STYLE vs UPDATE frequency

[charliepeppersoap]

According to modern medias such as animation and webcomicry, a drawing style can be as simple as Adventure Time or as complex as the Marvel and DC giants and see the same amount of success, so long as there is style cohesion. Homestuck is a good example of cohesion and story over realistic execution, highly stylised but with such a rapid update schedule (at the start of it, at least) that fans could count on consistency and extra quality whenever that consistency was interrupted.

On the other hand, masterpieces like The Meek and Sfeer Theory, provide updates few and far between, but with such arresting detail and compelling story to carry their fans and rack up the recommendations.

My first and personal favorite webcomic to read, Friendly Hostility, was a sharpie-scribble mess with very simple waist-up framing, but its story was so dark and wacky and new, and its large backlog of content saved it from early dismissal.

So what are you focusing on, for your comic/s? Detail and realism and complicated frame perspectives, or simpler style and easy color pallet for faster updates?

I still struggle with style coherency, as some pages require more emotion or detail than others, but have promised myself to scale back the grandstanding in favor of a quicker update schedule, hoping to amass a greater body of content so as to actively engage a viewership.

I've also resolved to create a series of short comic stories, instead of one large epic: does a 'finished' label pique your interest more, or do you like to hang along for the ride?

[LCT_m_a_d]

I definitely release updates slower for the sake of delivering my best quality. For me the comic is more about releasing something that's beautiful than it is about meeting thresholds and buffers. Not that those things are bad, but I don't need a second job.

I think in the modern trend of productivity and life hacks more updates are is the crave. It does have it's place depending on your goals.

[shazzbaa]

Runewriters, my fantasy comic, definitely has a focus on making the art look the way I want it to over quick updates. I do my best to stick to a weekly schedule, and not every page can be perfect; but the style I chose to put RW in definitely means it'd be tough/nigh-impossible to make pages any faster. For me, it's worth it -- extra care adds more detail and atmosphere to the world, and this is a story where I feel like that matters and adds something to how the whole thing feels!

Meanwhile, my old journal comic Today Nothing Happened prioritised update speed over style -- some folks asked why I never coloured it, and the truth is that it'd take time without adding much. TNH focuses on timing and facial expressions for its jokes, which doesn't really benefit from pages being coloured in. It was also a pretty light-hearted and silly comic, that wouldn't feel substantial enough to be worth following if you didn't get them multiple times a week.

So I'd say it depends on the comic! Different stories benefit from different priorities.

[joe_galindez]

Do you have any webcomics? Google is no help today.

[IdiotWithPencil]

since I have a unbalance between my draftsmanship and painting prowess, my style for the moment is trying to use zero colours and focus more on values and tones, plus my draftsmanship and digital inking abilities which I am currently expanding. this also gives me a bit of speed since I don't have to colour/shade as much and use more hatching to give form, so I can update my comic once a week and still give out a,hopefully,good product/comic for my readers to enjoy plus I can make 4-5 pages in 2 weeks if I got my script done and chequed, which makes the update schedule perfect .

also the thing with, most not all , long waiting updating comics is mostly cause the artist or author, doesn't have an efficient comic making process, what do I mean? well the style might have something to do with it or maybe it's cause they don't have a script so they make it on the fly, they create the panels from scratch instead of having a template(seriously helps with time I tell ya) or they don't have a colour pallet image and need to grab colours from other pages which they need to find, or the lighting is different so a new colour pallet is needed and they make it from scratch and then lose it, this all can amounts to a great piece but it takes too much time so they rarely update it. though if the art is amazing most people don't really care how long you take =P

[keii4ii]

So I recently drew this picture of one of the characters from my comic.

However, in the actual comic, he's drawn like this:

Obviously the first picture looks much better, but even with the simplified style, I run into problems of people forgetting earlier story bits because it's taking me too long to draw the comic. I think the style I use for the comic is a good compromise, a sweet spot if you will.

[69Michi]

There comes a point where you just cannot afford to make every single panel of your comic a master piece. It is not a single piece of illustration, it's a repetitive process of showing characters doing activity and the transition between that. While I value quality over quantity, there is still a dip in quality when you look at my illustration vs my comic panel. I can spend an entire day on a single piece of illustration, but there is no way I'm going to spend an entire day on 1 single panel. How long would that take for me to update my comic? By the time I update the next page, half of my readers would probably already forget what happened in the last update.

