Tell me about your comic journey!

I grew up reading my mom's old comic books when we visited my grandparents in the summer, and would try (and fail) to make my own comic strips. I got into graphic novels and webcomics in high school, and kept up with graphic novels for a while, but my attention got split into about a thousand other directions lol. Luckily those directions included drawing and writing.

I got back into webcomics more recently, and thought, "you know what? At this point I think I could actually do this," and so I'm trying. I'll check out your comic!

Aww, same! I'm happy to say your story looks like it's going to be genuinely interesting, so I look forward to more!

There were a lot of old Archie comics, and the classic super hero options. Also some weird ones like Addams Family, and these illustrated scary story anthologies... I just remember the Monkey's Paw was terrifying in comic book form. I also just really enjoyed the weird old advertisements in them.

I grew up reading newspaper comics. My top two were Peanuts and Calvin and Hobbes, but there was also Garfield, FoxTrot, and The Far Side among others.

In-between high school and college I started reading Sluggy Freelance and Megatokyo and discovered you could publish your own comics on the Internet.

I couldn't get into my college's fine arts program, so I ended up taking some creative writing and literature classes while teaching myself how to draw.

I was very hesitant to start making comics for most of that time afterward, but after I graduated I found myself with a lot of free time while looking for a job, and I decided, "screw it, just get started."

I have two, actually. This is my main comic. I've been remastering old pages and posting then here and at Webtoon - the story picks up from the last page at my website (https://nachosconcarne.com).

My other one is currently on hiatus. I've been working on it for a couple of years now, and I've recently restarted putting it up on Webtoon.

I started drawing comics at the age of 8 and stopped at the age of 16 and I was focusing on music
then. I picked it up again at the age of 40. I woke up pretty destroyed in some punk squat, some skinheads
in the room who were my bandmates, I didn´t really sleep because it was cold and we drank too much
wine the evening before. Nobody knew it was my birthday and I also didn´t tell anyone, then I decided
to change my whole life and started practicing drawing again, every day, sketchbook after sketchbook,
all the theory that I didn´t know about. I´m turning 46 this year and I didn´t miss one day of drawing
since that and I changed everything in my life

Copying this from the previous time this was asked recently

I drew swords and bad DBZ characters when I was very young. I started drawing more comic stuff at around 15 or 16 as I got into anime. I still have most of the comics I made at this age. I went to college for art starting and stopping a bunch of comic ideas. Everything always felt like it would hit a wall and then I would take a break and never get back to it. A bunch of those are still online actually.

After college I took a year off from making comics as I got into the workforce found a longer term girlfriend than I could find in college and got into magic the gathering. I got back to it with another webcomic trying to learn from my mistakes where I would start and stop. I figured a 3 panel jokes comic would be good. It was called 3 Wishes and it was hosted on Smackjeeves. But I found out then that I'm really bad at coming up with a bunch of jokes. I ran out of ideas after 10 or 12 and then started driving it into a big storyline for a couple years that also kind of hit a wall. I also was just having a rough time at the time and was displeased with my place in life and the slow improvement of my art. It kind of was setting in that I wasn't going to make a living in art as I had been applying basically nonstop since I graduated and was just working lower wage jobs.

So I took a break for 3 years. I still would draw here and there. Mostly from pictures or reddit gets drawn just to scratch the itch. Eventually, I felt like my work was getting much better and I started craving the work of a comic so I started brainstorming. I'd been reading a lot and studying better story telling practices so I took a year to worldbuild. Then once I got the rough draft done of the first section I dove in. I kept the first chapter (chapter 0) kind of loose and I worked extra hard on getting feedback and ironing out my problems with art, paneling, inking and storytelling. I reworked the script 3 or 4 times while I was working on the pages.

And a couple years in here we are. Life is hectic so I had to slow my update schedule down but I'm still working hard to get better at the comic both writing and artistically.

Just finished my first volume after a year on Tapas. Learned a lot and discovered other artists.

