How old is your comic? And what kept you motivated to hold onto it?

[dakotasapphire]

My OLDEST comic is 2 years old. (Ice Burg Skies, Brown Eyes) I started it when I had photoshop and a little scanner but it was a pain in the butt with the little scanner. I didn't have any of the tools I have now, so I sort of waited on it. So I basically restarted it again last year, and didn't end up coloring and uploading it till a few days ago. I guess I just liked some of the nice comments people gave me before and didn't want to disappoint them by not posting another episode.

[maximumthemokona]

~17 years D:
A lot of people say it's not good to start with a story you're so attached to. But I DON'T CARE

[meatmaiden]

I actually have drawn mine three times over the course of three years LOL;;;;;

That being said it didn't start off as a serious project. When I first did it I wasn't taking it seriously at all-- it was actually more of a parody comic back then. I had way too many characters and didn't even write a script. To be honest, I'm not sure what the hell I was doing ^^;; (I guess just having fun.)

The second/third time has been way more serious. I pretty much re-did the entire story. The original plot is totally different, and I'd say the new one is wayyy better. They're honestly not even comparable.

As for what's motivated me to keep going... Well I just want to share the story. They say "tell the stories you wish you could read" and that's what I'm doing. I'm just hoping that people have a good time reading it, that's really my ultimate goal.

[kambreapratt]

Shadowbinders was actually a completely different story 18 years ago. My husband had an idea for a story he called Shadowbinder and it was a very dark story. Some of the characters were the same (Sid and Winston) but the rest of the cast was very different. He did some designs for it and a few pages, but he said the story didn't work the way he wanted.

Fast forward a few years and he met me. I had an idea for a comic with a girl who jumps worlds and an arrogant mage type character, but I wanted them to be on an airship. Shadowbinder had an awesome one. So I asked him if we could take aspects of the original (including the title) and weave into my story. It worked! We talked about it and worked on it for several years before we launched it. Mostly my husband (which I found out later) drug his feet because he didn't want to share Shadowbinder with me. But eventually he came around and we went live August 2010 on our own site. We have been on Tapastic since August 2013 (we would have come over sooner but we were under contract at Keenspot)

Motivation. We keep each other motivated because there are times we both want to quit. The readers keep us motivated because sometimes we want to quit. But,honestly if we hadn't gotten as far as we had with it we probably wouldn't have continued a long time ago. It was hard to gain momentum then and I think it is even harder now, but we just keep pushing forward and thinking outside the box. It has worked well for us so far!

[heterodont]

Including the time I took to develop the story, Kongene Faller is roughly 7-8 years old because it went through 4 different rewrites but it's only 3 years in 'production' (that is, actually drawing the pages). This year will be its 4th year running.

I actually dropped it around the end of 2012 (I started it in August) - frankly because I had gotten bored of it and I really didn't have a readership at the time because it was limited to my friend group and maybe an incredibly small number of readers whom I didn't know. I only picked it back up around Summer 2013 because a new friend of mine had discovered I made a webcomic and expressed interest in wanting to read more - and since I have a thing about bending over backwards for people I really like, I picked it back up again.

Now, I don't really lose motivation? It's more like laziness to work on pages. I like my story and I like working on pages, its a good exercise especially when I have art block because it forces me out of the block. I also have a rather sizeable readership, more than just a friend group, and I wouldn't feel right just dropping my comic because it bores me! Not to mention it makes me feel fuzzy inside knowing so many people like my comic enough to stick around (a boost to my poor writing self esteem!)

[60Six]

But in all seriousness, I started posting the original City of Blank back in 2010 or 2009, but I came up with the idea in middle school. So technically, it's been around for 10-ish years (I'm too lazy to look up dates right now ahah). But the City of Blank I've been posting on this site was just started in March of 2015, so it feels like a pretty new comic.

[KSlinger]

Started drawing West about 15 months ago and my motivation is purely wanting to see it finished. There are lots of parts/characters I'm looking forward to introducing as well. Sometimes thinking about future events spurs me on when I'm feeling tired. Just want to share the fun, you know? And I get comments from people saying they're crushing on Jed or some other character and I want to do it for them too. Always nice I learn more about characters you like.

