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.
@TheHollyStanton I like that idea of the comparison! Maybe I'll try it one day
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.
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 2013:3
2
Compared to the latest page now, from recently:2
1
(ps: if you're intrigued, this is "Out of Time": https://tapastic.com/series/Out-of-Time1)
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
I'm only redrawing the first 3 episodes of my comic because they were done in a completely different style (fast, cheap, rough) than the rest of the comic (painted, colored, detailed), and I feel they stick out like a sore thumb.
Otherwise the only reason I would go back to redo something is if I made a huge mistake on the drawing, or if a minor detail needed touched up to fit with the plot.
As for my style evolution over the episodes, I'd say I had a "devolution" towards the middle of the comic. I was getting burned out and was too lazy to try and meet the standards I set in earlier episodes. Giving myself more time to complete updates allowed me to put more love into the drawings again.
I have to admit that before I posted The Angel with Black with Black Wings that you see online, I did redraw them. I made 27 pages before deciding to redoing them. I was extremely dissatisfied with my drawing and my the pacing of the story. It was way too fast. I thought to myself that I can do better than this crap.
compared to my current page in Chapter 1.
Honestly, even the first chapter is pretty bad by my current standards but I'm not going to redraw them again. I'm not gonna throw down 2 years of hard work down to drain because I'm not satisfied with my drawing style in the past.
Plus, you're going to keep on getting better at art so by the time you finish redrawing the first pages you'll cringe as to how bad it is and you'll get stuck on an infinite loop. So you know, instead of spending your time redoing the pages, focus on new pages so that you can progress thru your story further.
Of course you can do some little revisions from time to time especially when you're going to print them but don't spend your entire time re-doing the pages.
Well, that's just my opinion anyway.
Yeah, I learned from my very cross editor that it is NOT GOOD to do that unless you have like spare time or something. It's tempting, but readers very quickly forget that kind of stuff, and they're even more forgiving if they see a recent chapter and think 'hey, i like that, the things in the past weren't as good but i'm gonna read til then because i think it has potential'.
so yeah, don't sweat it.
I think when it comes to webcomics, it's more important to have something finished than to have something perfect. If you go back and completely redo earlier pages, you could get stuck in an endless loop of redrawing and never finish the rest of the comic, or at least take a lot longer to do so. Style change is to be expected when working on a long form comic, and I personally think it's really cool and inspiring to see how other artists' styles have evolved over time!
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