7 / 22
Jul 2018

So here's one of the differences between Tapas and Webtoons. On Tapas, I find that shorter episodes do better -- about 1-4 comic pages, or the equivalent for vertical scroll. Whereas on Webtoons, you want 5-15 comic pages per each update!

I think for every update you post on Webtoons, you might want to try posting that same update in two separate episodes on Tapas. e.g. If you update once every two weeks on Webtoons? Try updating every week on Tapas, but with only half the content. Do that for a few weeks to a few months, and see how the readers respond.

Long running webcomics are a marathon, so don't be discouraged by the low numbers for the first few months. Some people keep at it for years till they finally have an audience. I have a very, very modest following and I've been posting my comic since late 2014.

I haven't really read your comic yet, just skimmed through it real fast. I'll give it a proper read later, and if I have any useful feedback, I'll be sure to share. :slight_smile: (No guarantees though.. my brain isn't very good at coming up with useful comments lately)

Interesting, is the difference due solely to the type of audience? The format of Tapas and Webtoons seems quite similar to me. I've heard some people like to post their work pages at a time, but from my perspective, it seems like it would get annoying (if I were to put myself in the shoes of a fan/reader). If shorter episodes are preferred here, perhaps I'll break them up for this platform.

We're definitely prepared for the long haul, I just wanted to get started with a foot in the door, haha. Seems like our submission on Tapas got buried in 10 minutes and was never seen again.

I really like the style of Heart of Keol so I'll probably read it all when I find time regardless; be at ease, brain! It's already really far along so I'm not sure how long it will be before I can offer any meaningful feedback to you :joy:

I think your introduction update is very strong! Immediately generated intrigue into the focus character. Those who like period dramas will definitely be attracted to your story easily.

I agree with keii about the shorter updates. It's fine to have a long update for your first episode but it's far more efficient for readers and for your own analytics to have shorter ones afterward. You'll actually gain a lot more attention that way too.

I'd recommend putting some thought into the line art style though - at a glance it seems like this story is going to be more based on action and war, but the line art is very soft and kind of takes away for the action scenes. To emphasise a violent scene the line art should be styled accordingly. If the story was less violent and was, say a romance story then maybe it would be perfect... but at the moment it feels a bit disjointed.

I also think the backgrounds could do with maybe a bit more texture (for example the grass feels under-worked, and some of the walls look a bit plastic-y... sometimes it's hard to tell what a wall is made of) but backgrounds are pretty difficult and intimidating so I understand this will take time. Perhaps try studying more references for buildings to get an idea of how to draw them convincingly.

Colour values might need some work, too - check your drawings in a black and white filter to see what I mean. Sometimes the backgrounds have really similar levels of contrast and similar shades to the foregrounds which makes one or two panels look "muddy".

You definitely use good reference for the horses. They look very on model to real horses.

Keep working and you'll figure all this stuff out. The first update is always going to have hurdles. Looking at my first update compared to today's update definitely shows that.

Thus concludes my weirdly detailed review + advice - here's my comic if you're interested. Warnings for sex and drugs and rock and roll, babes. (and 80s slang. so much 80s slang)

Thanks for your feedback, wumblebumarts! Sorry for taking a while to respond. Here's Letty's 2 cents after having a read through your comic:

Your art has definitely improved from the first few pages! I wanted to give you my thoughts mostly from late chapter 3 since it's most recent and consistent but i noticed your most recent page (page 9) is different from the previous ones with it having no shading.

it actually would be kind of cool if you change it back and forth between these styles, maybe I'm wrong but it looks like your character Foreas is entering a different dimension or something so it would make sense if the art style changes. But if it's just purely a change of style i think it looks really cool and clean like that since your previous pages have a sort of dirty/ muddy shading on it. maybe the muddy shading is just a stylistic choice to fit the theme of your story, usually it looks really good and interesting but other times it seems a bit carelessly done which I think is due to your brush size/ softness.

