What am I doing wrong

[studiovecu]

I would like to know any and all issues that anyone can possibly point out in my comic so that I may improve it.

http://tapastic.com/series/bojo

tear me apart. render me inoperable. (just be constructive about it.)

I know there may be some readability problems in the latest issues. things are very cluttered. I'm still working on that.

[callmeshane]

BRO, GET THAT SH*T OUT OF HERE.

Really though, let's have a moment here. Come sit with me. Closer. Uncomfortably close. Your use of expression, character design and line work is quickly identifiable. It's quirky, it's offbeat and it doesn't stray on to a point where someone is going to get whiplash doing a double take.

The humor is random, and for the life of me that is just the kind of thing I enjoy most in comedic elements. I never know what the hell I am going to see with your work and that's perfectly fine with me. It may not be as readily deconstructed nor registered by others, but it still brings a laugh which I can appreciate.

I'm not going to go on a spiel here and tell you what I personally believe is wrong with your work or what I think you need to do with it. This is an ocean and that's your raft. I like what you're putting down and I'm going to praise you for that. Just hope you can look at your own work and decide for yourself what you believe will benefit YOU most and what you want to do with it. PEACE, YO

[studiovecu]

thank you very much-o

[lyon]

Kinda going with what @callmeshane is saying: you gotta get that shit out there

Part of that is going to be about updating regularly. Looking at your archives, I see a bunch that was uploaded in May, one in June, and then none for over a month. People on tapastic do wind up finding things when they show up in the "fresh" section (meaning recently updated), and the number of followers will slowly build from there even without regular promotion.

[studiovecu]

I've been having trouble getting the motivation to add to it for a long while now, simply because the tremendous effort I input isn't getting me any output.

That and 9-to-5 workdays are running me ragged.

[RiverKai]

I don't usually enjoy what everyone calls "gag-a-day comics" but I quickly subbed to yours, if that's saying anything! I especially like the weird and illogical part of it, don't change a thing! I do have an idea of what you might be noticing here...

Short joke comics on the web can be popular, yes, but they are tremendously hard to market if you don't post them daily, hence the "gag-a-day" thing. I would recommend taking your time with them, and consequently being patient with subs. And advertise the sh*t out of it. Be selfish, post about it everywhere, have your friends/online friends collaborate with you or have them read and share it, find a "one-liner" that describes it (looks like you have one) and post a goofy ad for it everywhere every time you update it.
The "golden time frame" for popularity is if you stick to something consistently for 3 years, or it could come way faster to you if you find your target audience and focus on simple marketing techniques. It could be as simple as crappily photoshopping pastiche into popular images/memes for people to reblog on tumblr, share on facebook, and retweet on twitter. People are surprisingly simple in terms of pleasing them, and I think your humor is spot on, which would be the hardest thing to work on if that needed help.

[mg78]

at first, watching the comic i was thinking "just another comic strips" low skill drawing technique," plus the humor/gags does not fit & look to me anything of particular.
but looking with attention, well... u have a good drawing skill! it's just the work to be "wrong". imho it own a bad style/graphic (and this could be recovered) with gags totally normal (and that is the worst)(that gags are something that everyone live. u need to be different from the normality, if u want to make laugh)
jm2c: stop doing strips and move in a comic,

[Doubtcent]

Wow, your comic is interesting, both in art and humor.

But it's kinda everywhere.

One thing you should focus on is what kind of art you should stick with, be it with the paintbrush or the pencil. Some episodes look like they were drawn for a Sunday funny with MS paint, while others are painted or drawn in a paint-like style that is really top notch. Find a style that's the most comfortable with you and stick with it.

Next is your typography. Whenever your lettering is done by hand, it looks really good. At least to me. Other times it's done by text box, which looks like someone took your interesting art and edited out what was said with a joke of their own. It's sort of an amateur move, no offense. Either continue to write by hand or find a font you like and stick with it.

