Do you think you’ll get featured?

Thank you so much for your feedback! It's really nice to get pointers like this so we can improve not just this series but future ones as well. The fact you're taking time out of your no doubt incredibly busy schedule to give us amateurs pointers it really means a lot. I'm really excited to get in and push the artwork and story further thanks to your advice!

Thank you for your candor and willingness to help! yeah, that's what I figured - we knew we were in a tough category but the story calls to me lol.

In my experience, paneling isn't too big of a deal. There is a certain standard you need to meet (its considerably lower than like, art and writing standards though since paneling is pretty easy to grasp) but anything beyond that is just like whipped cream on top. If you want to do huge shots, lots of tiny shots, whatever.

They want your paneling to be neat and readable above all else. If you want to add on some extra fancy creative panels, that will be viewed as extra credit, rather than something that's necessary for your comic.

Of course, our goals as comic artists is not to be satisfactory- It's to GO BEYOND, PLUS ULTRA! So, taking the time to do really cool panels will do you well!

So first off, I personally think you should be focusing your efforts into one of these versions. Either black and white or color. The fact you're updating both is actually kind of unreal levels of impressive, but it unfortunately doesn't mean that much in the eyes of the editors. If they know both versions exist they will certainly be impressed, but in my opinion the amount that they'd be impressed is not worth the extra effort you're probably putting in to update both. They'd be more impressed if you took your most popular version and made longer and higher quality updates instead, with that time.

In terms of art, with your style, I think you're sitting right on the line of what they accept for Featured. Since they have a lot more leniency with more out-there styles, you have more breathing room. But at the same time you're in Drama/Slice of Life which composes most of their most popular webtoons (True beauty, lookism, etc) so they're not really looking to fill up this category other than with titles that have exceptional everything, or some really unique spin. Remember that a lot of titles they're carrying over from Korea are basically majority SoL/Drama so you're also competing with whatever Featured webtoons on the Korean site that WT wants to transfer over. Basically: Competition is absolutely brutal.

Since I keep talking about the demand of certain Genres, I might as well make a list of my own deduction of generally how hard it will be to get featured in a genre, starting from hardest to easiest, using the canvas genres:

Romance = Comedy
Slice of Life = Fantasy = Drama
School
Sci-Fi
Action = Superhero
Supernatural
Horror = Thriller = Crime/Mystery
Heartwarming = All-ages = Animals
Post-Apocalyptic = Zombies
Historical
Inspirational
Informative
Sports (I feel like this genre in particular is one where they are looking for fresh blood but not many people are delivering)

Anyway, yeah, I hope me listing this out makes it clearer why it's so hard to get featured in the top categories- Because there are so many layers beneath it that they need to prioritize to get more of that certain thing on the site. The top genres are packed on english speaking webtoon featured, theyre packed on korean featured, theyre packed on canvas on both sites, they are P A C K E D.

In terms of what you could improve, I really think you should go in hard on the art. Like I said, it's passable, but it needs to be amazing. The art style that I draw the most parallels with on Featured is the webtoon "AXED", because you both have this sort of cartoon style and a similar wide-style of drawing faces.

AXED's art is extremely clean. No fuzzy lines, no color bleeds. This is what they're expecting- Extremely clean work. The colors they use also are not muddy, and pop out despite still having an earthy tone. I would study lots of other artists on Featured with a similar cartoon-inspired style and look at how they choose colors and draw strokes.

As for the story, I was mildly interested, but it's not enough to leap past your competition.The first three episodes were very slow and VERY slice-of-lifey, which like I said before, is already super abundant on featured. I think it could have been improved a lot if we got to see what was under his mask in episode 3 as well, as that would leave your third episode with that essential "hook" because people would want to know why he has those scars.

Anyway, good luck!!

Also edit to everyone else, I will be mega slow with finishing reviews since I'm behind on work and have something to do for my other job (so i wont be near a computer to do edits), but I will get around to them all eventually!

Okay, I may be a bit confused on your ordering and stuff, so bear with me. I'm going to focus on critiquing your first three episodes (intro part1, intro part2, 3rd)

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In general, when creating a Featured webtoon, we have rules about how big the space between panels should be. I recommend you pick a value (Around 300 pixels is recommended for simple panel transitions, it can be longer for things that have godly narration in between or a scene change) and stick with it so your Webtoon reads consistently.

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After reading the first three chapters, I like how you were trying to show us the story though action, but it was kind of belittled by all the narration. You have way too much text, you should have probably 1/4 of what you had in the comic. It is a visual medium- Show us, don't tell us. If your main character is shocked about finding a user of the mysterious element he hasn't seen before, do not narrate in his head a whole exposition of the backstory of elements and stuff. Just show him slowly walking through the alley and maybe being like "This feeling..." "...Could it be? No, it doesn't feel like an element I've seen before..." Then show the guy surrounded in purple and all your viewers will instantly know the element is shadow.

