20 / 20
Mar 2023

Hi, I have a lot of episodes up so here's the deal you read as far as you can and tell me why you stopped. I know that my comic isn't perfect nor does it appeal to a lot of people so just funnel your opinions here. Don't worry I can take criticism and I have a thick skin, I'm looking to improve :wink:

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    Feb '23
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    Mar '23
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I read the first two chapters and I stopped...because it's really late here and I have class tomorrow XD

I'm surprised that Archport City only has a few subscribers?? This is a very well produced comic with a strong start to it! I've def subscribed and I hope to catch up with the rest of the episodes so that I can continue reading the updates. Keep up the great work!

Okay I stopped at ep 3 because of the time of day but anyways the first 2 episodes didn't draw me in to much but the 3rd episode did

I stopped for several reasons after prologue.

Reasons:
1.- I prefer action and romance so pure fantasy is not my cup of tea. Meaning I am not your target audience so there's nothing wrong with story not apealing to me.
2.- Grammar is a bit hard to understand at times. You should be careful about that.
3.- Just scanning your drawings makes it hard on the readers. You should probably draw your final product on a computer/tablet. And you should use good font for your texts. Just scanning handrawn drawings makes it hard to see when you are on your phone/computer.
4.- I didn't get hooked on any part of the prologue. Your prologue didn't really tell me much of what the story will be about. Remember a prologue is the first thing your readers will see when they enter so you will want to hook them some way giving them a taste of what you plan to do with the story.

Hope my feedback helps. Again I am not your target audience but still hope it helps.

Love the art! I stopped at episode 5, simply because of the text, it takes a lot of focus to read the text as its handwriting and the words are a bit indistinguishable in some places, kinda straining my eyes trying to read it :sweat_smile: Maybe you should try to add text after you scan it? It would make it way more enjoyable to read, cause right now it takes away from the story and the art.

This is going to be the meanest answer, but for the sake of learning, not necessarily what I'd actually do, I'm going to give this hypothetical answer: "I stopped reading at the info page." because this does seem to be struggling to get subs in spite of decent drawing, and I ran into multiple things that could put somebody off there.

So...

The title gets us off to an inauspicious start: Archport City Chronicles Lockdown. So...I'm sat thinking "is this part of a series?" Archport City Chronicles implies this is part of a series, and then Lockdown doesn't really suggest it's the first of a series (because I'd expect to get to know what a city is like in more normal circumstances before I see it in Lockdown, and without context, I assume the city is on lockdown, not just the protagonist), so I'm already like "Oh...er... is this like... book 2 or something? Is there an "Archport City Chronicles: Origins" or something?
It doesn't help that on a personal level, as an experienced creator, I see a new fantasy writer calling their stuff "X Chronicles" or "The Y Saga" and immediately sigh because it's a really common beginner error to start talking about your story like it's part of a big series before you even know if anyone likes the story enough to be interested in the first book, never mind a sequel. It doesn't fill me with a lot of confidence I'm going to read a confident, polished product. Creators who call their work "chronicles" or "saga" have a tendency to have a ton of pointless side characters who are only there to advertise potential spinoffs, or to leave hanging plot threads for sequels that'll never be made, so I tend to treat works with titles like that with a lot of skepticism.

Then we get to the banner.... It's depicting a really complicated scenario that doesn't really make me feel any the wiser about what's interesting about this story, and it prominently features these signs where the typography is an important element, but they're written like somebody's handwriting in biro on a polite note and without enough padding between the text and edges, so you're immediately drawing attention to a piece of amateurish presentation. The banner is decently drawn, and I can see a lot of effort was put in, but the confusing scenario and the way it draws attention to the lack of effort put into the typography means that the first thing a reader sees sets up the expectation: "Amateur comic."

Then there's the blurb. The first thing the blurb tells me is that this comic is struggling to get readers, so that gives the impression, "people aren't buying this, it must not be good". If you present yourself as a loser, people will think you're a loser. No matter how badly your product is selling, you HAVE to sell it in a positive way. You have to make it sound like it's a fantastic little comic, get it while it's hot! You won't regret it! But also... do not EVER put unrelated stuff like this at the start of your blurb! ALWAYS put what the story is about FIRST!