It kind of looks like you don't have pressure sensitivity or the control of the pressure sensitivity isn't that good, that's if you're actually using a drawing tablet, if you're not then perhaps try using a soft eraser in combination with it.

Rambled a bit there but hopefully it's helpful in some way!

Just gave another view :slight_smile:
I really like how you blurred what's in the back. make it feel real.
The only thing I would check is the opacity of the text bubbles.
It really bothered me that I can see what's behind.

Hey, decided to give it a quick read as well!
Wumblebumarts already said everything there is to say regarding the art and textures.
For clouds and grass it might be worth it to look up different free brushes for whatever art program you're using. There are brushes for everything that really help speed up the process!

And now the reason why I actually decided to sit down and write a review - your summary/overview of the story. At the moment it's very short and dramatic, but it doesn't really give a good enough overview of what the reader might expect. Is the main focus going to be war in general without a defined main character? Or the main characters' personal struggle with the deeds they've commited during the war? Or is it a romance that blossoms in the midst of war? Something else? As a reader I don't mind the setting but I do care about the focus of the story. So it might help to make the summary a bit more detailed, that way readers won't hesitate to subscribe if they see that the story is going to focus on something that they like.

I hope this was of some help and if you're up to it I'd also appreciate a quick review! Feel free to bash my summary since it's so hard to read your own summary objectively. After all you as an author know what's going to happen but the readers can only guess based on what you've written and drawn. : D

Thanks for your feedback! Summary definitely could use a revision, I've never been quite satisfied with it.

Here are some quick thoughts on your comic:

  • Personally, I'm not a big fan of infodump-style prologues and openings. I think you're better off starting with a stronger hook to get readers engaged. In your case, you could probably omit chapter 0 entirely.
  • The script is mostly well written, but you may want to revise it with better punctuation. Even a few more well placed commas would help the flow a lot.
  • Consider spacing the comic out with more gutter. If your primary focus is the webcomic format, it might be worthwhile to follow the conventions more closely to make it more pleasant to read. Some parts get a bit confusing and cluttered. There's a guide on Webtoon that might be of interest to you if you haven't seen it already.

Hi! I’ve just checked your comic and here are my thoughts about it:

First, as some people has said it may be more practical to have shorter updates. As a reader I enjoy having more content but for the creators is easier to publish shorter episodes to have a bigger buffer in case you don’t have time to finish an episode on time (this is just a personal opinion, both sides have pros and cons so it doesn’t matter, chose whatever works better with you :wink:).

Another thing that I’ve noticed is that the colors don’t feel so right as a whole, the grass looks too bright and green and very unified. I would try to use colors that are more close to the others, maybe using a yellowish and slightly desaturated green would make the landscape more appealing (sorry, I don’t know if I’m explaining myself). Also I would use more varieties of green and brown in the grass and walls to give a more realistic look.

About the characters, the anatomy is amazing and looks very well. I’d suggest to use some movement distortion for a dynamic outlook on the fight scenes (the scene where the soldier has his head chopped off looks a little bit slow). As a personal thing, for me having many front views in the same episode gives me an stiff look, this could be solved by turning the characters a little to one side.

Finally, in terms of plotting and the proper story the beginning looks pretty interesting. It promises to be an intriguing story with exotic and historical background. Can’t wait to see more!

Overall, your comic looks very promising!! That’s why I subscribed!

Hope that I could be of some help, here’s my comic if you want to give it a try, though I’m a newbie too :sweat_smile:

well... the colour is nice
and it's was all about it. the rest is...
No... just no... I'm so, so, so sorry but... this... just no...
I'll say nothing about the story, because this just a introduction, so can't said much.
but the art.... just no... I'm sorry it's just no...
1/ the cinematography is... bad, it's do not delivery the scale of a battle.
2/ pose (especially the soldiers) is... poor
3/ the equipment of the character and the soldiers is... poor in details.
4/ that gatehouse... ancestors!!! that gatehouse is an eyesore... you don't even get the basic architecture right.... I'm so sorry I really don't want to bash you work. I'm sure you do you best but , I'm Chinese myself, I grow up with Three Kingdoms and had spent sometime to research the time period, the clothing, equipment, architecture... and what you has drawn is... really irritating me

Seems pretty damn good. Very webtoons-y format. You did that well. Pacing is good. Storytelling is good. Pretty cool idea to roll with. It’s a bit too soon for me to say anything else; but so far it seems like you just have a good start for a good webcomic :slight_smile: I have no complaints really.

