Should I ever re-do old pages?

[Down_the_Rabbithole]

Disclaimer before I start: my comic is very young. It hasn't crossed the threshold of ten pages yet, so this is a question for the future.

I'm kind of a perfectionist when it comes to my art. I always want to be the best I can be. That being said, I look for critiques and ways to improve moving forward.

I've noticed over the years that my art has taken huge leaps and bounds in improvement and I haven't stopped yet. So when I get, say, 100 pages in, my art style could look very different than it does now. The question there is do I go back and fix some mistakes that past me made or do I keep moving forward?

[AnnaLandin]

The question there is do I go back and fix some mistakes that past me made or do I keep moving forward?

DON'T GO BACK

The final decision is, obviously, yours to make - if you're preparing to print something, and you see a hideous inking error on page three, sure, fix it - but do NOT get stuck in re-drawing earlier pages. It is a terrible tar-pit to get stuck in, and is a really fast way to kill off any enthusiasm you might have for your story.

Because this:

So when I get, say, 100 pages in, my art style could look very different than it does now.

... is going to ge true when you reach page 200 as well. By then, page 100 is going to look very different from your current pages.

That's how artistic development works. We're always learning, we're always changing, we're always going to be drawing slightly differently tomorrow than we are today. And if you keep going back to "fix" the old stuff, you're not going to have time to draw new stuff.

Basically what I'm saying is no. I really don't think you should.

[Kyulein]

To decide whether or not to go back and redo stuff is very difficult. I got stuck on that on a previous comic, too, and lost precious energy for new pages.

What I do now is minor touch-ups, maybe a few corrections if something is REALLY off on a page. But I work with what I have already, instead of starting over.

I don't know if you know her comic, but the creator of Sombulus was in a similar dilemma and wrote an article on it. I personally found it helpful, looking at different angles. maybe it helps you, too: http://webcomicalliance.com/conversations/retcons/

[hushicho]

Don't fall into the trap. I've said it many times: if you're tempted to go back and redo pages, by the time you redo the pages, you'll have developed enough to be tempted to redo the pages again. It's an endless cycle and an endless trap, even if it's not so immediate.

You're wasting time you could be using to do new work, instead of being trapped in the cycle of redoing old work again and again. Learn from it, accept it, make your peace with it...and let it go.

[NanettesClouds]

I think everyone here is right. I have a suggestion/compromise/question thing I guess, though.

One thing that I'm planning to do with my comic is to touch up pages before they're released, seeing as sometimes pages in your backlog can start to look awkward several weeks/months down the line, not so much redoing the page but just adding some last minute polish.
Is this a bad idea too?

[Herofeeder]

its nice to see progress .i thought about changing mine aswell but now that i thnik about it .no famous artist really changes his work that much. Take a look at Garfield and how he looked before
then take a look at him now. he had like 3-4 major changes .but he never re drew his first comics

[shazzbaa]

Anna said it very well!

imo if you ever want to go back, it's good to make sure you have a one-time, tangible reason beyond "my art is better." Like, "I changed this character's design and now it's important to the plot so I need to fix a couple details in older pages that don't match up" or "I want to make colour corrections before I print the book." Those are tangible, one-time reasons -- once you print the book, you no longer have a reason to go back and tweak things again. But anything that essentially boils down to "my art looks better now" is going to be never-ending, so it's almost always Not Worth It.

[Damatris]

I do definitely agree with everyone. Redoing old pages is something that can easily turn into a trap and actually hinder you instead of helping. Think very very carefully if it's worth it.

...That said, I'm a hypocrite in this. xD I'm actually redoing my old pages atm, even if I haven't yet put any of them up yet. Just finished inking the 6th page. I thought about redoing them a long time (like over a year) and weighted whether or not it would be worth the trouble and the huge amount of work it would entail. Especially as I'm still keeping up with my normal once a week update schedule for new ones. But in the end working with the old pages and correcting mistakes (also writing wise, not only art) is making me a lot happier and actually more motivated.

I think the reasons why boil down to two main things:

1. I want to get the series printed. I'm planning on printing the first chapter (26 pages) in late spring/early summer.
   Which isn't possible as it is because my old pages don't meet the printing standards. And there are practically 4 pretty radical art/style changes that would be really jarring in print format. They are actually pretty jarring in webcomic too but that medium is at least something where people expect changes. Changes are traditional grey scale to traditional watercolor to badly done digital to decent looking digital with totally different shading style. Not to mention, old pages have really bad handwriting too.

2. The writing shows how rusty I was and art shows that I had never drawn comics. While I'm not ashamed of the early pages, I'm also not happy with them. I know that they are hindering the whole comic with bad pacing and characters are written a bit wrong. I'm pretty sure I could live with wonky art if the writing was stronger in the start. But yeah, this is more of emotional reason and main incentive is the fact that I want to print it. And I'm also 100% sure that I will never do another re-draw marathon with the series. And I'm actually finishing old pages faster than new ones even while updating normally so I will actually catch up eventually.

Just think really carefully what will be best for you and don't start redoing pages on a whim. Have reasons aside from "my drawings look better now."

[matsuyacreative]

I agree with everyone here, don't go back. I completely understand the impulse though, and am guilty of it myself. I revisited a project I had put down for a few years and saw how drastically different my style had changed. My main justification for redoing those early pages was I felt that they no longer accurately represented my style and my voice as an artist. I ended up going back and redrawing a lot of things.