Then it tells me that IF it gets 50 readers, it'll reboot!? As a better version of the comic? ...So, you're telling me... that you could make a better version of your comic... but you're only going to do it if I subscribe to the less good version of your comic? Can't you just...you know... make the better version of your comic and then I can read that better version instead?
If you're capable of doing a better job, you should just go and do a better job, and you certainly shouldn't tell the reader that you're currently not doing the best you can to entertain them. You're basically inviting me to your messy house, and then saying "if you promise to come over again and to bring friends, I'll tidy my house next time!"

Then the blurb actually describes what the story is about and it doesn't lay out any kind of exciting sounding stakes. It's about a world where everyone is nice and kind and a protagonist who doesn't want to be there and doesn't want to have adventures. Okay... does anything exciting happen? Or anything funny? Or is there some danger involved? You're making your story sound a lot more boring than it probably is.

Then we have the cover, which gives the vibe that it was a fairly nice piece of work that felt bare so you just kept adding stuff to it, like the multicoloured background that makes it hard to pick out the characters because of the similar value and saturation, and the very bold and complex frame around the edge. The title font is too small and fiddly, and so all together the impression is a decent drawing and then a bunch of stuff added in an attempt to make it look more finished, but without enough design knowledge, so instead of making it look better, it's made it look fiddly and overwrought. It may be time to look up resources and tutorials on cover design.

Final nitpicky thing: No unique thumbnails for episodes tends to first make me assume it's a novel, and second to assume the creator wasn't willing to put in those few extra minutes of effort on their presentation. So that's another bad first impression.

Hopefully this has been educational. Fortunately it's easier to fix these things than to fix all the rest of a whole comic. Read some books on the fundamentals of graphic design and typography and study good covers. Your drawing is good, but you need to start thinking about the finer points of how you present and talk about your work, and how to make the best first impression you can. If you're planning to make a new version, just start making it, and use it as an opportunity to rework these things I've brought up with a nice clean slate (a lot easier than trying to rework an existing comic).

Best of luck!

I would support what @darthmongoose said about 50 subs reboot. How do I know you won't start another reboot in 100 subs? Why should a prologue be recolored and put on a different page, just... switch the pages? People won't subscribe to another version of the comic to only read the prologue again.
"Full version and current renovated version available on ComicFury" why not on Tapas? :sweat_smile: it's terribly hard to make people switch between sites, you really don't want to do it until your comic becomes Premium/Original on another site.

I had a lot of troubles distinguishing square speech bubbles from the phone text bubbles, so if anything, the bubbles and text need some work.
On episode 6 I realized the comic cast is mostly animals of different anthropomorphic levels and that's just not my cup of tea (but that's just my personal preference which has nothing to do with a particular comic :slight_smile: )

I didn´t read the other replies before reading.

I skipped some parts in the prologue and also didn´t understand the prologue.
I skipped the middle part with the long text messages because it was too much to read
for me and I lost the attention there. Then there were some other characters and I didn´t
know who that was. I read until Ch 2 Part 1 "Klang" "Eat your veggies"

Beside the prologue it is an understandable and also good story idea so far, reminds me a bit of Studio Ghibli
storis.
I can always tell where the characters are, I like how you connected the characters with the background.
I stopped because it´s not really the kind of story/characters I´m interested
in but I wanted to check it out to give you a feedback.

Now I will read the other replies :slight_smile:

Sorry for not making this clear, I’ve been writing this comic for over 12 years and I like drawing it by hand but a lot of people like digitally colored comics so I’ve decided to make a second version that IS digitally colored. If there was a demand for it. I have very little experience with digital software, having only recently purchased it, and am willing to learn and use it now that I’m at a point in my life where I have the time to do so. So it would work that for every X number of subscribers I would make the next part digitally in a separate comic.

As for the other version on Comicfury that’s where all my old cringy pages are and I update them in big chapters sized chunks. I’ve been steadily rewriting my comic for many years and have had much success on new platforms except this one. I was interested in understanding what makes the audience here different from the other sites as some sites have more comics with this or that. I like to do extra today bits for my readers as well and this is one of the ways I thought I could do that.

As for your question about this story in particular being called “Archport City Chronicles Lockdown” I have other stories in the Archport City universe being written this just happens to be the first one.

