Here's a question about evolving art styles

[MrLewk]

Question: if, as you go along your art style improves and/or changes (assuming you weren't set on a style when you began or something), do you go back and redraw your earlier pages in the current styles once you have it more refined and set? Or do you leave it and have it as part of your 'journey'?

Personally, I'm slightly tempted to redraw my first chapter, but at the same time.. I kinda don't want to. I suppose if I decided to make a print version of the comic I may do.

Any thoughts?

[Zpreader]

I prefer see the journey, to be honest. Even in professional comics I've always found it amazing how art styles evolve over time. Especially as someone who loves to draw comics myself, I find it endearing when I can trace an artist's progress over the course of his work, and it makes me appreciate the quality that I see in the latest chapters all the more.

I would say a pretty cool professional example of this would probably be the difference between Tower of God seasons 1 and 2.

[gateofselidor]

Readers are very forgiving of earlier art not looking as polished as later art or being in a different style. If you're printing the comic, and there really is a huge difference, then it might be worth redrawing an earlier chapter or two, but it's generally not worth it otherwise. Sooner or later your current art will also look less polished compared to the pages you produce after it, and if you redraw things every time your art changes, you'll get stuck in an endless cycle of redrawing (which is exactly what happens to many webcomics, until their creators get fed up and abandon them).

[AnnaLandin]

No, I don't.

I'm always going to be improving and changing, so if I started doing back and fixing things, I'd never stop. I'd get stuck in an endless loop of re-drawing the same things and end up never finishing the story, which would be terrible.

My aim is always to be a little better every time I draw a page - which doesn't always come true, but that's the aim, anyway.

[TheHollyStanton]

I'm still improving, lol, but already have to keep myself from going back to redraw some of my beginning strips. I personally love seeing the artist's journey and get a little bummed when a strip has a disclaimer that it was redrawn.

I think a cool idea is maybe just to do a side-by-side comparison of your first strip ever, as it was, and how you would redraw it now, but leave both up for people to see:)

[TheVoidchildProject]

I have thought about this and might do it one day since there is a clear gap in my earliest stuff and my current. But I don't wanna do it yet because I'm still learning so much, I wanna move the story along and because it'll take too much of my time.

[saeedfaridzadeh]

Let's say you actually do take on the arduous task of updating your art. What will you do two years from now when your art has continued to improve? Go back and redraw the original comics a third time? As long as you cotinue to do it regularly your art will ALWAYS be improving until the day you die.

[MrLewk]

@TheHollyStanton I like that idea of the comparison! Maybe I'll try it one day

[GFalconDX]

I'm not looking to redraw my art, but I with my comic, I plan on redoing the coloring on the earlier pages for the purposes of self publishing in the foreseeable future.

[Rabbit]

I don't think you should re-draw it, at least not for now. Maybe if you're planning on publishing your comic you should for the sake of looking professional, but I remember a few years ago, when I was younger and sure I would never improve at art, I would get really inspired seeing artists at a level close to mine slowly improve to reach something amazing.
So I would leave the old pages as they are just for those fans, who can become more confident in their art by looking at yours.

[MrLewk]

Yeh, I get that. I think originally I was considering those cases where it's changed dramatically. Like, total style change rather than just gradual improvement.

Like for example, here's the first couple of pages of chapter one of my comic, from back in around 2013:

Compared to the latest page now, from recently:

(ps: if you're intrigued, this is "Out of Time": https://tapastic.com/series/Out-of-Time)

[saeedfaridzadeh]

Yeah, that's a great improvement. Awesome!

But like I said... you can go back and change it, but why would you waste your time on redoing art when you could make new art? Otherwise you'll be updating your art over and over again.

Personally I think it's a waste of time. You're better off looking forward and focus on improving your next piece rather than look back and mentally run around in circles on what you could fix.

You can ALWAYS find something to fix. And I promise you two years from now you'll look at the second image and find things you wish you could improve with that. Then what? You're going to back and fix that with your new improved style? Then you'll have to go back and fix the first image again. When will it end?

It's okay to have art you're not proud of. Let it go.

Keep drawing.

[MrLewk]

I will probably end up leaving it as is since it would be never ending! Maybe I'll redraw some pages for fun just to see how they'd look now when I'm in the mood for something different, or maybe as a challenge to kick "drawers block"!

[KreativeConfusion]

If you're planning to print and there are big changes is quality, then I say go change it, one artist I know has MAJOR differences in style and coloring of her older comics, so she changes them as she prepares each chapter for print. If it's subtle enough to only notice if you compare the latest page to the first, then I say keep it.

The artist I mentioned also has a separate archive for people to read the old pages as well.

[Stinahhh]

I've been thinking about this for a long while too, I'm SO tempted to redo it because it's such a turnoff LOL but for the sake of those who have followed since day one and were genuinely interested in the story > art, I'll keep it so I can continue updating regularly. Rather than fixing it and delaying the comic.

[maxzaguishi]

how important is better style, I say once you know that style to yours and is only one will grow with you and your story here I leave you the same page two years apart

[R.n.P]

I leave it so that if I have readers that feel bad bout their art style they can use my development for encouragementTHE LAST SAMURAI

[joannekwan]

I would not redraw the whole thing, but I would definitely go back and fix typos and small panels if like a face is completely off.

I like to follow Hiroyuki Takei's example of what he did with Shaman King's Perfect Edition. The original published series was 32 volumes, then they released it again in a condensed 27 volumes with all new cover art and a complete ending. He also went back to redo some of the panels in the earlier chapters. He didn't do much, just redrew a few faces here and there when there was an emphasis on them in the panels, but overall he left most of it alone. It's nice to see how far his art had come and how it "grew" with his characters as the story progressed.

[Ringarune]

I'm still not at that point where i've felt a strong urge to redraw my beginning pages, but I hope I never choose to do so, mainly because my story is so long that i have to focus on completing it rather than fixing it and not getting anywhere.

[Michelle]

Noooooooo.

A few years ago I was working on a comic when I was still pretty new to the whole thing. Once I got about 40 pages in, the beginning looked super bad, so I started re-drawing entire pages of the beginning. Which made the middle look bad. And then the new middle pages looked better than the newest pages. :u So I ended up with a comic with art styles all over the place. And I never finished it because of the constant re-drawing.

I do think it's ok to make a couple tweaks here and there, like what @joannekwan said about fixing a couple faces or panels. I've considered going back to the first chapter of my current comic and adding a little more detail to some of the panel backgrounds.

I agree with others in that it's nice to look back and see your progress. I like to see that in other peoples' comics, too. Just the other day I was comparing two similar panels from chapter 1 and 2 from my comic, and already I can see the improvement in the character art ~u~; but I will resist the urge to re-draw entire character drawings.

I think for anyone who's really worried about their style changing dramatically as they work on their comic, it's good to do a couple shorter series and find the style that works for you, instead of embarking on one long story and having dramatic stylistic shifts.