Quality over Quantity: Should I go quick or should I take my time

[kappapeachie]

so one thing caught my mind yesterday, the reason my art is lacking is because I draw waaaay too fast. Like, really quick. It went against odds with my vision for a more refined artstyle. But i really wanna make enough content not to lose too many readers. should they wait or should I just cram stuff out like a let's play gamer?

[Penni]

I personally will take quality over quantity, even if it means waiting a little longer for a comic. If the art is really inconsistent over a span of time, it's a real turn off for me.

[beta1042]

I think it's about finding a balance in both, and know where you can skip quality to save time. A lot of readers are not analyzing every panel, they spend a few seconds tops on many of them, those panels that get glazed over are the ones you want to cut corners on. Or there are parts of panels that are the focus of the panel- spend your time on the details of the focus, but skip corners on some of the less important aspects that are not in the focus-just make them good enough. A lot of time if I stop and really look at some professional comics, you'll see some really funky hands, thats cause the focus of the reader is on the face and the general body language, but they're not really looking at the little details, so the artist chose not to make a perfect hand and probably 95% of readers won't ever notice.

[rmdooley]

Play the long game and go for quality

[qwerty]

I'd say quality is more important, or at least that's what I prefer and what I imagine most people prefer.

I might be ignorant, but I wonder if the emphasis on generating content quickly isn't a bit overrated. If I see a comic I really like (and there are only a handful of those) I'll subscribe even if it barely ever updates. If I see a comic that doesn't significantly impress me, I won't subscribe regardless of how often it updates.

Once someone has subscribed, I imagine that they would be unlikely to unsubscribe as long as it's clear that the comic hasn't gone on the infamous "indefinite hiatus". I mean, there's no harm in having something sitting there in your library while you wait for it to update for a while.

Of course you can only take it so far though, I also wouldn't get so hung up on details or "perfection" that it takes forever to get anything done. It's kinda demotivating (at least to me) to work for a super long time before having anything to show for it.

And I suppose if there's too long between updates in a story-driven comic, readers might start forgetting parts of the context of the story.

In the end, balance I guess.

[Harmony-S-S]

I say quality. Quantity isn't important if the quality isn't good

[dawgofdawgness]

Honestly, if you want to improve as an artist, I'd say keep drawing fast. Personally I find that if I slow down, I become a perfectionist and I stop trying new things. So if you're going to draw fast, draw a LOT. Practice, and you'll get better, regardless of the speed.

But if you want a large audience, you can't really afford to pump out one masterpiece every month. It's not about how MUCH content, but how OFTEN you post it. On Tap, it's all about updating constantly. Don't worry about art too much and really focus on engaging your audience through story and keeping them up to date with the content. Webcomics is a visual medium, but trust me, people are not gonna stick around a comic that's shiny but has no substance

[Penni]

it's also helpful when an artist points out things that a non-artist wouldn't think about

[KoreanTacos]

This is more of a question to ask readers and not other creators. While i believe quality is important you always have to consider whether its more important than keeping up with expectations the readers are wanting. You can still provide quality along side quantity, you just learn to motivate yourself to balance both with time. The more you work on something the better and smarter you begin to work. As a creator i always want quality, but as a reader id like some form of consistancy as webcomics are easily one of those media things that are easy for people to just give up on

[Hodge]

I mean . .. still caught up with the original One punch man by One so don't care that much for visual quality. And I've read other manga with iffy art but there was plenty of story and usually 50+ chapters. Then in the opposite direction there's the comic by WLOP (Ghostblade I think) where the art is really good quality but honestly couldn't care less about the story and doesn't help that it doesn't update as often. Feel like its just an excuse to paint pretty elf girls (granted that's a lot of manga rn haha). For creators finding that quantity vs quality balance takes awhile, and our main push for quantity is often readership satisfaction (as annoying at that might be for some).

However, sometimes you just need to get that quantity, not only for readers to enjoy the story, but also so you can get the drawing mileage. It's a bit worrisome when I see webcomics with lots of rendering to it, because I get it you want it to look pretty, but probably still want to improve your raw drawing ability first if needed. Comics don't need to be over-rendered (and it can be distracting to the reading experience).

[darkone4587]

I say take your time, if you rush it you'll either produce something your not proud of or you'll end up exhausting yourself and your work will stop being any fun.

[fleohr]

I went for quantity when I started my comic, if you check the earlier episodes they all have flat (one colored) backgrounds haha, the characters head are too big, lack of different poses, and the dialogue are too flat

At the long run looking at it now it makes me cringe, wondering everytime if I should add light and shadow on them, fix here and there, to make them neat, but I also think if my subbers will be ok with that, I know Tapas readers have more patience, but LW are the opposite (some even unsubbed and downvoted my comic after I told I had to put it on hiatus lol)

Anyway, if you ever use your comic as an example of what you can do, go for quality, specially if you want to print it in the future

[Zhengo]

Like some others have said, it's about maintaining a balance.

Though I think I'm going to give a slight edge to quantity here. I think quality matters quite a bit, but there's also the fact that comic panels aren't meant to be individual pieces of art. I think TOO much quality can also be a bad thing for a comic. Since @Hodge brought up Ghostblade I'm going to use that as an example. The art in the comic is gorgeous but at the same time it feels more like a sequence of art pieces rather than a comic. There's also the fact that since the drawings are all highly rendered, they lose a certain movement and expressiveness that you would see in other simpler comics.

