This is a question for pretty much any comic that's featured on Tapas or Webtoon, specifically any that are on a once a week upload schedule (which most are from the looks of it).
With the new contest popping up on Webtoon, I quickly started to do research to see if I could get my budding comic entered into it. Up till this point, I thought I had been doing very well on it. I have a single flat colorist who helps, but other than that, I am able to sketch, line, paint backgrounds and add dialogue and panel layouts all by myself. With all this in mind, I also am able to get about 2 pages done a WEEK, which translates to about an average 14-17 panels usually for sites like Tapas and Webtoon's mobile viewing platform. To me, that's a lot! I have a weekend job but Monday-Friday I pretty much work ONLY on the comic, setting aside time each day to work on it and make sure those two pages get finished and posted on time to the schedules I've promised to my readers (which is once a week at present). In short, I felt like I was doing good. Maybe even great (well...on Webtoon anyway. My comic is barely noticed here on Tapas...)
And then I analyzed the typical panel count that most of the featured comics on Webtoon/Tapas have...35-60...on a once a WEEK schedule...
How....how? I've already tried asking the creators themselves, but have yet to get an answer...so far it doesn't SEEM like these folks get a lot of help, if any. Maybe a shader here, a flat colorist there...rather close to how I have a lone flat colorists to help me out as well. But 35-60 panels in a WEEK?? I can barely squeeze out 18 in a week...that's not even close to what even the smallest episode is on some of these featured toons...and we're not talking about the short funny slice-of-life comics. I'm talking about the comics with a story, the meaty visual novels that take you for a wild ride into a different world. And what's worse...the comics are about on par with the quality I make. Nice clean linework, doesn't skip out on shading, decent backgrounds in most panels (I might actually be working too much on backgrounds compared to them but that can be 'fixed' easily). Basically...I just can't see how they do it. Unless they work like a MACHINE during EVERY day of the week...I just can't see how they are doing it.
Does anyone know how it's done? Do I just suck? Am I just way too slow with making art? I already dedicate every day except Saturday and Sunday to working on my comic...and now I'm scared that I won't cut it to being featured if I can't seem to be able to mimic their panel-count and upload schedule...
Any replies to this will be appreciated...I really want to make my series a success, but it's starting to look like it's going to demand more out of me than my skills and time can give...and that scares me...