Pros & Cons of Comics + Comic Discussions

[Rhonder]

Yeahhh I'm looking to take a middle ground with my upcoming series. I'm thinking about like... drawing each chapter to completion before starting to post said chapter, and then just have small-to-medium breaks beteween each one while I finish the next. That way each chapter won't take that long to post and I can have beefier episodes, but the trade off is that it won't be seamless and there will be downtime. After trying the page-to-page thing for my one shot though I'm looking forward to trying the new approach! Page-to-page life wasn't my jam... for pacing, or producing

[M.ComicFan]

Interesting approach. I could try that too, but I want to see how many pages I can make in a week first. But before that, I want to finish the first 2 chapters so I can publish them right away without any delay.

[Rhonder]

Ah yeah! Posting them right away makes sense if they're setting up important points for the story That's the thing that disgruntles me the most is when a weekly webcomic has things introduced even in Ch 1... but Ch 1 comes out so slowly that it might be months into posting that the hook actually gets revealed xD Even if the pace slows down afterwards I think it's nice to have a little bit of bulk content up-front like that to get the ball rolling.

[Rowain]

Cons: Story comics take a long time to get anywhere. Updating 1 page a week only nets 52 pages a year. You'll have something in a few years if you don't move on to something else in the meantime. It's something I think about a lot. If you can update more than once or multiple pages at a time it's not so bad.

Pros: I like visual narratives and comics can be the most time efficient way to display that as a team of one. I would love do animation but the time investment wouldn't be worth it for me.

Also I just like doing them. Been doing them since 5th grade on stapled together lined paper. Reading manga is what got me started drawing in the first place. They're just awesome, seeing a world come together.

[M.ComicFan]

Story comics take a long time to get anywhere. Updating 1 page a week only nets 52 pages a year.

This is also something I also have a problem with as well, but at the same time some people put a lot of effort into their pages and depending on who's drawing it, it could take a few days to make a page.

[DiscountedArtist]

I have some pros and cons for comics in general

Also, my favorite "professional" comic series is either "Spider-Man Blue" or "The Ultimate Spider-Man" (I don't read that many comics besides Spider-Man)
My favorite "not professional" comic series are "Loading Artist," "Doodle Demon," "Safely Endangered," and "Raphcomic"

PROS:
They can look really good
They leave certain things to your imagination, like how the characters sound
Most of the time they focus more on storytelling than movies
CONS:
No music (obviously)

[M.ComicFan]

CONS:
No music (obviously)

You do know that on Tapas if you have Soundcloud, you can add whatever music track you want to any episodes of your comics right? 'Cause if you didn't, well, you do now.

[DiscountedArtist]

I didn't know that before. But now I know.

[gmaximin]

Pros:
- Visual but not too immersive, leaving a lot of space for imagination.
Cons:
- Mainly visual... I'd love a comics with smell...

[M.ComicFan]

Okay, what would you want your comics to smell like?

[gmaximin]

depends on the comics scene... just a comics with the ability to add a smell component. You open the page, have a beach setting, and smell the salty freshness of wave. Next page, small house, breakfast, the smell of coffee... Or the smell of dragon fume when battling to save the princess... just a comics with smell added...
So cons is just to say that comics lack the support of other senses, especially ones that would support the imagination of my pro...

[M.ComicFan]

Maybe some day we'll have "immersive comics". No idea how the technology would work, but that doesn't sound like a bad idea.

[Rowain]

That's very true. Quality sometimes comes at the cost of time.

[AVXP]

They're fun to make and an accessible story telling medium as mentioned above, but they take so SO long to make relative to how long they take to consume ;u; it appeals to "reader" me, but makes "creator" me groan a little bit lol. Drawing a page takes hours to do and yet it gets consumed in like 30 seconds.

Just remember, your comic is supposed to have more than one reader.
In that case, the page that took hours to make is consumed by hundreds of readers and that time, collectively, adds up.

The parallel is music. You spend years and tons of money to craft a song that only lasts 3 minutes and 20 seconds and costs only 99 cents. The idea to have millions listen to the song and also have thousands upon thousands pay that 99 cents.

Secondly, you can always slot your time investment and return like any hourly wage job. How much per hour sometimes seems good or bed, depending.....

And third, those hours you spent making the page were also supposed to be fun.
Hard to count those, in any way, related to the cons of making comics.

[Rhonder]

Solid points- it's definitely true that like any entertainment medium, unless the artist chooses to remove and make unavailable the content down the line, once something is done it's "done" and you now have that product to flaunt as long as you would like to~

However I guess a different way to put the feelings behind my original statement would be:

I could have 1 million readers, but at the end of the day I'm also a reader of my story- and perhaps the most important one since my satisfaction with the project is the driving force behind continuing it or not (as someone who does this as a hobby and not as paid work, of course lol).

