You know, friend, I've seen you beating yourself up about your work's performance on a lot of threads now and I'm kind of concerned about you. I think that perhaps you've made an incorrect evaluation of why your work isn't doing so well as you want it to and I want to try to help you understand the underlying issue as best I can.

I don't think your art or your writing are the reason your work lacks traction. I think it's that the premise of your work has naturally limited appeal; it's a niche comic based around stuff you find sexy and fun but won't necessarily interest a lot of people who don't share your particular tastes.

It's a comic about lesbians, but as a lesbian when I tried to read it, I hated it; I don't want to read a comic about these cutesy, underage looking characters who behave like children and are constantly objectified with their jeans riding up like they're vacuum-packed around their crotches, it's just not my thing. If I'm gonna read something with sexy content (pretty rare for me), then I like f/f stories about adult women who behave like adult women (Roomie! is a sexy comedy with f/f content that I actually enjoy). There are some people who like that sort of "moe ecchi" stuff, but it's never going to be mainstream. Even in Japan it's not mainstream, but relies on a small but very intensely interested audience who will sink a lot of money into it and privately share it around with other people who are really into it.

It doesn't matter how great the art is or how well written the jokes are, and let me be clear here, I think the art is absolutely pro quality and very polished and the visual storytelling and the writing are perfectly fine; I do not want to read this comic, and no matter how much the art improves, I will never want to read this comic because I don't enjoy what the comic is about. Comics with sexy content rely on hitting certain fetish/fantasy groups, and tend to have very dedicated followings, but they're limited by the size of the fetish/fantasy group, which will create a sort of ultimate cap on the audience size.

I think rather than getting obsessed with making the art even more polished, what you should focus on is how and where you're marketing. You need to either make a comic with more widespread appeal to the kind of people already on Tapas (like a more work safe comedy comic, a more serious romance story, some sort of cute slice of life etc), find ways to get the most out of the audience you have (merch, spinoffs etc.) or you need to find the kind of places where guys who are into this kind of comic hang out (my bets would be 4Chan, Reddit and Tumblr). No matter how much you improve the art or the jokes, it's not going to suddenly convert all the girls who are on Tapas to read serious drama about beautiful brooding men into fans of a bawdy comedy about cutesy girls.

Don't be too hard on yourself about it. I think you're an excellent artist with strong visual storytelling and comic timing and you've made a really polished product, but yeah, polishing it to the point you get sick isn't the way here. The quality of your work is more than good enough, in the same way that Firefly was one of the best TV series ever made but got cancelled after one season not because it was bad, but because it was really hard to sell "dysfunctional cowboys in space" to a broad audience. There are some comics we make for ourselves, knowing they have limited appeal, because it makes us happy, and there are some comics we try to sell, and for those, it's always a frustrating mixture of trying to work out what people want and a dose of luck in terms of hitting some kind of zeitgeist and getting seen.
I know that's really frustrating and that the dream is to draw the comic that is your personal dream comic that you want to read AND make a living off it (oh boy do I know how that feels, hahaha!).

Maybe what you need is another idea.
To tell the truth, I have no idea why would someone follow the comic without an actual plot for 5 years. To see the pantsushot of the same loli girl for 1000th time? Even if people love the characters, it's probably not something they will go and read immediately as it's published, because there is no real reason, not like they will find out something new happening, they won't see the development of action and characters growing.
Your pages just feel like a filling episode of the anime - "cute, funny, but please let's return to the plot". And since they are not even in the "relatable comics" category, you won't remember and laugh at them next week when something like this happens to you.
But then I feel this way about most comics like this, they are just something you see on 9gag and pretty much forget after half an hour of scrolling, so this is just one person's opinion.

I really just scrolled through your comic, and read a few pages from here and there. I don't say you haven't developed the characters and their relationships (hard to notice when you don't read the whole thing), but overall it's a funny ecchi, which is not overly interesting to read for a long time.

I just wanted to say that I checked out your comic and I like it a lot. I did some jumping around because you have a lot of chapters and enjoyed the ones I clicked on.

I know it can be hard to write character progression through gag type comics but that doesn't mean it should be abandoned entirely. Maybe outline some character arcs?

