Share your story: How did you get into webcomics?

[jacintawibowo]

Ooh I'd imagine! I already start feeling rusty if I haven't drawn for a week.
There's certainly a lot more confidence in your lines by the second drawing, and a lot more character too!
Yeah, a buffer's a great way to combat life getting in the way of comics. My buffer's saved me from a laptop in need of repair, a family roadtrip, and a sad period. Definitely know your weaknesses! A lot of success comes from having an attack plan for these things.

[jacintawibowo]

Awesome! Good for your friend!
And that's amazing that you got to meet the creator. Certainly a great motivation : )

[jacintawibowo]

Interesting! Some of us got into drawing comics quite early!

ah Awkward Zombie! That comic was mentioned in my webcomics class :3 What do you suppose made you more convinced with Tapastic over Smackjeeves? Was it a community reason or did it have to do with the performance of your comic?

[jacintawibowo]

Neat! I haven't heard of Scantrad until now! Certainly makes comics more accessible.

[jacintawibowo]

Mhmm yes, I remember meeting a lot of very young artists hoping to one day break into the industry and become manga artists. It's a tough job, probably more than western comic artists. I notice a lot of young artists get intimidated by a manga artist's intense and very heavy work schedule, along with very low pay. What keeps you going, knowing this reality?

Haha, it's a nice discovery isn't it? It really helped me get into comics knowing how accessible the medium was.
For fun or not, practice helps! From what I know, they're definitely still looking up contests to hunt for talent in the manga industry. I believe there's a (international?) Silent Manga Competition every year that people particularly pay attention to. Some of my friends are trying that out, it'd be worth a shot ; D

[jacintawibowo]

Indeed! I was always intimidated with buying printed comics and being disappointed in them. For webcomics, I could read and enjoy or drop a series without spending money. Accessibility helps a lot of us!
Did you have any difficulty with drawing your story out? Have you ever changed your idea from how you had your stories planned in your head? Or do you just stick to how you always imagined it?

[jacintawibowo]

It actually took me a bit to remember the word too XD

That's great! I know a lot of artists who often drop projects from lack of motivation or discovering how intimidating comics are ("I gotta draw backgrounds too?? Whaaat??") and sometimes it's hard for them to pick up comics again from that. Often, as you pointed out, life gets in the way of that too.
Yeah I get where you're coming from :] nothing's truly set in stone, and being a perfectionist about things often hinders the process.

[jacintawibowo]

I see. I notice writers often struggling around art circles, especially in the days of DeviantArt. I'm sure there's a community of writers and book readers out there somewhere, but I'm not at all certain what site or group they're hosted at.
Was the transition between writing and drawing difficult for you?

[jacintawibowo]

Yes! Totally! I love the fact Tapastic is like a shopping list for webcomics. So much easier to go through than making a list of your own of the several different main sites and their update schedule. It's so easy to bump into new comics too!

Fascinating. What made you choose Tapastic over perhaps, getting a main site? Have you heard of Tapastic before your friend mentioned it? What were the disadvantages to pitching to publishers?

I agree! Support goes a long way with personal projects. It's super satisfying getting the story materialized for people to read <3

[fishscribbles]

When I read comics online I'm mostly dependant on how the comic was structured to flow because of screen limitations (this applies to both desktop and mobile). How much I can focus on can be limited by the screen so reading physicals gives me a sort of freedom of reading choice. There is also a desktop comic call To Be Continued that uses the focus limitations of the screen, along with endless scroll, to their advantage by telling a moving story with still panels as you scroll down to the episode's end.
As for LINE Webtoon, I'm not totally into their desktop setup (it's better on mobile) but I keep coming back because I really enjoy the featured content they have to offer.
Fish

[Pandastrophic]

I think pretty much everything about Tapastic is better than smackjeeves, in terms of the layout SJ is very outdated I find it hard to brows comics on it, if your comic isn't BL then it's harder to get noticed, they don't have a very good system of featuring comics; the popular section always remains the same for years (unlike here where it changes everyday), they don't have anything like the staff picks where they feature comics that aren't getting much attention, so your pretty much throwing comics in the void. I used to upload on there a few years ago and the KB restrictions where so annoying, I had resize it so much or upload on imageshack then link to SJ which was annoying to do. I can go on and on but yeah those are some of the things that annoyed me.

[thesisterscomic]

Well, as the writer for the comic I got into webcomics back during the early 2000s when I was doing clerk work at my dad's law firm in a small rural winter-struck town. D&D 3.0 was the order of the day, so browsing the D&D galleries led to me discovering Order of the Stick and that was an interesting ride back in the day. I remember the smell of the room I was in, it was old and the books in it were old; the computer was a few inches above the heater in the room so I had to lean weird or burn my chest. I think from there I spiraled out into other fantasy comics going on at the time; RPG World was quite fulfilling and is one of the stronger self-aware comics I remember reading. I remember Keenspot back when it was something special, and man hearing about all the screwed up stuff that went on there now really does make it seem like I was innocent once.

I didn't think much in terms of comics.

