DO you remember when you were new?

[Sanz]

I laughed super hard at this too hahahahahah

[Sanz]

@kurapikasuki @carloswebcomic @WintreKitty @sorrelma@annalandin @shazzbaa @keii4ii how about when you were new to webcomics, any remembrance

[keii4ii]

When I was new to webcomics? That was 1998-1999. The term "webcomic" didn't even exist back then. I think the most commonly used term was "online comic" or "online manga." Community sites only existed in primitive forms (anyone remember Elfwood?), and the only social media site I can remember from that era is Livejournal. The entire internet was different.

For the most part, everyone had their own sites for their art. This was before dA took over. People would share their illustrations and comics on forums. I didn't feel self conscious about posting my stuff on forums where I already had people I knew. It was no different than simply talking to them, except with pictures and potential new buddies.

Times have changed. No one keeps their own site for their art anymore, except for professional portfolio purposes. I believe that's where webcomics need to go, too: more platform-based, less individual sites. It just makes more sense.

[carloswebcomic]

Well, when I started in 2003, I had no idea what was going on with comics and the internet.
I'd never read webcomics or had any idea about communities and such.
I simply started to draw pages and posting them on my website. After 4 or 5 pages I put my comic up on Onlinecomics.net and suddenly I was get 18 hits a day! AMAZING! I couldn't believe people actually bothered to read.
I threw myself in the deep end and learnt to keep deadlines, digital inking, the joys of getting trolled and how bitchy and nasty webcomic communities can get.
By the time I stopped doing my first webcomic, I was getting over 10,000 hits a day!
One of the lesson's I took away from that was the value of having buffers. Now I never have less than 4 weeks buffer. It really helps with your sanity.

[WintreKitty]

Fairly recently actually. Probably my first or second year of university is when I really took to webcomics -so about 5 or 6 years ago. Before then, it was just your classic gags every now and then. But I grew up on Calvin and Hobbes, Zits, Family Circus, Archie and For Better Or For Worse. So in a way, I've always loved comics. I just never realized how much they meant to me until just a couple years ago

[UzukiCheverie]

I remember when I got my first real job as a comic artist back in high school. I was hired by a magazine company that worked in my province, did monthly strips for $50 a strip. I did them for a couple years, wasn't bad Then I started doing Uzuki and Time Gate: Reaper and I got preoccupied with those. Uzuki had its own website a long while back, but then once I discovered Tapastic, I ended up moving everything over there, as I wasn't getting much traffic on the website and I was getting along pretty well on Tapastic.

I remember dealing with a lot more trolls on my native site. That was hard for me when I was still starting out, especially because many of them were people that I actually knew (after doing some IP tracking and putting the pieces together lol) and were just trying to bring me down. I almost gave up Uzuki because of it > o < But then I found Tapastic and it really helped me out, I met so many wonderful people here that seemed to enjoy what I was producing and it made me feel a hell of a lot better

I remember first breaking 100 subs with Uzuki and going AAAAAHHHHH <3

[shazzbaa]

That's why I included the part about Today Nothing Happened, haha! That was my first comic! : ) I didn't really get involved in "comic communities" until much later; I didn't know such things existed.

[AnnaLandin]

how about when you were new to webcomics, any remembrance

Oooh, new to webcomics? I'll answer both as a reader and as a creator!

I first webcomic I remember reading is Penny Arcade, way back in 1999-2000. I read it for years, but quit quite a while ago - it had felt unfunny for a while, and there were repeated instances of Mike Krahulik being a hateful jerkwad, saying terrible things about rape-survivors and transpeople (on different occasions) and failing badly in his apologies, so I don't feel comfortable reading it any more, even if I DID still find it funny.

Anyway - back then, there weren't really any community sites in the way we have them now. There was no Tapastic-equivalent, no Smackjeeves or DrunkDuck - everyone had their own website, and you really did find out through word of mouth. There were some websites that were associated with each other, but mostly it was a matter of stumbling on one comic, and hoping they linked to other good comics in their links-section. We didn't have Tumblr in those days, either.

The landscape of the internet was entirely different, and finding your way around took some doing. It took me a while to build up the courage to start posting art online - I got my internet-life started as a fanfiction-writer on fanfiction.net. I did, however, discover an excellent art-forum with the very unfortunate name eatpoo.com. I swear to god, it was a legitimate art-forum, and involved absolutely no eating of excrement - it was just a terrible joke picked by the site-creator. It was REALLY good, even though at, like, 13, I was too young to have the skills to fully participate, but I did get to talk colour-theory with Matt Rhodes years before he ever got a job at BioWare, and I got to read the comic that eventually became Ojingogo when they were still just a collection of sketches of a girl and an octopus, ages before Matt Forsythe was ever even a twinkle in the Eisner-jury's eye.

