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Mar 30

Hey creators! We’re curious to hear how everyone organizes their workflow.
How many people are working on your comic, and how do you split the tasks?
Some people do everything solo, others work in pairs or full teams. How do you handle writing, art, coloring, publishing, and everything else?

We’re currently figuring out the best setup for our own project — would love to hear how you all manage it!

By the way — are you doing any promotion on Instagram?
We’re trying to grow there too and wondering how other creators approach it — do you use it mainly for art previews, behind-the-scenes, or community building?

It's just me who works on my comic. I do it all on my lonesome.
I assume it's how it is with most people.

had a look at your comic — and wow, huge respect for doing it all solo! The world feels intense and layered, and the visual style is beautiful: dark, textured, and full of atmosphere. The storytelling really fits the horror vibe.

Do you enjoy the creative freedom of working alone, or does it get overwhelming?
And how do you manage your time — do you plan ahead or go with the flow?

Super inspiring!

That’s awesome — mad respect for doing it all solo! It’s a huge amount of work.
Do you find it helps you stay fully in control creatively, or do you ever wish for a teammate?

i'm the only one working on my comic so I do the whole thing myself. I use Instagram to promote my work as a whole, so I share art, WIPS from my comic, covers for my novels, etc.

Thanks for complements.

I do enjoy the creative freedom where the only thing I have to argue with is my inner critic.
I'd say if you have any friends who you trust to be honest with you, you can asked them for some feedback on your work.

Does it get overwhelming? Not often, but sometimes I do need to take a break.

I do plan ahead, but only somewhat, but probably not as much as I should.

The best advice I got is that if you wanna start a comic then start.

That’s seriously impressive — doing it all solo and keeping up with promotion takes real dedication! We'd love to check out your work — could you share your Instagram link?

Here’s ours, by the way: https://www.instagram.com/joyfulnib2
— feel free to take a look! We’d really appreciate any feedback or support :raised_hands:

Thank you for sharing that — it really resonates!

We’ve definitely had moments of overthinking before starting. At some point we just decided to go for it, even if things weren’t perfect yet. That first step really unlocked a lot for us.

We're a small team, so having someone to bounce ideas off helps fight the inner critic — but yeah, that voice is still always there :sweat_smile:

Taking breaks is something we’re learning to respect too — the long game matters more than constant output.

Your approach is inspiring. It’s great to hear how others manage the ups and downs creatively. Thanks again for the thoughtful reply!

I do everything myself. My projects are written and illustrated entirely by me.

If I ever did want a teammate or another person working on my project, I'd want it to be an illustrator or someone better at art than me. My primary forte is writing and conceptual stuff, but my drawing skills are more limited so I resort to using very cartoony and non-realistic art styles. Sometimes I wish I had some sort of help with the illustrations, but since I don't, I have to do the writing AND the art all by myself.

Love the vibe of your page — your characters have such distinct personalities, and it’s cool how each one feels like they comes from their own little world.
I especially liked the softness in the "Citrus" and "Rattar" pieces — the color choices are gentle but expressive. And your OC sketches feel really personal, like there's a story behind each one.
Looking forward to seeing more of your work — do you plan to develop any of these OCs into full stories?

Here’s ours, by the way: @joyfulnib — feel free to take a look! We’d really appreciate any feedback or support :raised_hands:
https://www.instagram.com/joyful_nib/

Makes sense — your storytelling really carries the work. And honestly, the style fits well!
If you ever team up with an artist, that could be an amazing combo — but you're doing great as is.

If you're ever open to it, maybe you could look for a collaborator through comic forums or art communities — lots of artists are looking for writers to team up with. Could be a great way to bring your vision to life with stronger visuals.

Think you'll find most people here do everything themselves. So we are the writers and artist of our own stories and not a team of people. In my situation I like just doing it all myself, I find it easier. Plus I'm not getting paid so I won't ask anyone to do anything for free.

I do everything myself, but I’m not sure what I would want a teammate to do even if I had one :thinking: I want to write the story, draw the characters, and color them, so idk maybe a background artist? Probably not. I want to learn how to make backgrounds myself. Maybe just having someone to bounce my ideas off of would be enough. Whenever I talk to my sister or my friend about my stories they sometimes give me good ideas that have made my stories what they are today.

Of course if someday I had the opportunity to make a tv show or something big I would definitely need a team to make that happen. But for my current projects I’ll do better by myself. Besides, the people with the right skill level for me to want to work with would probably be adults, and I’m still a minor. So it would feel kind of awkward for me to lead the project.

Thank you. Many of those OCs already have stories ."Kattar" (it's not an r, my hand writing is weird) is the male lead of my novel "Damsel in the Red Dress" which is available here on tapas. Texas and Chili are from my comic strip "Sketchy Business" also here on tapas. Some of the other characters are for upcoming projects, and others are random OCs who may be included in something some day, but nothing is set in stone for them yet.