[charliepeppersoap]

i juuuust updated my forum profile to provide comic links. if you're on mobile, might have to hit that expand button to see them.

one is planned to have a simple line style, minimal color but realistic anatomy and drama-themed pacing (so, atmospheric panels where nothing happens, just like camera shots in a sad movie)

the second is just fun and fluff, painted-in sketches with lots of action.

they will both take the same amount of time to make, i wager, because the focus will be shifted to color and stylisation in the second ("cabbage") which is on par with careful realistic layout and digital processing for the first ("epilogue"). basically i just like what draws the eyeball, whether it's an anatomy and perspective spread to learn from (achievable with sketches and hand written) or absorbing backgrounds rich with vibrant color and detail (my weakness is HiNaBN-esque colors, neon on black yaaaas)

[gpyrus]

I've started my webcomic with the intention of keeping it simple with rapid updates that would allow the story to unfold in an equivalent way. As I progressed through making pages though, I have found an overwhelming and deeper interest into elaborating on my drawing style. The obvious result being that it requires me to work harder on every single page. I also see a crying lack of consistency in quality for a short sample of 50 pages. Every new page that gets finished, I think to myself that I should start over with my current level. I don't know when it's going to change, I might be doomed.

I'm probably just overly critical of myself, but I am of others as well so it's only fair. I'm also taking advantage of the luxury of being able to work at my own pace (it's not like it's commission work or under a publishing contract). I hope to live a long life and I always look forward to what I'm going to be able to do next year.

[charliepeppersoap]

aaaa, i know this pain well, and part of the reason i started this thread! see, you can always finish your story to end the snowballing misery, dial back some of the detail, or save those epic art urges for really important scenes / splash pages.

my style can go eclectic depending on tone and mood of the scene, so i at least try to attach a purpose of communication to this method, like lighthearted conversational scenes can go simple and expressive, but tense or dramatic shots will have loads of background detail and realised anatomy n whatnot. it's a balancing act, between doing your best and not burning yourself out.

[LordVincent]

One thing to consider is that while high detail levels may be lovely and well suited for intense important scenes and (as shown earlier in this thread) illustrations, it is not exactly optimal for many long running series with high focus on story.

Sure, there are successful comics out there that have it. Gorgeous art and all, I know of a few and they're some of my favorite art of all time. But I never read the comics in question. And looking at the comments sections, it seems that the same goes for an unusual amount of other people getting involved with the comics in question.

Reason? The art gives so many impressions that words and story have no place to take. When some readers try to focus on the story, they get fatigued.

So this is not only a question of update rate, but also having a balance that works to engage the reader in the way that you want.

This is not a criticism against comics that choose to go for very detailed art btw, in some cases it's preferrable and that's a decision that is up to each artist to make. I just figured I would add another piece to this discussion since I think one thing keeping many people from a "simpler" artstyle and faster update rate is the idea they've been taught that more detail and more time poured into a thing automatically means better. Fact is, more time poured into something is only a positive thing when said time is used doing the thing that is right for the project in question.

Personally I believe in learning to work fast and well. Working fast is a skill, not because it's fast, but because creating an appealing image at a fast rate takes skill. What an "appealing image" is differs depending on who you ask. I aim to make art that is at a level that I myself would like to read, at a speed that will pay my bills and allow me to tell as many stories as possible. Finding the speed and style that is right for you is a matter of considering what you want with your project, how much time you can realistically spend on it and what kind of art you yourself would like to see. Try to find the middle ground that appeases each of these factors as well as you can.

[IdiotWithPencil]

theirs this piece in the book understanding comics by Scott Mccloud

where he shows an artist and writers both wanting to make a great comic book, but the artist thinks he needs to draw like a master be as good as Leonard or Rembrandt to convey the message of the writing, while the writer thinks she has to write like a scholar and be a master at describing the scene with all the best words possible for the artist to not get lost, this makes them end up separated since, on the writers side she has beautiful narration and descriptions that take away from the art and at the artist side the art is so emotional, impactful and beautiful that it takes away from the dialog and story.

just like LV said

beautiful,emotional and descriptive art is great but it exist in service of the story,
and the expressive and emotional narration in writing is perfect for a book but in a comic you need to make it so it doesn't take away from the art or the story.

they are both tools to convey the story and should be treated as such one can absolutely overshadow the other but it shouldn't overshadow the story or the message that it wishes to convey

speed in web-comics is the new and third aspect that Scott couldn't explain (since they weren't a thing back then) in web-comics your consuming a page at a time and we need to make sure that the reader doesn't have to reread our comics(loading times are horrible unless you compress the page for it to be like only 2 mb =/) just cause we take to much time making our comic, this makes the reader leave our comics and wait until we get more pages, or worst until we finish it, and then they forget us which is the death sentence for web comics XC

we all need to find a balance, personal balance for our comic, between these three aspects if we ever want to make a, relatively, successful web-comic.

