LINE Webtoon - Opinions?

madsparrow 2016-07-27 05:00:34 UTC #266

Yes on LINE you might run into the possibility of becoming a featured artist. However, I think that since they only have a handful of featured artists vs the hundreds of creators in the discover and challenge leagues, that the odds of an artist getting recognized on their site is pretty slim. I've seen comics that are uploaded to LINE that have fifty subscribers that are also uploaded to Tapastic and have 500.
I upload my series to both LINE and Tapastic I'd say that LINE has the following pros and cons
Pros
-You get your comic and your name out into the world on multiple platforms
-You get extra suggestions for making your work better
-You also get extra support! While I've had a few icky comments on their website there are far more people on there that want to give good comments than bad!
-You have the possibility of making a contract and becoming a featured artist
-I've found that its easier to have your comic seen right away because popularity is determined by rating, and if you just upload a comic you can just rate it 10 stars and let viewers determin where you should lay on the scale later (just hope that someone petty doesnt kick your comic down to five stars just because)
Cons
-They have a ten star rating system, and as has been mentioned before there are certain users who get petty and give 2 stars just because they think their comic is better than yours
-Theres a competitive aura HOWEVER, a little competition can be helpful towards pushing yourself
-They don't let you upload GIF panels and thats just nuts what kind of web platform is that?

Overall if you don't like the idea of making your comic exclusive to LINE you can just decline the offer to be featured. I don't think they'll try to force you into it if you're unwilling. And I have found the Tapastic experience to be a lot better than LINE so I think for me I'd want to stay with Tapastic if I had to pick one or the other. But having your comic on both just gets you double the viewership!

KoalaMari 2016-07-27 05:35:56 UTC #267

you should check out Kind if Confidential
It was used to be on tapastic until it went official on webtoon.

69Michi 2016-07-27 05:58:55 UTC #268

Becoming a featured artists mean you will get paid per month for keeping up to date with your comic. (I'm not sure how much exactly, but I heard aroung 2,000) this is why it's pretty hard to become a featured artist, not everyone and any series can. And yes, I do agree with you on how some series are more popular on Tapastic than Webtoon. I think it just came down to the obvious different in audience and taste between the 2 platforms. Like I said, Webtoon is more of a teenager place with pure readers, while Tapastic is filled with creators and often has a more refined, particular taste!

The star rating system can be suck! Sometimes people would just downvote you to upvote their favorite series. By this time I no longer bother about the rating system anymore. What I like about LINE is that they have many top 5/leaderboard thing to give your series a chance of popping up on the "front" page of discovery section. If you have high rating, your series can get on the top rating board. If your series has a lot of view, it will pop up in the specific genre top 5. Etcetc, honestly their discovery section works a lot better than Tapastic's trending, popular and fresh section imo.

@marisebastian78 A lot of series that used to be on Tapastic got picked for feature and now only live on LINE! The latest series that got featured was "Ghost among wild flowers" whom I remember seeing it used to pop up occasionally in Discovery section and on Tapstic a long time ago. It makes me happy to see series I follow got picked

KoalaMari 2016-07-27 06:09:26 UTC #269

Wow I didn't know that. It really is a great opportunity for every webcomic artists out there plus I think it's a great platform to invest in.

elixiadragmire 2016-07-27 18:15:15 UTC #270

I'm in total agreement, theres something there that just works I dint know what it is

respheal 2016-07-27 18:56:35 UTC #272

In a similar vein, SmackJeeves is beta testing a Patreon integration system: http://www.smackjeeves.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=18086

Both are pretty neat and it is pretty cool of Webtoon to show their support for their content creators like that.

69Michi 2016-07-27 19:18:51 UTC #273

Yep the one and only reason that pushed me to make a Patreon page even though I had planned to wait until my reader base grew even larger haha

Pandastrophic 2016-07-27 20:08:06 UTC #274

I've always been on the edge about re-joining webtoon but this is just really pushing me to go post there again...;A;

carloswebcomic 2016-07-27 20:45:53 UTC #275

Too bad that Webtoons has a really restrictive page size limit. Most of my pages are too large for them.

J.Z.Castillo 2016-07-27 21:17:42 UTC #276

what's their size limit?

Pandastrophic 2016-07-27 21:31:46 UTC #277

It's 800x1280, you can add multiple pages to one episode like here on Tapastic but just cropped smaller. I think you can have up to 20MB of files in total.

