Do you think you'll get featured?

[Cabbage]

I'm glad it could be of help. Part of me going anonymous was so I could give out totally honest critique without cutting corners.

I think a complete redo would be the most logical option. HOWEVER, I think you should still continue the comic just because improvement is slow (for everyone!.) It'll take a while to get to a point where you can create an episode 1 which has art that meets the standards, so don't redo it now, Keep drawing and redo it later. Maybe down the line you'll think of an even cooler idea you'll want to pursue, and you'll have that comic in your pocket to prove to the editors you can dedicate yourself to a project, and then your new project could get picked up quickly.

[BlackRose108]

@Cabbage
I'm actually really hoping to be featured one day >_< Seeing the variety of comics that do get featured I figured being niche like my comic wasn't necessarily a deal breaker.

At first I was drawing my comic in black and white and in page-format, but realized that it was never gonna get noticed that way, so for the Webtoons Contest last year I colored and re-formatted it into scrolling. I didn't win anything (obviously) but I did get on the honorable mentions list. So while I was going to give up and continue with the black and white comic, since I got on the honorable mentions I decided to continue the color alongside the black and white, I currently update both versions bi-weekly, but that still means I'm updating something every week. The color version is a good 8 or so chapters behind the black and white version, but the color gets more views and has double the subscribers.

I know that Webtoons has only looked at the color version, and it has ended up on the recommended page a few times. I guess updating the color version bi-weekly might be hurting my chances? And Since chapter 8 I changed the font to something bigger and easier to read as it was too small before (I'm still in the process of changing the previous 7 chapters to the new font, I just gotta find the time).

But I also realize that my art is kinda weird...I honestly don't know if my art is bad or just in an odd style. I know it's a lot more cutesy, cartoony, and sketchy and while no one has outright told me my art is bad I have gotten comments like "the art took some getting used to" and one blog review of the the color version said "it's a different style than most webtoons I read". But I still have gotten plenty of people saying it's great and the colors are nice. I'm always trying to improve my art, though, since I know it's not 10/10 in every panel but regardless of how hard it is to hear I understand if my art is just not good enough yet.

Either way, here's my story:

My New Friend is a Cat DELUXE!

And here's the black and white version, which is much farther into the story and has my most recent artistic abilities:

My New Friend is a Cat

[marvelescent]

Well this comic will take 11 years to completely finish. At the level of Noblesse, tower of God, etc. We've charted out every essential aspect and created the entire timeline. Weeded the unnecessary and put in the proper foreboding. The project will be long so ditches the story isn't in the plans. At this point it's just a matter of moving forward and being willing to redraw when asked. We were thinking the improvement process of tower of God would be similar to ours as their comic visibly improved over time. I guess that finding our style within the will be the first hurdle to overcome. Do you have any idea how often webtoons revisits a comic to see how it's doing? Let's say that see us and think to themselves"they need some work." How long until they come back and see we improve?

[marvelescent]

@Cabbage Thanks for the heads up. That is unfortunate, but I guess we just have to perform our asses off just for ourselves and our story and prove it by doing it.

[SuperRazz]

I know there's something that needs to be fixed especially on the first 3 eps but I just couldn't point out what's exactly wrong with it. At least now I have an idea what needs to be fixed so I could start doing them one by one. I think I will have to consider rewriting and redrawing a few eps while keeping the 3 episode rule in mind.

Thank you so much for taking time to give such a detailed advice! You've given me a LOT to think about

[akiocha]

ah I live in australia so it's a bit difficult for me to talk to them in person.

I do occasionally chat/talk to them but mostly regarding specific issues. And mostly with Jin really. I have talked to friends about editors though and I might consider it a bit and ask some of the editors what they think about my comic. Thanks for the advice!

wooahh, you're a tough cookie ahaha, good job on juggling both at the same time!

[Rosso]

Not with my current messy upload schedule i won't :")

From what i've noticed, sticking to a weekly schedule and delivering on time is THE most important factor the staff in WT look for in their Featured offers.

But despite the messy schedule and occasional F-bombs and strong language, i'd say my work really appeals to their audience. Luckily i've been featured in the front page many times (Spotlight, Staff Picks, Hot Today, Rising Star...etc) So at least someone is paying attention? And if i ever get the chance to redo the whole thing to better fit into their Featured model then i'll be more than happy to do so ngl lmao.

[Beatrush]

Thank you very much for the insight into how Webtoons picks it's featured artists @Cabbage. Really appreciate the time you took in writing everything out and giving thorough explanations to people's questions (it answered a lot of questions I had).

While it is a little disappointing to know being featured won't happen for us (since we use traditional page layout and we plan on staying b&w), at least I know not to worry about it and continue to grow our audience ourselves.

