The ridiculous standards webtoon has set for creators

[smokesalty]

I do acknowledge that this may be a personal thing, but like there's times when I'm like "oh I'm not making enough" or "This week's update is really short" when in reality when you're working on your own with no pay, having the length and consistent upload schedule that is so prominent with webtoons is really hard! (not to mention very unrealistic)

I was just thinking- isn't it crazy that the norm with webcomics is to have a fully coloured decently sized update a week?? I mean sure, there are a ton of people who do it, but it is a whole lot of work!

I've been seeing a lot originals creators talking about how tight their deadlines are to the point they feel their art is getting worse simply because their goal becomes to get updates out on time. I also feel like a lot of readers are spoiled by this standard webtoon has as well, especially those who don't know the amount of time and effort that goes into a comic.

I just feel like there's this pressure to constantly be productive, even if you're just putting out your comic for free.

I dunno, I just wanted to start a discussion- let me know your thoughts as well

[redfish]

I think the issue is that weekly serialized comics and even manga are worked on a full team of artists. A lot of casual readers may not realize this and honestly don't fully understand the amount of work that goes in.

Webtoon is also notorious for its super demanding audience.

[Kelheor]

It's absolutely crazy. I know a couple of Original creators and they all are dying out there, spending all their salary on assistants, not sleeping, some dropping out of school, etc, etc. Not fun

[NickRowler]

I do agree with this.

Also sort of critical of Webtoon Academy which felt like them telling people what kind of comics they want people to make.

I wish we would also normalize content creators, be them in webcomics or other online media, who take breaks or go on hiatus. Especially if these breaks can help someones physical or mental health. This is why I tend to not be too critical of people who suddenly just disappear from their online presents.

[ShidoDraws]

Yeah, I think it's just the fact that companies in Asia have a tendency to push their workers to overwork. And I'm beginning to think Western countries might be slowly following suit. Especially since social media is such an important part of everyone's lives now.

[MartaTod]

I don't know if there are older webcomic readers here, but I feel like Webtoons and social media have completely messed up the readership with their insane standards for the speed comics "have" to be created at.

10-20 years ago, it was perfectly normal for a free webcomic to update 1 page a week. If we were lucky (and often this meant there was a team working on it) we'd have 2 pages a week (usually Monday and Thursday update). Comic strips and shorter comics sometimes made it 1 strip a day, but usually by that point that comic was a source of income for the artist/team.

That said, I completely agree this new system is bonkers. And I have absolutely no intention to follow it. I don't care if my numbers suffer for it. My health comes first.

[AlydaB]

I agree.

I'm reminded of a completed Webtoon original I read that ran for about three years. The creator had two kids over the course of the comic's run, and due to the stress and demands of meeting the requirements each week, she apparently cut out some arcs of the story and wasn't able to cover everything she'd planned. The ending is (imo) really rushed, and the panels in later episodes are quite literally scribbles, while the panels of earlier episodes are elaborate paintings. If I could screenshot it, I'd share it here.

I can only imagine how heartbreaking it'd be as a creator if, after three years of hard work building up to my story's finale and pouring my sweat and tears into it, the ending came out visibly rushed and sloppy because I simply wasn't allowed the time or energy to make it what I wanted it to be. Especially as it was her passion project for the better part of a decade before becoming an original.

As a reader, I would have preferred to wait as long as needed to get a solid ending and all loose ends tied up in a satisfying way. I'm willing to wait for a story if I know that extra time will be used to make it amazing instead of just "okay" or "good".

I know there's a necessary balance there to strike as a creator, but I tend to approach my own comic the same way. I won't have as many readers, probably won't make money off it, and the story will continue to crawl along at a snail's pace until (maybe) I'm out of school... but I'm doing it by myself and for myself. Hundreds of hours of work for free, on my own time, alone, while trying to maintain work, school, good health, a social life, and other interests to remain a whole person. Knowing it's not a recipe for fame and wild success, I'd like to both take the time to make my story the best it can be, and preferably not kill myself doing it.

