Share your story: How did you get into webcomics?

[jacintawibowo]

Oh wow. You're tough! What software do you use for your comic? How had the transition between hand drawn and 3D been for you? Did you struggle with the art style?

[jacintawibowo]

Neat! I always wondered how fancomics keep their momentum going. I'm not a fan-art motivated to create artwork, I get more hapy feels when I draw original stuff.
How was the transition for you to go from fancomic to original? Was it difficult? Did any of your fans from your old comic follow you into your new projects?

[jacintawibowo]

Wow that's a lot of improvement! The decision to become both a writer and an artist is a pretty intense decision! What made you decide to draw your stories yourself? Did you find any other artists who were willing to collaborate?

[jacintawibowo]

Whoa that's cool! A little project ended up blossoming into becoming a webcomic! What got you interested in telling the stories of these characters? Did you see potential in their characters? Or was it a "for fun" thing?

[jacintawibowo]

That's actually a really smart way to go about it. What you're doing is pretty much lots of editing and an informal "screen test" and gauging for a target audience for your comic, which is an oversight for some people.

[pedro_de_matos]

Thank you very much! =)
At first I asked my girlfriend (a talented and experienced artist) but back then she was flooded with school projects, so it wasn't possible. Then I decided start drawing myself expecting getting some readers, maybe among them, a better artist (easy) willing to collaborate (not so easy).
But I was bitten by the drawing-bug =p

[jacintawibowo]

You're welcome!
haha, aww that's cool! I'm glad you've found a love for drawing =D

[BraveHeartTatsumaki]

Same, maybe mostly because the feel of "I created this and none else" thing xD
It wasn't that difficult actually, the fancomic was slowly getting stuff that you wouldn't actually see in the usual one, but the fancomic helped me in the composition of the story, and since I already was working with original characters, it made things easier.
Actually yes xD they still follow me in my new comic, they became good friends of me and they come to read the comic and they're interesed in more things I do too.

[Jrej]

Before 2012 I had no idea webcomics were a thing.
I met a guy at work who had a plan. Make his own webcomic!
It inspired me to get started. I had always worked on stories but after novels, and short films, I was looking for another way to share it!

Webcomics gives me full control on my story telling.
And the immediate feed back keeps me going!

[jacintawibowo]

Yeah something like that XD
Cool! That makes sense. Glad to hear it wasn't too difficult to switch gears.
That's such a good thing to hear! It's sad when fans don't cross over to original work after fanart, but looks like you were successful in that regard =)

[jacintawibowo]

That's cool! Did you support each other when making webcomics?
Yeah the full control you have on webcomics is both daunting and exciting! It's great having such a personal project.
True!

[Jrej]

My friend actually showed me a lot of his techniques which helped me down the line.
We were discussing how to market our stuff and cheering eachother up.

We didn't do link exchanges or anything like that but it's good to have a friend in real life with who to share this stuff!

[jacintawibowo]

Aaw that's nice! I'd have loved it if I had a webcomic friend in real life to help out. Really cool!

[Mharz]

My background actually leans more on animation. One of my dreams is to be able to finish my own stories and show it to the world. I wanted to have my own animation series. When I got into the industry, I realize that creating your own animation series is absolutely a daunting task. You need huge funds and manpower to be able to create even just 10mins of animation. It's something I can't do on my own (okay maybe I can but it'll take decades but I don't have funds for it). I found out about webcomics through my favorite artist because she creates one as well.

So I decided to shift to webcomics and created my own webcomic series. It takes a long time as well but not as long as animation.

[jacintawibowo]

Mhmm yeah. Interestingly enough the movement from animation to webcomics is a common journey for a lot of creators. A lot of us want a visual means of telling a story, and we usually think animation before comics. As you said, the large funds and tons of manpower that animation desperately needs makes it a very daunting project. Getting your own animated series means a lot of climbing up the social ladder too.
Are there any skills you've learnt from animation that lent itself to webcomics?

[Tindabox]

Well when I was in high school I started reading manga, but I was never really interested in making something like that myself. Eventually, I got into Penny Arcade, Ctrl+Alt Delete, Megatokyo, and a lot of BL webcomics. Webcomics were super convenient to find unlike physical comics. An old friend and I thought it would be a great idea to make our own webcomic. We got a couple of pages out there and it was a really interesting idea, but after some time she just wasn't as motivated to continue the project as I was. So it just sort of died out. About a year ago, I got this great character idea and wrote this entire storyboard for her. It's currently a rough draft and hopefully it'll see the light of day soon. So in the event of taking a break from writing, I took advice from Shia LaBeouf and I started drawing my misadventures in video games. My friends and I thought that they were actually pretty funny. The rest is history and now I have a webcomic completely unrelated to the storyboard for a comic that I've been working a whole year on. I'm just hoping that working on my video game webcomic will help me in the long run with my other projects. My main motivation would have to be the reaction my friends give me when I show them the new ones. They've even started using quotes from my comics when greeting me.

[Mharz]

Lots actually. I was able to build my drawing foundations thru animation. Storyboard in animations is like doing layout in webcomics. The only difference is that in storyboards the panels are consistent in size while comics will always have variations. And since you have to draw every single movement especially in frame by frame or traditional animation, aspects like character poses, proportions and perspective are always exercised. Dialogue scenes helped greatly in practicing facial and body emotions.

The only setback is the lack of detail since animation itself is already hard to do since the movements have to be realistic and just imagine animating a character wit tons of ornaments O_O

[scythe]

One day I just up and decided to more or less turn my back on a reasonably lucrative career managing an online gambling addiction, and Etsy shop and a swathe of royalty-bringing tee designs for the high-flying world of writing and drawing a story at slower than a snails pace, where you're lucky to scrape together a meagre number of likes and comments, and you're thrilled for what scraps you can get. Nothing influenced my decision other than my own masochistic tendencies. I literally never read a webcomic before I came on to Tapastic.

Couldn't be happier though really.

[candycanadianduck]

I started off reading webcomics rather than printed. Reading printed comics was and still is for me a special treat. It's exciting in a whole different way because I'm left to the solitude of my own thoughts and conclusions rather than the thoughts of others posted in a comment section.

[jacintawibowo]

Yeah, printed comics feel wonderfully personal =) it's a very different environment than webcomics.