Some Feedback on my comics I've fixed twice now

[KoreanTacos]

I'm a little concerned as to why I can never seem to get a straight answer for this issue I'm having. I create a series called JODDAS VAPD, it's a slice of life/comedy series. I've completely fixed the comics layout (twice), but I never actually receive feedback about the comic itself. I'm wondering if the art is bad, the writing isn't to peoples standards, I'm just looking to improve my work, because I get views, but lack any likes or subs. Just asking for some feedback about the actual comics themselves.

[J.Lovelace]

You seem to care about other people's standards a lot. But is the comic up to your own standards? Are you enjoying drawing it yourself?
If both answers are "yes", then all you have to do is keep drawing, and wait for the people that will enjoy it just as much as you do, when you're creating it.

I know this answer may not satisfy you, as you expect results right away. But life gets so much better when you don't have to focus on pleasing the crowd or be obsessed about the numbers/opinions
.

[KoreanTacos]

Naw, it's completely fine, I've been drawing for four years and I have a small following on my wordpress page, so I just get a little concerned when no one has anything to say. I know this is all a patience game, but I guess I'm glad there's nothing directly wrong with my strips themselves. I've already gone through two nights of heavy editing already so it's a relief to know I don't have to re-make my strips yet again. I think my current subs are getting tired of me constantly changing things around on my page.

Thank you again for taking the time to read my work and give me feedback.

[AliceHoffmannArt]

I will give honest feedback.

The reason why you have a lot of views and relatively low sub count might be the art.
You can for example improve anatomy (especially hands and body poses), backgrounds (at the moment it's often simple or just a color fill), line quality (work towards smoother lines and apply line-weight; if you draw with a mouse, consider getting a graphic tablet, drawing lines traditionally or working with vectors) and coloring (adding shadows, using less saturation in most areas).

I recommend to draw many poses from real life or photographs for exercise even if your style is cartoony. Realism is a solid base for any style and the grind is worth the sweet, sweet results.

You don't have to rework your whole comic though just because of these general suggestions.
If one starts reworking a lot, there is the danger of never finishing a project as there is always something that can be improved.

Instead, you can finish the project and leave the currently finished parts the way they are while improving along the way. You will surely have a ton of other story ideas that you'll also want to execute at some point and reworking will lay these off for a more uncertain point in the future.

Here are a few great, free resources for learning drawing techniques and design principles:
https://www.ctrlpaint.com/library/
http://drawabox.com/
https://www.youtube.com/user/Sycra/videos
https://www.youtube.com/user/ProkoTV/videos

If you want to follow my tips, as intense as the work may be, please take the studying at your own pace and most importantly... have fun!

[lukas3]

This may or may not sound weird, but you need some "gayness" in there.

It is believed that there is a strong connection between same sex romance and comic popularity. Tapas seems to favour comics with that regular comics. Doing this will greatly increase your chances of getting staff picked or featured...

Anyways, it's your comic! You don't have to do it if you don't want, but i'm just saying!

Hope I could help!

Dr.Zeus

[KoreanTacos]

Ironically I have a strip coming up that addresses that issue. Thank you though. I do talk about homosexuality in my strips from time to time though as well, but I'm never sure if people can get that I don't have any preference on the subject.

[KoreanTacos]

I'm currently in the process of saving up for a tablet (tired of wasting paper). I always had a feeling that it was the design of my characters that might have been an issue. Thank you for the note, I'm trying to improve on that with my newer strips including shadow effects.

[KoreanTacos]

@CatharsisGaze forgive me for asking, but I only just thought of this as I was working on my newest strip, but what strips does my link send you to? I'm just curious because I'm still mirroring my older strips onto Tapastic and my newer strips won't appear until next week. Because another person mentioned I don't talk about homosexuality, but I don't do that until later comics. I don't know I'm just curious as to which strips are being looked at. I'm still taking note of your feedback, waiting to find a cheap tablet after taxes.

[AliceHoffmannArt]

No problem: The link in the first post goes to episode 83 Cheap Education, seems to be a permanent link of that episode.

[Kayke]

I don't think you should keep going back and editing the old strips, people are generally okay with the style of comics improving as they move forward, so don't worry about fixing the old ones.