Anyways might as well do some shameless promotion while I'm here...

Gun+Blazer

[marvelescent]

Yeah I feel you, we have done redrawing to do as well in order to adjust it to be a more comic style. A question though, you started very recently. Did you bring an audience in before shout out, or was that the biggest contribution? Did you have a following from a separate comic? What was that whole spotlight thing like

[Rosso]

Nah this is my only comic and it's just a re-launch. The original had an episode removed and to this day, the staff didn't reply back even after i censored the damn thing LOL

Bloodrain Valravn (OLD Version)

Started posting on May 11, 2018.
You can see it took me about a month to barely get to 500+ subs. Two months later I was just about to hit my 1K when suddenly it jumped to 8800K overnight! That's when i got my first front page feature. From this point on, i started getting featured more frequently.

The relaunch numbers were quite a surprise to me. As I've regained much more than i've had in a significantly less time than i did in the original version. Actually... i tested out something where i changed the thumbnail one time it got featured (from the boy in my current avatar to the wolf in the current one) and i think this actually helped grab the attention of a wider range of audience that are more interested in the wolf than the boy

---

The Spotlight is just one of many frontpage categories they have where the featured comics stay up for a week (Tuesday~Tuesday. Last year it was every Monday)
Only two categories appear both on App and Desktop: Recommended Series & Specials
Recommended Series is second-best section to be featured on. Larger banners and appears on more than just the app [ check the top row ]

Specials is also good but weird. [ can find 10 featured comics at the bottom ] but on app, only 6 of them show up?

Hope this answers your questions.

[Kelheor]

To tell you the truth, after you posted all these requirements you know, it disheartened me a lot I still will hope for the best for sure, haha!
We are making consistent updates, color and all, but the amount of panels is my weak point. All the advises you gave another authors here are really helpful, so if you have some time and will, I'd like to ask you to check my comic out too. Absolutely anything is highly appreciated

[Cabbage]

I don't think your chances are like, impossible.

Everything I've been saying here has been from my own observation and deduction from watching what gets picked up for featured, which I've kind of gathered by taking the explanation they gave me for why they chose to feature me and applying to to patterns I see in all other discover works that have been picked up. The editors work in godly mysterious editor-ways and even if patterns I've observed in 9000 series may be true, they might make exceptions. They have plenty of information they'd never share with me (and if they did trust me with the top-secret stuff, I wouldn't share it either since I respect private information.)

@graveweaver was picked up despite doing their comic in black and white, but AFAIK they're coloring the featured version. I am personally unsure if they have picked up any manga-style comics recently, but I know there are some really old featured works that are in page style. They're clearly cycling that out completely, but if they really wanted to feature you they might message you asking if you'd do webtoon style in color. Of course that would be preeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeetty rare but I don't want to discount the possibility entirely.

[Cabbage]

I've been watching your comic since I started mine, and I was surprised your series wasn't featured, actually. Your paneling quality is fantastic, and the art is beyond the line of what they expect from featured, and you're in two unusual genres.

I'd say I wouldn't be surprised if you got picked up eventually, but they probably are kind of weary because of your upload schedule. I also think they might be a little hesitant since Lumine is so popular and people might lump the wolf stories together, but, Lumine has seriously gone downhill with its updates so I think it'd be a perfect time to feature yours to put a new wolf story in the spotlight.

Truly the editors work in mysterious ways.

At the very least I can tell you the violence and language is not going to stand in the way of a potential feature. I don't want to get your hopes up TOO high but I don't want you to discount the possibility.

[seru]

Your art looks amazing. The feel of the story is intriguing too. If you push yourself and re-format the comic to vertical scroll and color it, it will get noticed.

[marvelescent]

Yeah thank you! It's good to hear goe process and its something to consider changing the icon. I wish our gains were as much as yours, then again maybe its the competition becoming that much thicker. I really appreciate it. If we gain a following, as I don't wanna come off as opportunistic, would you be interested in cross promotion?

[graveweaver]

Whoo!

@cabbage is right, my original comic is in black and white (and its still up if you want to see it) and I was picked up for feature. However keep in mind I was picked up despite being in black and white :^D The other aspects of my comic were strong enough that they considered me even though the art wasn't meeting their standards!