I am a terrible communicator and apologize for the confusion unfortunately I have difficulty looking at my comic from an outside perspective so I thank you for your feedback. I have tried making my comic sound more exciting in the past but it’s never helped and I’ve always been a quite person so it doesn’t bother me. I’d rather people be pleasantly surprised than sorely disappointed by preconceived expectations, but I do understand where you’re coming from

Well, that's the problem with reboots - they take time and you have quite a page count already. It's a bit hard to judge how much success your comic has on other platforms, like on your site or Comicfury or other new platforms you posted. The question is are 50 people who already subbed and read your original comic enough to go for a reboot, which you don't know how much time you will have to spend on. If you think it is - sure, it's up for you to decide. (I did a reboot and it's still hard for me to judge if it was a success lol)
I think you comic looks nice as it is and if you enjoy drawing it traditionally - great, if it's successful on other platforms - even better, you don't have to measure what you do by Tapas on which comics may be terribly hard to find and where comics usually get more success when they are in scroll and colored.
Anywho I wasn't really going for that particular critique, it was just something that got me curious as a maybe-reader, so I am sorry if it was out of place :sweat_smile: wishing you best of luck :slight_smile:

No apologies needed the subscriber goal was made to incentivize casual non subscribers to hit that sub button and to tell me whether or not there was a demand for a colored version of my story. If there was a surge in subscribers then I would have a clear indication that the extra effort would be welcomed by the Tapas community.

And to further clarify I will not be rebooting my comic even if I reach 50 subscribers. I will create a separate version of my comic, uploaded in sections, starting with the prologue, that is digitally colored and if that is well received then more chapters will be added.

I would have stopped at the prologue for 2 reasons: the text is hard to read (as someone already said, perhaps consider adding it digitally after you scan the pages) and teenagers arguing is not something I enjoy reading (it didn't interest me when I was that age, even less at my current age :sweat_smile: but this is a personal preference).

But I continued reading because I saw this thread and I made it to chapter 1 part 4. The reason I stopped there was again the text font; those pages had more text so the difficulty reading just made me lose interest, I'm sorry :c The story seems fun, but so far nothing got my attention enough to make it past the blurry hand written text.

I stopped at chapter 2. I gave it a good chance despite the summary being a bit confusing. Overall, I like the art, but the storyline gets a little confusing. I didn't really understand the start of chapter 2 as it felt very --- mushed together? Like we have this one idea, now here's a second idea with absolutely no reason / transition. You get what I'm saying?

You don't need to do this. If somebody isn't interested in the comic, they're not going to suddenly change their minds because it's digitally coloured... and if somebody does like the comic already, it being digitally coloured won't make them like it even more. If you're looking to practice digital colouring, it might be better to do it on some extra omake comics and things.
From the sounds of other people's comments though, digitally re-lettering your comic is a more pressing change I'd recommend. That sounds like the most common reason people stop reading.

...Does it need to be in the title though? What if you just called it "Archport City Lockdown" or "Lockdown" with An Archport City Story in smaller print somewhere? I'm saying this because being part of a series is only a selling point if the series has one or more things already complete that have popularity or critical acclaim. If it's not, it can actually be a hinderance that makes people think it won't be strong as a standalone work. I don't think C S Lewis called his stories "The Chronicles of Narnia" until there were a number of them complete and they needed a collective name; before that, they tended to just be called by the name of each work; "The Silver Chair", "The Horse and His Boy", "The Lion, The Witch and the Warderobe" etc. If you've been making part one for 12 years and you're still making it... calling it "Chronicles" feels a bit early.

I think you should try it again. I don't think the act of describing your comic in a way that highlights exciting things that happen or what the dramatic stakes are should ever feel like a disappointment to the audience if they're things that really do happen in the comic. If the comic is disappointingly boring to read, it's rarely your blurb's fault for making it sound interesting. It's usually because the comic is boring; a problem with things like pacing, characterisation and lack of tension or stakes, not with the premise or events.
Being a quiet person isn't really a good excuse. Comic artists are nearly all quiet people! Most of us are like... autistic hermits who crouch in dark rooms and may only grudgingly even go to conventions a couple of times a year. You are not going to get some fairy godmother publisher appear some day and sell your comic for you and describe it in bombastic terms for you while you stand to the side, blushing and saying modestly "Ohhh... they're exaggerating, it's not like that, hahaha!". All you have to sell your comic is YOU. Readers aren't psychic. They don't know your comic is good! You have to tell them why the work you've put in to making a product to entertain them is worth your while. Talking about your work, making it sound exciting, isn't easy at all or natural for the vast majority of comic creators, but if you want people to read, it's necessary.