Your comic makes me think of the early 2000s when comics had their own sites and you traded them like secrets. (that's a compliment I swear)

Maybe consider compiling them and finding your niche through a kickstarter? I argue that you don't need to get better but that you do need exposure.

Somewhere in this thread you mentioned that you don't read any comics. That's going to be your biggest failing--if you want to get better at creation, you need to consume it. You become a better writer, a better artist, by looking at other works and seeing how they do things and how they impact you. All of us are an amalgamation of our inspirations, so limiting your pool is only going to hurt you.

There are no shortcuts, but I do think you can ease off the pressure on yourself. Find techniques that make your page production faster, make compromises on quality and detail. Take it down from 2 patreon drawings to 1 a week. Hell, you could probably taper that off to 1 exclusive a MONTH. Most of them are only paying you $1 a month since you have no tiers, so why break your back putting out an excessive amount of extra content? They're following you because they like your work, and 90% of them aren't going to bat an eye if you ease off the exclusives to have more time to yourself or to improve your craft. You need a better work life balance and throwing yourself into more work isn't the solution.

However, my best is not good enough to compete with the extremely talented and skilled creators that are at the top of the food chain. Not even close.

Can you elaborate on what you mean by this?

the remainder of the week is spent doing 2 exclusive drawings for my Patreon, and I barely make it. I literally have no spare time to put any more work into this.

What kind of drawings?

I feel like 15 hours is a lot of time to spend on one page. I don't know how much time other people spend, but I do about 4 hours / page. I have a looser, sketchier style than your's and less detailed pages.

Looking at your pages, your art is very smooth and clean. It's clear you took a lot of time to get it that way. But maybe if it's burning you out you don't need to do so much? Maybe look for ways to take less time on a page instead of ways to improve your art. I think you could get 90% of the polish with like 60% of the work

You really want to get better? Head over to www.penciljack.com12

These guys are the real deal, professional comic artists and if you listen they will be more than happy to get you thinking about the medium in ways you probably never considered before. You NEED to be okay with criticism though. These guys are good. They definitely know better than you or I. So if you're serious, that's a great resource. You can take a look at my comic, Runner and how it changes throughout it's run of 28 pages throughout 2019 and you can see the amount that I grew and it was in no small part because of their help

I kinda feel like there's a lot of circumstance at work here, so I'm a bit confused.

What exactly are you frustrated with? And why do you need to get better? What's your intent or goal here? Cause once you know the end game you can plan and make the appropriate changes to get there. Though it might be the case where you have to make some sacrifices to get there (especially if time is the biggest issue).

Honestly, I don't think its "talent" or the like, and that kind of thinking is probably preventing you from believing in yourself and building up confidence. Like you're stuck in some trap and the more you struggle the more you're making it worse for yourself. You need to create a more optimistic mindset for yourself, if for any reason because it will help you work better. A combination of stress, worries, anxieties, pessimism, etc. don't really make for good decision making and can often lead to you digging yourself into a deeper hole.

As for the genre, yeah tapas might not be the best platform, but I don't think its that niche really. Probably there's some changes you can make to the story and the art, but I think there's potential for a growing audience. Especially if you added more fluff and lewd stuff. Not everyone has to like your comic, but obviously you do have an audience.

I'm all for the "git gud" approach don't get me wrong, but that alone is too forceful. Yes, improve the art and writing, but also try to have a strategy and know where you can work smarter not harder.

All that sounds like you're trying hard to find a reason why you consider yourself and your work a failure, despite none are. Because, like many of us, you chained part of your self-confidence to the metrics of the sites you're in.

May this call for help be more "my depression is taking over the work I love, please, grab your nearest weapon and help me fight it back"?

We are not on your head, the only thing I can say is to take care of that depression, whatever way works for you (therapist, medication, a less slaver schedule...), because that exhaustion of yours is clearly a body call for help, to take more care for yourself before keep working on anything else.

First health, Carlos, then everything else will roll at its rythm.

Cheers

I'm glad this is the only part you can argue about my reply.

This is my last message, you're feeding your inner demons with our responses, dude.

It's your decision to take or not the advices or what to do with your work. Yours, not of your depression, she's not the boss here, you are.