From that perspective, laboring hours each week to produce a single page- a single snippet of the story and the final product, is a bummer. Not a deal-breaking bummer, mind- I knew prior to making my more recent works at least how long comics take, maybe not my earlier endeavors when I was younger as evidenced by the length of those stories - but a bummer nonetheless.

In that way, I find the time to produce a comic a con- even "measuring" it by fun (which I definitely find making comics to be :D). If I was primarily concerned with telling a story, novels are a faster way to do so. If I just wanted to draw cool pictures, then drawing standalone pieces can produce equally stunning results and also get completed in a shorter time-frame.

The caveat is that there are also ways to mitigate that feeling within comics too- working on shorter stories gets you do the finish line faster, which for me at least alleviates some of the above feeling (and is why I've mostly worked on short projects in recent years~ It's only now with several of them under my belt that I'm thinking about embarking on a longer series), or of course, with the art being the most time consuming part simply reducing the quality of the art to increase speed right away is also an option. I could simplify my style, or make do with clean sketches over finished line work, or removing the shading and go to flats, or work in grayscale, or work in black and white, or reduce the amount of backgrounds I include...

But all of that does go back into what makes making comics fun for me I like drawing comics in a style that takes some time to produce, and going through and coloring all of my panels, completing them with effects and shading. The con of taking a long time gets coupled with a pro of seeing my skills level up and having a quality product in my hand (or on my screen lol...) at the end~

To that end I would stand firm by my initial statement that it's a con for me, but not that it has to be for everyone, and certainly that it's not a big enough con to deter me from pursuing my hobby~

[AVXP]

I could have 1 million readers, but at the end of the day I'm also a reader of my story- and perhaps the most important one since my satisfaction with the project is the driving force behind continuing it or not

I tend to read my stories over and over again, so the time working on them versus the time enjoying them is a gap that is always closing. When I made comics (and anything, really) for myself, I tended to have a lower bar of execution. A lot of things remain tucked away on a hard drive, unfinished.

with the art being the most time consuming part simply reducing the quality of the art to increase speed right away is also an option. I could simplify my style, or make do with clean sketches over finished line work, or removing the shading and go to flats, or work in grayscale, or work in black and white, or reduce the amount of backgrounds I include...

This has always been a tough concept to work my head around.
Once it's done, it's done, that's it. No reader cares how long it took to make so it'd only be me explaining that I wanted it done by summer so I rushed in a few places or skipped over a few aspects.

Or one says nothing and the assumption would be- that was the best work the artist was capable of...
It's a balancing act with all three.
Quick, quality and cheap.

You can't get all 3 so you compromise along the way. I hear that.
I just don't know how valuable the Quick is or should be.
I'm still undecided.

[thel3tterm]

Oh this is an interesting discussion!

I think I agree with most of what people are saying here regarding the richness of the medium, but that it's time consuming to make.

Pros:
- There are many unique storytelling opportunities not present in things such as novels such as presenting expressions, body language, and unique stylization and color
- Like many others said, they're cheap to make and can be done by a single person, making it a medium that's far more accessible than film and animation
- Easier than ever to find a platform to share it
- Quicker to read and digest

Cons:
- Time consuming to make in comparison to the time it takes to read
- Labor intensive, especially for a one person team
- Not taken very seriously as an art form by most of society

[M.ComicFan]

All very valid points. I definitely agree with the fact that comics are very time consuming to make. I've been working on my comic for almost a year now, and I'm still not ready to publish. I am almost done however.

[ButterflyEmpress]

Pro
Being able to make and see your OCs do stuff outside your head, especially if it's an exciting or plot heavy scene that's you've been planning for a long time. I know it sounds weird, but there's an excitement to visualizing ideas that have been bottled in my mind. This might be just a "me" thing since I have an overactive mind.

Con
Very slow process, especially if you're not that good at drawing or too socially inept to write decent dialogue. This means taking a lot of time out to do research. (I written a scene where A was impressed at B, for being able to cook steak. I realize now that steak isn't that hard to cook. That scene would've made A look incompetent and childish) Also serialized stories take longer to update since there's more planning that goes in it. It could lead to people getting bored of waiting, moving on, and forgetting about you. I'm guilty of the same and I fear it'll happen to my comic.

[M.ComicFan]

Being able to make and see your OCs do stuff outside your head, especially if it's an exciting or plot heavy scene that's you've been planning for a long time. I know it sounds weird, but there's an excitement to visualizing ideas that have been bottled in my mind. This might be just a "me" thing since I have an overactive mind.

It's not weird, to be honest I'm kinda the same way.

Very slow process, especially if you're not that good at drawing or too socially inept to write decent dialogue.

Gotta agree with you on that part. It's why I ended up trying to make the introduction in the first 2 chapters of the comic that I'm working very quick; mostly so I can get to the parts that I want to write.