Finally, your humor is not too focused. Some episodes are a hit, with good pacing, panel placement and jokes, but other times it seems like you're throwing everything in a blender and setting it to frappe. And unless you're trying to make a delicious banana-strawberry-nut smoothie, you'll most likely end up with something tangy, which some people may like, but it won't attract too many readers.

At least your art is good, with a definite character that can literally go anywhere and do anything, and you have your own style of humor, which not many people have. But what will help you in the long run is polishing and focusing on your concepts. While your comic's style can't be pinned down very well in a box of definitions, you can at least focus on your humor, surround it with your crazy art, make the comic readable, and boom. You've got yourself a decent series.

You have potential, you've just gotta to sharpen that blade.

[jonufele]

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[studiovecu]

Just a couple things from your post I'd like to address.

One thing you should focus on is what kind of art you should stick with, be it with the paintbrush or the pencil. Some episodes look like they were drawn for a Sunday funny with MS paint, while others are painted or drawn in a paint-like style that is really top notch. Find a style that's the most comfortable with you and stick with it.

The dramatic shifts in style are actually intentional; I wanted to create a comic that is incredibly inconsistent in order to mirror its absurd nature and to also set it apart from other comics.

Maybe this detail is lost on the average viewer -- maybe it isn't. Either way is fine by me!

Next is your typography. Whenever your lettering is done by hand, it looks really good.

I can definitely see this. I think I'm going to start writing all the dialogue by hand, unless I want to use poorly anti-aliased fonts as a comedic device. The possibility is always there if I need it. Noted. Okay.

Finally, your humor is not too focused. Some episodes are a hit, with good pacing, panel placement and jokes, but other times it seems like you're throwing everything in a blender and setting it to frappe.

Many of the episodes were created on-the-spot without much pre-planning, so that would explain that. It's hard to consistently come up with funny ideas and the motivation to set those ideas into play, so sometimes I just had to brute force it. I need to figure out a way to come up with pure, 24-karat comedy gold without gaps spanning weeks between every new (good) idea.

Also, one more thing:

with a definite character that can literally go anywhere and do anything

This sentence is definitely spot on for this particular comic. I started bojo and car tarp with the express intention of being able to take it absolutely anywhere I wanted -- complete artistic freedom to do whatever.

I'll take your thoughts into consideration, thank you.

[studiovecu]

Why do you think there's something wrong with it?
You're the one that's unhappy with your own comic...

On the contrary, I love my comic. I think there's something wrong with it because I've seen people with two-episode comics that have 9.8k subscribers, and I have 18. There's something wrong there.

Now, I know subscribers aren't everything, and that popularity is certainly not the mark of a good comic. But if I put lots of effort into something, I generally would prefer it to not be all for nothing. I would rather update my art blog than work all day on another comic page and throw it into the black hole that is Tapastic.

[Vikiro_Hop]

Honestly not a ton more I can add. (I say right before typing a couple of paragraphs...)

I dig your style and sense of humor and I think this is just a case of updating regularly. (After taking into consideration what people said above.) I'm certain that a lot of people will tell you that while it's possible to get an "overnight success" on tapastic, it isn't something you should count on. (There are people who fly under the radar for years before catching a break.)

I could try to go into how certain comics get more subscribers, but instead I'll just say this. There are tons of comics on there that I think are amazing and have very few subscribers and vice versa. It's all pretty subjective and getting caught up on comparing your work to others isn't going to do much besides discourage you. It sounds like to me you have some motivation issues (happens to me too often.) but I think as an artist you gotta ask yourself. "Would I still enjoy creating this if no one at all was watching?" I know attention and ultimately validation is really important to an artist, but if you get too concerned with it you will get discouraged when it doesn't come immediately, or worse compromise your vision to pander to an audience.

Webcomics are a lot of work just to make, networking and promoting your comic is a whole other beast entirely. Even under the best of circumstances there will be times when you don't feel like it pays off. Ya gotta do what makes you happy.