[TristanJensen]

Well my series Life of a Homeschooler ( http://m.tapastic.com/series/Life-of-a-Homeschooler) has been going for about a year as of mid November.
It's inspiration was really more of a personal challenge I had made when I saw the amazing stuff people were making here. That and I had a style for an animation I kind of gave up on that I needed to put to use)

I figured if I just start something and work on it a long time I could be as good as them. And a year later I'm not quiiiiite there yet but I'm definitly improving... I hope. But in the meantime I've gotten to meet, digitally at least, a lot of great people here. A lot of which have been either directly or indirectly really helpful in my quest to be a better artist than I currently am.

[efdvorsky]

I started Cosmic Fish originally as just...a test I guess? To practice comics way back in 2011 and was using ideas from comics I did in High School back in 2007-2009 (At least some ideas and some characters that appear later on, the rabbit is one of them). It kind of became a melting pot after an exam I took in the university, after that stressful event, I sat down and tried to fill a page with characters and whop there it is.

The original test run of ideas were in OCTs and just minor comics here and there. Then some friends started asking me about it and I kept expanding to million of years of plot until one of them pretty much pushed me to "at least make a chapter and see how it goes" last year, and here we are.

I think it motivates me because it's solid but also pretty loose, and it can grow. I want people to see it grow, to help me make it grow, and interacting and joking with readers is honestly just way too fun for me.

[Dingbat1991]

My comic: Lento started January of last year and only made my comic available to Tapastic last October. Lento started as a new year's resolution as a way to open up to people through art and to demonstrate some storyboarding and illustration skills to potential clients/employers. The main character itself was created in the summer of 2013 and has undergone many changes since. I liked him so much is why I decided to give him his own series.

That's part of why Lento is still around because I myself am invested in the story and the characters. Designing a comic can be time-consuming and it means nada if you aren't passionate with the assets you have.

If you like superhero comedy, satire or just the idea of a cute, spunky character. Please do check out the comic.

[CaptainUfo]

Captain Ufo was born a lot of time ago. I used to attend a school for comic book artists way back in 2000 - 2003, and one of the first assignments for the scriptwriting class was to create the cast for a series of strips; I settled for an incompetent crew of aliens trying to conquer Earth. I reworked the idea in the back of my mind over the course of the years, but never actually sold it to anyone.
Then my career moved from comics to advertisement, vector graphics for websites, rough layouts for videos and such, but I never liked it.
Then, in 2013 someone finally offered me a new book to draw and I was the happiest man in the world. As soon as I started I panicked, because appearently I forgot how to properly do comics. So I decided to bring back old Ufo and make a webcomic series to bring my "comic book muscles" back in shape (if you read it and you think that the first few pages are a bit rough, that's why. I was seriously unfit from the artistic point of view :P). The series has been going on for nearly two years, I'm translating it in English now for the first time.

[fatrolf]

I came up with the idea for Slim Piggy just over a year ago while in the middle of watching a concert (no coincidence, as the comic is essentially about a band) where I had nowhere to write anything down. I remember furiously texting myself character names and the title of the comic between songs so I wouldn't forget. Honestly, out of all the comics I've made in my life, Slim Piggy was the one that started up the fastest... it went from initial idea (December 2014) to it's internet birth on Halloween, 2015.

I had a few comics I actually got going when I was younger, but my adult life has seen a lot more loose ideas and unrealized stories than my kid life. I have one called "Keith Maximum" that came into being from a very bizarre dream about zombies that I had back in 2008 and I still haven't found a proper way to get it going.

So it's a wide range for me... sometimes I can get down to work and start right away, sometimes I kick ideas around and make a few failed attempts at getting things going for eight or so years

Though it hasn't been long, I keep Slim Piggy going with deadlines and with making sure I love my characters. I keep their stories fresh, make sure I'm flushing out their personalities in my head enough to like their reactions and interactions in the comic. I also think getting it posted on the internet in a more professional way has kept me on track and grounded with the content I put together and put out for prospective readers.

Basically, I put it on the internet to make sure I created it. I feel a more driving force to focus on continuous production and keeping loose when I have a nice place to upload it each week and another place to toss all my sketches and notes and character Q&A's! It's all worked good so far, even if I don't have THAT many people reading it yet, it's still young and I started from scratch with my internet friend-base back in 2014. I'm still happy with it and hope to get it to more people who might enjoy it

Also, I'm writing about something I love! Which is super important to me. Writing about punk and industrial bands in the 80's and having a good chunk of my characters fit into the LGBTQ+ spectrum keeps ME interested.