As for getting views, make sure to promote on social media. I like Twitter. And don’t be afraid to do follow for follow, it’s the only way you can really get around twitter. So hashtag up out there!

Now if you would like to return the favor:3

Hi Chita, thanks for reading and sharing your thoughts! After reading through a few chapters of yours, here are mine:

As I wrote in one of my previous posts, I'm really not a fan of infodump-style prologues, irrespective of medium. Let me elaborate a little, since I'm posting about it twice. I know it's traditional and especially common in fantasy, but it's also overdone (if the sheer number of comics that open this way are any evidence), rarely needed and difficult to execute well.

They are usually very long without much actually happening, which is a problem because I've only just picked up your comic and have no context to make me care about all the details of your world. The art is beautiful and that certainly helps, but I'm still scrolling for an awful long time without any progression. Even if it isn't actually, this can make it feel dry to the reader. It's exacerbated if it's not directly relevant in the beginning of the story proper. Let me get to know the characters and the world before you start laying on all the backstory and worldbuilding details, and I'll be much more inclined to care!

Here's an article that may be of interest for further reading on the subject. This isn't all directed specifically at you, I just wanted to share my thoughts in general.

Some other thoughts:

  • Maybe I've just gotten used to the 'webtoon' format, but the gutter space really does help with pacing. Unlike print media, you're not limited by page real estate so I would take advantage of it.

  • Script could do with some editing. There's quite a lot of missing punctuation, grammatical/spelling errors, etc. While it's still understandable, it would go a long way towards making it feel more professional!

  • I get the appeal of handwritten text, and while it does look good in places, overall I feel like it just distracts me. My attention shouldn't be on the written form of the text; I'd prefer to focus on the story and art.

As always, take everything I say with a grain of salt but I hope it's helpful to you!

Thanks for reading! I went through all of the chapters you've posted so far, here are some thoughts:

  • I like the black/white scheme. It really suits the style of your comic!

  • The pacing is a lot better after you optimized it. While it is possible to go overboard, perhaps expand the 'range' of gutter you use to add more variation? Bigger gaps in slow scenes will also make the tighter ones feel more immediate by comparison.

  • The script reads well. I could probably nitpick a thing or two here and there to improve, but it's very clean overall and I really would be nitpicking.

  • Your comic has a lot of character. The little details you insert really help make it come alive and give it some charm, good job!

I'm not too familiar with Twitter but it'd be nice to get involved. Do you have any tips to share? I followed you, for starters :smile:

Thank you very much!!!! :grin:

As for Twitter here’s my advice:
1. Follow similar accounts. For starters you can look at the people who are following me and the people I follow. Plenty of awesome creators in there! F4F is even bigger on Twitter than it is on Instagram. Also make sure to drive some traffic from that IG account to your Twitter. Just make a post on your story saying you have Twitter now.

  1. Make sure to use good hashtags. There are lots of articles on this but first just try to copy the hashtags other creators use. Like webcomics, comics, indiecomics, supportcomics, promotecomics, webcomicwednesday, and of course webcomicchat.

  2. Tag similar or “promotional” accounts. Some of the best accounts to tag are Webcomicchat, Webcomicnetwork, and Webcomicconnect.

  3. ENGAGE. The best part about Twitter is that you can actually have a conversation with your audience. Ask a question. Participant in webcomicchat’s threads. Talking to people on Twitter will help you infinitely. It’s not even that time consuming.