On Tapas, you really have to decide if you're dedicated to just making a comic for fun, or using it as a mirror, or if you really want to build an audience, because building an audience here really does mean presenting and advertising your work like it's a professional product. Tapas is a pretty straightforward platform, because there isn't really a lot of randomness here. Readers and the Staff know what they like, and they want more of the same (and before anyone complains, that's how like... every print publisher is. Self-Made Hero, Nobrow, Oni, Marvel, Image, Dark Horse, Boom!...They all have specific niches in style and genres). If you make a comic that's suited to the Tapas audience based on research into what else is popular, and you present it to a level of professionalism with the cover, blurb, typography and banner that's close to high performing comics, it will build a large audience. So it's a great platform for learning to present your work more professionally, since it'll usually get rewarded with features and audience growth if you nail it, and it's a very safe, reliable platform to launch a comic similar to other popular comics (unlike Webtoon, where you can do everything right and still get lost), but it's also a place where you're never going to be the exception who doesn't bother with those things, yet still gets a lot of readers in spite of it.

You make some fair points about the title but I do feel just calling it LOCKDOWN is going to attract an audience expecting a prison story and not a fantasy road-trip. I’ve been talking with some other people on my other sites about my subscriber goals and I will be changing them the official announcement page will be replaced soon. I’m going to make a digital lettering version but whether I make a digital color version is going to be contingent on how much I enjoy making it. The greyscale version will never be replaced and will always be my priority until I finish my rewrites.

On another note though I have been trying to to come up with other strategies for advertising but I don’t see a lot of good options. Consistently updating gets me nowhere here, unlike other places ,so what do you recommend then for this site in particular? For being on her only a few years your comic is doing amazing, congratulations Btws.

The times I have tried “selling” my comic have been unproductive. No amount of making it sound exciting have worked in years past.

I stopped at ch2 ep 3 because I have houseworks to do.

I found difficult to read some parts for these reasons:
1) sometimes I couldn't understand which panel or baloon I was supposed to read first.
2) the hand written font wasn't always easy to read and dialogues missed some comas.

I like the choice for traditional art, maybe correcting the B&W contrasts should make it better. The story is intresting but I don't understand why we switched from the blond guy's story to the wolves characters for example.

Thank you! I think it's not really about just promo... that's why I'm so insistent about the cover, blurb and readability.

People often go on and on about promo on these forums, and promo strategy, but as I said in my earlier post, performance on Tapas is very predictable, and part of the reason I only touched on, is that the biggest way to build readers on Tapas is to get a staff pick, and the Tapas staff like very polished looking comics that are easy to read on mobile, have a plot that gets rolling fairly quickly (or at least kick off with fun jokes or scenarios for comedy and slice of life) have clean, modern typography and a clear blurb that outlines something exciting, and generally feel like they might appeal to the Tapas audience (largely 20 year old women in the US).

So before I started updating, I carefully chose a comic font that was easy to read and fit well with my style and did tests to make sure the text size and spacing read well on a phone, I spent a long time thinking about my comic title, making sure it was unique and punchy, designing my logo and making an SVG of it so it's cleanly scaleable, I planned out my plot months in advance, did style tests for how the art would look. When promo assets like my banner didn't perform well, I redesigned them, and I got feedback on my blurb to make sure it was nice and punchy.
THEN once I had all that sorted and had launched the comic, I started promoting. I share every update on twitter, I regularly share pages and posts about it on Instagram and Tumblr, and I've even tried Tiktok. I do promo banner swaps under the comic with creators who have similar comics, I post regularly on these forums (but never sub-for-sub, usually more on threads talking about the comic or sharing cool panels, or just general threads) with a link to my comic in my bio, and also the Tapas discord.
Really, a big chunk of my readers came from getting noticed by the Tapas staff when I was posting on the forums and discord and getting featured. I've been featured a bunch of times now, which is why I stress the importance of presentation. Unless you're already super-famous, you really need to get featured to build an audience on Tapas, and you need to look polished and professional and be readable on mobile to get featured.

1 month later

closed Mar 10, '23

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