In the long run though I think you will be much happier if you stick with it.

[jonufele]

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[UzukiCheverie]

The dramatic shifts in style are actually intentional; I wanted to create a comic that is incredibly inconsistent in order to mirror its absurd nature and to also set it apart from other comics.

Maybe this detail is lost on the average viewer -- maybe it isn't. Either way is fine by me!

You can still convey that, probably even BETTER, without having to switch the drawing tools and styles. When you do that, it's hard to get a grasp on what we're actually reading - who the characters are, where the setting is, etc. You don't need to draw it in every style under the sun just to "set it apart" from other comics, because then you'll just face an identity crisis and no one will want to read it because they won't even know what they're looking at.

Convey the absurd nature through the style you choose, not all the things you can do with it. There are lots of comics, movies, TV shows, etc. that have done this without having to change how they're drawn/animated/etc (some quick examples are Poorly Drawn Lines, Cyanide and Happiness, Stickin' Around, etc. while some of the art styles of these comics/shows are ridiculous and sometimes a tad inconsistent, especially Stickin' Around, you can at least still recognize the characters and understand what's being showed to you.)

You need to make sure things can be read properly and consistently across issues, otherwise you may as well just do different comic series for each episode. I'm personally a fan of the style in this strip here; it's whimsical, fun, and still shows off that absurdity you're shooting for without disorienting the hell out of your reader.

Aside from art style . . . the content. Who is this comic actually for? People who don't know what humor is? A lot of these strips are fourth-wall breaking "WHAT'S THIS COMIC GONNA BE ABOUT TODAY", and while you're in the early phases of your comic, this is a big no-no. Why? Because everyone has done it and/or will do it at some point or another. If you start the first handful of your comics off with stuff like "HEY SO WHAT'S THE JOKE TODAY, I DUNNO, HERE'S A GUY SNEEZING, THERE'S NO JOKE" then you're not giving your readers or yourself enough credit to produce actual content that's worth reading. Just sit down and write a joke. Don't be afraid to use real-life inspirations or look at other comics to see how they handle comedy. If you want a previous example of a comic that handles this style of comedy you're trying to do well, then check out Poorly Drawn Lines. It's very blunt, dry humor, but they still get a joke across without throwing themselves into a car just to try and stifle a laugh from the reader. (that being said, the comic of yours I linked earlier, "fall out boy", is probably my favorite strip because it just handles itself better in terms of comedy than the other ones do, say, the one about cow manure that was just another "YOU KNOW YOU'RE READING A COMIC RIGHT, THIS IS A COMIC, YES, JUST IN CASE YOU DIDN'T KNOW" type thing.)

Sit down (or stand up, I dunno lol) and start thinking of ideas. Go for a walk. Take a shower. Play some video games. Socialize. Get those ideas going in your head and come up with jokes that I know you're capable of making, jokes that readers will actually appreciate. It's those jokes that are going to land you subscribers and dedicated readers; if you're not willing to give your readers more credit than understanding juvenile "THIS IS A WEBCOMIC" type jokes, then you're just being insulting to them. If you want people to read, you have to give them stuff that's worth reading in the first place.

Alright, so I've touched style, content . . . last thing, this isn't so much a "critique" as it is a minor suggestion. You posted a good chunk of the first half of your comics on May 7th. Then you posted another a week later. Then you didn't post more until June 5th. Then you posted your most recent comic yesterday . . . August 7th. Doesn't matter if people are reading your stuff or not, coming up with a consistent schedule is key. Once a week, once a month, just some kind of concrete day or schedule so that readers know when to expect a new comic and can trust you to follow through.

Yep, that's pretty much it. Work on coming up with a consistent style that still gets the theme of the comic across, write some jokes that you can actually be proud of writing, and come up with a consistent update schedule. You've got a unique piece of work going here, so I know you can polish those rough edges out and deliver something that people will really, really enjoy and want to stick around to read in the future. Good luck!