)

[Colours_dont_match]

I did not yet, but I'm going to start pretty soon, as I too see that I improved a lot.

I think I will at least work over the first few episodes for a bit, because I would make it differently if I'd draw it by now, more interesting, longer and overall have a better hook for the people who start reading it.
But I would not go over every episode, because yeah you'll have an infinite loop some day.

[Kann]

Nope, because I would get stuck in a redrawing loop. xD

I already procrastinate enough on new pages.

[nekocoa]

Thank you for taking the time to look at it and share your thoughts! Yeah, the text is definitely something I have considered redoing as it was a little shaky at the beginning and readability is very important. Thank you again for your feedback, I'll keep it in mind as I do the text for newer pages!

[Kaydreamer]

I feel you can get caught in a cycle of redrawing because you are always improving

I feel you, and this is a very real danger. Especially when you're improving at a very sharp rate, which is almost certain to be the case with any developing artist getting into making comics for the first time.

That said, I intend to redraw my first few episodes. Definitely before the end of the year. (I'll just work through them slowly in my spare time.) The biggest reason for that isn't so much the art. It's... okay, I've definitely improved, but it's still solid. But I'd never made a comic before, so my pacing is way off, my panelling is terrible, and there's a lot more I can do to establish a few essential character traits of my protagonist.

The panelling, episode length, and overall quality of at least the first few episodes are vital to drawing in new readers, so my first two are the ones where I'm absolutely certain that redoing them is the right choice. Anything beyond that heads into hazier territory, but I'm generally self-assured enough to be able to leave something alone if it works, even if it's not perfect. Or at the very least, if I really want to re-do it, just do so little by little in my spare time, rather than throwing my full attention at it and risk getting caught in that endless loop.

[PaulDevers]

Right now, no. But I am going back and coloring them, albeit very, very slowly.
I get the vibe that a lot of new readers are turned off by my early pages, due to them being in black and white back when I was terrified of coloring. I figure that if those are in color in a style consistent with at least the first regularly-colored chapter, it'll let the audience gradient into the rest of it and not turn them off.
I'm hoping that at least, anyways. I got about... 60-odd pages to color though, so a lot of work ahead of me. XD The physical lineart is still a bit jank in places too, but if I sit down and fix every pages lineart the comic will never finish. I'm only touching up some of the really egregious stuff.

Normal:

Colored:

[thomassayle]

@PaulDevers I like your comic in black in white, it suits the style more than the colour personally.

[migxmeg]

I have my writer helping me stop myself from doing any redraws on our comic (we made a rule about it but I've been tempted at various points). Now that we're 40 episodes in I have a pretty rough relationship with the beginning chapters but:

1. If I had done redraws any of the times I wanted to, I'd just be disappointed with them now so it would have been a waste of time.

2. We have more stories to tell. And the readers we have that are following our current story as is () would surely prefer new chapters. So we keep moving.

3. The earlier chapters can feel cringey but also sometimes amazing and sort of a monument to all the work I put in. So I don't want to cover those tracks.

[Rocksteady_Comics]

Years ago when I first tried making a webcomic I kept redoing the first four or five pages and never got anywhere. This time I'm refusing to redo anything until I completely wrap up the story (no mater how much I cringe when I see the first few pages).

[noenoh]

Nopes. I dont have enough time to even do the actual thing, so a redraw would be only to fix a huge mistake in a part of a page and tahts all. idk if its psychological on me but I avoid doing it cause I feel Im walking backwards and I dont like that feeling. Of course I would like to fix a lot of things but the "I need to continue and move on" voice is stronger.
For example, in Die Instrumente Gottes, the first chapter has 2 different styles in a part of the chapter (I was even using a different brush for inking) . The part that has a thiner lineart was made by the mid 2019, I abandoned because work and when I tried to retake the work in 2020, I got covid, so Ive been working on the rest of the chapters while recovering. I dont have enough time to redraw.

[nekocoa]

We have more stories to tell. And the readers we have that are following our current story as is () would surely prefer new chapters. So we keep moving.

Yeah, that's one of the biggest reasons I don't want to redraw mine. I have so many more stories that I want to get out there and spending time redoing stuff will take away from time for finishing this comic and making other ones.

[thecrystalrook]

I don't, even though the art in the first couple of chapters of Space Pirate is hot garbage. For a few reasons:

1. I'll be in an infinite redraw loop
2. There will then be a weird shift in art quality where the first episode is then significantly better than the second
3. I like my readers to be able to see the progress I've made (and hooo boy have I made a lot)

[YourRandomWaffle]

I fell into that trap when I was doing my first comic, it caused burnout and I lost interest fast. Maybe writing comics is just not for me, but I'm sure all the redrawing had some factor in it. So, I would definitely advise against redrawing old pages.
Your art is good enough that I don't think it would turn people away, it reads easy and the palette is pleasing. You also have to remember that you're your own worst critic, and you're able to find much more flaws than the average reader.
But if you have to redraw the pages, then I would suggest waiting till you're finished to redraw anything

[ninjashira]

I do not redraw anything. My least favorite thing in the world is redrawing, so I'm certainly not going to take time out of my day to redraw something I've already completed.

With webcomics, I feel like it's kind of expected to see the artist grow and improve their art throughout the duration of their comic, especially if it's a long-running series, so I certainly don't think it's a detriment to new readers to have your art improve over your series.

I think too many artists get caught in a redraw loop, where they go back and redraw old pages, then by virtue of drawing so much they learn more, and now those new chapter one pages are significantly better than their most recent chapter, so they redraw that one as well. Lather, rinse, repeat, until the artist never makes any real progress on their story because they're stuck redrawing over and over. I also think some artists get stuck with their stories and either don't know what to do next or have fallen out of love with their story, and they stall by redrawing old pages instead of dealing with future pages.

Personally, I feel like the best thing you can do for yourself as an artist is to keep moving forward to continue to create new pages, rather than revisit old ones.

[Lady_T_Musings]

Oh is the struggle real. Like I look back and see things I'd like to redo, but I got a story to tell and redoing already done parts of said story aren't going to help me finish it any time soon and it's already a long form comic so I just make my peace with them pages and keep rolling. When and if I go to print once the whole thing is done, I just might do some quality of life changes bc at that point I'll have completed the story and know that I want fall to the redo loop as it is done.

I know it can be hard to see where you came from vs where you are and not want to fix things up, but I'd much rather keep moving forward, besides the folks who do read defiantly will appreciate the story continuing.

Another way I saw someone address this though is from the creator of the webcomic Out of the Blue. He started posting the main comic on Tapas and then once his art style changed drastically enough a few years later, he started to redraw the comic and post it to webtoon but didn't remove his original work from Tapas. I thought that was pretty neat, but it's still gotta be such a time sink as he hasn't updated the webtoon one in a while.

Taps version: https://tapas.io/series/OutoftheBlue/info
Webtoon version: https://www.webtoons.com/en/challenge/out-of-the-blue/list?title_no=192270&page=1

[purrlpankras]

I re-drew the first 2 chapters of my comic because it was 5-6 years out of date and the difference between the old chapters and new was extreme. And I wanted to fix some pacing issues.

I usually time it so I have at least 1 chapter ready to post, then I work on re-drawing for a bit.

I think my art style will stay like this for a long while now, of course we are always improving but I don't think I'll need to re-draw those chapters for a long time now.

[jcmraz]

No. And I won't unless it goes to be printed. I don't want to get caught in the trap of constant reworking. I'm always going to get better. Better to look forward more than back.

Runner | Tapas