It was a different time, and sometimes all these newfangled social media and webcomics-platforms make me feel like a creaky old lady - and I'm only 28.

As for creating webcomics.... I didn't actually start drawing proper comics until I was about 16, I think - which is weird when I think about it, because I've always READ comics, and I've always been drawing, and I've always been telling stories - it just took me a good long while to realise that hey, what if I put the drawings and the writing together?

My first webcomic was weird mess of a thing, which I posted on DrunkDuck.com back in the good old days, and it taught me that a.) I am definitely the kind of person who needs to plan ahead, b.) I had a long, long way to go before I reached any kind of competence. The thing about DrunkDuck is that it was as much of a mess as my webcomic was - it was badly put together, looked terrible, and tended to explode on occasion. Sometimes the site went down, and when it came back up, it had eaten a whole bunch of my pages, and I had to re-upload, etc.

I kept going for a while, despite this, and did have a bunch of readers who kept coming back, but then I got into college to study Comics and Visual Storytelling, and my courseload just overwhelmed me and put my webcomic firmly on the sideline - and after a while, I realised I didn't miss it, so I posted an apology to my readers and told them I wouldn't be finishing it. I felt bad for abandoning it, but I really couldn't finish it. I'd gone in making the same mistake I see a lot of young webcomic creators still doing - I'd had no solid idea of what I was doing. I'd just come up with a beginning of a story and some characters, and hoped that would take me somewhere.

It didn't. I ended up with a jumbled mess of a plot going nowhere, and it just wasn't fun for me to work on.

I don't regret doing it, though! It taught me a lot about myself as a creator, and what I needed to avoid doing, and what kind of structure I'd need to be able to pull something off successfully. I took those lessons with me when I picked my next project - a 24 Hour Comic that accidentally became a 168 graphic novel. ^_^;

[demthorshie]

I no longer consider myself "new" here anymore, I haven't been here for a year yet but still, I no longer feel like a newbie. I had never heard of Tapastic until I heard about it from a fellow comic friend on Twitter. When I first got here, I was also a bit reluctant to upload my comic after seeing everything that showed up on the main page. They all seemed so much more awesome than what I could bring to the table xD . I was also very confused about the episode thing for each page as well. My comic here on Tapastic isn't my first, but it is the first comic that i've ever been this pleased with. xD

[Sanz]

I'd gone in making the same mistake I see a lot of young webcomic creators still doing - I'd had no solid idea of what I was doing. I'd just come up with a beginning of a story and some characters, and hoped that would take me somewhere.

I'm totally guilty of doing that in my first web comic. when I didn't even know it was called "webcomic" I always look back and think I'll redo it someday but we all learn from past mistakes !

[Sanz]

a 4 week buffer...that is totally what I need. mine end up usually only being a week. but thats so cool it took off like that on Onlinecomics pity the site is gone. thats such a straight forward name. that tells you exactly what you're getting haha!

[Sanz]

@UzukiCheverie

I remember dealing with a lot more trolls on my native site. That was hard for me when I was still starting out, especially because many of them were people that I actually knew (after doing some IP tracking and putting the pieces together lol) and were just trying to bring me down.

at least you didn't quit and kept on! thats great it worked out for you on tap

[sorrelma]

i'm super young so i don't have the history that lots of people here have (i was born in 99 so obviously i wasn't reading comics then aha !) i started in 2011 which i feel like was around when the "industry" sort of shifted into what it looks like today ? modern looking sites like tapastic weren't quite here yet and from what i've heard crowdfunding started really taking off a few years before that

i started on smackjeeves and comic fury and a couple of message boards. it was definitely not as friendly! i don't know if that's because my art and pr has improved or if it's actually a cultural thing

and, of course, i had no clue what i was doing ! it took me years to figure out how to update more than once a month and even longer to figure out some of the finer nuances (when where and how to post, who to market to, etc) i'm still figuring all this out C:

[JimJom]

I am new. I feel the same as you.