[redfish]

It's a lot more difficult when you're a paid creator. There are expectations and deadlines you have to meet. The upsides to being an original is the advertisement, the pay and some support, but from what I've learned from anonymous original webtoon artists.... it's hella stressful and honestly kinda demotivating. It doesn't help Webtoon picks favourites with webtoons and overadvertises their already popular works to keep bringing in the money.

Doing it as a hobby gives you all the time you need and should take all the pressure off as you don't owe anyone anything.

[redfish]

I think it's why I actually would love to be able to have my work under Hivecomics! The way their comics are structure is for page by page updates rather than whole chapters or x number of panels. It's not the same kind of support, but I'm really enamoured by their community.

[Lady_T_Musings]

Color me personal shoot.

As the one-person team on my starship webcomic (which many of us are) that does the writing, editing, storyboarding, cleaning, inking, coloring, dialogue, and word bubbles for my comic there are no failsafe co-pilots that can carry on my work if I get burned out, sick, or you know drop out of existence. That would be a wrap (save for the black box that details my thoughts on the courses my comic should chart, it wouldn't be the same, but it would be something I guess). I have to be the one taking care of myself if I wanna make it to my destination beyond the stars to planet completed comic with an intact vessel bc there are other places I wanna explore in the comic galaxy. Running ragged to get to the first stop will only make me want to give up or realize I literally can't go any further bc I didn't take proper care of myself and my vessel and became permanently damaged (every time I see carpal tunnel and tendonitis I get a cold sweat).

Space metaphor aside, It's just awful to see brilliant creators breaking their backs, losing relationships, and being in poor health to appease folks who drag them for not churning out pages fast enough, or having long enough updates. Then once they do deliver you find out they aren't even getting paid enough to make a living off of, and are rarely given the proper support to be creating at the output levels they have been.

Like I'm glad folks like what's being made, but like go touch some grass and get some chill. :V. We're people too.

[EverydayWonderlander]

Yeah... It seems quite unattainable. There's nothing wrong with prefering scroll format or the ~WT Style~ as a reader, but it's seriously concerning for artists.

I was worried that I was a remnant of the Old Internet when I was shocked and surprised to see huge 20+ panel updates in webcomics. There needs to be a shift in readers, where we see artists as people again. Especially if we're not paying for their work.

[RedLenai]

Well... a lot of people have the bad habit of not pre-making their series and not have a nice amount of chapters ready before posting. No wonder why many cannot keep a steady schedule of posting once a week if you have literally no space to breath especially if you have another work or are studying. Still, I believe in Webtoon they encourage weekly updates, but if you make longer episodes to post bi-weekly or once a month.

I want to mention as well that, at least from some info I've gathered from a few OG Webtoon artists's from Webtoon Spanish is that, once you become an Original you have to redraw your series or at least retouch a few episodes, but the thing is that you actually have a whole year or even more time to work on the series before the re-launch and serialization. So it's not that in all cases are editors and artists being overworked to finish a chapter to update the series each week.

Webtoon has a brand, therefore I understand why they'll tell people what kind of stories they want to see, however this results on most of their content to being pretty vanilla, even very cliché but it's easy to consume, still, you won't find much stuff that would blow your mind. They encourage you to post your series in canvas, and even if it's a popular series with good traffic, nice incomes with the revenue program or whatever, they may contact you but if your story, after analyzing it properly with their team, is not profitable on their standards they'll just tell you to continue working on your story, if you become way more popular than what you already are they may come to contact you again.

[powerplantanimations]

I guess I'll only use Webtoons to just promote merchandise but like... Webtoons isn't as engaging as Tapas and the features just turn me off.

Also I'm contemplating if Webtoons is worth it with these horror stories.

Can I say to readers on Webtoons to just read my material on Tapas? Do I get into trouble? I dunno.

@AlydaB Heads up btw because I know you read over there, I might just stick to Tapas. : /

[bronte448]

Webtoons should realize that people are humans and not computers! Have mercy.

[bulgariansumo]

Oooh, this reminds me of popular advice on another site that I'm on, which is to post a chapter every day for years if you can. To me, that sounds bonkers. You'd either have to break your back writing constantly, or spend years building up a backlog long enough to satiate readers, and in that time, who knows what may happen? Your material might not be fresh anymore. The place you were planning to publish on might no even exist!

