Share your story: How did you get into webcomics?

[jacintawibowo]

Ah I see Ooh that To Be Continued comic has a really neat style, and very innovative use of the endless scroll :0 Are you familiar with Emily Carroll's comics? Her art flows through the screen beautifully.
Interesting. Each site has its advantages and disadvantages, I'm seeing a general consensus for Tapastic and LINE Webtoon at the moment.

[jacintawibowo]

Mhmm I agree. Smackjeeves layout turned me off especially. I didn't know about the popular section and the poor feature system, though! Those image restrictions don't sound nearly as convenient as Tapastic. I suppose the only thing I saw as an advantage compared to Tapastic was the ability to customize your page with stuff like an archive, character page, etc. Not nearly as important as what Tapastic has to offer, though.

[fishscribbles]

Hadn't heard of her before, but after reading a short of hers, I fell in love with the style.

[Wolven_Sister]

My dad originally got me interested in comics. He had boxes and boxes of comics stashed in the garage, a lot of them were in perfect condition. I can't remember the exact age I read my first comic, but it was prior to 10 years-old. I loved it immediately. I even started implementing stories into my drawings but I didn't understand how to make comics or even that I could make comics. I only read a few of my dad's comics because he was super protective about them, but I was a kid. I had no idea where to find comics or anything.

Several years pass and I wind up in middle school somehow, where I made my first best friend and she introduced me to manga which I loved practically instantly. Her mom would buy us manga, or if I couldn't afford any my friend would let me borrow some of hers. I still love manga to this day, and I only read very few western comics (JTHM, Squee, Fables, HellSpawn.) When I saw my friend making comics my mind exploded, I was in 7th grade when I made my first comic. During that same year we learned about webcomics and started to make our own, called " 3RWT (3 Rednecks & Some White Trash)". It was a collab comic, about the craziness in our lives at the time and some funny stuff happened like we all got our genders switched because someone sat on the TV remote. It's not on the internet anymore, but I still have the pages my friends and I drew.

Well, we all went our separate ways unfortunately. But I was still very much in love with webcomics & manga. I read them (Go-Girly was my fave!), loved the community, and made a couple series that will never see the light of day because of how horribly cliche they are. And I also made stand-alone comic series as well (which again, will never surface). When I got out of high school, I was attending college for Veterinary Assisting and though I love animals, I couldn't stop drawing!!! The urge to draw was painfully prominent. So I made my first, solely created webcomic "Moonlit Dawn: A Mythical Tale" then it got picked up by a publisher so I had to take it down as a webcomic unfortunately. I still make webcomics though, this spring I uploaded my newest series "Between the Realms" and I'm currently doing research to make future webcomic projects because I just love everything about them so damn much! XD

[jacintawibowo]

Whoa, quite the response! I think regardless of being the writer or the artist, getting inspiration in things outside of comics is super important. Reading novels, playing videogames, watching stage shows, movies, etc. It helps to have a big "morgue file" of stories from many different genres and mediums. I liked that a lot in the personal journey you've shared.

The artist and I are working, and it isn't easy

What specific difficulties do you face being an artist-writer team? Do different perspectives and opinions get in your way of understanding each other? How do you overcome these differences?

I think after you talked about some of your inspirations and how you met your art student friend, your response went on a bit of a tangent. I see you have a lot of feelings about literatire and your characters (which I respect!), however I haven't read your comic to understand the context of your explanations. But hey, regardless! You've certainly made a lot of progress. It's healthy to be the kind of writer that has a lot of stories thought up, regardless of those stories being materialized or not.

[Vikiro_Hop]

Wow this is quite a question. Well I'll try to make a long story short by saying the comics sequential art, and sinfest sorta introduced me to a bunch of webcomics. From there it was just me being a fan.

The comic that really made me feel like I could make my own was Whomp. I figured if some weeb trash could make an entertaining and successful webcomic based on self deprecation I could to.

My current comic Self Defeat came about because all my story comics required more art skill or more development then I was able to commit to at the time. I just wanted to put out a comic and get my feet wet. I was pleasantly surprised by the reception and now I'm super jazzed to be making comics.

[jacintawibowo]

I'm not surprised! There's so many good comics on Tapastic.

I don't have to worry about maintaining a site.

That's true!
Hmm inkblazers sounds familiar. Might have discussed it in class. First time that site's been mentioned in this particular discussion!
Cool, happy webcomic-ing then

[jacintawibowo]

Self-inspiration, huh? Fascinating!
It's great that you were able to battle and overcome some fears of rejection with webcomics. Would you say that webcomics made you more confident with sharing your stories? Or is it still a struggle for you?

[jacintawibowo]

That's cool, determination is key! Artist jobs are tough in general, it's good to be ok with having jobs outside of your dream job as a back-up.

Definitely do prepare next time! Those competitions are an excellent way of getting in the spotlight.

[jacintawibowo]

<3 My mom is the best!

Give your mom a high-five next time you see her! Don't have to explain why, just...do it.

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.

Yeah, that's how our Personal Project went in our high-school too. Coolness!