Okay okay, deep breaths, buddy, you're not screwed. You've had a little stumble and it's thrown you off-balance. I've seen comic artists come back from way worse than this. Your situation is really not all that bad. Objectively the problem is:

You have made a comic which has excellent art and solid gag writing, which has 13,000 bookmarks (incredible, that's a bigger number of bookmarks than the average per-issue readership on most published comics!), but has hit a point where it can't expand further easily and fails to generate the kind of buzz you need to really push your career to the next level because it has already filled its small niche and isn't a wider appeal kind of comic.

You are a hermit crab who has survived long enough and been successful enough to outgrow its shell. You have made a comic that does what it does very well, it's just that the type of comic you've made would have been a hit in the 00s, but the audience for webcomics is different now.

This is not a horrible situation! What, did you just spend $10,000 on a huge print run of five thousand books? Did you flounce out of your day job and tell every employer in the country you'll never work for them because you're a hot-shot comic artist? Did you stinkbomb the Onipress offices? If no, then there's really no barrier here.

Your options:
- Start a new comic. Yeah, you can. It worked for John Allison, who moved from Bobbins to Scary-Go-Round to Bad Machinery and Giant Days, it worked for David Willis going from It's Walky! to Shortpacked to Dumbing of Age, so there's no reason you can't make a new comic that's more in line with the tastes of the contemporary audience without the baggage of your long page count, and even bring along some of your fave characters from the comic you have and put them in a new context. You'll probably get faster growth from fans moving over from your old comic to help visibility, so you should build up visibility quickly.
- Dig in with the comic you have and merchandise the crap out of your audience. Like, dude, your comic is like an early 00s sexy gag comic, do you know what your core audience is? Men in their 30s and 40s, the biggest spenders in comics merch. I've seen it bandied around that if you have a core base of 2000 really hardcore fans, you can scrape a living off a webcomic. You could sell posters, books....body pillows.... (I'm not necessarily saying I'd approve, but as a business decision it makes complete sense given the genre of the comic).
- Start pitching to publishers and showing your portfolio at events. Your work is more than good enough, why not give Dark Horse, Oni Press or even Marvel a shot?
- Have your comic as a thing you do for fun on the side and do a different job to pay rent. There's zero shame in this and it doesn't make you a failure. Being pro full time for like... nearly everyone I know on the scene means drawing crappy comics about other people's IP. A lot of my friends who wanted to draw the comic they care about started doing a different job and having their dream comic be a side hustle or even a hobby (self included, actually).

You have plenty of options, and whether you drop it or continue, you have a very successful webcomic under your belt that you should treat like an asset, not a failure. You could go to any publisher and say "I have kept regular updates for five years on a webcomic with over 13,000 readers, and now I want to take my career to the next level" and they'd be really impressed.

You got this! Good luck!

There’s a lot of good stuff being said in this thread that I agree with. I just sort of want to throw in my two cents that I think could be valuable and relevant information to a lot of people struggling with webcomics.

Getting better is an important aspect but it not just getting better in regards to art but the medium as a whole. One-hit wonders still had a lot of output and practice before they became big for that one big hit. I think in webcomics people see the one big hit and think they just have to work on crafting their One Big Hit. The reality is that there are VERY few people who haven’t had a few hundred pages of comics and standalone graphic novels under their belt before they got that One Big Hit. It’s important to practice working on something and getting it done in a reasonable time frame. It will force you to get a handle on how to make a comic flow and learn pacing. But it’s also helpful in that you shouldn’t put all of your eggs in one basket to begin with.

If your goal is to just focus on your own IPs you HAVE to practice creating them, establishing them, and finishing them. Doing one thing for X amount of years is massively limiting. I don’t think I would be close to having a TV deal or have any success with publishers right now if I only focused on one of my comics for the past five years. Like, I would not be in the same situation at allllll.

Also stop comparing yourself to the people at the very top. There are people who still do extremely well and make a living who can’t be compared to the people as far as skill level goes. I don’t think it’s good to compare yourself to anyone but if you’re going to do that then at least compare yourself to the people in a comparable skill level to you who ARE managing to make it work.

