How do you know how well your comic compared to nice/good comics?

[ylldre]

I can’t for the love of god judge how well my art(comic) especially, and story compared to others. I am like blind if it comes to my own comic. So how do you comic artists/authors know that you do as well as other comic you deem nice/good? Not that I want to be the best, just thinking in terms of the ladder and the level of growth/phase. It’s a goal to be able to see my comic and think, I’ve done well and be satisfied with that. I’m not talking about views and such btw. And I know some people make comic for the sake of just having fun. But in this particular case how do you know? Please share your thoughts with us.

[darthmongoose]

It's difficult!

For me, I found that learning to analyse or critique other people's work helped a lot. I was really overconfident when I started making comics, because I was a small-town artistic prodigy as a kid, always being told how exceptional I was. I thought I was practically pro standard and that all the polish stuff that made book art look different from mine was just like..."IDK they just put it into the printer and that stuff just happens".

When I started spending time around more experienced aspiring comics creators online, I came down to earth with a bump. "Oh, you need to make your gutters more consistent", "Hey, your shot distance and angles could do with being more varied", "Hm, maybe look up some comics fonts and read this tutorial on speech bubbles", "Here's a good book on anatomy" etc. I realised that other people didn't just get given that polish, they created it by themselves through pure effort.

I started to study comics I liked on more than just a surface level, and the closer I looked, the more I realised how far I needed to climb. Yeah, my anatomy was good for a teenager, and wasn't bad when characters were in fairly neutral poses and viewed from a straight-on angle, but my skills simply weren't good enough to draw to that level while changing the angle up, I was limited in body types I could draw, and on poses. So I started to study really hard.

The devil is in the details. When looking at other people's comics, look at things like their colour palette choices, their line quality, their design elements like fonts and speech bubbles, their visual storytelling, or things like the proportions or sense of mass on characters. When you find somebody who really excels at something, try to think about what you can learn from it. Every creator has strengths and weaknesses, so look for what they do well compared to what you do well. It's not unusual to be better at a creator around your level in some aspects, but for them to be better than you at others.

And if you're still struggling, you can always ask for reviews!

[ylldre]

This is a very good answer I’ve gone so far so used to my critical eyes whenever reading comics and know their weaknesses and strenghts. But for some reason when I apply that to my own comic everything becomes blurry? Like you have a brain fog that prevent you from seeing clearly. Is it because I’m not experienced enough that I can’t apply my knowledge to my comic yet? Like when you read books you know what a good book is and which ones not so great ones. But writing it is another level entirely. Or is it a distance issue, you can’t be your own judge? Does it mean that the only way to know is to ask specific review? Maybe

[Kelheor]

Nothing bad with wanting it to be the best
I think the judgement becomes a bit more natural with time, in all honesty, unless you have real troubles with disliking your work/thinking you are the best of the best already.
Big agree with @darthmongoose, analysing is your best friend. The main goal is to compare and try to be as objective as possible, without guilt tripping yourself. What am I doing well? Am I doing it as well as I want it to be? What can I do better, comparing to this creator and this creator?
Asking for a review is great if you can. I think I only started being better in this after a few years of intensive drawing, but if you want to do it faster, a review might help a lot.

[ylldre]

You got me there lol. I do have a hard time recognizing my own effort and have self esteem issue, so it’s hard to see with objective eyes. All I see myself is just…bad. I’ll try to ask(bravely) a review then. Thanks a lot

[darthmongoose]

Well... the problem is, as far as I can see it, that you're looking to judge the quality of your work, but not in terms of how well it gains a following, and so it's like... what metric do you even have to measure it? Knowing your goal is important.

If your only goal is to feel happy about your work, then if you're drawing and you feel happy, you succeeded.

If your goal is to be regarded as objectively good at drawing on a technical level, like to know you have good anatomical drawing and perspective, but haven't developed an eye to judge how you compare to others, then you probably either need to keep practicing and studying, or find somebody who is an expert in that kind of technical art and ask for a review.

For me, my goal is building a following and earning money from my work, so I always have that as a guide. Am I making money? Are people reading my comics? Do people buy my book when it's on my table at an event? In my case, I've had professional clients and my work is in print books, so I know I'm professional standard, and I can sort of get a sense for how effective my work is based on how well it performs next to other people's. Sometimes even if I am better at drawing anatomy, I have to come to terms with somebody else's style just being more appealing and better at gaining readers, so that's often something to learn from. Like with anything though, it's not as simple as a ranking. I have friends who have thousands more subs than me but envy how busy my comments section is, or I have friends who can't build a webcomics following, but do amazingly in print and have a proper agent and stuff.

