How often do you update long gone published pages?

[Kelheor]

You don't do it. Just. Don't. Maybe some day after a few years of drawing it, but not now
Your next page will always be better than previous, just deal with it, it's a good thing ^^

[Iris-Grimoire]

What Kelheor said - and it's time that could be used making a new page or promo art. However, every now and then if I finished a new page early, I check for gross lettering problems, fix an effect here or there, put shading in places I forgot; these are things I can do in a few hours and it's warmup to the new page. But I never try to redraw a whole page and it's really not recommended unless you've got a huge buffer to waste months with that kind of ordeal.

[Random_Guy]

I am so tempted to update my fourth page (the first comic I did with any real point other than an update), because I know I could make it way better but at the same time, I know it's just not worth it.

If I updated the page, I'd feel like I was concealing something. Like I was hiding my old work because it was bad when I'd rather be transparent with readers.

I always remind myself that I should learn from my old work, not conceal it.

[Jenny-Toons]

Never.

I'm more focused on getting my stories out rather than trying to have them match my current art. It's too time wasting, and I don't like to waste time. That, and I like going back and seeing my art evolve. It shows that yeah -- I improved over time.

[IndigoShirtProd]

I'm actually redrawing my whole first chapter. Others would highly recommend against it, but personally it's been a lot of fun for me. I'm reworking the story and fleshing out some things. The art style change drastically from my first chapter to my second chapter, so I felt it was necessary. I'm still working on future content, but it feels good to take a break from that to rework chapter one. I also did it because I plan on printing when the first volume is finished.

[AdamBraveOfficial]

I'm surprised with the so many "NOs".

I would suspect that the majority of comic creators wouldn't resist to correct some minor details of the initial pages every now and then.

[cleo_san]

Well, I've with the "nope" section here - I'm a very slow artist, so redrawing the first volume of my story would probably take me another 3-4 years... and I honestly want to finish my story before I retire in 60 years XD

[TAMAnnoying]

It’s really gonna depend on you and how you feel about your first chapter, I have plans to go back and rework some diologe and panels to make it flow a little better but that’s not gonna happen for a very long time- I already have too much on my plate with my full time job and making to I get weekly pages out. So the updated first chapter isn’t gonna happen until I have more free time or I have a large enough subscriber count that I feel like I can risk a month or two of updating the first chapter rather then getting out new pages.

[Kelheor]

It's because this is a vicious circle And the more pages there are, the more pages you have to redraw. Every time you will look at the page and think you can do better. This feeling never goes away.
Also you spend time you could be drawing next page on older pages! Especially if you are slow (like I am), redrawing is a dead end.
I am actually adding new panels in the first season right now to help the story flow a bit better (originally we were making 4 pages per chapter, so the amount of panels was made to fit in this small number of pages). And we decided I can also redraw a few panels a bit. But the more I look at them, the more I have the feeling that if I'll start redrawing one panel, I will end up redrawing all of them I will make minor changes in the worst panels though
But I definitely only recommend doing it after you see a considerable level up of your art (that's why I said a few years) and you decide to print it

[phoenixrenaissance]

Well, I'll jump in as one person who did re-do my prologue. I set myself a definite limit on pages I would re-do even though it created another obvious style switch in the middle of a chapter.
I do my pages in watercolor and there were some years old pages that were very, very amateur, so I only redrew those ones.
I tried to keep my regular updates going at the same time though I think did end up taking a couple months off current updates to finish them up. Nowadays there are only panels here and there I'd like to correct for a print run eventually.

So, my advice would be, let them sit for a few years before you consider redrawing things. (A few weeks/months is way too soon to consider this) Your speed will have improved, your art will have improved, and you just might be 'ok' with how things look anyway.

I feel nostalgia now that I look back at old pages, not shame or regret.

[AdamBraveOfficial]

I guess I'll have to deal with it.

To be honest this impulse has been growing also motivated by the high quality of some comics out there that I end up knowing on social media.