I don't really remember how I first got into comics. I was drawing them from a young age, sometime in elementary school even, but I didn't become a big "comic reader" until I discovered manga in middle school. I know I had exposure to newspaper comics, would skim some archie collections that they had in the aisle of the grocery store check out line while waiting with my parents, and I owned one sonic comic issue that I really treasured, it covered part of the "Sonic Adventure 1" arc. But otherwise I wasn't big into comics because my understanding was that comics were mostly superhero related (despite all the different types I just listed... kid logic lol) and I wasn't into those. I've always liked drawing though, even from a really young age, and I have stacks of comics from that period in my collection of old drawings.

After I started reading manga in middle school, though, as mentioned already my interest in both reading as well as making comics really skyrocketed. That was the main thing that flipped the switch in my brain to start taking art more "seriously" (i.e. actually studying and practicing things instead of just doodling whatever), take more art classes in school, write more stories, & etc. I made starts to many many fan comics over time that never got too far, but were always fun to try. Around 7th/8th grade I started writing my first "original" story (it was really just a mismash of elements from other series that I liked into a frankenstein monster that didn't resemble any of them too closely) and that was my driving creative focus for... literally 10 years lol I never made it farther than chapter 2 in comic form, but I wrote out like 10 chapters in novel form, and designed and drew characters, and rebooted the comic for years. It wasn't very productive, but it was super fun! Like half of those years (5ish) weren't as productive as the initial ones because I took a pseudo art hiatus during uni, but I would still draw those characters and stuff from time to time.

The final, modern stage of my comic journey began in 2016 as I was starting to get back into art again. A friend encouraged me to try making my comic again so I spent time between 2016 and 2017 (with another gap inbetween) shaking some of the art rust off and beginning 2 new reboots of my series. I had recently discovered Tapas(tic) and had intended to post it here when it was ready, after finishing the first chapter. During the 2nd reboot at the end of 2017, however, I finally realized that I didn't have as much faith in that particular story anymore. After completing a number of pages for chapter 1, I realized that I was happy with the art, but that at the pace that I could finish pages the story pacing was way too slow. It would take ages for the plot to pick up and get going. So at that time I stopped the series again, this time more or less for good, and decided to try writing something new, while also taking advice that I had heard here on these forums to try starting out with a shorter project when you're first getting started. Thus my first completed one-shot, TreasureHUNT!!. was conceived.

Writing and storyboarding began in early 2018. I drew the first several pages in the spring but had a busy summer so I put the project down for a while and didn't resume again until September. I pushed that month to generate a decent amount of backlog and launched in the first week of October! The production went pretty well. I worked hard on the series throughout the fall, building more and more buffer as I went. In the winter I stopped making new pages temporarily to participate in a collaboration comic project here on the forums, as well as commissioned and worked together with a video editor to put together a video trailer for my comic. I started working on new pages again in January or February of 2019, although my buffer had allowed the comic to continue posting uninterrupted during this time. Said buffer quickly ran out, though, so my updates became a little less consistent starting in the spring time. I also got accepted to create a short comic for an anthology project that summer so the series took a temporary hiatus while that was in progress. When all was said and done, I was able to finish my 70 page story at the end of December 2019!

2020 was a recuperation year for me. I had intended to take a short hiatus just to take a break and also work on writing the next season of TreasureHUNT!!, but I was approached for a large bulk commission project, and so that kept me occupied immediately from that point through to February. Right after that lock down in the United States began in March and so I decided to just fully take an art break for a while. It felt better to just indulge some other hobbies and relax while adjusting to the new world state than try to burden myself with a new project, y'know? I also realized with time that I wasn't interested anymore in adding onto TreasureHUNT!! (which was originally written as a standalone piece) and would rather transition to a new project instead.