In high school I did read more comics. Donjon, Journey into Mohawk Country, and a lot of the old Conan comics. I was big into Robert E. Howard, and I still stand that he's superior to Lovecraft in terms of writing prowess (and that people like Lovecraft for the wrong reasons and completely ignore Conan/Solomon Kane/Boxer stories...that's another point, I'm rambling.) But comics did not really hold all that much for me. I wrote stage plays, I had one of them put on and it was enjoyed. I wrote stories; one got published and it was a Western. I'd say I did not respect comics as a medium.

And years later, best buddies with an art student who specialized in comics; sort of feeling the same way. There's an issue of crippling minimalism going on in a lot of comics; and then there's people who go head over heels in details and everything blends together. Finding the magic medium is a challenge, and I won't say I've hit it; I'd say it's the thing to strive for and a lot of people don't by my reckoning. Story cohesion and theme often fall by the wayside, and some people let their personal politics color what they can and should create.

The artist and I are working, and it isn't easy; but considering our main work is a multi-person intimate point-of-view work concerning a tried-and-true genre in literature---it just wouldn't work as literature proper. I wouldn't write it that way. Structurally it wouldn't work. We've branched out into dumber things, or applying formats we appreciated when we were starting out. But I've been told by numerous people in the field that if I want respect, I ought to go back to writing short stories.

It isn't hard to keep motivated though. I have a production bible; the people who read my work seem to enjoy it, and frankly I appreciate how the story is being told. My words and how the artist decides to portray them changes up the narrative a bit. Erin was supposed to be a bit less human as a character, somehow she's come across as a bit more scrappy and cute. Scott was supposed to come across as more ambiguous to his purposes and a bit more dreary as a human being; so it was also nice to see him come across more as "cool gay math dad." Conrad's character changed a lot, to the point that while originally he was written to obviously hint at his purposes; now he's sort of basking in it.

I appreciate those things. I'm just the writer, the artist is the director and the actor. And it goes into interesting places.

Maybe I sound a little burnt out and a little jaded. I'm one of those guys with a backlog of half-finished products, things we know will never see the light of day but we could whip out in a second if someone wanted to buy them or see them. And it's the lag that kills. I'll produce a full hundred pages of script content and research, artist will do a dozen pages; and then we'll see it isn't panning out. It takes time; for both of us, and by no means I'm saying I put in more time than him (honestly at the end of the day I'd say he works more in the long term on a project); but it can burn you out quick.

Still, as far as motivation goes I've found that research gets me going. Kind of wish we were further ahead in the Sisters. Researched hard core "this is what they were scared of in the 80s" Satanism for like six months, and aside from the nightmares we haven't really benefited from it yet.

[joannekwan]

Oh yes, my reading list here has grown to 168 series, haha.

I chose Tap because they make it super easy to upload and I don't have to worry about maintaining a site. One of my series originally began on tumblr, and it's still there but it's gotten way more followers here. I was fairly new to the webcomic scene so I never really heard about webcomic sites, except for inkblazers but we know what happened to that. And I never actually submitted to publishers because I didn't have anything to submit, haha. I like the immediate feedback for webcomics so it prompted me to actually start a project and perhaps one day when I have it complete I will look into publishers again. But for now self publishing is the best option for me.

[Dranif]

Pre-webcomic creating days:

People always told me I had a huge imagination, especially after seeing quick doodles I made and or stories of events that took place in my imagination. Thus, I was inspired to make a few traditional comics. (which I no longer have, as they were donated to a middle school's library as a gift) Despite a lot of people bullying me back then because I was the only boy in that school who hated hunting, a lot of people actually liked my stories.

What brought me into the webcomic creating scene:

One day last year, I was browsing the internet for cute pictures of chibis to cheer me up as I was depressed.
I came across mmidori31's Chibi Reiko comics on DeviantArt, which through that I found Tapastic. Months and months of debating on whether or not I should actually create an account here passed, And during that time, I was occasionally practicing drawing my style. When I finally did, I still wasn't sure about posting my own comics yet, due to fear of rejection, but I still did anyways around the 28th of August. Multiple rough times and anxiety attacks later, and from the uncertainty of if I should continue Randomness of Chibi Wognif, I started anew after a 3 week's vacation at my sister's house last late July/early August and created Wognified. And here I am today.

[ikushina]

Yes, I'm aware of how hard the indutry is, but I still wanted to live my dream xD I read various of other manga artists stories and got inspired by that- But I also have a plan b and c, so i'm not gonna get total butthurt if my mangaka dream never comes true. But you can give it at chance anyways x)

Yup, I've heard of that one. I have considered entering it one day x) there was also a international shonen jump competition kfjdgngk. I was so busy at the time, so I wasn't able to finish my story D:

[AnnaLandin]

@jacintawibowo <3 My mom is the best!

Was that high-school assignment like a Personal Project of sorts?

Yes! In the last year of high school (or rather, the Swedish equivalent; gymnasium), all of the seniors had to pick one big project that would run through the last term - as a sort of separate course - and the subject had to be at least somewhat related to our chosen focus-subject (in my case; visual arts). We had regular one-on-one meetings with an assigned teacher, to make sure we actually did the work - part of the project was to write a project-diary and do a paper on the whole thing at the end of it.