Making sure I would color the comic was like, the first thing my editor made sure of though, even before I got the contract. They are serious about all new webtoons being in color. They weren't going to force me to color it, which is why he asked me if I would color it before he even proposed the featured offer. And of course I'm going to color it, I like money XD I kind of did want to color it on discover but I had weighed in my mind before I started the comic that I wanted to get a story out more than anything, which meant weekly 60-80 panel updates that would not be colored (or else itd take way too long.) I wasn't aiming for feature, I just wanted to tell a story, and I think me prioritizing story over anything else and being so motivated to do it every week out of just wanting to show my story to an audience was a big plus in me being picked up (since I never missed an update, in fact I updated more than once a week with multiple 60 panel updates sometimes kfjdsf)

edit: oh yeah and re:violence and langauge, my featured version (its not out but these arent spoilers since its in the discover version too...) uses foul language a LOT (scarlet says fuck constantly) and shows lots of people getting killed onscreen (with blood)) so yeee its not been a problem for me at least

[Cabbage]

Okay! So the first improvement that is relatively simple and I think will bring up the quality a lot is increasing the font size. It was readable on my computer, but not on my phone.

Also, make sure to proofread your text! Grammar and spelling is an exceptionally important thing in a comic, if I have even one typo in a panel my editor will make me correct it and reformat THE ENTIRE CHAPTER (even if I have it already saved to the final flattened versions) - Always double and triple check!

For example, this should be "I can't believe they are still haunting me after all these years"

Make sure to also double-check the artwork for errors. The elbow here is cut off.

Here's some more errors where the bubbles/lettering is cut off. You honestly have decent art and can put things in settings coherently, I know what was going on in the first chapter pretty well, but these small errors like typos, line problems, etc can drag down comics that would be like a 9/10 to a 4/10. Make sure to be super neat!

The sudden transition to black and white with tones is a problem, but I'm sure you're well aware of that so I won't go on about it! Consistency is important for a reader to feel like the story is flowing well. I actually can't really comment on the story after this part because the transition was so jarring and confusing that I couldn't understand the panels at all.

Going onto your most recent chapters, in general study what I've recommended prior multiple times: Anatomy, color theory, but additionally perspective since you do seem to like to do shots where their bodies are at angles (which is good to do, definitely would be expected out of a featured artist) - You can try many online sources for figure drawing such as this and just practice once a day for at least 10 minutes. You'll need to do it daily for basically, ever, but expect results in about a year. As for color theory, here's an entire pinterest with tons of tutorials. Read them all!

[marvelescent]

Just want to thank you for the advice. We've been working all day ann's picked up books to work specifically on our rock spots of clothing and form. I wanted to show you our progress to show that your time wasn't wasted. We do use the model as reference, but have learned ourselves to simply sketch based upon it to allow our style to show more. I myself am a painter, so we both are drawn more to the realistic look, but we have lowered our saturation more. Anyway, thank you for your advice, and we are always open and welcome any more anyone has.

[denaliah]

**EDIT: Please read before critiquing! I'd love a critique now if you're still taking them I'm redoing my story's first 3 episodes. However after reading your valuable suggestions, I've decided to rewrite more things and move certain scenes from my story around so the reader will know what they're getting into, so I recently uploaded an alternative. (both in link below)

**#3, #4 and #5 are the first option and #6, #7 and #8 is the alternative of the intro ( ignore the first two updates):
https://www.webtoons.com/en/challenge/test-1-prol/list?title_no=278786**

I'm not sure which one is better. Also sorry about the roughness of the last chapter, I didn't have time to do anything other than rough storyboard for the last scene.

If you want, here's the rest of the chapters from the current one (read from #4 the boy who defied heaven, anything before will be replaced): https://www.webtoons.com/en/challenge/pseudo-wings/list?title_no=208635 but you don't have to crit this if you don't want to sorry if I'm asking for a lot, but I reeeeally am serious about this.

My concerns are that my story has elemental stuff which is age old, but I'm putting a twist on it by approaching the magic from a personal standpoint (each character's power branches to unique) and match their emotional state, but this is hard to show in 3 chapters, I was planning to slowly reveal this. With these chapters I'm trying to show this has a fantastical side but it's still a personal relatable story. I don't recall a featured webtoon that has this magic system though. And I know angels have been done before but my character isn't an angel, but a fake trying to be the real thing. I try to remedy the age old fantasy aspects by making it character driven (I think characters are my strongest point, but feel free to state your own opinion). I don't think my plot reinvented the wheel, but I do think I have something unique to say in the message and characters growth. How can I better show this is not just another elemental story with angels? I have a complex story and it's hard to decide what to sell first and reveal later I dug myself into quite a hole haven't I?
**Also I changed styles. I started off with a painterly style then switched to line art since it was efficient. So that's the reason why it starts off with line art and painterly in the middle, then line art again was cause the parts in the middle were started off first.

Thanks for your time.

[marvelescent]

I just wanted to say, I feel you in goe entire journey. It's complicated knowing it's a popular dream, to have elemental powers, but to do it originally. I do think what you have is unique, and at the end of the day, it's all about how you tell your story, and showing up to the plate! I am keeping my eye out for you! @denaliah