  4. Also make sure your content is good and not spamming.

Took a look through your work. I do agree with others that your artwork itself would definitely improve with a more thorough understanding of culture, research and history. An example: A problem a lot of folks have with representing American Indigenous People in media is that they assume well the headress of feathers for chieftans, or the single feather on a headband for...everyone else? Those single feather headbands aren't representative of any indigenous people. Do they use feathers and headbands? Yeah. But they don't wear them like it's shown in say...Disney's Peter Pan. Also not just chieftains have those long feather headresses. It was explained to me that anyone could have one. Eagle feathers are presented to people for doing kickass stuff from helping people to prowess in battle. Chieftains often wore them because they'd done a lot of stuff worthy of those feathers, and therefore were probably good people to choose as a leader. Simple things like clothing and knowing the context of what, why and how they're used or made is really important.

Another thought, the artwork doesn't quite fit the tone of your story. So you've got good work, you obviously know how to draw, but your style is very soft. Yet you're using this soft styling to represent serious violence, and I don't think that's having the desired effect. So, what do I mean when I say 'soft'? Fair question! What I mean by soft is your color palate is quite pastel, your character designs have very little angles, they're curvy. The violence you're representing to me would be better suited in a harder style. Use of dark spot blacks, heavy shadows and more would go a great way toward fixing that story tone to art issue.

Finally I do think it's be improved with getting more creative with your lettering on special effects, and re-writing other sound effects all together. I really love the way you showed the arrow being drawn back and how the lettering in that panel stretches with the string. You can HEAR that word! However there's other sections where you didn't get quite as creative. Even changing the font can help get across your idea on sound. As for cutting SFX? Specific stuff like "Breathes In" That's not a sound effect. Breath in really deep yourself. What does that sound like? Maybe "phooooo~" or "huuaaaaa~" or something else, represented in a small font to show how soft it is would work better. As it's written it reads as though when he breaths in it actually sounds like "breath in" which is not the sound you're going for. Also small stuff like the horses footsteps. You've got one where a horse is trotting away, and you literally use the words 'trot trot'.Okay, but...that's not what a horse sounds like when it's trotting on grass."tok tak tokk" would give you a better sense of 'place' than just using the word 'trot'.

As for your thoughts on twitter: Twitter is a conversation. Follow other artists there, and as they post stuff start talking to them. The WebcomicChats or Comic Artist United chats are group events that happen every week. There's topics presented there and it can really help out with finding other people in the community and starting convos with them. Share your work with folks. WIP's are often really appriciated, or just noting problems you're having. Think about being in a room of folks, and talking with them. It's the same deal. Something that REALLY helped me out when I was starting on Twitter was using a chrome plugin called Tweetdeck! Look it up and use it. It's so much easier to keep track of conversations, follwers and more through it. Seriously, that little plug in saved me xD Personally I'm @mermaidshells on twitter, and if you have any questions or wanna chat talk w/ me!

If you wanna check out my work (so you know I'm not coming from a place of BS) you can read it here

Hi Letty & Akirus! Congrats on your webcomic debut on both Tapas and Webtoon-! I think you guys are off to an amazing start. Your art is gorgeous w/ the amount of detail and lighting--I can tell you both put in a lot of effort into the first chapter! I think the flow and readability of the panels are great too, which isn't always easy to pull off!

I think the comments before me pretty much nailed their constructive criticism and have really good insight as to the difference between the two webcomic platforms, so I won't reiterate their points.

Please check out my work too. I'm pretty new to webtoon, so a critique would help a lot! I'm trying to improve it bit by bit : ) thanks a lot!

I'll give it a shot! Although of the 20-25 people I originally followed, I only have 1 follower in return. :joy: Wasn't fishing for them, though; just followed people whose tweets/work I like. I will try to go about it more thoroughly with your tips, thanks.

Thanks for taking the time to write this, Carrie.