I started writing in June on another series idea I've had for a few years but ran into some roadblocks with the characterization of the Main character. While trying to work that out, a few friends invited me to start a D&D campaign with them (I've played like once before, years ago, so was interested in giving it another go) and that's how my current project was born! There was one fight in the first play session where something really extreme and kind of silly happened, and so afterwards I decided that I wanted to draw a little skit comic depicting it. Something similarly goofy happened during the 2nd session the following week and so I drew that out as well. Originally I was thinking that maybe I would do some of those just as a side project to the other one that I was writing. But a few months passed and I hadn't made any headway with that other project. Meanwhile I was having a lot of fun drawing these little D&D comics so I decided to "upgrade" them to main project status. Now I've started to make them longer and more detailed to add more context to the skits, since I have more time to work on them now~ This project hasn't launched just yet as I've been building up buffer for it (planning to be a monthly release series) but I'm hoping to finally have it ready to go either at the very end of January or, perhaps more likely, early February at this rate

In any case it's been a fun journey, and especially these last few years that I've been seriously working on projects has been an incredible experience! As for the future... the campaign that the comic is based off has ended recently so I have a good idea of roughly how long this project will run. We've started a new campaign in the same universe so there's the opportunity to continue the story later if I want to but... much like with TH!!, we'll see how I'm feeling after I get through the first part lol. I'm still eager to someday finish writing the other series I was working on last year, and it's still in the back of my mind. Just gotta work out that MC lol! The rest of the plot skeleton is pretty well laid out otherwise.

Hey hello! Thank you so much for this thread, I love the idea

Okay, so I didn't really seriously start drawing until late 2018 because I was getting very interested in the art and animation community i.e. TheOdd1sOut, LetMeExplain Studios, and Jaiden Animations. I started trying to draw children's books on a nifty free program called MediBangPro (which honestly isn't that bad for a free program). I continued to practice and build my craft until I tried animation in 2019. I discovered that animation took a lot of time (being an MBA student and working full time, I do not have much) and it actually wore me out quickly. Please note: This is just me personally, animation can be REALLY fun for some people.

Then on a fateful day around early spring of 2020, I discovered a very lovely channel on YouTube named LavendarTowne and found the classic "Unfamiliar" on tapas. Which is how I discovered this great website! So I decided to study a bit on comic art is done and published a series a few months later. Unfortunately, I learned a hard lesson that sometimes jumping into a series hastily can lead to burnout/ a story that you have no idea how to make you happy. So I shelved that series, took a little break, and developed the series I'm working on now. Let's just say I found a world that I look forward to creating

Wow I babbled on, but I hope you like the story!

Well, my comic journey's a simple one. XD I'm a fanfic writer but someday I want to write my own original novel. For some reason, my small brain thought creating a comic would be easier than actually writing a novel. (Spoiler: it was not). I kind of went in without doing any kind of research and things didn't go to well. In the end I had to reboot my comic because there were just too many problems. Moral of the story, here's to an original novel someday. XD

I've been an avid worldbuilder and writer since I was young, and I always liked the idea of turning the stories from my Dragonfeathers Universe, which I've been creating for more than a decade, into a graphic novel, but I never seriously thought I'd have the time or the artistic chops to make that a reality. I figured I'd write it as illustrated novellas instead, with art scattered throughout.

BUT.

At the start of 2020 I tossed 80% of my teaching load to focus on building a career in illustration instead. Given my now huge focus on improving my artistic abilities, I came to the abrupt realisation that actually, Dragonfeathers could and SHOULD be a graphic novel. I love sequential art, I think very naturally in that way. But Dragonfeathers will be a maaaaaassive, decades-spanning project and very dear to my heart - I didn't want to make it my first foray into comics. I wanted to practice comic creation with a smaller, more bite-sized chuck of that broader universe.

So, I started thinking of a side-story. Something which was a part of Dragonfeathers, but separate to the main story. After months of thinking, the idea for Blue Star Rebellion hit me quite suddenly one weekend, and I scripted about 80% of the first chapter in a DAY. I spent the next few months after that planning things out, making new characters, getting their designs in order... And I've just now started creating the actual comic. The first three pages went live TODAY.

I plan to eventually link the plot of Blue Star Rebellion directly to the plot of Dragonfeathers at some point. I know how it's going to go down, though I can't honestly say when it's going to happen, haha. Decades into the future, at least!

https://tapas.io/series/Blue-Star-Rebellion