But then I listened to this podcast with an artist named Jake Parker (he actually started the Inktober trend) and he said something that completely changed my point of view. He said:

"Finished, not perfect."

Basically, it is more important to finish something at this stage in our careers, then for something to be perfect. And that something we think looks perfect now, we will look at in a few years and realize it was only perfect at that moment. And that we have improved so much from that point.

Good luck! It's comforting to hear that other artists have/are going through the same struggles as I am. Great advice everybody!

[Jinral]

The only things I've ever gone back and fixed were minor errors in pages that i wanted to fix, from small easy to fix anatomy errors to messed up text filled speech bubbles that really need to be changed so people can read it better. To go back and re-do entire pages? No i would definitely not do that or you may find yourself wanting to make more changes than you planned.
You may even end up doing what i did, which was completely re-do what i had already, which can take time to do. But the only reason i did was because the plot had changed so much that it would have been for the better to do so.

[Down_the_Rabbithole]

Yeah. I know that feeling.

I know I want to redo some line work from my first few pages considering I have a way of making my lines cleaner.

[NanettesClouds]

Why though? I think the article that @kyulein shared made some very good points about how to decide if you should retcon, and how you should do it. Going back just to make things better sounds like a huge trap from what everyone is saying, I did that once and it led to two complete rewrites of my comic, which sure, yeah it's better now, but in hindsight I think it would have been better to not have restarted twice and instead make new things and get more of my ideas out to the world. My "tweak before posting" policy is more of a compromise with myself to prevent me from wanting to restart every time I have to take a break from working on the comic than it is about fixing the page.

The article talks about having specific goals for your retcons, which should be things like "I want to make this first chapter less confusing." or "I need to update this character design to make it work in the continuity of the rest of the story" like @shazzbaa said.

Cleaning up the linework a little bit more sounds like a huge waste of time TBH, I guarantee that 90% of your readers could care less about your line quality as long as everything makes sense. New readers who would be put off by the line quality can see that your linework in the future is better and they'll put up with it. On top of that, people will appreciate your progression as an artist that much more if they can see where you started from.

[Down_the_Rabbithole]

Good to know. I was getting a little self-conscious about that.

[NanettesClouds]

yeah man don't worry. One thing I try to keep in mind when I get overly critical about my work is this thing I heard in a movie review once.

The critic said something along the lines of "If the story is bad, I'm going to look for all of the other things that are bad even if they're really small in order to further justify my opinion. If the story is good, or at least entertaining, I probably won't notice any of the little mistakes because i'll be too busy enjoying myself"

[Damatris]

The article talks about having specific goals for your retcons, which should be things like "I want to make this first chapter less confusing." or "I need to update this character design to make it work in the continuity of the rest of the story" like @shazzbaa said.

Oh, yes! This is really good advice. Having concrete, tangible reasons for redoing things is a must. If one can't find / pinpoint those it's wasted effort to redo stuff and won't do anything than make you frustrated. A vague dissatisfaction is something everyone faces and vast majority of time it's something that just has to be lived with.

It's kinda ironic that I lived a long time with the mindset of never gonna redo anything considering the reality now. :'D But I guess that after I actually figured out that I do have pretty big things to change and what exactly they are, like a whole scene that's actually in a wrong place, I transcended the vague irritation to a mind set of "Let's do this - as long as it won't affect updates".

[Ambat]

I dunno, one of my favorite comics, Trying Human, is actually going back and redoing old pages to prepare them for print so that they match the current place in the art. I think redrawing pages too early on might be a bad idea, but in the case of Trying Human, the comic's been going for YEARS, and honestly if I were planning to sell prints that far down the line, I definitely wouldn't feel comfortable selling books with art I did 8+ years ago!

I think don't have redrawing pages be in your immediate priority list, but doing so farther down the line for consistency/print I'd argue is a fair thing to do.

[Greg_Dickson]

Normally, I would say to not go back, but in my case, my comic is fairly new, and I started out with my first 5 pages in black and white, then changed to coloured pages. I feel that the black and white style may turn off newcomers before they have a chance to discover what the rest of my comic really looks like, so I'm slowly dipping back into those first pages between my weekly comic pages, just picking at them bit by bit. I find that my intro page looks gorgeous now compared to what I had before, so I think it will provide some reader retention. My main goal is to just get those 5 pages, but I'll eventually just touch up the colours of maybe the next 5 (I'm satisfied with my colouring by Page 10 or 11). I'm not stopping all progress with my main story, but it's just a little side thing to pick at. I see the fear of getting stuck in a loop for longer comics, but I really don't have that much work to do when I really think about it.

[insomniascrawl]

In general, I think not going back is a good idea even though it hurts (I'm also a perfectionist so I understand the pain). You will make artistic progress the more that you draw, and then by the time you finish redrawing, you'll want to redraw agin because you're better again and now what you were proud of a month ago looks like it 'could be better' and you will never be done redrawing and will get caught in a vicious cycle!

However, if you have a finished story and it's going to be published or something or packaged and sold, I think in that case, redrawing isn't a bad idea.

For now I think you should keep moving forward though, don't get caught in the cycle. Aslso I checked out your comic, the art is fine as it is now, the characters have a good sense of motion to them, I like it

[Down_the_Rabbithole]

Aw thanks so much! That degree in animation is actually doing me some good Ha ha!

I'll only re-draw if I ever decide to print.