How much concept work and planning time went into your comic before you started drawing/writing it?

[Mane]

Honestly? A week, maybe two. I have at least two stories that I've been planning and developing for years, but I was too afraid to start working on them because I felt I wasn't ready skill wise to commit to these huge projects. But I was also itching to finally start working on something, something that wasn't quite so near and dear to my heart as a story concept and that I could start with to better my comic making skills. I remembered this idea I once had for a one shot years ago, revisited that, tweaked it a bit, redrew the character designs and voilà Custode. I'm really worried that the lack of a careful and detailed laid out plan will come and bite me in the behind sooner or later, but I think I'm doing alright for now.

[lempi]

Well, let's see... Nia started as a planet I invented for Star Trek fanfiction (YES I AM TRASH OKAY IT SAYS SO RIGHT IN MY PROFILE I AM SPACE TRASH OKAY THANKS), which was right after Star Trek: 2009 came out, back in the heydey of LiveJournal, sooo... 7 years? Yeah, 7 years-ish, maybe more like 6. It separated itself from the ST universe pretty quickly, though, lol.

Other ideas came and went, but Nia just kind of stuck around, floating in and out of my brain and becoming richer and richer as time went on. Aino showed up for the first time 2, maybe 3 years after Nia's inception.

The world is so rich that I can just kind of plonk down anyone I want, or call up any point in history, and idly explore what happens. I often fall asleep listening to music and following someone's story, Nian or otherwise.

I found all my old info sketches again recently, including my first sketch of the Nian megacontinent! I was really excited to find that, especially, but it was really cool to find all my old stuff again. There's a lot to Nia and its universe that I'll probably never end up mentioning or using in Lonely Human, but I feel like that only makes the story better.

[Jewe11s]

The Chronicles of Oro first popped into my head back in August 2005. (When I was the same age as my main character.) Needless to say, it has changed a lot in the nearly 11 years it's been floating through my head.

To compare to the very first version, the comic:
- No longer has talking animals that will make commentary on your conversation or hit on you as you pass by.
- The twins aren't royalty anymore (yikes. no no no!)
- There are not 6+ books each with a new villain in the style of Dragon Ball Z (each bigger and badder than the last.)
- Tablita exists (angelic choir)
- Walter is no longer a literal weasel that talks (see point one)
- Walter is ALSO no longer a little kid (turned weasel) from England.
- Isa no longer sells junk and chicken-warmers to get by.
- The twins' mom and Juniper's mom aren't best friends. (In fact, they won't ever meet.)
- Kanal is not a Miner who has ears like something out of a Jim Henson Muppet movie.
- Tiko has an actual backstory now (but we won't be talking about that...)
- Juniper no longer has a magical elf-cat as a pet.
- AND SO MUCH MORE

I am certainly glad that I took the time to develop this story. Although I'm sure I've over-thought it now and it might be just as strange... albeit a different kind of strange. We'll see.

[Jewe11s]

@stnmaren By the way! I checked out SPIRE and holy smokes, I LOVE your style! It's got a Jack+Daxter meets the Gorillaz meets Disney look to it! And the colouring? And lighting? And... everything looks great! Subscribed!

[ukiyo]

The story Letters in Between started around February to March of this year. It's still in its baby stage so we are still continuing to develop the story. We started working on the actual comic pages around early April and launched it last June (SmackJeeves) and last two weeks ago here on Tapastic. Each page takes about 2~5 days to make because I asked my best friend to be the editor and we often find things to change to make the pages look better. I'm glad that she's quite keen on these things, it prevents me from doing the pages half-heartily.
We usually write the script in Japanese (because we are both currently Japan-based and it's become our main language for a few years now and sometimes writing it in Japanese feels better? We do write some in English, too though). So translating the Japanese script to English proves to be a task for the both of us because we aren't so sure how to make it sound "natural" ;A; Translating takes some time to do, too.

