Have you thought on reworking past episodes of your comic?

[Lilmonstart]

Thank god the forums aren´t gone....but they´re not quite active? idk...OK back to the topic

So I´ve been thinking on this
each time I work on my comic´s episodes, once they´re done and published I stare at them a lot
and sppot many mistakes at the drawings specifically

So....well sometimes artist´s artsyles changes or improves

should I just let people see the art´s improvement or rework past episodes?

have you thought about this? what do you think?

[migxmeg]

just let people see the art´s improvement

This one!

I would have regretted it if I went and "fixed" the art every time I thought about it. It would still look terrible now and I'd just want to fix it again. No thanks!

[GesuGesu]

Yes I've thought about it, but I resisted because I knew it'd be a waste of time and I'd rather be working on continuing and finishing the comic instead of going backwards.

[K.aixin]

I’m planning on eventually redrawing my first episode (so that new readers are greeted with better art haha).

But prob not for awhile. Going to wait until I finish an arc because right now I want to focus on just getting my story out there!

[BLTX]

I have been wondering if I should go back and update the text boxes, and some of them can be really hard to read, and, while I'm at it, I can fix up some art mistakes. But, I really want to preserve it as much as possible. While I have made a few updates, they were mostly for really important things like adding a word I forgot.

Then again, I suppose making the text readable would be important. It's still something I'm debating on.

[migxmeg]

Go make the text readable. That's not subjective and you will never want/need to fix it again. But tell you what people are going to drop a comic they can't read so fast... That's worth the effort!!

[BLTX]

K then.

[BLTX]

On a related note, I'm thinking with these 2 panels I should remove the box and just have white text off the background, with an arrow pointing to the character. You think this is a nice design?

[nathanKmcwilliams]

I have to say...in my case yes. I have to redo the art eventually. Especially since I've had an entire style change from Pixel Art to monochrome cartoon art.
Besides, the story needs to be tweaked. But this is something that I'm waiting on doing until I can find the time. Eventually I'd like to print my comic and sell it that way so everything needs to be worth the money. As it is now, it isn't.

[migxmeg]

Er, besides believing firmly in text that can be comfortably read I can't say I'm any expert on stylizing comic text (still very much figuring that out myself). I'd say as long as it's clear what's going on and it's consistent with the conventions and style of your comic, anything goes!

[TheDoublekey]

Yep, many many maaany times, if I have to be honest. Looking at my first chapter always sends shivers down my spine for how poorly executed it is when compared to my new concept.

Although I suggest you not to succumb to the urge of remaking past episodes, I, personally, will do it because I hope to print my comic and (you guessed it) it isn't print size. If this is the case for you, then go ahead and remake them, otherwise I'd say no.

Focus on making new content, new art, new episodes. Eventually, readers will notice your growth and come to appreciate it!

[Rhonder]

If I spot a glaring mistake in a recent episode, I'll often go back and make quick touch ups in an editing pass- comic pages/episodes take so long that sometimes you just miss small stuff after staring at it for so long

But as far as going back and reworking or redoing older episodes after some time has passed? Nahhh. I've fallen down the slippery slope that is the redo loop when I was younger. I found that typically it takes way more time and effort to go back and do that kind of rework relative to the value that you get out of it.

Also like, where do you stop? If you touch up chapter 1 out of 10, for example, chapter 2 might look a little meh/off by comparison since it's also older. If you do chapters 1 and 2, then 3 has the same issue... and so on. So do you do the whole thing? Do you just accept that there will be a random drop in quality and bank on the early stuff being good enough to retain readers through that? idk.

That said, I'm also a big fan of seeing improvement over time! I think there's something endearing about that and it's always a little sad when that is lost by overwritten edits :')

[DiegoPalacios]

Mostly for little changes like fixing grammar mistakes or important visual details

[Rhonder]

Contrary to my main topic reply above, I absolutely do think that there is value is making improvements to readability. It's of course up to you, but I think that improving hard to read sections is almost always a worthy editing time investment

[shooshell]

I've reworked old episodes from a formatting perspective - I used to stack two standard comic pages on top of each other to create more of a scrolling effect, but I didn't clearly delineate between the two pages within the canvas and there were serious cropping issues when I compiled it into a pdf. It took ages to do, but it was worth it i learned my lesson, no more long canvases lol.

But redrawing? Nope, not worth it. People DO like to see a progression in the art, even if they don't seem to notice or comment on it. Its part of your comic's visual history, even if you cringe at the older art. (Lately I've been thinking of old art like they're my characters baby pictures...like, aww, they were so cute and dorky, haha). I promise, your readers don't cringe nearly as much as you do! They like it for what it is!

[IndigoShirtProd]

I've already bit the bullet and gone back and redrawn my whole first chapter and a few panels of my second chapter. Was it worth it? Yes. Would I recommend it? Not particularly, unless there are other extenuating circumstances like you're printing in the future and if you're rewriting whatever you're redrawing. If you make clear boundaries on what needs to be changed and what you want to change but can live with, then it's easier to go about readdressing previous episodes.

Yea, focus on new content and all that jazz. It's always better to be ahead than pathetically behind.

[danitasibert]

oh yes, I'm currently gonna be re-working on my prologue for my main series, and I'm really excited for it, I'm still in the planning stages so it'll be a while until its created.

to answer your question i wanna show people who my art has got to where it is now, i feel its your decision and if yuou want to fix older pages down the road go for it!

[qniki]

Oof I just launched my comic and I have like around a 3 episode buffer and when I was launching I had the biggest urge to just delay it and redo the first 3.But you know at some point the results youre getting dont justify the amount of effort you put in. I prioritize finishing my comic so I try to turn a blind eye to things I'm not happy with and work on them in the next episode ^^

[Lilmonstart]

Samee I´ve been thinking on also that just give new readers a good impression of my comic because well there´s too many inconsistance and I´m afraid that might bother, but yeah also making the story progress is the main point of all of us comic creators

[Lilmonstart]

Oh yeah the text and grammar its also important althought in my case I´m not good with text bubbles ._.
and well I´m not good at editing but the text is also an important element, idk if this helps but I´ve heard a tip when sketching the comic you must focus on the location of the text bubbles first and that also helps you save space with backgrounds and such-
but I agree the text is a very important thing, like without we can´t tell the story

adding a word I forgot

oooof when I have the episode scheduled and notice one grammar mistake I wanna idk destroy everything around me xDx