Since its come up a few times, I just want to say some general words on historicity in fiction. This isn't meant as an excuse for ourselves, since there are definitely things we would have preferred to do more thoroughly but couldn't due to time constraints - we started writing for the Webtoons contest in early June with zero experience drawing comics - but rather an explanation of our thought process in case it may be of help to anyone reading this. If it leads to some productive discussion, even better!

While I care a great deal about faithfully representing the era I'm writing about, Flames of Tranquility was never meant to be a historical reenactment of the Three Kingdoms, and I'd imagine most modern adaptations aren't either. I'm more concerned with capturing and preserving the essence, not so much the material form, and telling the story from my own unique perspective (ideally with a little flair!)

For example, Yuan Shu wasn't a woman (in fact, no woman would have held the place of a traditional 'lord'), but just because I wrote it like that doesn't mean I'm not informed on the history; it's a deliberate choice I made with my artistic license to tell the story how I want. I have still researched and read every primary source reference to the character I could find so I can write a personality as close to the real person as possible, only within the parameters I set for myself.

Historical records themselves are actually very dry; the Records of the Three Kingdoms would put most everybody to sleep unless you had a specific interest. They are also full of gaps, inconsistencies and distorted by bias. It's the job of the historian to sort through these. For a writer, they are the opportunities for you to insert your own interpretations and stories to fill the holes. The classic Chinese novel, Romance of the Three Kingdoms is often described as 70% truth, 30% fiction, but it's still vastly more popular than the historical version for this reason. Spoilers, Guan Yu didn't actually wield an anachronistic, 50kg 'Green Dragon Crescent Blade', but a lot of people would agree that it's still cool, and much more distinctive and interesting than just giving him a generic polearm!

I'm aware of inaccuracies in our comic. Sun Ce's long, flowing hair is contradictory to Confucian morals of the time. Lu Fan wouldn't have a piercing. We like it, though. It looks good. The long hair expresses his wild, impulsive nature. The piercing is a hint at his extravagant side that nearly gets him in trouble later in his life. And we're not the only ones, either. A lot of Chinese media doesn't strictly follow the conventions of traditional hanfu. We actually referenced things like the popular 2010 TV show San Guo, movies like Red Cliff and various anime adaptations (my favourite is Souten Kouro) to design our characters and scenery. These may not be authentic as accurate depictions of life 2000 years ago, but they are part of the modern culture that shapes our perception. They still have enough resemblance to evoke the right feeling, and generally look better to 21st century sensibilities.

I don't think this2 looks cool to my eye; it's a traditional style, 17th century illustration.

Another thing to consider is the audience. If I wrote Flames of Tranquility for my eyes only, it would be much more antiquated in style, violent and dark, with vague references and confusing titles. However, we're posting to Webtoons and Tapas, which is mostly a Western audience without a strong background in Chinese history (which is basically Letty; huge props to her for figuring everything out as she goes). Outside of a very small subset of the readership, most aren't likely to notice, much less care about these details. Is the extra time invested necessarily going to make it better? Imho, accurate historicity is paramount in a textbook, not fiction, particularly to a non-enthusiast audience.

Tangentially, here's a conversation with someone concerning the naming conventions I used in the first chapter, with respect to consistency, accessibility and style:

In the comic it will say Lujiang Commandery, but it will say Shucheng instead of Shu Castle. I just found it inconsistent but I do see it written like that in many places. If I were to write it I would either say Liujiangjun and Shucheng or Liujiang Commandery and Shu Castle.

Reply:

Funny you mention the naming convention; I actually agonized over that exact thing for a good while trying to find a nice common ground between consistency, accessibility and style.

'Shucheng, Lujiangjun' would have been my preference, but since we're mostly writing for a western audience who probably wouldn't understand what those suffixes mean without explanation, I thought it would be too confusing.

On the other hand, 'commandery' is also just a really cool-sounding translation, so we decided to sacrifice a little bit of consistency to make it all flow better.

For readers familiar with Chinese and/or the common romanizations in academia, it might be a little bit jarring or unclear (for example, I chose to render 'xiaowei' as 'commander' rather than the more common 'colonel' because of its more neutral etymology). For the most part, I think it should still be easily understandable though, especially for the less knowledgeable reader that's likely to be confused.