One day I was bored at work. I always write BL story ideas when I got nothing else to do.
Then this simple idea came to my mind, I sent my best friend a random question about the story I thought of.
From there, a discussion between us started which led me to planning the story more than I intended to.
I asked my best friend to develop the story with me and make it into comics. We are still in the process of writing it to be honest.
And working on the plot is really fun for us. ^^
We started talking about the flow of the story, like how it started and possible endings. This one took a couple of days.
We left a lot of details in between blank to allow us to develop the characters and their relationships.
After that we worked on the characters' personalities and backgrounds. This one took pretty long (some of our characters are still not yet complete even now) We researched about flowers ("hanakotoba" -or "flower language" is a thing in Japan and we really like the concept of having a flower for our characters to match their personalities or backgrounds) we also take time to consider their birthdays and way of speech.
The designs were finalized after almost a month of discussion. Funny thing is, we took much more time designing one of our side characters than our main characters.
We are also still developing the setting of the story. Hopefully, we can improve along the way.

[Wandercreature]

Honestly, Superbia took about a year just to develop the characters, species, and the way their world and country works. The two or three months prior to beginning work on the comic itself were ones where the story went through a lot of different ideas and drafts. Originally it was going to be much more political, but ultimately, making it that way distances it from the low struggles of life and culture I wanted to highlight. Some characters, like Sam Grizzle, already had existed in other stories I'd created. Others were brand new, and something of a departure from what I'd done before.

Over the course of a month I assembled a cast of eighteen characters from all mythologies and walks of life to get drawn together by the story. Some of them affect it majorly, some not as much, but I wanted every one of them to really have a drive for why they do what they do, and I tried to give each one something the audience could care about. Most of them haven't shown up yet.

I started drafting out the major threads of the story, but honestly, I could work on the story for a whole year and never get a single strip done. Instead, I chose to just begin the comic, and see on a daily basis how I can use each strip to push the story and develop the characters. Kind of a first for me. If you asked me what's going to happen in the next five strips, I couldn't tell you - but I know generally where everyone's headed, and that lets me work in small details to pick up later. I'm a huge fan of foreshadowing and cinematic plot devices. I've actually slipped in most of the big antagonists already in tiny little details. I look forward to introducing them.

Most of all, Superbia is something that's growing at a time when I'm doing a lot of growing too. It's really an expression of myself and it's the first story I've ever shared with the world, and it's changing as much as I am. I look forward to seeing where it goes, and also what it holds for you guys. Thank you everyone who reads already - you guys mean the world to me, and to those who don't, hey. It's an atompunk fairytale about a girl with horns, an Atlas Bear, and a black-magic antiquities dealer comprised of fungus. Would it hurt to check it out?

[samchiewhan]

Haha, I took forever. 12 years to be precise. I took so long my friends forgot the premise and plot of my story.

There's a lot of characters involved, and past events of characters that affect the current plot line. That and I wanted to be sure that my art is good enough first before I started posting.

Part of it was also a confidence issue. (I've yet to tell ANYONE outside of three close friends that I have started a web comic)

[MissMagicGirl]

About a year of planning before I started for real. I did try different art styles a lot before finding out how I wanted to make it. the first five pages of https://tapastic.com/series/magicadvisor took many months because it had been a long time since I had been making comics. I feel like after those first five chapters the story, art and characters started to live their own life and I am just tagging along. Following every new idea that pops in to my head. And I really love that. The humor after the first pages just gets more and more slapstick and crazy and I really love that. It feels right. So despite all the planning I think the comic started to re plan itself after I had started making it for real.

[jennula]

Oh jeez, I think I started to muse about the characters that eventually became the cast for SPEJS in like...2007? ^^; At first, there was a fantasy setting, but in like 2012-2013, I started to experiment a bit with a sci-fi setting instead, change some character's genders and personalities a bit.

I probably made like 4-5 written scripts, but always scrapped them. In late 2014, I was all like "nah, let's do this!" and started making thumbs instead. It felt a bit risque, but I started to get the hang of the characters' personalities and just wanted to make the comic come true!

I'm not sure if it's a good thing to keep the characters inside you for so long before they make their debut. On one hand, you get to think and try out their personalities a bit more and get a better character, but on the other hand, chances are you get tired of your concept and just scrap it. But then again, maybe scrapping it for something better is a good thing too?

For shorter comics, I usually just write a short pitch and then start making thumbs. I just want to get an idea out there, and usually that's enough preparations for me =)

[Jenny-Toons]

For me, it's an on and off process. My upcoming comic Within the Woods was originally a fancomic centered around the Slenderman. That was a while back in 2012 - 2013, when I was a pre-teen. However, over time, I was able to adapt the story around and do more planning. For Within the Woods, not counting the on and off moments, I'd say I've done about 2 -3 years of planning.