[monotone_ink]

I remember the great crash of inkblazers - the flames spreading through the land, the infrastructure crashing down, and families crying in grief. I was young then, and I didn't remember much when everyone scrambled to the shores, boarding boats, planes, zeppelins, in search for a place to live. I don't know how I got here, but I know for sure that it crashed, and that I washed up on the shores of another land.

I had walked with the energy I had left to a nearby coastal town. The only thing I learned that day was that the town was under the rule of an empire named the 'Tapastic Empire'. Their language was strange, and I found it difficult to understand: 'Vertical comics? I've never heard of such a thing!'

It's been a few years now, but I'm finally beginning to fit in. Though I don't talk too much with the locals, I'm trying my best. This place is pretty great.

[scullpanda]

yup I drew everything on printer paper and didn't know anatomy and honestly had no idea how to draw all back in what seems like forever ago in 2015 I wasn't so much as nervous as eventually when I started to get better I looked back on my 70+ pages and died (I have still to redo that comic) but over the years even when I was down about my stuff being pretty bad I kept chugging on , got over my fear of talking to people on the forums , disappeared from the forums for a bit , came back and now am updating again with my comic Wait...What? and my other comic The World By Batsy Monroe (I cut it down to two due to having like 4 is like insane and i never got any work done)

[lunaartemisasama]

I still consider myself new here, at least as a creator. I tried to make a webcomic before, but too much trouble... Now is my third attempt and I am taking it slow lol, for me it's more fun that way. But when it comes to reading I have been reading webcomics since 10 years ago almost o_o.

I redrew the cover of my comic and I think my art is becoming better which is gogod because that was one of the main reasons I started my comic.

Of course I know I can do better, but I need to post what I do in order to inspire me, and try harder the next time.

[Shanny8]

First webcomic I came across was a one a friend of mine did back in the early 2000s- Urban Shogun. I was floored, coz at that time I was trying to learn digital coloring and digital lettering. I eventually took my hiatus shortly after, as how I was doing the parent thing, which demanded my attention.

I started doing comics again 3 years ago, when I came across another friend on Deviant art, and he kept talking about Tapastic & Patreon. So after I had gotten my remastered comic series going I started thinking about making a 2nd series. I wanted to make the 2nd comic a webcomic so that I could increase my online presence, so I joined Tapastic in January(I had been creating the content for my webcomic beforehand).

[PotooGryphon]

I joined back in 2014, I guess according to my Tap profile but I thought it was more like 2013. I remember I was actually invited to check out Tapastic by a staffer on Facebook. I signed up and was also confused by the platform. The Creator Guide was helpful at first, then the forums helped further in learning from other artists.

In the beginning, I created two different series for Oops. One series contain all of issue 1 and 2, and I published it all at once without staggering it, and the second series contained issue 3 and all new updates. It was confusing and unorganized for readers and many didn't know issues 1 or 2 existed since the second series was more popular. For the longest time it lived that way since Tapastic doesn't allow us to merge series or rearrange episodes easily. I eventually deleted everything for both series and republished the full story in both series, with one being vertically formatted and the other being page format.

Not complaining, but gosh, I did so much to try to adapt to the recommendations and trends the staffers told us in the forums and townhall livestreams. I formatted one of my series to be vertical since it was recommended by staffers that vertical scroll comics get featured more and perform better on their app. Then I colored my series because the staffers rejected Oops in B/W for Tapastic Premium, when I applied out of curiosity. Then I moved all extra non story related episodes to their own extra content series because there was a time when staffers cracked down on creators and banned a few series posting announcement episodes in series. Oh my, so many drama-filled moments during my time here. I'm currently still thinking how to adapt to the tipping program and the best way to offer rewards when I can't contact mobile only users.

However, there have been so many great moments too which keep me sticking around. So many great comic creator pals have been made here and the community in general is the best I've seen. The staffers are also very kind and helpful. They've helped me and my friends with collab projects and even featured us where they could. And Michael is great to pick his brain on how to better improve my series to adapt to the platform. All the stuff that I've done so far has made it a better series, so all though it was annoying and a lot of work to change it it was for the better.

Now I'm working on remaking the series prologue so it's a better intro to the series, and even going to make an episode introducing the characters. I think these things will help get new readers more acquainted to my series, instead what I currently have with a prologue that has old outdated character designs and not in color.

[andrewgenaille]

I've been reading Webcomics for awhile; it wasn't until last week that I started uploading them; It actually took a few attempts to get them uploaded in the proper format from the program I use to draw on. I'm starting to get the hang of it, so it's starting to be fun.