Anyway, I may have rambled a bit there, so lets just wrap that one up. I guess I kinda ended up... reviewing my own comic there? I'm interested to know specifically what details from our comic bug people, though. It would help me a lot with my review process, so if anyone reading this has any irksome points they could isolate for me, I'd appreciate it!

re: Kamikaze - Its been running for so long, I'm not sure I can do it justice with the limited time I have at 2.30am. Nevertheless, here are some of my thoughts:

  • I'm definitely just spoiled, since I used to read manga one page at a time too, but I find it's slow having to click every time to go to the next page. I'm a fan of the continuous scrolling format so it feels a bit cumbersome to me. It seems that most people prefer this length here though so I'm probably in the minority as far as that's concerned.

  • Letty noted (my eyes are too untrained to notice :joy:) that the backgrounds seem more detailed than the characters, which creates a jarring effect for her. The art looks very polished regardless.

  • I have no experience with comic books and that style, so I don't know that I have any meaningful feedback to share except to say that your work certainly lends you the credibility you mentioned! Not that you needed it; your critique stood well on it's own.

Again, thanks for sharing, and I hope I didn't kill anyone with this wall of text!

Hi wufargia, sorry for taking a while to get around to reading your comic. I'm really impressed! Here are a few thoughts:

  • The script is written with natural dialogue and solid editing. Very few mistakes I picked up in five full chapters, which is great. Thought I'd point out this one, just in case it becomes recurring: http://puu.sh/B04CX/12aaac7d90.jpg - 'Cried' should not be capitalized; see here for an explanation.

  • The pacing is well done and it flows nicely. Only thing I would add is that perhaps you could consider... blending (?) the panels a bit more in places? One example that comes to mind is the day to night shift in the first or second chapter; I felt like you could have used a gradient there for a really smooth effect.

  • The suspense is really well executed. You established some foreshadowing with the quotes at the beginning and it took a dark turn really quickly. The build up with the finger scene had me hooked, and the car scene afterwards cemented the tone of the comic. Bravo.

  • The art style and character design has a lot of charm and it makes the transition into the violent scenes even more gut-wrenching. I like it, but it does seem a little rough around the edges at times. Perhaps it could do with a little more polish? I'm by no means an expert on art though, so take that with the smallest grain of salt you can find. That's just the feeling it leaves me as I read through it.

  • You inject a lot of personality in the lighter scenes with cute panels. I found this worked really well in throwing me off in the transition from chapter 1 into the savagery that followed; on the other hand, I feel it may have pulled me too far in the other direction once we got out of the car, and a lot of the tension you built up just dissipated (and also with it, my burning compulsion to keep turning the page). Not necessarily a bad thing, and I don't have a concrete suggestion on what you could do differently or better. Just something to think about, perhaps.

I genuinely enjoyed SHELTER and I'm looking forward to reading more. Really strong start, good luck with the contest!

You picked a great period piece!!! Your panels are done really well, that goes for your pacing as well. Shorter episodes do seem to be what most creators stick with on Tapas, as others have noted. A note that I was given a while ago when working in digital was: try avoid "chicken scratch". Basically make sure all your lines are smooth, continuous and generally one stroke. I've personally found this to be helpful in creating a more defined look, but I also found it very difficult. I only noticed it here and there, but it stood out for me. hopefully that helped!

I'd love any feedback you have for my prologue

Wowowowow-! Thanks a lot for taking the time to write out such a thoughtful feedback lettusbear! Will definitely take your comments into consideration for future episodes ^-^

I understand what you mean when you mentioned the car-to-home transition dissipates the tension... I guess I was trying to show the dramatic difference between what happens behind closed doors vs. the illusion of light-heartedness and that "everything is ok." But maybe it was too abrupt?

I'm so glad you enjoyed reading it though-! :slight_smile: looking forward to seeing where your story goes as well!