[UbePie]

I actually work in two styles. There is my comic style which is simplfied and a bit cartonny or animeish. And then there is my "studio style" which is what i draw when i am at school or i have a lot of time or i am doing a painting.

Comics is alot of work and I couldn't imagine having to draw every panel in my "studio style." That would take forever and i would update like once a month if i did, lol.

To me story is more important. I can forgive simple/plain art if the story is amazing. However if your story os boring i wont stick around for just the art.

[dawgofdawgness]

My art style is pretty simple and the color palette's even simpler. I just tried to make my pages as simple to make and pleasing to the eye as possible. What I'm trying to improve on is the lineart so that my art doesn't have to rely on color.

[JeanGuillet]

I've developed a bit of a strange approach as I've gotten better over the years. Since I keep my comic production process highly organized, I can easily update the art in my comic to my current level of skill. So, as I make a breakthrough, and it's turning into a once a year thing on average, I'll go through MY ENTIRE BACKLOG and update it. So no, I don't have consistency right now, but I'm going to have it at some point in the future and I can see that point approaching fast. Just work it in and keep a consistent update schedule, and you can have it both ways. for example, here's a art comparison i posted on patreon it's an iterative process. have your cake and eat it too!

[charliepeppersoap]

aaa, see, this is the exact opposite of what i would do for a panel that expresses such quick information without much emotion- i mean yes you have improved at coloring and a bit at anatomy, but this scene is way too generic to require all that realistic shade and coloring! this looks like an example of what not to do for every panel, unless you've resources and time to spare (i have a dayjob! cryin over here!)

maybe pick a different aspect to improve, now that you have color and lighting down? the thing with visual media is that the human brain can process a lot really fast, so you've rendered with detail and time what took me half a second to absorb and i'd be ready to move on after reading the dialogue, devouring a whole page as easily as fire would devour a tissue napkin or a silk scarf just as easily.

don't paint a silk handkerchief if a tissue will do.

[akemikae]

For the most part, my main comic is about consistency, since it's in essence, a practice comic. Plus the story is intended to be very long, and slow paced, so I feel the need to update more, to move the story along. (So people don't wait for a month at a time to read a few extra lines of dialogue, and that's it.) My style has been heavily increasing as I go, and the most recent pages compared to the beginning are much higher quality, simply from practice.

I have a second series now, and it's going to have a lot slower updates, and focus on quality. It's a passion project with a friend, and we want to have it be as high quality as we can manage at the time. So it's also a form of practice, really. It's also planned out to be shorter to begin with. Also, since it's a collaboration, certain parts will be easier to have higher quality, since we're only working on bits we're strong on. (I do the characters, she does backgrounds...etc.)

[Pandastrophic]

I'd rather go for something in the middle? I wanted to have a consistently good, fully colored comic while also updating (almost) weekly and that's what I aimed to do when I experimented a lot before starting the comic, i wanted to have a colouring style I can actually shade and colour quickly, so my lineart isn't clean, I don't do flats I just paint everything together and I guess it's working since I have a lot of fun working on my comic and my readers seem to like that style.

It really depends on what you want to focus on vs what you can afford to rush, for me I like to put more importance on the lighting and emotions in a panel way more than background, I usually rush making backgrounds and use them several times in the same setting if I can but I do my best when it comes to lighting and shading because that's what's carrying the emotion in the story (idk if I'm making sense lol) but i do know that if I want to make my comic in a timely manner I have to assess where I can take short cuts and where I can work hard when it comes to the art and make sure the decisions I make still work in favor of the comic.

(small example)

[XzynderVexymous]

Simpler style. First, because I’m not a good artist yet and second, better update frequency is a lot more important that art style. I know amazing artist and their comics but they don’t update as frequently and/or they don’t advertise.

Tapastic really cares about update frequency.

[NaamanBlanco]

I actually try to approach my comic as a traditional syndicated artist would with my daily's being simpler and my Sunday's being more detailed. I'm even considering "Splash Pages" on holidays. I've wondered for a while if I should post less to preserve content and not burn the reader out. What do you guys think? My comic is called "Dyeing Liberty". It would probably make more sense to ask my subs, right?