[demthorshie]

Cosmos Song has only been on the internet for a little over a month, but it's been a couple of years in the making! I got the idea to create this comic from an already existing cast of characters from another project I was working on. I probably spent more time on the character development than anything else, since the story was already crafted pretty much years ago,

I think the one thing that motivates me to continue working on Cosmos Song is the fact that I have invested a lot of time and energy in to the creation of the world as well as the characters, I had to do something more with it I guess

[chanalli]

The idea of 2 Leaf Clover began about 4 years ago, I think...
I created the characters with no story in mind, I just wanted to practice drawing male anatomy but after a while, a story started developing.
The comic began a few years ago but I wasn't totally motivated on drawing it, I was also drawing it in another format for another website....

It is until the end of last year that I really wanted to see my characters come to life and tell their stories so I forced myself to continue with the story....

I have really put a lot of effort on 2LC, story wise.

With my other (future) comic, Royal Blood, the idea (and whole story) came in one night about maybe 2 or 3 years ago and started drawing it around those years but I still haven't publish it. I will soon though....
For now, the only thing I have publish of this are the two main characters: Prince Landon and the female character whose name I forgot and still can't remember...

I'm really exited about this one :v

[AffectedMind]

My current project Bite Me is only two years old. It's very young, but helped me learn lot of things, not only refined my drawing skills but also helped me discover what genre I feel strong in. I think my biggest motivation was the urge to create something and share the story with others. My motivation grew bigger when my fanbase was slowly growing bigger. I saw many enjoy my comics and now the rest of the journey I'll spend with them.

[Squeakybat]

My comic Stellar Persona started as a absent minded doodle of a little boy with stars in his eyes and then I kinda spiraled on from there. This was about 3 and a half years ago. I just scribbled them in a note book....and then another character....and then another....and while i was doing this I sort started creating personalities for them. After that i started making backstories... After that I was like. "Welp, I might as well make a whole story now. I've become attached to them."

I guess what motivates me to keep going is my fondness for my characters .....and how much a really wanted others to like them too....>3>

[starsyscomics]

Finite is an idea that we've been molding for the better part of half a decade. It started as a re-read of the HP books in my adulthood, just after I had graduated from university and was super cynical about the world, which definitely crept into my reading. Instead of seeing the story with the whimsical view that it held when I was younger, I spent the entire time focusing on the absurdity of the wizarding world and it's illogicalness and griping about it to my wife and co-writer. That turned into the dystopian take on magical government that features in our story.

I actually originally planned on it just being a fanfic, but that's when I found out I am terrible at writing prose, so my wife got all gung ho about turning it into a comic and now I feel bad for her because she spends 99% of her free time drawing it.

[Starfestival]

My comic Retro is about 7 years old almost. I've been drawing these characters since I was 14 ^^.

Not exactly sure when I got an idea for it, for the past few years the overall story of it has been gradually changing.

As most early teens who watch anime and draw, I had dreams about being a mangaka(even though back then I didn't know that the majority of mangaka in japan are basically slaves and work torturous routines weekly). Retro as well as my over all drawing style were heavily inspired by Tite Kubo's Bleach, and Astushi Ohkubo's Soul Eater.

[noctuidae]

I started the first attempt at my comic around the time I graduated high school back in 2014, but last year I wiped it out and started back at the beginning. So the rewritten version has been going on for 4-5 months, but I've been drawing pages for almost 2 years. If I was to go way back to when I first came up with the seed of the idea and counted all its various incarnations, then that would mean about 4-5 years of "development" (mostly idle doodling)

I hold onto it because it's been stuck on my mind for such a long time, and it gives me something where each week I can say to myself, "yeah, I accomplished something." when I started college i went through a few stressful experiences in rapid succession that I had trouble dealing with emotionally, and working on the comic was a way of climbing back onto the daily routine of life and making sure I wasn't just wasting away in self-pity.

[Mharz]

The Angel with Black Wings was born in my mind around September 2011. I started creating the comic on 2014 and I started posting the webcomic on March 2015.

In regards to motivation. I made a vow to myself that I'd definitely finish this no matter what. If I finish it, I'd be able to create another series which is way longer than this.