Jun 2022
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Jun 2022
Aug 2022
Shanny8
Jun '22
1
bronte448

CREATORS should [also] realize that they are not computers. At some point- especially if Webtoon isn't PAYING you to churn out these episodes on a weekly basis- you as the creator, need to peel back your production.

I was posting on both platforms(Tapas & Webtoon) and after this last injury riddled hiatus, I am NOT in the place where I want to keep further wrecking my body at that pace for likes & views. If I put out one page/episode every 2-3 weeks, then so be it...I'm pretty much like right now I can't and dont live off my earnings as a comic creator because it is NOT sustainable. I want to, but I'm not going to toil and wreck myself for an insane number of years when the [comics/webcomics] industry as a whole refuse to compensate and/or value creators; if I'm going to create, I'm going to do it in a manner that benefits ME.

@bronte448 I'm not attacking you, and I apologize if this looked like I was...I'm just...I get in stages where I really become disgusted with the way these webcomic hosting site/models work.

VibrantFoxRegular
Jun '22
BoomerZ

my only rebuttal is that just because thats the way things are doesnt make it okay and that goes for all industries and a hell of a lot of things outside of media but this isnt about stuff like that

art may be perceived as a product but its still a luxury theres labor and knowledge and skill that goes into it do to just say "this is how things are, deal with it" accomplishes nothing. sometimes you have to rock the boat and personally i hope to high heaven that more folks do

why else would there be workers unions or the animation guild? to ensure that the working environments are fair and healthy. breaking you back for next to nothing isnt a good thing and thats precisely the reason more folks are being vocal about it

and i wanna make clear that this isnt directed at you in specific but more at this kind of mindset because by just going with the flow it perpetuates this unhealthy working style

@Shanny8 covers some of my emotions on this perfectly because the way things are right now truly arent sustainable much less is any of it worth it especially when it comes to injuries folks have sustained as a consequence of all this overworking. Like ive seen folks my age if not younger talking about carpal tunnel, RSIs, back problems and a bunch of other thing and it doesntneven go into folks working themselves to literal death in these industries so yeah its just not worth "going with the flow" or "just dealing with it" :\

NickRowler
Jun '22
BoomerZ

Why did you pick Liefield???? Like different strokes for different folks but he is a bit infamous and not really liked.

Anyone who doesn't know who this is, he drew this.

image.png640x860 811 KB

Also I hope by Lee you don't mean Stan Lee, because he wasn't an artist.

BoomerZ
Jun '22
NickRowler

BY dismissing Liefield you dismiss his cultural impact on the comic world. And Lee could be Jim or Jay.

NickRowler
Jun '22
bronte448

Stan Lee is famous as a writer. I think people often forget about Jack Kirby who was the artist of a lot of the original Marvel comics.

gabriellabalagna
Jun '22

I just want to add that the number of panels in one episode is often too much for me when reading other people's comics.

I sometimes find myself tiring of so much scrolling and checking to see how much more is left to keep reading. Long episodes can feel like such a drag and the panels look too similar or sketchy.

I've counted before and some episodes seriously have 70-90 panels! To me, that's just way too overwhelming for one episode.

TheLemmaLlama
Jun '22
1
VibrantFox

I'm pro-boat-rocking, but it's also like ... I don't think we need the boat? I can't really bring myself to get up in arms about this. I feel like what @BoomerZ is getting at here is: if you want to make art, make art. Just don't complain about people treating it as a product.

How you react to it is up to you, You can continue at your own pace and not cave to the pressure to work long, hard hours, but then you don't get to complain about your work going unseen and people getting bored and leaving because you're too slow. Or you can throw yourself into the rat race and hope to place well, and I guess betray your fellow artists by contributing to raising the output standards. But the choice has always been ours.

I get that it can be hard to resist the pressure, but I can sympathize more with someone who's like "how do I deal with the pressure to push myself to an unhealthy degree to meet readers' expectations, help" than someone who's like "audiences these days are so entitled, we as webcomic makers are doomed to slavery, and that's terrible" ^^;

Shanny8
Jun '22
BoomerZ

Not gonna dismiss Liefeld for his impact on the industry and such, but as things begun to settle & unravel- the bottom line is dude isn't the best artist; he caught fire when the industry was shifting its perimeters...by more people looking at what [Jim] Lee was doing and how aesthetically sound most of his work was, it made it easier to dissect Liefeld's stuff. There was a period where Liefeld was trying to refine his stuff and get better, and then it seemed he just said "f**k it" & went back to being lazy about his work, as well as bitching & barking at folks on Twitter.

