How long is a webtoon episode in traditional webcomic pages?

[Darth_Biomech]

There's a competition currently ongoing at the webtoons.com, and the requirements there are at least 30 panels per episode. I've calculated that it might be roughly 4-5 pages per episode, but it's really hard to say since the webtoon format also loves to waste nearly half of the episodes with useless completely blank spaces and gradients.

If I'm right though, it makes my eyebrows only rose higher. Most webcomics update weekly and release one page, but webtoons are also updated weekly, often have the same or greater quality of art, but which demons do creators of these things sell their souls to in order to be able to do a month's worth of work in under a week?!

[Kelheor]

which demons do creators of these things sell their souls to in order to be able to do a month's worth of work in under a week?!

Lol yeah, you are right =) But they usually have assistants too, like professional comic makers or mangakas, since they can afford it. Anyhow, a usual episode consists of 60 panels (at least) which is freaking crazy. This doesn't include all the blank space. I have no idea how Lalin's curse updates like this with this level of art
I make comic in pages (usually around 6 panels per page), then cut the pages for Webtoons to make an episode which consists of 15 panels. And I update every 2 weeks with this But I am too slow too ._.

[Darth_Biomech]

But they usually have assistants too, like professional comic makers or mangakas, since they can afford it.

Ah, so they're just rich. Yeah, that actually makes sense.

[Kelheor]

Well, Webtoons is paying them well + ad rev program, + whatever Patreon money they make, so I guess many of them have a nice salary in the end. I don't think all of them have assistants (at least I haven't saw the names of assistants everywhere), but I recently saw one popular Webtoons origins maker seek 4-5(!) line artists (and this doesn't even include colorists) on Insta, she wrote she needs help since "working 100 hours a week is not funny". Anyway it feels pretty hard on them, because even with the assistants the amount of work is hilarious.

[Darth_Biomech]

since "working 100 hours a week is not funny".

Holy crap. 14 hours a day and without weekends. That's insane.

[Kelheor]

Yeah, and she already publishing in Originals for 2 years now... so it's kinda hard to imagine even what's going on there

[HGohwell]

As @Kelheor says they often have assistants and work ungodly hours, but they're also underpaid from what I hear. As a lot of artists are. And while not quite the same, you can see the ungodly length professional manga artists go through for their weekly updates:

So the answer is really unbelievable dedication and drive and probably way too much coffee and not enough sleep to be healthy.

[Cavechan]

Become extremely fast at drawing and have an assistant or someone do the manual work.

I was floored when Boichi said he draws a page in 1-1.5 hours. Honestly just didn't believe it, but then I saw him draw and yeah, he really can draw a page in that time frame. So on a 19 page chapter, that means he can draw it in 20-25 hours. Not only that, but his drawings are extremely detailed and he often times use crazy or dramatic poses. Horikoshi has also said before that he can ink a chapter in one day.

Best I have gotten so far is doing the final sketching for a chapter in one day and even that was for my comic that has less details.

This video is sped up though, but he drew these in about 15-20 minutes.

[Kelheor]

I believe someone wrote they are paid 2K$ a month as a bare minimum? (maybe I am wrong though) +adrev (let's say 800$). It doesn't feel like too much for the amount of work they are doing, but this doesn't sound like small money unless they can make more somehow. I don't know how much money other comic artists are usually making too though.
Still unbelievable dedication and an unhealthy way of living, of course.

@Cavechan holy cheese.
Horikoshi is unbelievable, just kill me somebody

[Darth_Biomech]

Well he goes from barely defined sketch right to the inking, If I could do the same I'd pumped out pages significantly faster as well.

[HGohwell]

It's certainly not a small amount, although it's definitely more stretched if you have to hire an assistant as many people do. It should be noted the ridiculously tight schedule I posted above is for a weekly updating manage of less than 10pages a week and with multiple assistant. I know more about manga than webcomics but they are falling roughly in line.

So here's a break down because I can:

The average for a mangaka (with currency conversion) is roughly $100 per page, which given they're expected to do about a page a day is about $100 a day, so (if we use your figure of 2K base) that's slightly more than webtoons overall but roughly in line per page/panel. If we follow what @Darth_Biomech worked out about panels vs pages and say roughly 30 panels = 5 pages, so an average of 6 panels a page. I assume those 30 panel episodes are weekly, so 5 pages a week over a month is 20 pages = roughly 2k. It's basically paying the same rate, but while manga is average 1 page a day everyday webtoons is averaging 1 page a day Mon - Fri. So if you do the conversions (and I'm using my country's legal min wage with converts to roughly $10 an hour) they're expecting 1 page or 6 panels to take roughly 10 hours, leading to webtoons artists averaging a roughly 50 hour week.

[Cavechan]

It's not even just that though. He inks a lot in just one line. So he's able to get these textures in just one stroke.