I'm also on my own for my personal tapas comic, but I'm also paid to be on a team as a storyboarder, sketch artist and lineartist, and there's about 5 of us on the project, so it's quite a big team for a comic. The solo one is a huge amount of work and I have self published in hardback form and the crowdfunding for that was one of the hardest things I've ever done because I'm really bad at self promo and get easily overwhelmed. Like I know my art speaks for itself a lot so I put a lot of my energy into actually making the art and forget the promo.

From the workflows I've seen teams are usually organised by specialities and skills, so here's a couple of options for typical team jobs:

1) Divide by production step:
- Writer
- Storyboarder
- Sketch artist
- Line artist
- Colourist
- Letterer

2) Divide by speciality
- Writer/Storyboarder
- Character sketch and line artist
- Decor sketch and line artist
- Colourist
- Letterer

Some of these jobs can be fused or adapted, like I'm not the best at backgrounds and in my personal comics my backgrounds actually have no lineart, but I'm fast to line so I work well as the liner on the team I'm on. Also the writer even if they're not an artist can be the first storyboarder and then give that over to the sketch artist to do a kind of "second storyboard" with an artist's eyes. Basically work out who you've got and play to everyone's strengths.

Sidenote: the bigger the team the more "organising the team" becomes a full on job in itself, so once you have over 4 people in there it's a good idea to cut some slack to the person who's organising the team and deadlines and stuff because that takes up way more time than you'd think. Over 5 and i think it's worth it to bring on a dedicated organiser if you can.

I think you'll find most people here are doing a solo project, including myself.
After all, this is mostly just an unpaid hobby for most. A thing we do out of passion, not for monetary gain.

It’s me and my editor, who’s actually just my mom. In exchange for calling her regularly, she corrects all of my mistakes, gives me a second opinion on creative decisions, and makes sure what I write makes sense.

I'm a one man army. Like in solo leveling. :laughing:

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I don´t believe in comic collabs without payment.
It´s hard for me to imagine people working for free on one person´s vision.
Or to find 2 or more people who develop exactly the same creative vision.

That´s the reason why I work on my vision alone.

I work in creative teams as a musician since 35 years and it´s always a
struggle

Totally fair — full control can be a huge advantage, and yeah, asking for free work is always tricky.
Really admire your dedication!
Have you ever thought about doing a short collab just for fun, or are you more into keeping things fully solo?

Haha, that was awesome! True Solo Leveling energy :sunglasses:
Honestly, it’s clear you’re handling everything like a pro.
Ever thought about doing a mini project just for fun, or are you fully immersed in your own universe?

Really cool stuff — I followed your world!
If you’re interested, feel free to check out what we’re working on. We’d love to hear your thoughts!
https://www.instagram.com/joyfulnib

Totally agree. In our team, I’m both the creator and the producer, and I also write the scripts — it’s a lot, but it’s a deeply inspiring experience.Finding a true creative soulmate is rare, and I get why you'd rather build your vision solo.That short collab you mentioned sounds like a great experience too — sometimes even a small project with the right person can leave a strong impression.Do you think you’d ever consider doing something like that again, or are you fully focused on your solo projects now?

That’s super insightful — thanks for breaking it all down so clearly! Your experience with both solo and team work really shows. Totally feel you on the promo side — it’s hard to juggle making the art and getting it seen.

And yeah, managing a team really becomes its own job. We’ve got a small crew — just 4 people:

I’m the worldbuilder, producer, scriptwriter… and the one who pays for everything, haha.

Our artist does all the visuals.

A second writer shorts comic strips and the story bible.

And someone helps us with Instagram and promo.

We’ve made solid progress in the last 4 months, and there’s a lot planned ahead — expanding the universe and hopefully doing crowdfunding soon too.

Have you found anything that helps make promo or crowdfunding less overwhelming?

If you're curious, feel free to check out what we’re working on — we’d love to hear your thoughts!
https://www.instagram.com/joyfulnib1

Fully immersed in the ADB universe... whether I like it or not. 24-7 / 365 :laughing:

This is me.

I've done them back in the day because I really liked the work of the writer. But you need to be on the same page for it to work and they all fell through because we weren't.

That having been said: If someone isn't willing to let their partners have control over the final product, they don't have a partner, they have an employee. Then they better pony up some cash.

Do everything myself.
My stories are ones I hand wrote back in highschool in the 90s during boring classes. XD
Now I break it down to raw storyboards, then line art then full colour rendering.
Then plop it into a premade template I made which covers the volume, episode, page plus logo info. I do that extra part for online postings.
For me its a way to help with brain injury recovery (relearn hand, vision and cordination skills) + a hobby to learn how to improve and develop that style. After doing it for about 5 years now. Ive noticed a big change.