Zugaikotsu
Jun '22

Not directly to OP, but tbh if, you're not drawing webtoons professionally, just do what you can, the best you can. I read TONS of interesting Canvas titles which less than 15 panel chapters and they have a lot of subs and patrons. Usually they balance the small amount of panels with faster paced writing and meaningful action. If someone complains, tell them to gobble on your chinchin.

If you want to be a pro, tho, unfortunatelly there is not much escape. Once users get used to a certain standard, it's too late. If they are paying, too, it's Oof. I'm getting back from a year and something hiatus because I couldn't even stare at my own characters anymore, and I'm already spreading some oil on my back to make the lashing less hurtful. Professional Webcomics may be an excruciating journey, but hey! It's also where I get my best pay and it's my most successful artistic endeavour so far...

Another thing, "Golden Age" on Webtoons is long gone. If you didn't make it to Originals until 2019, it will be reaaaaaaaaaaally hard for you to get an audience now. Most probably WT will kep squeezing Lore Olympus for more 10 years than investing in new IP.

VibrantFoxRegular
Jun '22
TheLemmaLlama

i respect this and i absolutely respect the folks who manage to keep up i think my plea is just a bit of balance or a little extra patience for those who maybe dont have the time or ability to keep up with those standards which obviously can lead to some more nuanced convos but i know that only so much can be done to create change which is why ive just kind of backed away from it all

it hurts but then again thats life or whatever :confused:

Shanny8
Jun '22

ANNNND not too long after the post I made, a pic goes up on Twitter from an ad/campaign that Webtoons put up in a train station that states "Comics is Literature's fun side hustle"

So all of comic artist twitter is up in arms about it.

And Webtoon just released a tweet/statement trying to walk it back...

Le sigh.

VibrantFoxRegular
Jun '22

yeah i was kinda wondering if anyone would double back here after the uproar but it's interesting because the ads themselves kind of speak volumes on how presumably the site or maybe more precisely it's higher ups view creators as not much more than content and ip farms for them to generate revenue off of

like for folks who want context theres the main post that kind of set things off here
https://twitter.com/KenneDuck/status/153675661456423731342

and webtoons response here
https://twitter.com/webtoonofficial/status/153682079496090419232

TroyVSTheWorld
Jun '22

This is why I draw comedic gag comics. I mean, I'm not exactly marketable since my comic has "punk' in the name and I'm pretty much all about taking down the big corporation, but eh. Revolution and renaissance has to be taken into our own hands or it'll never come to fruition.

sams_cartoon_shack
Jun '22

Same here. Besides gag comics being a good starting point when getting into writing and drawing characters, even if Webtoon did express interest in turning it into an original, they wouldn't be able to request for me to create a longer-form comic without looking incredibly tone-deaf about the structure of daily comic strips.

nathanKmcwilliamsIn the making of Bunneh The Rabbit
Jun '22

To be frank...I really don't think it is a ridiculous standard. These aggregate sites are running a business for paying customers. They also give people a platform to host stuff on for free.
It's not like they're asking the small creators to do this.
For the bigger creators, they're employing people that willingly signed a contract to produce webcomics at the competitive rate.

Yes it does set a standard. But as an amateur, not signed into a contract, small creator I'm not beholden to that standard. If I want to grow my audience, I will have to do all the work, promoting, etc. Am I a fan of the tactics Tapas and Webtoon use sometimes? No I'm not. But I don't expect them to act out of character for what they are.
After all, I'm on here for free. I didn't sign anything saying I'd make X pages for X deadline. I own my responsibility to produce my work at my own pace.

sams_cartoon_shack
Jun '22

I see what you mean, but I think the issue is that general webtoon readers aren't aware enough of the differences between original series, which often have entire teams behind them, and independent creators who usually work solo.

