What do you guys do for extra content?

[igneriss]

For extras so far I did some info episodes about world in my series (history, technology, organizations etc), fanarts galleries, Q&A episodes and mini-comics (several about family of one of the characters, and also quite a lot with alternative story/dialogues to series episodes).
I wanted to upload every Saturday, but sometimes my week is too busy and I don't have time to draw. But that's okay, as those are just extras.
This is how those mini-comics episodes look like. The black and white panels are from the original episode

[TheLemmaLlama]

Personally, I try not to put too much effort into extras because my thought is; I might as well just put that work into my main comic. So my extras tend to be:

• things that already (mostly) exist (e.g. concept art, recontextualized panels)

• things that are stuck in my head and are easy enough to get out (e.g. jokes/memes)

Though I did break my own rule with my series of 'Loading Screen Tales', which is a post-apocalyptic fantasy AU told in short bursts, kind of like how Trails in the Sky told a story with their treasure chest messages with 'Trails in the Chest'

Also curious to hear people's thoughts on this, because I've been thinking about including extra content at the ends of my episodes for a while. As readers, how do you guys feel about that kind of thing?

As a reader, I do enjoy worldbuilding/lore as well if it's presented well (e.g. visually, and not with long walls of text). But I personally tend to dislike extras if there are too many of them and disrupt the flow of the main comic; once at the end of every chapter is good and once every holiday is okay as long as there are enough normal episodes to make them feel relatively rare. If you're like me and have super slow updates, please don't do holiday extras lmao XD

[AlydaB]

True true, hahaha

I upload monthly so I couldn't do something like that too frequently or it'd bog the story down and become a distraction. Better to do very small and unobtrusive things (a great example of this would be the little quotes included with each episode of Woven on Webtoon!). Might save bigger things for if/when I reach a special milestone (ex: 1000 subs).

I really should use social media for a lot of these ideas, but I have an extreme aversion to posting on my Instagram. ..Should probably work on that too lol

Anyways: Those are really great points- gives me some food for thought! Thanks for the response :]

[TheLemmaLlama]

Better to do very small and unobtrusive things (a great example of this would be the little quotes included with each episode of Woven on Webtoon!).

Yes, something like that is great! Something else I like is the diary entries/bestiaries at the end of some episodes of 'The Steam Dragon Express' (though they only show up at the end of some episodes, where the relevant creature is introduced :P)

[NickRowler]

Because my chapters can sometimes take a while, I have been putting profiles and mini comics between the chapters. I will sometimes do holidays. I would love to do an AMA or viewer polls but I don't think I have a large enough fanbase for that.

[Fafnir]

Good question. I think about this ALOT. As I do want to convince readers to give me money on patreon. BUT, the reason i want money is to make the comic, which takes alot of time, and extra content takes time away from that. sigh... This is a good question for something like patreon. But I do think its important to remember you are giving a comic away for free, you do not need to make more content on top of that for free, you are making content already. just use that. My GUESS is that readers would rather have a new page, than some wordy backstory thing. (maybe im wrong)

but patreon, or ko-fi, or whatever. yeah. Currently I make NSFW pics on patreon for xtra content. but i realized... I am competing with alot of very good artists doing exclusively that, so i think that's dumb. What I should focus on is what I have to offer. Which is a comic, and characters from my comic. So current plan is short B/W mini comics, and bonus sections of the main comic only accessible to patrons. The trick will be, they cannot be important to the story, just silly character moments, and nsfw stuff. And they have to be easy to make... =/
Oh and early access of course... which sadly is only one week ahead. wish it was more.
But I think a good trick is make your bonus content something your already making, like process vids, or high res images, or phone backgrounds of certain pages. Id like to do that stuff eventually.

TLDR: Making the comic is my main focus, and any bonus content I make is to try and convince people to give me money.

[doublemelon]

I make all kinds of things for extra content
• Extra mini episodes
• Extra chapters
• Illustrations SFW and NSFW
• Process videos
• A Patreon exclusive NSFW comic.

I used to do holiday special episodes too, which I won't do anymore in the future.

Recently promoted my Patreon comic on some platform that's not English, the AUDACITY of kids complaining that it's not free is alarming. They said they DONT WANNA pay, not that they can't pay. Some people are ungrateful that you make a free comic already, and for those kids, I won't do any special free content lol. Sorry for rambling.

[allenT]

Conceptual soundtracks, timelapse videos, merch prints. they are gradually added base on story progression.

Things i do for worldbuilding:
Extras 101 (few pages of detail on specific worldbuilding elements), MAOR Facts: A bite-sized facts/info about the story worldbuilding/characters, post on twitter every month.
And sometimes I make my in-world item mockups/replicas, for fun sake or for reference.(Base-8 Abacus, Game Cards, Village 1:300 scale model.)

[powerplantanimations]

Hmmmm.... now after reading all of this I'm wondering if I should make Diary Entries every Saturday.