I guess I just feel that I wont stand a chance to promote mine if I dont elevate my standard to those levels but...it's hard

Boy, life is hard

[Kelheor]

Social media sucks Especially promoting there... Overall you have a good base, you just need to polish it =) This will come with time and a lot of drawing
Also maybe try not to just draw the comic, spend some time on other art, if you have time. The main problem, if you're not drawing for a long time yet - your style and quality can change a lot in a short amount of time. And you do not want to redraw your pages every time you want to try out a different style or your art levels up
look at me telling things like I'm a pro working in the industry lol, I should just go :'D

[AdamBraveOfficial]

try not to just draw the comic, spend some time on other art,

But then, I will not have time to work on the pages to be published and keep a weekly schedule lolol It's a hard trade off!

[Kelheor]

Tis true xD Oh, and if you want some story-or-art advices, don't forget you can just ask all of us People here helped me a lot!

[Jenny-Toons]

It's also important to remember that a lot of high quality comics out now may have more than one person working on them. In the case of featured webtoons, many of them have assistants, so it's not a one person job. Meaning, if you see any of them redoing something, they've got the people power to afford to do so.

Moreover, a lot of professional comics/mangas show an art shift from the beginning to recent chapters. Compare the art from the first chapter of Bleach to its end -- it's completely different. Most professionals don't have the time nor the energy to go back and redo things. Illustrator Yusuke Murata might do that from time to time with the One Punch Man manga, but he is an outlier, and again -- he has a team of assistants. Either way it goes, most readers don't notice that change unless they're going back to binge through everything. And even then, most readers don't care or they find the art shift cool.

All in all, I say it's more important to go at your pace than to work yourself into a corner trying to "keep up". Other creators are at their own pace, you are at yours.

[brilliiant]

Everyone on here is giving such good advice about this stuff!

I feel like anything I'll say will be redundant, but I know that personally I worry that the eye-bleedy art/formatting wank that I've got at the beginning of my comic is turning away potential new readers simply BECAUSE the standard for art here is set by people with art-school backgrounds or full teams. IDK it feels a little like the webcomic community at large isn't really a place for hobby-artists anymore.

So this is more of a solidarity post, dude. I feel your pain, but I agree with everyone here. In the end it'll just hinder the story you're trying to tell.

[Rhonder]

Kinda depends how your story is broken up and how long it is. Generally speaking, I think the rule of thumb is that small updates can be done at the end of a "section", and larger updates upon completion or in preparation for publishing somewhere new, or physically, or wev.

Small updates might be things like typos or grammatical issues that you notice or are pointed out, or if you need to rearrange a speech bubble, or if you forgot to add highlights on a panel, or if you pinpoint a wonky panel or two that you want to touch up.

Large updates would be like redrawings of multiple panels, or large format changes, or other heavily time consuming changes and amendments that would interrupt the telling of your story too much if you were to stop and do them midway.

For my story, I have it broken up into little self contained seasons where even though they share the same world and characters, each one is meant to be kind of standalone. I'm currently on break between Season 1 and 2 and so for my own comic, I'm thinking about going in to apply some of those large updates to Season 1 at this point. For example, I don't think I'll do too much re-drawing, but I do want to go through and change out the font to something easier to read, start preparing it for print, and create a vertical scroll version for webtoons. These will each take time and I don't know that I'll do them all all the way before starting Season 2, but I figure if I want to make these changes now is the time to do it while people aren't expecting updates lol

[pilot-obvious]

I'm forcing myself not to look back! I've only been posting my webcomic for about two months and I only have 6 episodes, so I know if I do that I'll get into that vicious cycle of constantly redoing all my pages. BUT... maybe 2-3 years down the road I might consider touching up something if it really bothers me that much. We'll see... someone tell me if that's a bad idea! LOL

[spadesart]

ive made minor corrections if they stick out especially bad like the speech bubbles i initially had in spire's chapter one (i drew the bubbles before adding the text so it was all weirdly cropped, squished, or overpadded) or panels i drew when i had burnout like this one

[Elixiink]

Usually when I see a mistake from my previous works I just note them down in my notebook and leave it like that. I don't EVER touch it again because I know it'll lead to an endless spiral of redrawing-disappointment-redrawing again. I make the notes cause if I ever had to reboot my comic for any reason (hopefully a valid reason) then at least I'd have my handy dandy notebook to remind me of the things I wanted to change.