Share your story: How did you get into webcomics?

[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.

[jordanthelass]

I think that Whose World is the result of failed attempts at trying to draw a gag-a-day strip since high school. Fail until you get it right, I guess? Haha.

I started reading things like Megatokyo and Penny-Arcade way back when. I think in .. 2002 - 2003? Somewhere around there. At first, I thought they were printed comics that made their way onto the internet, but it turned out they weren't in newspapers, etc. (Why would they be, anyway?)

One day I thought "Hey, I love drawing and telling jokes. Why can't I do that?"

So I started drawing silly strips and characters. All failed attempts to make people laugh. I was missing something, though. Character development! All of my characters didn't have personalities then, so I stopped drawing and took the time to study all these webcomics as much as I possibly could to understand how the characters change over time, what makes each one different, etc.

I've been studying "Peanuts" for a few months now (about the same time I started Whose World), and it's helped out a TON. My dad told me that it's always a great idea to learn from the best. (Even though Peanuts was a printed comic).

It's been so much fun. Once I my characters had solid personalities, the comics just seem to write themselves. ^_^

[jacintawibowo]

Neat! I used to draw gag comics in high school too.
It's interesting how you mentioned character development for gag comics. I never really saw gag comics that way.

I agree that strong personalities really do help a gag comic with a recurring cast. Plus, it makes lots of fun interactions.
Yeah! You can totally study from print comics. A lot of my inspirations are from print comics both indie and mainstream DC/Marvel stuff =)

[UrMom]

Well, it's kind of a weird story?

I started experimenting with the idea of making comics in my early years of highschool, before I even knew webcomics existed, and just had my mangos to read. By the time I found out about webcomics I was almost out of school, and was brainwashed by yaoi thanks to a friend, so I read a lot of really bad "gay" webcomics... in Smackjeeves. Although oddly enough, when I attempted my first comic it was a story about demi-gods getting their energy...powers together to create a world in their image, which would have ended with them all being exiled to said world as deformed monsters for going against the rules of the god above them (this story would have been the introduction to other stories based in that world, taking place during different time periods, and acknowledged eachother since most of them would have major events that would affect eachother).
It was the least gay thing ever, and my fanatic brain couldn't deal with it, so I lost interest quickly and dropped it. A couple years later I wanted to try again, but I felt that I needed improvement before attempting an "epic" fantasy sort of thing, so I went with my least favorite genre to work with; slice of life. My project was going to be a simple bl comic about a religious kid falling for a down on his luck guy in his school, getting disowned and kicked out of his home for being gay, and ending off with the two guys living together in the poor kids apartment; coming together to make things work (as far as money, and food, and all that super fun stuff).
Since I'm not a fan of 100% happy endings, it was going to end on a more... humble? note, sorta bittersweet.
But when I put it on paper it turned into 'WYIHN!', a comic about a religious extremist having a bad encounter with a guy who beat him up, eventually maturing and learning to be more accepting and open-minded; leaving off with the religious kid trying to figure out his own beliefs. Totally the least gay thing ever, but there's a couple butt shots. While that is still ongoing, I now have the side project 'Void: A Guide to a Healthy Relationship', which involves characters from that project, and while it has more lgbt+/mogai themes; it's still pretty platonic.

So I got into comics because I like(d) bl and wanted to be a part of that, but totally failed so I just make these weird, not necessarily engaging stories with no visible goals... I blame my asexual-aromanticism. Lmao! When it comes to webcomics I love how free range they are, you can make ANYTHING you want in any way you want, and not have to worry about meeting a certain standard to have it seen by the public. They didn't necessarily change the way I thought about comics, but seeing them helped me realize I can contribute, and not have to worry about going through the editorial and publishing process. I went for comics because I have a lot of ideas I want to get out of my system, and slowly seeing the things in my head being translated into something physical is the coolest thing ever, sure the love of drawing keeps me motivated (and I'll never stop because drawing keeps me alive) but seeing that is super encouraging.