69Michi 2016-07-27 21:39:19 UTC #278

And on top of that you don't have a limit of 40 files to upload. You can have as many as you want, as long as it doesn't exceed 20MB in total! It's pretty cool seeing how I draw my comic in a Webtoon scrolling format and use Photoshop to slice up the art into multiple 1000px height pieces.

VermillionWorks 2016-07-27 21:42:25 UTC #279

Because I rarely update at LINE I'm afraid to activate this feature there. XD I just expect bad comments or dropouts for some reason. Sorry, still hard to get past the old bad feelings about this site... ^__^; (Plus I'm on a break right now anyway that may be extended by a week...) But maybe I'll consider using this if I decide to change how I update there...

Perhaps Tapastic should consider putting a slightly more advanced Patreon-friendly system like this into the site? They don't even have to donate like they do if the comic becomes popular, necessarily, it'd just be a nice, handy feature to have. =P

AnnaLandin 2016-07-27 21:49:08 UTC #280

This would be nice, yes. Just having a more prominently displayed Patreon-button (perhaps beneat the Subscribe-button on our comics?) would be something! Anything to ease the Tapastic-Patreon transfer, and make it simpler for Tap-readers to support creators directly.

Going as far as Line, and giving additional money, seems like too much to ask for (not even sure how that'd work, honestly), but just something that integrates Patreon a bit more into the site would be lovely. I know there are monetization plans being worked on, but they feel v. heavily geared towards mobile-friendly comics (which is fine! It's what Tapastic does best!), and my comic isn't one of them - and I already have a Patreon up and running. Some way to more easily connect the two would be welcome.

Michelle 2016-07-27 22:11:22 UTC #281

I would love if Tapastic could do this! Especially considering how "sticky" the userbase here is, it might help encourage patronage if there was a built-in Patreon button like what Line has.

I've only just started using Line, but I really appreciate that the Patron button is included on every page of the comic. I like not having to constantly ask people to support me in the description.

There's some things I like a lot more about Tapastic than Line (like how we actually get comment notifications here... wtf Line?) but Tapastic should seriously take note of some of Line's better features.

carloswebcomic 2016-07-27 22:54:23 UTC #282

Yeah, a total deal breaker for me. It's archaic and I can't work with those limits.
Maybe they are concerned about storage costs.

69Michi 2016-07-27 23:11:59 UTC #283

Yea a total height of 1280px is kinda suck. But I think it's because small image files are more friendly for mobile user, which is LINE's main audience. Compare to loading a huge and long image file, it's easier for mobile to load a smaller and shorter image! Also hence why they only allow .jpg

Then again this is just my assumption judging on my experience in creating website.

madsparrow 2016-07-28 05:54:49 UTC #284

Yeah I've experienced that issue with people down voting and that is something I really like about Tapastic. Since we're not competing anything we tend to be a lot kinder to other artists because we aren't getting petty and competitive. However I've also noticed that series that I really could have worked harder on getting 6 ratings while series that I poured my heart and soul into tend to stay a steady 8.

I personally think that the tweeny atmosphere is because Deviant Art advertises the stuffing out of Webtoon. Like they post about the contests and stuff pretty regularly there and so then all of the young future artists flood into that site and kindof nest there. I think thats a good thing though, I started out on LINE, got a feel for the online comics community and fell in love with it. I wouldn't have found the loving Tapastic community I'm currently in without it and I still get really excited when I read the comments and suggestions on LINE (Because all my series are uploaded to both platforms)

I actually came back here to Update though, Webtoons has a secondary way to pay artists who get popular in the discover category! (while maintaining the ability to upload anywhere). LINE added a button to artist pages that directs to artists patreon accounts and if you gain 3k followers and upload regularly LINE will donate a certain amount to your account! I thought that was pretty neat.

scythe 2016-07-28 07:36:05 UTC #285

Not having a competitive rating system may make interactions between creators "nicer", but it also gives those same creators very little impetus to improve. Competition is the engine of innovation and improvement.

AffectedMind 2016-07-28 09:34:59 UTC #286

I don't think it will ever happen tho. Many were suggesting or even begging for it after SP was declined, but they didn't want to replace the Support button with Patreon button (for some reason I will never understand). It would help creators so much.

I've escaped from webtoons because people were ignoring that I was a human being. I'm thinking about going back tho because at the moment I don't like the direction Tapastic is going and the fact that Line implemented Patreon feature is really neat.