[arushiangelica]

I write a poetry comic, so I think I had a slightly different path to take. First step was poetry, which was the result of my past seven years of sitting in the back bench of my class. Artwork technically took 2 years but only because I lost a major junk of my artwork because of a stupid glitch in my laptop. That broke me. But then I picked it up again. And then almost 3 months ago I published Existentialist Crisis here.

[GFalconDX]

For my comic, The Chronicles of SolLuna, the idea 1st came up in 2009 with the 1st version of my main character. At first I had a more cyberpunk storyline originally, but then I discovered steampunk Indy Mogul's steampunk tutorial, and then I switched the story to a more steampunk setting. I officially started the comic itself in 2013, but even now, I'm still writing the story as I go along.

[MelancholicOtaku]

My main comic has been in the planning process for about five years. What I have now to what I have in the script two different stories.
My second comic about two years ,although the script is also different.

Now for the writing process, I have the main stuff written down. However I do tend to just wing most my of comic scripts.

[avrilguarino]

Hahaha I'm a bit ashamed to say that, I've read answer on this topics and people seem to take a LOT of time to plan their comic, I'm amazed, go people ! But since my comic is a simple life comedy comic, I maybe thought about it for less than a week when I started drawing it ! I started maybe beginning of January, the comic is about stupid things that happen between my bf and I and I've been together for (only) 6 months lol. But I still have plenty ideas to continue because we're both incredibly stupid

But yeah I thought about it a week, started drawing profusely about it and still going on today !

The Adorkables :: The denial is strong in me | Tapas

[Kann]

I had idea for my comic for like, 3-4 years but serious concept work and planning took me around 6 months. There are still parts of plot and ideas that need some planning and thinking, but they're so far in the future, that I thought there's no problem if I start drawing before I'm done with that work and ideas will come eventually. xD

[storytimebiondi]

You seem rather quick to jump into final art!

The comic I plan on releasing in February was conceived of in the fall of 2016. It's taken me that long to draft-redraft-redraft the plot and construct the characters and elements of the story. Though, I didn't actually write a script until late spring last year.
This being said: I had other projects on the go at the time and haven't actually FOCUSED on this project until the past few months, when I started doing art.

Artwise: some pre-planning on character design, costume, and aesthetics was done, though not as much as some, I'm sure. I'm a writer first and an artist second, so most of my planning went into the writing side of things.

[indagold]

My comic All Broken Gods I thought up when I was 15/16 which would be about 7-8 years ago? Well the plot didn't go anywhere so I spent a while mulling over it for years. Then started working on the story 3 years back, took about 6 months writing it out and polishing it up, then moved onto character design and scenery design for about a few months. Been working on it ever since 2016

Welcome Back and Garden of Mold was an interesting process. I started getting interested in psychology when I was 12, reading jung and barely understanding it lol. Then I became interested in dreams when I was 14-15 and starting jotting down stories and characters that didn't really have any continuity, just ideas. At 16 I finally started working on more fleshed out ideas for welcome backs first story and its sequel. Finally in senior year we had to make a comic so I made the first part of it and then for the next 4 years I went on to finish the sequel. Garden of mold was based off 2 dreams I had in highschool that I also wrote down in these brainstorming sessions.

[dawgofdawgness]

For me, about 6 months. A LOT has changed since I started though, so it doesn't really matter.

I'm glad I didn't stick with my initial idea... yikees

[DiegoPalacios]

I had the idea for my comic may years ago, but after a storytelling course i had in college, i started to polish my story for about 11 months. While it kept it`s escence, the changes helped to improve many scenes, characterization, foreshadowing, etc...

[spadesart]

since this is gaining traction again, heres an update for my original post:

SPIRE is now at 167 finished pages! my initial ideas for some of the more prominent characters (victor, william, cog, alphonzo, alpha, and caravan) had actually existed since 2015. outside the actual plot for spire i've been building their world since 2015, so i guess my info here was kind of off?
im not super proud of the original versions of these characters and im glad i didnt end it when i lost round 4 of the tournament i'd attached them to. victor was abusive towards william, and those two had a love triangle with caravan? and cog was really mean to william most of the time (and william had a crush on her). caravan still needs a lot more work since she ended up on the back burner while i polished william and cog's relationship and dynamics.