How did your art-focused high school work exactly? (I'm fascinated because often art is not very emphasized at school!)

Swedish schools work in such a way that grades 1-9 (ages 7-15) all have the same kind of content, no matter what school you're at. Math, science, languages (Swedish and English mandatory, an optional 3rd language - I picked German, have forgotten most of it, and am now teaching myself French instead), history, etc., etc. - the basic stuff you need to know. We have art classes there, too, but not a lot of them, and not very emphasised.

Then, aged 15, we leave middle school and move on to our equivalent of high-school - called "gymnasium". There, we are expected to choose a major. There's social studies-majors (courses focused on languages, or economics, or politics, etc.), there are science majors, technology majors, electrical engineering or construction majors, restaurant-focused majors, healthcare/childcare-focused majors, etc. - and, of course, art majors. The art students were all in the same class, but were split up across - in my school's case - three different focuses; music, dance and visual arts. Some gymnasiums have theatre-majors as well, but ours didn't.

Then, we spent three years studying both the required core subjects - Swedish, English, math, history, social studies, science, etc., - as well as devoting several hours a week to our chosen majors. The visual arts students got courses painting, drawing, sculpture (mostly in clay, but we did some stuff in wood as well), photography, and film (both watching the work of others and producing our own) - and all art-majors, regardless of focus, got art-history courses.

A Swedish gymnasium major is nowhere NEAR as specialised as a college/university major; they're more there to prepare us for college classes, and to give us a good all-round education in our chosen subjects. Thus, I am able to handle various different painting mediums (watercolour, acrylics, oil, pencils, tempera, etc.,), I can photograph and - in a pinch - even work in a dark room (though I didn't do much of that; I have TERRIBLE night-vision, which means I am nearly blind when inside a dark room), and I got some practise both recording and editing film.

It was nice! I remember spending most of those three years with paintbrushes stuck behind my ears for safekeeping, and coming home every day smelling faintly of paint.

I then moved on from there to a college-major in Comics and Visual Storytelling!

We also TOTALLY DID Christmas comics every year for 4 years! They were about our original cast of wacky Victorians up to weird stuff every Christmas. Excellent way of doing one shots and practicing!

Oooh, nice! I change subjects and casts every year, just for the sake of variety! My first one was less of a comic and more of illustrated prose - it was about a girl who, stuck in the middle of an unusually harsh winter, gets sent on a quest to find out why that is, and to fix it if she can. The second one was about a woman journeying across a wintry sea to return home - and this year's effort will, believe it or not, involve camels. XD

[getsuart]

Scantrad saved my teenager life, when I wanted to read manga which weren't translated and on stores!
(now I can read some of them as books, it's perfect)

After this, I discovered websites like SmackJeeves... which is not really, really alive now, and it was very cool! Lots of amazing stories to read

[whydocowsfall]

Well, I first started with Homestuck when I was probably about 13/14? Before then I'd never heard of anything like it! While reading it every now and then adverts would pop up for what looked like similar things, but I wasn't really interested because Homestuck was SUCH an effort to keep up with that I just didn't feel I could cope with anything else. Then sometime last year someone I followed on tumblr was reading a comic called Cucumber Quest (which is an EXCELLENT webcomic) and they seemed to love it so much that I decided to check it out. I'm pretty glad I did because I ended up adoring it and it made me realise that webcomics weren't all sprawling crazy massive things like Homestuck. I started actually looking at the adverts for other webcomics that popped up and found a few more through tumblr. But it was most Cucumber Quest that made me feel like I just had to make my own! So I decided to take the story idea I'd been thinking about for a while and start to make it into a webcomic. I started off by posting on tumblr, but when I was telling a friend about it she recommended me to Tapastic. Tapastic has helped me so so much and introduced me to so many other comics and artists, and I'm so happy I was told about it! <3

[insomniascrawl]

Haha, yes that community of readers and writers are hard to find. I find people are a little more willing to read a comic than a book, or at least from my experience. I don't blame them though, seeing all of the words on a page can be daunting, especially when it's a bit more difficult to skim over and get a feel for the characters and environment like you can do with comics.

I still find writing for comics a bit strange, I think I'm still trying to figure it all out, but I'm getting there. I put a lot of detail in my writing to try and make the reader feel as engaged as possible without being overly wordy, but in a comic, writing the description is unnecessary when it can just be drawn in. I think I'm still trying to get used to not having to write in the same amount of detail I suppose (if that makes sense)

[jessiepolfliet]

It has changed a great deal from when I first started it. The main character has changed the least, but the other characters, designs, the world the villains, everything has come out different than I had planned. When I read more on the internet I realized what was concerned good an bad in the storytelling, characters etc. I always did sort of my own thing but my original plans were everything but original. It was cliché and done a 1000000 times before.

I didn't have that much of a problem with buying printed comics. Only thing is here in Holland they aren't the most populair thing. For a comic book store that sells Marvel or DC I have to make a car drive of 2 hours. And even when I managed to find a comic they are twice the normal price in the US.

Btw, do you have a comic? I always love to read new things.