OK, that's really good to hear that you've gotten so much faster. Can you go into more detail about your process for inking? 4 hours to just ink one episode of 6-8 panels is too long for a chibi comic. I know this thread in large part is because you have a lot on your chest you want to get out there, so if you don't want to talk about your process, that's fine and I'll let it go. But, especially if you happen to have any recorded footage of you inking, maybe we can pinpoint what is taking all that time.

Thank you! That's actually super helpful and it's nice to put voice to your username (good ghost story, btw). I'm just so glad you're using Clip Studio and not like some weird program I've never used before.

So first off, your stabilizing tool is lagging in a way that I don't see on my own computer, and it's probably part of why this is taking so long. Usually the response to drawing a line and it being formed is near instantaneous even with stabilization at 100, so it's a concern that it's really slow for you. It might be because of streaming, but if it's still happening without streaming, I would try to speed the program up.

One solution is to hide your rulers. It's a weird trick, but it usually works pretty good, also works good for photoshop slowdown and when using complicated brushes. I don't know why rulers are such an issue for all art programs but...they do. (and I felt you when clip crashed. Clip crashes a whole lot). Another solution is if you have a second drive on your computer that you can use to store that memory. I put my virtual memory on the D instead of C, that prevents as many crashes and it makes things go much faster. You can find it in the Performance tab under file/preferences .

You can also allocate more memory to Clip as a whole because I personally think they don't allow enough in the factory settings but youknow...be careful with doing that, you can only do what your computer will allow you to do. Either way, it shouldn't be lagging like that. Something's happened. Probably the streaming.

Drawing wise, I think you're in better shape than you realize. You do have talent man, you've worked real hard for it. The biggest problem I see is one that you acknowledged also in this video, that you have a tendency to redraw the same parts over and over only moving it a couple pixels to the left and right a lot before actually launching into the inking. It's a perfectionism thing. So consider the forest from the trees for a bit. That this will only ever be 940 px wide on tapas and I think 1080 on webtoon?

We get restricted on how large our comics get displayed and you're drawing at full zoom and like...10x bigger than that in 300 dpi. So don't worry about moving things a millipixel left and right, it will look virtually the same when you save for web. Remember this will only be like a hand's width wide on browser, and everyone reading on a phone sees it at like 3 inches wide unless they pinch and zoom. It's kind of the bane of digital art that we can zoom in soooo far when...no one can see those details once we finish. Your very nice careful work that you're doing, these strands of hair, these tiny notches near the neck, might not even show.

My teachers used to call this type of nitpicking "doodilating" your art, (which sounds kind of like a lewd term now that I think about it), but it's pushing paint around in the same tiny little spot instead of progressing forward towards finishing the figure as a whole, and so to get away from doodilating, it helps to zoom out as often as possible and see the whole piece--so you don't get sucked into details that again, are pretty, but are both not the focal point and are also kind of invisible at 72 dpi.

Since we're at a computer screen and can't literally step back, what I like to do which may help you as well is to have a zoomed out version in another window on a different screen so you can glance over and ask yourself--is this visible? and if it's not, ignore it and move on. You can go to Canvas/window/new window and it will open a second instance of the window you are working on, so that way you can just have one zoomed out and you can put that window wherever you want it on your screen (I like putting it on a second monitor). You can even tile the windows or maybe have it float so you can move it around. What you do in one window will now do to both windows. It's a neat tool that's kind of hidden and it helps a tonnnnnn to prevent not only mistakes but also noodilating. (You can even have the second window flipped so you don't have to worry about the horror of flipping your canvas ever again.)

Another thing is your technique for drawing the outer line thicker is neat, and I like the effect it gives, but you do it the hard way. It's not the wrong way, I just think it's way harder than how most people do it. You can simulate that thick outline when you get to your coloring phase, and I feel like you already do that anyway with your white outlines so...may as well do it with your black outlines, too. Just put an outline on a duplicate of the colorblocking layer and make it as thick as you want. Instant thick outline that is nice and clean and dandy. All you'd have to do is fix the sharp angles of the hair with another layer, if it's even noticeable at that size.

But honestly, your inking is good. It's clearly a strength for you, just slow right now. When you ink you're so much more confident than when you sketch--so maybe sketch less. The biggest thing is to fix that computer lag and to resist redrawing things that are invisible. You just gotta breathe in and relax, you got this, you're a good artist. I mean it.