Evolution of Drawing Style Within a Comic

[Tieback]

Something I notice when rereading my comic, is that my style has changed/evolved (At least it appears that way to me.) I know it’s normal and a good thing for styles to change, but when it happens within the same comic, I’m torn if I think it’s a good thing or not. I question how professional it looks. I’d love to hear what other comic readers and creators think about this.

Bellow are two pages from my comic, they were made about… a year apart.

[Down_the_Rabbithole]

If there is a difference, it's certainly not a jarring difference.

[nessiefynn]

I can see a difference, but honestly it's pretty subtle! Most readers are used to art styles changing over the course of a webcomic since they take so long to make, so I really don't think anyone will mind! ^-^

[antwyonsimpson]

Cant see a huge difference. But still pretty nice art

[shazzbaa]

Well, considering that it happens to the professionals as well,

I wouldn't be too concerned about it being unprofessional. x3

But yeah, it's also really really common in webcomics for the style to shift and grow, since they take years. Look at any random selection of existing webcomics and I bet most of them will have a big difference between the first page and the latest.

[TrustyShamrock]

yeah thats pretty ok i think. the style starts out pretty snazzy lookin and it just gets better so its all good with me. itd be weird if ya went to a suuuuper different style. unless it makes sense with the story somehow like a wizard of oz dealio where theyre switchin worlds or things are happenin in different times

i really dont like what marvel and DC do where they got a certain illustrator in the beginning then just switch to another one a few issues later. but your version is ok since the style just gets better

[AnnaLandin]

Style evolution is natural, and happens to all of us - including professionals! I'm hard-pressed to think of a single example of anyone, webcomic or print, whose style hasn't evolved at least a little bit during the years.

Part of it is acquiring skills through repetition - you draw so much when you draw a regular comic that you naturally learn new things, and become better at the things you already know - and part of it is becoming more comfortable with drawing a particular set of characters over and over and over. You become familiar with them, and start getting them more "right" than you did on page one.

... and part of it is that you change and grow as a person, and thus your taste in what you find interesting to draw will change a bit as well.

[Doubtcent]

As long as it's not different page to page, panel to panel, it's fine that your style changes.
From the beginning, just about every comic has it's changes, either to make it easier to draw or makes it more exciting to draw for the artist. It really doesn't matter all that much unless you have inconsistencies within a very short amount of time.

[indagold]

Happens especially when you're still getting a hang of comics and drawing. Especially when I was younger, I worked on a comic for 4 years and the first page looked nothing like the last one.

[NanettesClouds]

It's totally natural for small style shifts to happen over the lifespan of a comic, something that I would be more concerned about is MAJOR style shifts, there was this one comic that I had read a long time ago called Olympus Overdrive. I think it was a hiveworks thing, anyways, the artist drastically changed their style every couple of chapters, one chapter may have had a serious semi-realistic marvel-esque style, then the next would be a more anime influenced style, then the next had a cutesey homestuck-esque style. It was really jarring and I eventually stopped reading it because I felt like the creator didn't really have a clear vision for what they wanted the comic to be.

For me personally I've been working on my comic for 3 years now, and I restarted my comic from scratch twice, partially because I felt like my style had changed too much between the gaps of working on the comic. It's not as big of a deal if that shift happens gradually, but I hadn't been able to work on the project consistently. On top of that I kept rewriting the story, and as the story developed more and more I felt like whatever the previous styles that I had used no longer properly represented the tone of the story I was going for. Also some pages were cringe-worthily bad and I was super embarassed by them.

Here are the different covers I've done for the project as examples of what I'm talking about I guess.

TLDR. It's not a problem if your style changes gradually, but changing the style significantly all at once can be disorienting.

[Tobi_The_Dark_Rabbit]

I like how it looks like Garfield is loosing weight as time goes on. xD