Feel bad about my comics (just speaking out)

[unknown_user]

What defines "Better" is different from person to person, it's about the taste. I honestly can't concur how someone can choose a popular romance cookie-cutter webcomic over a meticulously crafted story by a smaller creator. The proof you have active subscribers and got fanart means your work is anticipated and appreciated, there are people who like it, there's a market for it.
Just because a work is popular and widely liked, it doesn't always mean it is good; most of population just happen to know and like it.

Yes, this is true...

I personally follow your work because it takes a simply weird idea, but still have substance that I don't get lost in it.

It's good that you mentioned this. One of my major worries is that readers will be lost and will not understand what's going on because of my lack of ability to express things. Nevertheless, due your comments I see that you not just understand key things clearly, but even notice some subtle hints (which I didn't think will be noticed from the first reading). It's really important for me. I think every author would be happy to have such an insightful reader.
But what about less patient and thoughtful people? I'm afraid that they will be disoriented from the very beginning and will not bother to read more to sort things out. ¯_(ツ)_/¯

[unknown_user]

@Darkstrong @amortelito @simplykit19

✿ڿڰۣ—

[DasIstWunderblyat]

I don't think you can please all kind of readers. Also no matter how much a thing is liked and popular, there must be people who dislike it for various reasons.

I was on the same dilemma with my old work; some readers regard my work was hard to understand, yet there are some who read far and appreciated it. While I'm keeping myself open for the former one, I focus to work for the latter one.

[unknown_user]

To be entirely honest, I've actually started to think about all of this after these threads:

Heyyy guys! :tea: Doing character ref sheets is quite a fun thing to do for me yet an important thing as well since it will serve as a guide for drawing your characters consistently in your comic so they wouldn't go out of model, etc. Plus it feels so goood having an official character ref sheet for your ocs. Especially if you have tons of 'em and you don't have the good memory to draw them all from your head. Here are some advice that I learned from some people I could probably give that …

In my current comic I reach the battle segment of my comic and though it be a nice topic to see how others do battle scene in their comics. I think is one of the hardest to do cause of the various poses one has to do to make it feel fluid and interesting. On top of that you need to understand motion lines to make it feel like movement is happening!! If you have scene from your comic where battle happens feel free to show them. Let's give battle scene some love. I'll start by showing my OLD bat…

Because literally everyone else here did battle scenes and character sheets better than me.

Probably I really should stop to compare myself to others or concentrate on things, which I can do better.
Thanks everyone for responses, anyway

[Nerdicon]

My advice would be to look at anime, manga or comics in general that do action scenes and see how they compose the shot to sell the action. At the end of the day you can polish a scene however you like until you think its perfect but if you strive for perfection too much you can get lost in doubt and never be satisfied.

Art grows the more you repeat and improvise as well as experiment thats the beauty of it.

[Daknight]

I used to compare myself to others and it got me down about my own art (specially on the first version). I turn that around by instead analyzing and admiring the art and trying to piece how it was done. At least for battle what I did is re-draw some action scene from comic (just sketches as a learn how). I know there is this fear of redrawing some establish art, but it is great practice (no tracing though). I seen your comic and you have a more american comic approach so I would suggest checking out action scene from those to learn

Also I actually compare my current art with my old stuff instead of comparing it to other peoples art...it helps my motivation seeing MY improvement done instead of comparing myself to other great artist that also took years to developed there style and talent I just admired them and try learning a bit from them (seeing streams of them working helps a lot!)

[MangoTango]

;;-;; Don't worry you're not alone on this, dude. I have felt the same way in the past years until now when someone does faster and even better art than I am. I spend the time comparing myself when all that time you can do is to reflect and keep working hard on it no matter what.

People even drove me away from an art community because of doing ugly art. But what we can do now is just practice, practice, exercise yourself and find more reasons and things for your work that could attract people on your content and at the same time loving it yourself. Find the things that you think you are the weakest on and keep exercising it. I am not the best at giving advices xd but still look at the reason you're still here. Be proud of what you have accomplish so far and only things you could do for now is just keep getting better. It's really good that you are interacting with people here and venting out what you feel.

We believe in you and you have my full support dude. c: Just keep up the good work ^^

Also just wanna share this channel which covers almost every aspect about doing webcomics and problems comic creators encounter

McKay & Gray

[TheSpaghettimobile]

Yeye TiredProgrammer, the best way to see how much you've improved (and you WILL have, unless you are those people that just give up and lose passion, which you certainly aren't) with your art is by straight-up redrawing old pieces.

If you're scared that your redraw will somehow end up worse than the original you did, say, one or two years ago (speaking from experience lmao), I recommend adding something to the piece. Say, for example, it used to be a sketch, maybe now you can line and colour it / render it as well this time, or perhaps add another character / element.

[Freemints30]

Dude I can relate to that sentiment completely. Every where I look every one is doing what Im doing better than me. Thou I do not care that I'm not popular it is some time disheartening when see others work.

However Just stop comparing how poorly you do compare to someone else and start comparing what you know your doing better than any one else.
1) you have genuine fan art which many other works online can only dream of.
2) your passion lead you to stick to your project for over a year. Waaaaaay better than most other web comics I have seen that are just abandon after a few updates.
3) Your art even thou it not my cup of tea is still a whole lot better than others who have attempted what you are doing. I can see it improving tremendously within a year of practice.

You are so much better than you think. Your 100+ viewers can see that even if you don't. Have confidence and see not how worse you do than others but how much better you do than others.
Hope that helps.

[LittleMissDevil]

I can very much relate to the feeling of inadequacy, especially when comparing myself to others. What helps me get through these slumps is to concentrate on the things, I can be proud of. And you have something there to be proud of! Your comic has reached an audience (150 subs? holy sh....I'm jealous!). So even if your artwork is not up to your standarts yet, a lot of people see the potential you have and are interested in what your story offers. That is something not many people can say about themselves. You also got fanart, which is a clear sign that your character designs are interesting and cool.

So.... just build on that. Others have already said it: You'll get better with practice. Try to remember that you do have a solid foundation and give it time. Try to change your perspective and focus on your own accomplishments instead of the success of others. You should still strive for improvement, but this change of perspective can offer a more healthy way to deal with your own goals. Not "Everyone is better than me and I'm no good", but "I've already come so far, now off to getting even better!"

And if you see someone doing better than you: try to learn from them. They have started with stiff action sequences once as well, so they know how to get better at it ^^