Later on if I ever get fianances, I plan to hire someone to redraw it all.
As for animated shorts. I do have a friend who has had multiple voice acting gigs on many anime shorts. Willing to voice one of my characters as a collab to build his portfolio and exposure.

Thanks ^^
I've had a look over what you've put up, the artstyle's pretty cute and gives me Charlie and Lola nostalgia, and I like the episodic format of it where you can kind of hop through the episodes to get little snapshots of the character's lives.

For the crowdfunding the thing that really helped me sounds obvious but:

  • having a fanbase. I'm not huge online, but the people who like and read the comic are pretty invested and were willing to give some money to get the book and perks. That's in part thanks to having been publishing the comic online for 2 years at that point PLUS I'd been talking about it to people around me and at conventions, some people who use social media but don't like reading on screens for example.
  • Preparing A LOT. I wasn't just selling the book, I was also selling extra goodies with the higher tier donos and personnalised illustrations inside the book to a quality that I won't ever do outside of the crowdfunding campaign (full colour portraits). That got a few people to up their pledge to get the extras. In general planning to have a good amount of time to make the goodies and the promo material is a good idea, I rushed everything in 50 days and I do not recommend for anyone's mental health, I was exhausted during and after the campaign even though it went as smoothly as humanly possible.
  • Knowing why your comic should be in paper format. My entire comic was, and still is available online for free and I have no intention of taking it down because I don't want to lock this story behind a paywall, so I had to know WHY it would be worth it to buy the physical copy. In my case the answer is simple: I do really detailed pages with a bunch of details that just don't pick up on such a small jpeg on the screen, and that's not even my choice, it's a limitaiton of online webcomic hosting platforms. I also work in A4 page format so vertical scroll isn't the ideal format to view my comic, so all round it's better and nicer to read Petrichor on paper. Plus of course all the people who were interested but don't read on screens.

If you want to see what my crowdfunding page looked like, you can see it archived here as it was, the main difference being that the "buy stuff" buttons don't work anymore. It's in french but even if you don't speak it you can get the gist with the visuals.

I hope this helps!

I really don't have the time as my comics is a weekly comics and with other paying projects it would just get in the way.

I have a co-creator who created the story with me and designed some characters, but all af the practical work, writing, storyboarding, illustrating, editing, publishing and marketing, is done by me.

Creative partnership is a tricky thing.
Before jumping into one, ask yourself: why do you need a partner?

To share the load? Get a fresh perspective? Go further together than you could alone?
Cool.

But if you're expecting your partner to make all the decisions —
or cover the expenses you can’t afford yourself —
that’s not a partner. That’s a sponsor. Or a babysitter.
And those tend to burn out fast.

I’ve tried building partnerships many times — it just didn’t work.
Eventually, I chose a different path: working with a hired team, but building real synergy.

With people who made my project our project.
And that drives things forward way better than any “equal” partnership full of power struggles.

Really cool that you’re doing everything yourself — it shows how much heart and meaning you put into it.
Your story of healing through creativity is genuinely touching :raised_hands:
The comic is impressive: strong atmosphere, emotional style, and Lily is a powerful, layered character. You’re clearly giving it your all.

If you ever feel like checking out our stories and sharing feedback — we’d love to hear your thoughts!
https://www.instagram.com/joyfulnib1

Thanks so much for sharing your experience — super helpful and really resonates! :raised_hands:
We're also publishing our comic online right now and went with short-strip format — it helps introduce the characters more easily and fits the rhythm of social media (especially Instagram and Threads). It's a good way to build recognition and engagement step by step.

What you said about having a fanbase is spot on. We're still building ours, trying to interact through the characters, adding memes and polls. We know it's too early for crowdfunding without an active community.

The personalized illustrations you did are such a great idea — definitely something to keep in mind! We're currently figuring out how to balance cool bonuses without burning out :slight_smile:

Totally agree that the print version should be something special. We want it to feel like an artifact from the universe — not just a copy.

Also, I followed you on Instagram!
And if you're curious to check out our project, here’s a link to our socials:
Would love to hear what you think!

https://www.instagram.com/joyfulnib1

That’s awesome that you’re so self-sufficient — seriously impressive! :raised_hands:
And the fact that you’ve got your sister to bounce ideas with? Total win. You’re lucky — that’s a power duo right there! :boom:

This is some Grade A marketer bullshit.

I do both the script and the art for my webcomic (it's the first time I tackle a project on my own), but from episode 06 forward I've hired an artist friend as my flatter because I needed some extra help and that part of the coloring process is always a bit overwhelming for me. Going solo is fun because you make all the big decisions... but tbh I also miss nerding over the characters and story with someone else :_)

I do promotion on Instagram, Tumblr, BlueSky and lately also on TikTok. I try to post previews for the new pages, some character lore and I'm also working on small side comics and funny memes that might pick future readers's interest :_)

Hope this helped, best of luck with your project!