Not to mention, having a slight inconsistency in art I think adds more to the comic. I don't mean like, something where readers can noticeably tell dips and rises in skill or that the style constantly shifts. I mean kind of like when you want a panel to be particularly impactful, then having an increase in details will add to whatever emotional impact or reveal that the story has.

[punkarsenic]

bit of both, really

going fast and avoiding perfectionism is really important in comics, but being satisfied with your work is too. a good and common approach is to go fast and loose with most of a chapter / issue / update, and then have one or two extra effort gorgeous panels - often double-page splashes.

that said - whats your update rate at this current drawing speed? if its once a week or more, dont worry about slowing down a little. while once - twice a week is the ideal for webcomics, lots of people are very willing to wait longer for something they love.

[monotone_ink]

Compromise - Make good content quickly

I'd say to consistently practice drawing with the aim of creating your images as quickly as possible while maintaining the quality of your work. It's really a matter of constant practice. Have a look at people like Kim Jung Gi - he makes consistently detailed and great work at an appropriate speed:

For him, this was a skill achieved by drawing literally all the time.

[yozhikisblue]

I suspect this depends on the kind of readers you want to attract. I'm more of a "masterpiece-a-week" type I guess, so I do have a clear bias in that direction x) - but that's my personal preference with comics I read too.

If I had to create a "reader profile" for myself, it would be something like this:

I've always enjoyed consuming media that is slow-moving and elaborate. Stories that make me think- where I can go back over the same pages and notice something new and different every time I re-read them, or better yet- where I realize the narrative was so well-planned that I notice hints and foreshadowing on previous pages I might otherwise have missed, or even read a previous scene in a completely different way now that I've acquired new information from later pages. So of course I aspire to make something like that myself.

If I see a webcomic that updates often, with a nicely done art style suited to fast-paced drawing- but the individual pages lack substance (i.e. five pages spent on a character doing something as mundane as getting up, turning off an alarm clock and going to school- or random character banter about lunch) I'm probably not going to read it. Similarly, if I'm choosing between spending my time reading a comic that looks like it has considerable thought put into every single page vs. a comic where the art "works" as a vehicle for the story, but that's about it- even if the latter comic has more pages out and updates more often- unless something about the subject matter really hooks me, I'm always going to choose the first one.

And I know that as a reader, if I like something, I really like it- meaning I won't be put off by long wait times (unless we're talking something ridiculous, like years here). I'm not going to lose interest and unsubscribe, simply because a comic I enjoy hasn't updated in a week- perhaps even a month or two of hiatus. If I did, wouldn't that suggest that my interest was pretty shallow and circumstantial in the first place? (i.e. I just thought it was pretty and hit the subscribe button to check it out later)

So this is me, a type of reader.

There are other types of readers out there. For example, I have a friend who always tells me he has a short attention span, and so prefers fast-paced media that makes him laugh. His interests tend to fluctuate a lot more, and he jumps from one favorite thing to another more often. He's more likely to give up on something, or grow bored if it doesn't go out of its way to maintain his interest. This doesn't make my friend a "worse" reader, but I personally wouldn't work to cater to readers like him because that just doesn't make sense for the type of story I'm trying to tell.

I'm sure there are many other "types" of readers out there you can conceive of. So perhaps the best way to answer your question is to think about what kind of story you want to tell- then what kind of reader would most likely enjoy this kind of story- and finally, cater to that. If you're basically the type of reader you want to attract, because you're writing a story you would want to read- consider your own reading habits. What makes you want to read a story? What turns you off a story or makes you grow bored of it and give it up? And then use that as your starting point for what to do and what to avoid.

[Oksa]

A lot of people have said this already, but I think it needs to be a little bit of both. As a reader, I want to see the story to actually continuing, meaning that if I get like... one page a month, it's really slow to me. But if the quality is really bad, I can't even get myself to read the comic in the first place.
As an artist ofc I want everything to be perfect, bu theres's always times when you need to just make some things simpler and faster.
So, I say pick your battles. concentrate to make some of the things as best as you can, and make the rest of it faster. It can be characters, backgrounds or coloring. just make sure that it all fits together and your fine oh, and don't stress too much about these things, I think that mostly artists find their way to do things with time.

[indigodrawing]

XKCD is literally stick-figures, and that's one of the most popular webcomics on the internet! This shows that you can get away with very minimalist art... but only if you have some other unique selling point going for you. So if you're planning to skimp on the art then you need to find something else to give your readership to keep them coming back.

Ultimately it's up to you to decide whether it's the art, the story, the characters, the jokes, the drama, etc that's the bit that really matters to your story. There's no hard and fast answer.

[kalrhungus]

webcomic - quantity
printed comic - quality.

because you carefully read a printed book. but a webcomic you read on your phone while waiting for the bus.

[Pandastrophic]

Agreeing with what a lot of people said here with having a balance, although I personally lean sliiiightly more towards quantity. Draw faster, make mistakes faster and learn from those mistakes. It's a good way to improve.

Figure out where you want to cut corners, figure out the parts you want to put more effort into. I don't like perfectionism in webcomics because when you think about it from a reader's pov they spend like 2 seconds on a panels that you spent 2 hours on. As long as your overall art is good then you don't have to worry about perfecting everything. For example, I know I want my comic to be coloured and I really like interesting and cool lighting so I know I'll be putting most of my time and effort into colouring, therefore the lineart is sketchy and the backgrounds aren't detailed, and I'm fine with that because the colours and lighting gives my comic an atmosphere which aids the story.