Re-doing/Starting over web comic. What do you think?

[ButterflyEmpress]

I haven't posted my comic yet this is more of gathering info on what people think.

I heard that once you start its best to keep going and your art/story will eventually evolve as the comic goes on and that no one is ever satisfied their first chapter/page.

I also heard that popular stories had multiple drafts of their first chapter and that ugly art can be a turn off.

I did restart once since it originally began with
"Hi, my name is Main Character, and today I'm starting school, exposition, exposition..."

Sometimes I feel like restarting again since the art in chapter 1 of lower quality that chapter 2, but I don't want to get stuck redoing the same pages over and over.

In short, is it better to keep starting over or keep going?

[LCT_m_a_d]

I recently started over my comic due to drastic changes in my artwork and some slight changes in the story. It's really early to tell, but I'd like to think if it helps with consistency it's better to redo. Just as long s you don't get caught in that perpetual perfectionist zone where it's "never quite there"

[randomladyaj]

For me I would and am moving forward. I know I will improve as I move forward and if I keep going back to fix pages then I will probably never finish my comic. I feel that when I am done I will go back and fix anything that doesn't feel or look right. But I think a piece is actually never finished unless you say it is. You can continuously go back to your work and always find something wrong with it.

I know that in novel writing, it's common for there to be multiple drafts but that's after you've completely finished the first draft. I don't know if this is the same for comics. But one thing that might help is to write the story out and do multiple drafts and when you have it to a place that makes sense then translate it into a comic.

If you feel it'll be best to redo your webcomic then go ahead, just try not to fall into a loop of fixing it over and over and over again, nothing gets done that way. Good luck! I hope I've helped in some way.

[shazzbaa]

My rule of thumb is basically that, once you start, you need a reason why going back to redo pages is a one-time thing. "My art is better now" is almost never a one-time thing.

• "I'm just touching up older pages and fixing major errors on old pages before the book goes to print" could be a valid reason to redo old stuff, because the reason you're doing it -- the files getting ready to be printed as a book -- is something that will only happen once.

• "I've completely re-imagined the story and now I feel trapped by my old pages, like I can't tell the story I really want to tell unless I change the beginning" could be a valid reason, because changing the entire story shouldn't happen over and over again -- this is a one-time change. (On the other hand, if you find yourself reworking your story from the ground up constantly, or if you're fixating on tiny things like "there was too much exposition in this one page," that's the sort of thing you can go back to over and over again, so that wouldn't count as a one-time reason).

• I could even see an art reason being valid if it was a big one-time change. Like "I was originally drawing on notebook paper, so I want to redo those strips" is something that, once you've fixed it, you won't have to fix it again.

But a reason like "my art style is completely different now" or "my art is higher quality now" is going to keep happening as you keep drawing. I've been doing webcomics for 9 years, and every few years I can look back and see that my work now is better than the pages I was drawing then. That never stops happening, which means you'll keep feeling that way again and again. There's no way to make "my art is better now" into a one-time change, so I would advise against restarting, and encourage you to just keep making new pages.
Especially considering that the two pages you've linked are honestly not super different, from a reader perspective! As artists, we notice all the nitpicky details, and we see the small changes to our characters that we make along the way, but readers often won't notice those kinds of long-term shifts unless they specifically go looking for them.

[isabelleArne]

I agree with @angelajal91 and @shazzbaa unless you have a very good valid reason other than " my art got better " you shouldn't redo your comic, the best is to finish.
If you want to do better the next time then start a new series. You will always get better. As someone who has redone many pages of comic when I was younger, I realized that it was a total loss of my time to a point that I have 2 unfinished comics ( one is almost 200 pages long ... )
The 2nd one is not finished but I haven't given up on it, and as it is getting a bit old, I am tempted to redo everything, but I am also thinking, is it really worth it ? It doesn't look at all like what I am able to do right now but on the other hand it is some kind of memory of how my art what at this time. it's kind of interesting too.

