Restarting a Webcomic

[ccrrally]

Over the past few weeks I have found it hard to motivate myself to work on Rally. It felt like a chore and I didn't really care for my beginning and thus my art quality plummeted. The beginning was just something put together in order to get to the plot I really wanted to work on, but the beginning became very slow and I found myself disliking it more and more as I tried working on it. I soon found myself hating every aspect of it from the art to the beginning storyline and just decided to delete it.

But this doesn't mean that Rally is over. I have decided to start over and work out a beginning at a much quicker pace that gets to what I would like to write very quickly. I do not know when the new version of Rally will be up as I'm still working out this new beginning. I have a general idea and just have to work out connections to the plot I have already planned.

I was wondering what others' opinions on restarting a webcomic or if anyone else has shared similar issues in the past or currently.

I've got big plans for this, I just have to find my love for Rally and comic making in general again.

[AniStaciaArt]

I'm re-drawing parts of mine, but I've never tried restarting. I think there's a big risk involved with restarting totally. Especially if you're hoping your current fans will be as happy with the re-do as you are. If you don't care about keeping your current readership and want to do it because it makes you happy then please do it! Otherwise you'll just get burnt out again.

[Coati]

Hmm I have one that I decided to drop and restart, so it depends of how your comic is already doing.

[ccrrally]

It honestly wasn't doing to well and really didn't have that great of viewership so I'm not entirely worried about that. Luckily I was only 4 chapters into it. It's actually a little relieving to be able to start fresh. I'm sure I'll be able to get views back thanks to friends and of course the forums. I just want to love my work again and put a smile on at least one person's face every week.

[AniStaciaArt]

Then definitely go for it! You'll be happier making your best work.

[Eightfish]

I think it's a dangerous move. It's all too easy to get stuck in perfectionism and end up restarting and restarting and never even getting to what you wanted to draw in the first place.

And your existing readers probably won't care for the redraw- often creators are too hard on themselves and their comics really aren't as bad as they think, and no matter how good the new art is it'll be tedious to read the same story over again.

I think you're better off putting your energy and enthusiasm into your new pages. Oftentimes, art evolution can be one of the most charming parts of this weird medium.

Take El Goonish Shive for example. It starts off very poorly drawn, with a very immature writing style, but slowly evolved into a well drawn story with intricate plot lines that has a large and devoted fanbase.
Like seriously, go take a look and compare the first comic to the latest. It's an insane amount of improvement.

[seasa]

I was in a similar situation a year ago and decided to reboot my comic. The thing with restarting or rebooting is that it can get tedious and takes time. It took me half a year for approximately 15+ updates before the reboot and most probably another half a year after rebooting just to catch up to the original story. The amount of likes i get per updates is still similarly the same in discover, but I lost a lot of readers (like, reeaally lots) especially in my country's version, and this is disheartening but, at the same time, those who genuinely support you will stay.

Overall it's hard, but I guess I feel pretty satisfied for rebooting. If you're not that far into the story, i personally think you can just go for it.