[ylldre]

More on the technical levels. When I read a comic I judge the overall experience, how well the story is told and how do the panels carry that weight? It’s really hard. I don’t think I have the necessary skill(yet?) to do panelling well. How to make the experience seamless and not awkward. These things are much harder than drawing a single panel well. How to string them together with my own style….sometimes I feel so tired of just putting panels together and not knowing how much I’ve learnt compared to yesterday because you can’t really track it. I think panelling is the hardest thing in comic lmao.

[darthmongoose]

Aaaah.... now that's something that's really hard to judge, but if it makes you feel better, I think anyone who realises that panelling, and choosing what goes in a panel, is one of the hardest parts, and realises it's an area that needs a lot of learning, development and work, has the makings of a truly great comicker.

Really with that one, just keep going, and keep reading and studying great comics. I found the work of creators like Bryan Lee O'Malley (Scott Pilgrim) and Kiyohiko Azuma (Yotsuba&!) hugely helpful to study, because their panel choices and timing are top-notch. Over time, you'll start to really get a feel for that rhythm where the visual storytelling across the panels just works.

[powerplantanimations]

Not art, but writing. Had a really OCD person on my back when I was a teen and that critiqued the HELL out of me. I then met some people later down the line, but it was really difficult figuring out which person to listen to.... so I listen to them all and compare their opinions. Whatever opinions line-up I know for sure.

I feel like it becomes a leap of faith doing your own thing without beta readers. You'll still get criticisms sure, but there's got to be a point where you can't rely on beta readers too much.

I studied comics by making a list of DC/Marvel comics through the ages (I'm in the 80's). Not just dialogue, but camera angles and how panels evolved over the ages. I can share you a list if you'd like. (Speaking of DC I refined my scripting skills by taking their format after I entered their Milestone competition).

[ylldre]

That’s a relief to know. Sometimes I feel lost and want to give up. To know that I’ll just have to be patient and keep going is nice. Time to dig out my old yotsuba comics somewhere in the closet lmao. That comic indeed is very good. Thanks a lot

[ylldre]

Yeah, a good idea to know which ones the most regular points by critique to know where the problem. Wow please share, thank you so much

[Kelheor]

First of all I have to agree that paneling is the worst thing ever (I, for example, have this problem when I get lost in this whole 180° thing and I can never choose an angle because my mind is just being thrown around through the whole scene, ugh).
Second, if you would like to participate in community and maybe find some like-minded people to just randomly ask them about art, I will leave the link to sketch a day thread here, maybe you'll want to join if you need an advice here and there ^^ no deep reviews there (unless you ask for one?), but if maybe you need a company to share with

[powerplantanimations]

Aight:

HEYYYYYYO

[ylldre]

Ikr, it’s too much informations for the brain to compute because it involves the whole chapter rather than one specific thing Ah that fabulous thread, of course i’ll visit again, thanks haha!

Second, if you would like to participate in community and maybe find some like-minded people to just randomly ask them about art, I will leave the link to sketch a day thread here, maybe you'll want to join if you need an advice here and there ^^ no deep reviews there (unless you ask for one?), but if maybe you need a company to share with

Thank you!!

Aight:

docs.google.com

HEYYYYYYO

PRE-CRISIS: Wonder Woman: All-Star Comics #8 - October 21, 1941 Wonder Woman: Sensation Comics #1 - January 1, 1942 Wonder Woman: Sensation Comics #2 - February 1, 1942 Wonder Woman: Sensation Comics #3 - March 1, 1942 Wonder Woman: Sensation Comics #4 - April 1, 1942 Wonder Woman: Sensation Com...

[nathanKmcwilliams]

@Kelheor
I think personally when it comes to paneling (the 180 rule thing you're talking about), it's a wise move to opt for readability and flow.
Meaning having consistently directed shots in the way the comic is read. If your page is full of panels it's probably wise to have all the characters facing the direction of the next panel. Yes that can limit variety, but it does cut down on trying to load in all sorts of perspective shots and it's easier to keep your designs consistent.
This is something I've been working on recently after reading some Tintin books by Hergé. I've noticed the more I change angles/directions on a page, the harder it is to shift my eyes to the next panel. And the same is true when I read other comics.
Of course that doesn't really quite apply with vertical scroll, I don't know much about that type of layout unfortunately.