PS : I highly advise you to watch this video by Jake Parker ( inktober guy ) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZZLzI0CwhkA it is filled with awesome advises on how to take on a project, comic included ( it's 40 minutes but 40 minutes well spent ) and how rewarding is it to finish something.

[Mari]

IMHO rather than restarting completely it's better to keep going, and once you're done redraw the pages you hate the most. This is only if you haven't made drastic changes to the script though. If you're happy with your script it's best to keep going, but if you're unhappy with your script it's better to take off the whole webcomic aspect of it (as in, not immediatelly restart it) and work on the story just as a story until it's appealing to you. I did that with my main, NSE, and ended up having a break for three years before I eventually restarted, and I've been going for seven years now with the current script. I'm not happy with the first 30 or so pages, but I won't restart just for that, and will go on until the end and then redraw the pages that most make me cringe.

[Evan]

Sometimes I feel like restarting again since the art in chapter 1 of lower quality that chapter 2, but I don't want to get stuck redoing the same pages over and over.

You call that lower quality? It's already way better than what I could do, so I don't think you need to restart.

[Devika]

Honestly, the artist will always see more differences than the reader. I'm not saying you haven't improved, you definitely have, but the difference is much less drastic than you fear. It's not jarring. It's an organic, slow-process growth comic artists go through, and as a reader you don't notice it when you're reading page by page, because the difference between pages is so small. Drastic differences between first and last updates don't begin to show up until pretty far into the story.

Also, each new page is going to be slightly better than the previous one. So where do you stop? Once you've "fixed" the first chapter, it'll be on the level of the last chapter, but what about the ones in between? The second will be the "worst" one now. Then you fix that one. Then you have two "better" chapters in the beginning, and then the rest looks "worse". See what I'm getting at? You risk getting stuck in an endless loop! And your story won't progress!

Another thing to keep in mind is that your readers are also focusing on the story, they're not sitting there thinking about every little line on the page. In general, they'll only spend as much time on the page as it takes to read it and get the gist of the images, and then go to the next one to progress the story!

The art of your first chapter is no turn-off in my opinion, so don't worry and keep pushing forward! Your readers will appreciate having more story to read way more than a hundred versions of the first chapter (;

[beccaw15]

I agree with the majority of people here, if there's a good enough reason then go for it but art quality is not really enough- you'll just end up in an endless cycle of redrawing!

Your art will always improve the more you practice and with a webcomic you're producing a steady stream of artwork so it's always going to be improving in quality and that's definitely a good thing

Just keep moving forward with it, I kind of enjoy looking back on my old pages and seeing the improvement, shows me how far I've come.

[KuroTorii]

I also agree with most of whats said here. I think if you redo your comic, there has to be a very strong reason. For example, I restarted my comic early on (I juuust started on chapter 2 when I restarted) because I wanted to switch to colour, and I wanted to completely change the 1st chapter to better compliment the story as a whole. I was a bit worried about doing that, but I have no regrets now that I did it and am very happy with my choice.
Redoing your comic because your art has improved isn't a strong reason, because as its already been said, you will keep improving especially with comic work because you work on it so often. And thats a really great thing, and I personally think its fun to look back and see how much you have improved over time through old pages. If it really bugs you though, personally I'd find time inbetween updates to 'redo' old pages, but in a way that isn't interrupting your current page updates. I think a good time to do this is if your maybe thinking of printing a chapter or something and want to fix up certain pages.

[DMBrigman]

I'm definitely on the keep going train, but I do understand where you are coming from. I recently started posting my work on a different site and that has forced me to look over all my first set of pages, and boy does it make me feel like they are terrible compared to the newer ones! But, I am more interested in putting out new pages than reworking the first few chapters.

As others have said we are often more critical of our work than the readers are. I have lots of nice comments on my first chapters, so I have to learn to just leave it alone. I would say that if you feel like rewriting something before you have drawn it that is a good investment of time, but reworking your first chapters is probably not. Ultimately, if you have people who like what you are doing then just keep moving on