With webcomics, it's even worse, because if you're working alone, that means having to draw and write enough material for your weekly update all by yourself. If you have a team, that means you have to be super coordinated and not have any hiccups in your personal lives.

It's inhumane, really.

I just feel like there's this pressure to constantly be productive, even if you're just putting out your comic for free.

It's really messed up that these kinds of sites foster an environment where hobbyists and people who are trying to make a living are competing with each other. On one hand, people who are trying to earn money are going to put waaaaaay more effort into trying to make their work professional and marketable. I don't think it's unfair that those people are more likely to be seen. The problem comes when platforms are so saturated that hobbyists have to be just as competitive in order to be seen at all. Gaining an audience isn't a right or a given, but I'd estimate that a lot of hobbyists post online so that someone else might read their work.

On the flipside, if a hobbyist does manage to get famous, that kind of spits in the faces of the people who need the views/likes/feedback to translate into money to survive.

[Stargazer31]

I only do about 2 pages a week, but I'm the only writer, editor, sketch artist, line artist, layout designer, colour artist, advertising person and merch designer for my comic, so I can't do any more.

[Caro]

I’m lucky in that I was able to do the amount if work required of me on my own when I did do a comic for WT but I do not think its something I would do again and its simply not worth the amount of time, stress, and the potential demand to stretch out something longer than it needs to be.

I definitely prefer the way I earn my living now. Its much looser and my income directly correlates with however much I can hustle and is not a mostly fixed monthly income.

But also the demands from readers being just as high for people who aren’t even getting paid is wild. I remember I just had to stop reading comments completely over there.

[MalonTheArtist]

I agree completely! The amount of time and dedication that goes into creating something you love, is ridiculously down sided and downplayed by the fact that right now you are not making any money. And to make matters worse, it's like you're being demanded or forced to work harder away to produce more.

So I agree that webtoons standards can be ridiculous, especially to a creator who loves what they do and just want their hard work to be noticed. This is why most people give up or just lose interest in their comic. But I think that maybe, just maybe somewhere down the line all the hard work is recognized and you end up completely satisfied with what your doing and feel like it's not all for nothing.

And it's best to not get overwhelmed by the overall process and not get sidetracked by pressure, even though this is very complicated!

[VibrantFox]

i think theres a lot to be said but i really do think it also boils down to capitalism and the way art and comics have been comodified because like someone else said years ago it was normal for indie comics to publish with far less content or less frequently but as its come into the mainstream and big companies are really getting involved the landscape and expectations have changed drastically not to mention the expectations that readers have developed as a consequence of this so even they demand "more content, more often" because some of them are consuming media at a much faster rate than before

thats why its not so much a matter of oversaturation in the comics sphere but rather that publishing landscapes have changed among a lot of other things

and this reply honestly got a lot longer than i had intended but i really have strong opinions about it because as someone who wants to start publishing again i worry for what itd mean for me as well as other creators when we have to deal with things like this and what it means for those who may join in the future. it just really sucks the more you look at it

hell i think on the flip you can see how its sort of bred this near workaholic mindset where if you're not keeping up with the standard you're failing and then pushing that onto each other so yeah I've got beef with regards to all this

[BoomerZ]

I'm going to go in a different direction here. Yes I understand you want your comic to be "art". With that definition comes all the problems with it. The hard work, long hours, under appreciated masses, and the problem of no one caring as much as you do. But remember, your art is just some else's product. Be that some one is a website that publishes it down to the reader that just wants to be entertained. You knew getting into it this was the demands to be popular. Back in the day comic artists gave up a lot to get in the industry, and even after that they drew multiple comics a month. And after all that, we remember a handful of them by name. The big stars like McFarlane, Lee, Liefield... the rest fall off into nothing. That is the way for being an artist. Do the best you can, better than you did yesterday, is all you can hope for. Then hopefully you get an audience and make some money. And BLW, our industry is no different than singers, bands, or other artist out there. It's just the way it is.