Your art could use improvement, IMO at the quality featured desires right now you are a bit below it. I am confused sometimes though because some of your panels are quite good, good enough I could see them in a featured webtoon, but other panels are completely in the uncanny valley side


like the top face is excellent, but just a few panels down you have this close-up shot that falls clearly in the uncanny valley with janky lines (that is quite big, i could excuse it if it was like a tiny shot of him in the background looking wonky)

I think you should focus a bit on improving your artwork, or at least, taking more time with it. A Webtoon original expects the top-face quality in every single panel. I think you have a good idea how faces and bodies work in certain angles, but you haven't studied figures and faces extensively to know how they work thoroughly.

Practice doing studies like these. And do quite a bit of figure drawing too.

As for the story, as you already stated, you don't have anything crazy new but I don't know if there is a Webtoon that has this story. However there are a lot of stories in YA novels and TV that focus on elements, and I don't know something popular having a similar story would effect choosing a webtoon to be featured. I think your story is solidly on the middle line- It will not detract from your chances of being featured, but it also will not add to your chances of being featured.

Anyway, good luck ~

I fell in love with your art right away. Not Cabbage, I just had to say it >.<

Hmm I had a feeling I had too much text, and because that's what you emphasized the most, I guess that's the biggest flaw. I do have a lot to say and it can be hard to tell what's important to me may not be to editors/readers yet.

I understand your confusion on my level of art, for that I apologize, so please let me clear it up. I personally was aiming for certain "key" angles to look more impressive and didn't spend nearly as much time on other panels I thought were "less important". I thought maybe the readers wouldn't care as long as it doesn't happen too often, and I didn't want to spend more time than I absolutely needed to get my message across. We put way more hours in to creating than most readers spend looking at it, but I guess my cutting myself some slack in the drawing showed through as inconsistency more than I thought oh well, at least apparently the art is feature quality when I do try. Since my new intro is long, I admit at some point I reeeaallly just wanted to get it done and not keep my readers waiting, I'm quite anxious I'll lose them , but now I realize rushing through things created the wrong impression. But regardless, I'll still take the figure drawing tip, and I'm always up for practicing and leveling myself so I'll do that!

I was wondering if my painterly style versus line art style changes would affect my chances? Since this intro is newer than the chapters that follow (which has a painterly style for a few chapters till it goes to the recent line art style again). Is it worth redrawing them so that the style across all chapters are the same, even before the promise of a feature?

Anyways thanks for the tips.

@Cabbage Thank you again for all the time and effort you are putting into these reviews. They are reeeeeally helpful, and this thread became by far the most helpful and informative on this forum! We are looking forward to your review of our Hexameron very much, hopefully our request wasn't lost amongst the others.

The style change will not help your chances of being featured, at most they will overlook it if other parts of your series are good enough, but one thing that is valued is consistency so a sudden style change will be a problem. I would however focus on other aspects before worrying about the style change.

As for the art, this isn't something I was really ever told during my editing process but I had it drilled into my head extensively in university while learning to put together portfolios:

People will remember you by the worst piece you present, not the best.

This is why even series' that have beautiful animations or comic panels get one wonky frame, it's screenshotted and passed around the internet and laughed about. You need to make sure that even the very worst you produce is still above a certain standard of quality.

first, i would like to say, thank you for telling me that bubble was cut off, i'm going to fix it on Webtoons soon, i have already fixed it on Tapas

as for the elbow, i was so confused as to what happened there, then i looked at the Tapas release (which is traditional page format) and found out originally; a panel actually covered that, so yes i am glad someone pointed that out to me...

only things i still cant grasp is pasing and the very very hard one... colour theory. i actually have a friend coaching me on that but i know that one will be the harder one to overcome since i really cant grasp the understanding of it, like in a visual sense, you show me a colour nightmare and i would see nothing wrong with it kind of sense but i am takinng these into consideration despite me never going for featured

like the others have said, panels is a bit of a cherry on top thing that I suggest to people who seem to have the skills to accomplish it on top of other things you need to worry about for comics. I do see that many Cavas comics seems to have a lot of white space. Like enough that when I scroll it almost is a bit of work haha, which is something you definitely don't see in Original works. In my experience, people who use smaller korean panels still are just as likely to have large white space so I don't think it's to combat that particular problem.

Regardless, imo panel shapes can be some of the most fun things to do and you do get readers noticing it (I played with it much more in my other comic "Normal." and would get comments complimenting it). Not necessary though. I think your comic is going to go far to good luck on it!

ahaha thank you very much, dear! I really appreciate it! ^-^