So yeah!... sorry about the text wall.

[mdchristopher]

I started out making geeky graphic designs, all computer-based, mostly one-sheets that referenced fandoms or were full of puns. I designed some t-shirts. Then as my drawing skills improved, I decided to continue in that vein, but with a pen and stylus. Working in a comic shop influenced me to expand to multiple panels and dialog balloons, and I started sharing those comics under the title I, Geek (which I've just started posting on Tapastic). When I got stuck on nerdy gags, I started Ace Adventures, based on my life as a romantic asexual living in Los Angeles.

I've seen so many impressive webcomics, and I doubt my skill will ever match theirs, but I really love this format for storytelling, as I think it works to my strengths. I'm still writing prose, but as tedious and time-consuming as drawing can be, often this feels easier.

[CaptainUfo]

I started my career as an actual professional comic book artis in the early 2000s. I never made it to the big names, I mostly worked for small series, partially due to bad luck, partially because of bad decisions on my part. Then the global economic crisis arrived, basically all the small series I worked for closed, so I found myself doing something else to pay the bills; mostly storyboards, layouts, vector graphics, stuff like that.

In 2013 finally someone offered me a new book to draw and I was the happiest man ever untill I actually started to work. It turns out that if you don't draw comics for so long, you forget stuff even if your job is still somewhat related to drawing things.
To make a long story short, the art I made for that book was a monumental pile of crap. It was kind of a waking call. I decided that I wanted to go back being a full time comic book artist and to reach that goal I had to retrain myself, draw some pages regularly, paid or not; I brought back an old project of mine and made it into a webcomic. Thus, Captain Ufo was born. A year and a half later I finally found a native English speaker who accepted to translate it, so here we are on Tapastic.

[jacintawibowo]

Yeah I like how webcomics don't have any of the expectations that mainstream print comics have to live up to. I always found weirder stories in these circles than in print, along with more diverse art styles and creators. It's super cool that we can contribute to the comics world so easily nowadays too.
Haha, don't be silly, AroAces can totally write and draw romances! Some even draw erotic arts =)

[jacintawibowo]

Ooh I think it's neat when I hear stories of creators who worked in comic stores. They have such a love for the comic craft, I love hearing from them.
Drawing is very time consuming, but writing the story for the drawings to go to makes me stressed!

[jacintawibowo]

Aw cool! I bumped into that webcomic while going through the forums!
I totally agree on the "if you don't draw comics for so long, you forget stuff even if your job is related to drawing things"! Stuff like page layouts and camera shots are totally lost on you. Comics are a different art entirely from illustration or storyboarding.

[monotone_ink]

I was drawing ever since I could hold a pencil.
When I was younger, I used to make these dumb comics with a friend of mine called 'Scaredy Man', a comic about a stick man who was scared of literally everything.

Fast forward a few years to my discovery of manga and anime. I binge read a lot of manga because of how different and unique it was to me, everything from the use of black and white art to story-telling techniques that I didn't see much of before.

From there, I attempted to make multiple (failed) comics, the first of them being a dumb comedy about me and a bunch of friends. I eventually started posting my work on inkblazers (but we all know what happened there).
Over time, those ideas developed, and now I'm currently reworking on my comic Shade. It's a simple story really.

[UrMom]

Lol. Sex is easy, I draw porn too, romance is just impossible though... at least romance that isn't creepy and unnatural. But dang it, what else am I going to use as a scapegoat for my short comings!

Hmm... I'll blame it on my subconscious being sick of love interests being shoehorned in nearly everything media wise, since I do actually hate that. xP

[CaptainUfo]

Exactly! Also, the kind of jobs I had to do teach you all sorts of shady shortcuts to meet a basically impossible deadline. Despite what I thought, that's not a switch you can turn on and off at will. The quality of the work suffers a lot.