I would say that if I stumbled on your strip I'd probably pass because of the art and text being rough looking. It seems like you're maybe having a hard time getting the scanned likes to look smooth? Maybe try scanning at a higher dpi. At the end of this inking tutorial I talk about how I get my lines ready to be colored digitally if you want to give that a try: http://orig04.deviantart.net/1dc4/f/2014/021/3/f/inking_tutorial_by_cup_kayke-d7156ca.jpg

Also consider doing the lettering digitally to make it easier to read.

[KoreanTacos]

@Kaykedrawsthings My newer work I type up because my handwriting is so bad/small, plus when I was starting I didn't like drawing my panels around my drawings. So now I type dialogue using Calibri font (others depending on character/tone). I'm glad I made the right choice to change that a long time ago though. I wish there was a way to inform readers "HEY! I promise it looks better when you scroll down." But I generally like a good chunk of my first season of comics.

[SynergyEclipse]

I like the interactions between the characters. How the characters interact with each other, and deal with experiences are what derive the writing in a slice of life story the most. It was readable when the dialogue was written in, but it's easier to read when typed in.

With the art, you can avoid spots where color was missed by using multiple layers, putting your line art on the top layer, and the colors below it so they won't affect the line art. You can select the areas inside the lines, and then switch to the coloring layer to fill it in. If any areas near the line art are missed in the coloring layer, you can use the brush tool in the coloring layer to manually fill in them in.

[KoreanTacos]

@Kattlanna that's how layers are supposed to work? I'm going to sound stupid, but I never learned how to properly use photoshop. Ironically I've always used pen and paper. Thank you though, glad to hear my characters are somewhat interesting. Thank you for the feed back. I'm going to have to watch some tutorials after I get my newest strips made and uploaded.

[MidZM]

Sadly this does seem to be true in most cases that I've seen, and it's kind of irritating for some who want to make a comic that doesn't revolve around a BL or GL setting...

But as for feedback, I feel like what @CatharsisGaze said in her first reply is quite right, working on character positions, proportions, and art style are things that can draw you into the story it'self, the same can be true of the story line, if you have good art but not an intriguing story/interaction it'll make people bored. When it comes to art I would suggest setting a goal to achieve, my goal when I first started drawing anime style was to make it look as good as Masashi Kishimoto's, I worked up to and surpassed Kishimoto's style and made my own :P.

[blinkingkills]

I can break down a few things for you, I'm an art teacher.

story wise, some of your situations are a little harder to relate to, a slice of life 4 panel comic is usually supposed to invoke the feeling, "lol same" and your stories don't always do that. the ones that do are the most successful comedy wise. https://tapastic.com/episode/567453 i enjoyed this one for example because it gave me that lol same feeling.

For your style of art, because its a bit on the naive side, a more handwriting looking font would match your style, or something rounder. The one you are using looks a bit too mechanical. your talk bubbles could stand to be a bit more shakey too, because that shakeyness in your current lines is a legitimate style, so own it and make it all shaky.probably hand draw your own bubbles and find a font that will work with it.

if you are satisfied with the way you draw, then my advice to you is cohesiveness. I've redlined your drawing below. well i didn't change the drawing just the bubbles

but then again, this is just a suggestion.

[KoreanTacos]

forgive me for asking, but "naive style?" What do you mean by that?

[blinkingkills]

Naïve art

here is the formal definition.

[lukas3]

(post withdrawn by author, will be automatically deleted in 24 hours unless flagged)

[KoreanTacos]

While I appreciate a good majority of the comments I've received on this page, I will have to say this has been the most useless and downright rude one I've gotten. Gay or not it isn't the subject of my series, it's slice of life through the perspective of myself I may only know three gay people in my life, but I don't view them as a minority anyways so why write about it? I don't view homosexuality as a "genre" and honestly it's disrespectful to use it as a means to garner attention. Yes, I don't mind making a joke about it, but I won't exploit them to garner viewership. I get that you're trying to help me, but this comment was much too far and disrespectful to a majority of people including people who are in my subscriptions list.

Thank you anyways for the comment.

[KoreanTacos]

Suggestion ignored! But joking aside at first I was a little pissed, but I kind of get what you were going at. Thank you for taking the time to give me this response, and I apologize for waiting this long to apologize (that and I forgot this entire topic was made after awhile), but I've decided to do what I do best and take it easy and slowly garner my fanbase. I'm sure there's a cattle out there with a third leg I can shoot down. By the way I think your work is quite good