As a result, they are so spoiled by the long, weekly updates that they become impatient when reading series which don't update as frequently with as much content. This wasn't as much of an issue before the vertical scroll became popular since most webcomics were used to updating a page's worth of material a few times a week with hiatuses when needed.

nathanKmcwilliamsIn the making of Bunneh The Rabbit
Jun '22

I think in general the mass population of entertainment consumers is just spoiled rotten by media catering to them. This has been going on for years, there's an exess of entertainment for people to pick from, so they naturally demand more.
It's not necessarily one group of readers, it's a culture of consumers that's been nurtured over the last several decades to get exactly what they want, when they want.

conventurecomics
Jun '22
1

It is impossimble to grow on webtoons. I've been on there almost 3 years still under 60 subscribers. What bugs me is they want your webtoon to have a ton of subscribers you get a small subs, then someone unsubscribes. Please try not to unscribe it hurts us creators we all do care about who subscribes, likes comment our hard work. Anyone else agrees.

Oh I forgot this one realy gets me is comics on webtoons just started they have 1 or 6 episodes and all ready they have 200k or 1.m subscribers with in a few months out on webtoons, and it gets better a lot of the webtoons canvas ones have one page promo not art, story, or not even long scroll or color. And they have already 6k subscribers.

nkapit
Jun '22

Fundamentally this is how capitalism works, the need for companies to extract as much profit with as little investment as possible, without regard for any ethical costs. What Webtoon is doing is what happens across every industry that can get away with it— that’s the really horrifying part.

TroyVSTheWorld
Jun '22

I don't see a future in Webtoons and Tapas unless you're the top percentage, y'know?

Personally, I've been thinking lately I want to step back, regress the formula a bit. Back in the early days of webcomics, the strongest comics didn't need Keenspot or whatever to host, they had their own sites. And webcomics got big because of webrings. Not social media, not Tapas or Webtoons, but websites. Webcomic websites, with links to other webcomics. Forums existed, not discord!

Ideally, I want to create a new community of webcomics. Maybe its just delusions of grandeur, fantasizing about being revolutionary, but, you're never gonna change the world if you never try.

Here's what I'm thinking: Get 4 other comickers on board for one site, that releases 5 different strips M-F. IE Artist A releases on Monday, B on Tuesday, etc. Not even the same comic, everyone just doing their own comic (preferably like-minded), just hosted on the same site to corral people to. From there, you've already got a team onboard with the power of 5x what you'd have by yourself. Create a community based off these artists, add forums, talk it out, and people will WANT to join this community, as long as people are able to find out about it.

Its just, we can't win if we play their game. We have to flip the table.

Prometheus
Jun '22

Nah, I agree. I want to be liberated by creating my stories, not a slave to them.

Prometheus
Jun '22
nathanKmcwilliams

I agree with this whole-heartedly. Catering to consumers is important for a business, but I fear societies have gone down a toxic rabbit hole that dictates to them without considering those with which the consumers are actually purchasing the product from. There's a lot of take and not much give. It's heavily focused on what we want right now rather than being sensible and patient.

conventurecomics
Jun '22

What I'd like to know how some of webtoons gets tons of subscribers overnight. Let's
say comics start after yours, they don't have social media, and there up on canvas uploaded about half of what episodes you have let's say you have 39 episodes only 58 subs, they have 11 episodes terrible one page art or just random promo art and there sub count is 1k to 500k all of a sudden how.

arxianfall
Jun '22

Sounds like bots or an army of "trained to sub" kids.

Or a paid karma farm. You know, those places with a lot of accounts and phones in some basement, ready to offer their services for a price.

gabriellabalagna
Jun '22
conventurecomics

Sometimes it's a reboot and they tell all their followers to come to the new version. So they get a bunch of subs right off the bat.

Other times, I'm not sure.

VibrantFoxRegular
Jun '22
conventurecomics

some instances of sudden growth can be a consequence of quality or prior followings on other websites or from previous works

of course it doesn't dismiss the fact that growing on any platform can be a challenge again leading to those really high working requirements and standards but thats why theres been this whole wave of creators getting vocal about the current environment and whatnot

as for what things can be done to fix it is still kind of up in the air but thats the point of people speaking up now

bloodstained.skies
Jun '22

This may work for people who draw comics as a full time job but it's almost impossible for someone with other job or school

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closed Aug 8, '22

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