---

Okay, to add my two cents in to the overall discussion...
I believe that comparison is an important thing, but mainly in a way that is constructive. If you see something you like in another comic, compare how they would do it to how you would do it, and try the technique out in your own way.

Secondly, I suggest reading a lot of comics. Read manga, read American comics, read European comics, read Webtoons. I spend a lot of time reading professional comics, because I get more value in my comparison efforts. Work on getting that critical eye developed.
I probably spend at least 30 minutes every day reading comics in some form or another. And it's very important to look at different styles, even if it might not be your jam. If you're trying to learn anyways, rather than just being entertained.

[Iris-Grimoire]

Don't really have anything to add that hasn't been said unfortunately - it's still hard for me to apply what I learn analyzing panels and coloring because so much feels part of the artist and doesn't feel mine when I try.

That said, I do have a good thread for paneling because studying regular cinematography helps a LOT with it - it's about shot framing in a 3D Animation, but a lot of principles carry over. Honestly sometimes it's easier for me to study animation than comics;;

https://twitter.com/brendandjcad/status/1661837220741783558?s=20

[Katzalcoatl]

To see how well your comic is doing I would suggest looking at your statistics. How many views you get per episode, like per view ratio, recurring readers, etc.

Statistics is what helps you analize how well recieved your comic/story is. A good independent author usually has similar proportional statistics to a story that tapas got the license to. By proportional I mean they usually have the same like to view ratio. Or subscriber to view ratio. Proportionally the same amount of positive and negative comments all of that.

View wise you probably can't compare since tapas gives way more promotion to works they get the license. You also have to take into cpnsideration how many views your last few chapters generate. If your views have dropped from 3k per chapter to 100 that means your story is not as successful as tapas may make it look like. What do I mean?

Tapas views of a series stack over all chapters. A series with 1k episodes may have 300k views. But that is basically saying your series has 300 views per chapter. So it may not be good compared to a series that could have 100 episodes with lets say 50k views. That would give you an average of 500 views per chapter.

As you can see even if the smaller series has less views proportionally they would be doing better. Both scenarios have a good view ratio but they were only used as an example to show that it is not as simple as looking at overall views or likes since tapas stacks them.

At any rate if you want to see how well your series is doing you should look at it from a statistical point of view. You should always try to improve said statistics by asking yourself who is your target audience and who your current audience is and what attracted them to you in the first place.

[Mallory]

Honestly, I think some of those things is just... time. I did a lot of competitive team stuff when I was younger, and one of the things you do to improve is watch recordings of your own play, to find mistakes. The problem is - especially when you have less experience - that if you watch the recordings, you immediately remember what your reasons were for doing what you did, so it blurs your objectivity and makes it hard to realize that something should have been done differently. If you give it some time though - maybe, a few months without seeing your footage -- you can immediately recognize mistakes because you no longer remember the (very personal) reason WHY you made the mistake. Over time, as you gain more experience, you're able to create patterns and a repository of previous situations where your initial judgement was wrong vs. what actually needed to happen, and you can recognize mistakes (or good decisions!) much faster than in a few months.

The same is true for drawing. You have to forget why you made certain decisions to be able to objectively compare yourself to others (or just to evaluate your decisions). Over time, as you do more of this, you build a knowledge bank that helps steer your decisions, and also self-evaluation.

I do want to caution you against comparing yourself to others though, because... at the end of the day it's not really about the others. It's about what you want. There are some comics out there that are just unspeakably ugly or illegible (in fact, they are obviously intentionally ugly) and I personally think that my comics are much better than those, because... I draw my comics the way I want to draw them. There are other people who feel the exact opposite (the artists who draw their comics) so it's kind of... IDK. Pointless? You probably want to decide what YOU want to achieve and strive towards it. Finding comics that match your goal is good, but they're just references, not goals, if that makes any sense.

[Lensing]

Make lists.
Take 10 comic books that you like and write down one thing that you
think is really good about it.
Then write down what you don´t like about it.
Make the same about your comics. Compare it.

You will see that you are worse and better at things than some artists.
All of those dudes made artistic decisions and have their limits, some are
very limited

What are the things on your list which are really important for your stories?
There are things you are good at and there are things you need to improve on
to make your comic look better. Every artists goes to those decisions.
The people you look up to have their limits and made those decisions too

[thepenmonster]

1. Accept that there are million creators better than you are in one way or another.

2. Accept that you are better than a million creators in one way or another.

3. Stop ranking and focus on making the best possible version of the comic you want to make. You're wasting what little time you have on the planet otherwise.