Ah, interesting. I've never heard of the "gymnasiums" concept before! Looks like this school system specializes earlier than we do. I think British school systems do something similar.
That's neat, I wish my school specialized sooner. I probably wouldn't be so traditional media-phobic with some good ol' training from youth :B

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

Ooh what college did you go to, if I may ask? (You don't have to answer if you're not comfortable with answering :B)

this year's effort will, believe it or not, involve camels

I have such high expectations now hnng

[Dranif]

Self-inspiration, huh? Fascinating!
It's great that you were able to battle and overcome some fears of rejection with webcomics. Would you say that webcomics made you more confident with sharing your stories? Or is it still a struggle for you?

It helped a bit, but there are still some stories I find myself not fully capable of sharing just yet. A web manga I've been working on, Legend of John the Parakeet, has been put on hiatus due to me losing faith in myself, and its a web manga adaptation of a novel I wrote during high school. What made me lose faith in it, I have no definite clue other than there still being plot holes, the beginning seems even more rushed, and the anxiety attacks I keep getting definitely don't help matters.

Maybe its because the internet is still unfamiliar terrain for me. Maybe it's because I worry there are people out there who expect storytellers to have an imagination far stronger than mine. Maybe I'm just worrying too much due to stepping up to a different battleground. I'll never know for certain.

[AnnaLandin]

Ooh what college did you go to, if I may ask? (You don't have to answer if you're not comfortable with answering :B)

I went to a college about two and a half hours' travel north of the tiny town in which I grew up - the program doesn't exist any more (or is perhaps on some sort of break, while they figure out changes to the currriculum? idk), but there is an excellent comic-school in Malmö that several of my friends have attended. : ) I'm told it's pretty great, and they're good at helping people connect with the comics-industry as a whole.

[jacintawibowo]

Ooh second time Scantrad is mentioned in this discussion! Wouldn't be surprised if it inspired others too!

Are the comics still active on Smackjeeves? Or is it mostly the popular ones that are still going?

[jacintawibowo]

I hear a lot of crazy things about Homestuck XD I haven't actually read it myself, but I know a lot of people became super invested in it. I suppose Homestuck's introduced webcomics to a lot of people!
OOOH I LOOOOVE CUCUMBER QUEST <3 I've been reading it pretty much since it started, it's amazing where it's going now. Super duper awesome that you got inspired by it. I'd love it if we got more daring all-ages stories like Cucumber Quest.
I love the fact that it got you into looking at adverts for other webcomics. It's amazing how comics can change the way we think!
How did you find posting comics on tumblr to be like? How has Tapastic felt like the better option for you? :]
Also since you mentioned it, I'm gonna ask...who's your favorite Cucumber Quest character? ;D

[whydocowsfall]

Yes! More cucumber quest-style comics would be the best! <3 I think posting on tumblr was alright (and I still keep it up because there are readers on there that don't have tapastic) but it's quite... Lonely? There's no simple comments system and it's a lot harder to get your pages seen! It's so much nicer to use a website like Tapastic where there's a real community and it's easy not only for people to find your own comic, but for you to find other people's! It's just 100x better in every way. d:

As to my favourite Cucumber Quest character... How am I supposed to choose??? 0: I love Cucumber and Almond because I tend to love main characters without fail, and I love Peridot and Cordelia because loveable villains are the BEST. And Carrot is amazing, especially in that bit with Rosemaster. Him and Parfait are... Amazing... I just... ??? I think Nightmare Knight is my favourite though because every time he appears it's like a special treat, and he's so mysterious and interesting. What does he want? What are his motives?? What's he going to do next???

^^ You can probably tell that I have a lot of love for CQ...

[Doubtcent]

It all began when I was looking through different comics on Google+. Yeah, I know, it was stupid, but it lead to me finding Gamercat. I then went to the main site and noticed that the comics were also being published on a site called Tapastic. So I went there and was amazed to find so many quality comics available. It was mindblowing to say in the least.
After reading for a while I made myself a profile. Then, after reading for maybe a month I decided to order a drawing tablet and thought, yeah. I could do this too.
Once my drawing tablet arrived, I immediately started creating. I was hoping for the best and believe me, I sucked. I had no idea of what I was doing, let alone how to make quality comics that made a lick of sense. But I decided to keep going, continuously making them until a formula was formed, a kind of style under myself that no one else seemed to have. It was niche for sure, but I kept going.
Now I'm at my 100th episode, and I can draw stuff. I mean really draw stuff. Before I could draw things on paper, but with digital, I could outdo my own self. So now I'm still going, with lots of ideas and projects in mind. I don't know how long I'll keep doing it, but it gives my life meaning. I almost did nothing of worth before this. Now, I'm obligated to make three comics a week, coloring them, inking them, making people smile, even if its just for a moment.

[michaelson]

[pottedlilgoree]

my experience:
well
it's like...breathing?
you just, do
it's not much of a conscious decision/event for me i think
this one answer is for all questions... reading, making, liking (print or not) - all feel like breathing
as you might guess, nothing changed much about how i think of comics - print or not

for creators:
well...we don't really simply stop breathing even when life gets hard now, do we?

[pottedlilgoree]

this sounds so divine <3

[jacintawibowo]

Oh wow! That's amazing! We can't wait to hear everyone's stories <3 thank you, Tapastic's really improving our forum experience :')