I know I also said small gag comics, but I'm afraid it might interrupt the reader's flow like you guys said (plus it is too wordy). Maybe after every arc I do Diary Entries as a way to get people hooked for the next storyline and maybe every milestone I do something interesting. Like every five or ten subscribers I answer a funny question about how stick figures live in the world or I make a small little gag comic. Or character profiles.

Restraint is most likely the best option here lol. I make the audience want more.

With that said, I'll still do D episodes exclusive to Instagram.

I am actually making a YouTube series that ties into my webcomic in the strangest way possible, but that's only if people want extra lore lol.

EVERYTHING I MAKE MUST BE CONNECTED :v

[Nada]

Mmmmm ... well, I make a mix between the episodes that I publish and the extras but within the same update, I don't know if it seems a bit overloaded but when I have to show them I try to establish a difference between one and the other.

[smokesalty]

I mean for me I know I can only do extra content at the end of chapters because it can really disrupt reading flow (and my story isn't light hearted so I don't want to whiplash readers with a change in mood )

My extra content that's planned is bits of lore/mini stories, character illustrations/doodles, holiday drawings and a couple character profiles. Other extra content such as animatics and jokey things are saved for my other socials. I might do a q and a when I have enough chapters out.

[bulgariansumo]

I have no idea how to put extras in my stories. But for people who follow me on other social media, they can see me draw memes, half-baked AUs, doodles that don't make it into the story, and maybe talk about characters every so often.

Sometimes I write non-canon stuff like a reality show between my main characters from both of my series or most recently, how a game of Among Us between them would go down.

However, there are some spoilers if you visit my other social media because I've been posting about all my characters before I even started writing them seriously.

[Fafnir]

oh if we're talking xtra content in the comic feed. i do a chibi wrap up at the end of chapters like so. (this is one page of it)
i only finished one chapter so far, so i have a couple others written.

[MeltingCORE]

I make music for extra content.

[Caro]

My extras for social media are usually strips and random artwork that I think looks good enough to potentially share. I try not to post too much stuff on social media that’s heavily reliant on previous knowledge of the work because social media functions best when people are actively sharing the work— not just liking and commenting. So I don’t like posting anything that needs context or relies on the assumption that all of my followers actively read my work.

For Patreon, I mostly just do early access once a week (varies from 4-6 pages a week vs. the maybe 1-2 posts per month on socials) and then also any drawings or paintings I made that week as well. Most people are there for early access though.

[xstarx07]

Sometimes I make memes/little animatics or trading card-esque illustrations of my characters as extra content. For episodial content, I also do q&a's - had to postpone the 2nd one though - and I have an intermission planned, which is more of a non-canon filler scene (It won't come out until I'm ready to work on my next chapter, since I'm a little too busy irl)

My favorite to do as of right now are the intermissions and animatics, since they're done pretty quickly! :3

[darthmongoose]

I do a variety of extras, and things I've done before include:

Mock in-universe textbooks and similar to explain the magic system in more depth. There are some things that readers don't vitally need to know to follow the comic, but some people do ask about because they're curious, and it'd feel weird to have the characters in the comic whose job is doing magic talk about it, so I stick it in extras. This is one of my faves because it's kind of riffing on a certain well-known brand of UK revision guides made near my home town, as well as my day job being in STEM-related Edutainment, and it was a fun opportunity to have Rekki and Sarin doing typical schoolgirl friend stuff.

Behind the Scenes bits. Mostly tutorials and extra illustrations. People sometimes ask for these, and they're easy extra content. Stuff like this:

Fanart features. I always make sure to include the cover for the artist's comic in these, and from what I've heard, the most recent one did give people a small, but noticeable bump in subscribers. There's nothing I love more than getting fan art and sharing it, and it's a fairly easy extra to make that also helps talented creators get some visibility so basically everyone wins! Also damn, like how could I NOT want to showcase fanart this good!?

I'd quite like to maybe do a Q&A at the end of maybe chapter 5 or 6. I think people often rush into Q&As before the audience knows the characters well enough to ask interesting questions, so I've been holding off.

[Lady_T_Musings]

There are a lot of good ideas in here!

For me, I do short video updates of the progress made after working on my comic weekly on my Patreon page.

I also, on occasion, do short stories based on folks (usually couples) that exist in the world of my comic, but that isn't related to the main story (since I can't just make a side character and leave them in the background lol).

QnA after each chapter of my comic, natch.

I also have a blog where I sometimes talk about experiences with making art and comics, inspo, and processes.

One thing I've been contemplating is sharing snippets of my codex, but I don't think many folks would be interested in that, alone so I would have to pair it with art to make the info into an infographic. I'm mad verbose and my codex is a full binder's worth of notes and info and I have a physical and digital copy of, and that's not including notes on fashion XD.

[sams_cartoon_shack]

When I publish my daily comic strip, the extras I might add during hiatuses would be timelapses and maybe original prints of my earlier material which would be on Patreon first before being posted on social media.

[powerplantanimations]

Neeeeeeeeeat. I've been thinking about taking music classes.