What makes a good webcomic? What styles do you find to be successful?

Que 2017-06-22 01:15:18 UTC #1

Hey there! I have always wanted to create a webcomic ever since I was a wee one. Even though my industry isn't the comic world I love the medium. So here on Tapas what sort of genre do people tend to lean towards? Is it more a hodge podge in terms of what people enjoy to read? I am a digital painter and I have shifted away more from the anime style I was used to growing up. Now personally I work fairly fast but I know if you start in a style you should stay pretty consistent. So I guess I am just asking for people's opinions on what their experience is/if the style of art that I do personally would be appropriate for the web comic platform. Also do people value art = to story? What's your experience with creating a webcomic/what is the hardest thing you have experienced in doing so?

I like darker horror ish comics personally. -And here are some links to some of my art.

Example 1
Example 2
Example 3

Thanks so much in advance! This community seems really supportive and kind and I am really happy to have found it.

joannekwan 2017-06-22 01:22:42 UTC #2

Nice work! I really like the last one in particular.

Long story short, create what you want to create!
Unless you want to completely sell out, just do what makes you happy.

Like I could easily make a comic with a friendly art style and post a silly fluffly comic with it on tumblr and get thousands of notes (seethes) but my art's not about that. I respect my characters too much for that.

Also I've found that many people can accept less-than-stellar art if the story/jokes are good enough.

The hardest thing is just basically creator's envy. There will always be someone more successful than you but you have to learn that you're doing the best by your story and characters.

SleepingPoppy 2017-06-22 01:36:59 UTC #3

I often hear that the romance genre does well on tap, but I think any creators best bet is going to be making the story you're personally passionate about. It takes a lot of dedication to actively update a comic, so its important to be really into what you're doing, or burn out is likely.

Your art is lovely.You say you work fast, but I definitely recommend making a few pages in whatever style you think you want to do and seeing how long it takes you, keeping in mind the over all length of your project and how often you want to update.

Art and story are both important. Art is kind of the pretty-shiny that attracts people, and the story is what keeps them. It's okay if a comic leans more one way or the other, but both are important.

And good luck with your horror-esque inspired machinations.

NanettesClouds 2017-06-22 04:23:12 UTC #4

Love that second piece - I wanna echo what everyone else said about making what you want/not following trends.

In my opinion, art IS story, framing and posing and coloring and expressions etc. are all so important to set the proper mood and tone. It's not a question of having "good enough art" or "good enough writing" its a question of having art that synergizes with your writing and vice-versa. Also, I would recommend picking a style that's easy to do quickly and consistently, otherwise you'll spend months on a single page and never make any significant progress. Whatever you pick, make sure its something you're comfortable with.

My other piece of advice would be to start small, whatever you plan for your first project, I would advise that It shouldn't take you much more than a month or to make. and in general, keep most of your projects fairly short (sorta an unpopular opinion) this way you have more freedom to experiment and play around with new ideas and processes without having to worry about abandoning projects/drastically changing your style mid-way through/wanting to redo bad pages from a year ago/etc. And also you can avoid some of the technical/statistical problems of running a longer webcomic, while also growing a diverse body of finished work. (In my opinion it's way cooler if an artist has a large collection of finished stories than a small collection of abandoned stories)

Also horror is a totally under-represented genre and it's always great to see new ones :V
Lemme know whenever you launch your comic I'd love to see it.

EDIT: By the way, the biggest challenge for me is resisting wanting to re-do older work, I get around this by keeping my projects fairly short :VVV

Luminosophy 2017-06-22 04:33:40 UTC #5

Hmm. This is just my personal perspective.

Art is definitely an attractor, and yours would certainly pique my interest based on cover alone. But I've also picked up quick that art is in absolutely no way an indicator of a good story. You'd need to catch my attention with in the first 3 pages otherwise I'm just going to drop it immediately. How I determine that isn't necessarily by high energy hooks like exploding cars and super 2deep5me edgy internal monologue, it's actually rather the opposite. I want to see that you have a good grasp on reality - you've gone outside and observed how people act, think and behave. The writing should be natural and confident - not something clamoring desperately to prove it's value by insulting the reader's intellect with immediate exposition dumps and fanservice, or edgy try hard heroes.

Art and writing are two very different skillsets that an individual needs to master. However thankfully they're both acquired and improved the same way - pay attention to reality. The comics that suffer are the ones that always try to pass off the author's personal narrow bias as "character growth". It's just wish fulfillment no matter how subtle it is. Engage in discussion and debates, understand your enemies and truly appreciate their points of view. Learn to listen, learn human psychology.

I truly don't care what genre or art style something is, I just want to enjoy quality work. Ultimately make something that in some way reflects you and your passion, whatever that may be.

Also random tangent: PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE draw your backgrounds! Characters existing in the white vacuum of space beyond random furniture objects that appear when plot requires drives me absolutely insane. The environment is a character, you hurt your story in so many ways by omitting it!

thoughtfulboxful 2017-06-22 13:53:17 UTC #6

@Que you've got some great advice here. My only piece of advice is that you cater your drawing style to YOU; once it's developed, you'll begin to see a story revealing itself through your artwork. Also read a lot of books/comics/stories and practice writing short stories/comic scripts. I'm so sick of hearing people mention how they are sucky writers. Writing is like doing art; you get better the more you work at it!

Tell the story you want to tell, and draw the way you want!

Lol... this pretty much sums it up.

...but if you like fluffy stories and friendly art styles then BE FLUFFY BE IT ALL THE WAY.

EDIT: Your style is eerily beautiful. Which interesting coming from me cause horror's not my thing. (But I think most of you established that.)

shazzbaa 2017-06-22 13:58:31 UTC #7

I definitely agree with Joanne here, if you want to just try to find the thing that'll be the most quickly successful, you definitely can just put a couple of cute anime boys in a cute situation and make them kiss -- but I think if your heart's not in it, the webcomic won't be fun for you, and that'll show in the work.

Webcomics are very much "a marathon, not a sprint." In most cases, it takes at least a year or two of updates to really get an audience. So the trick often isn't to find The Most Popular Style, but to find the thing that you love so much that you're able to stay motivated and excited even when it doesn't take off right away.

Your art is really lovely! Though I do also notice all three examples are of the "character floating in a void and looking at the camera" variety -- and in comics, being able to draw environments, and being able to compose an image that clearly tells a story are gonna be a lot more important than what style you use. Can you draw characters interacting? Can you convincingly capture different expressions?

I do also agree with the folks who've said that the art style you use needs to be one that you're comfortable with and will enjoy working in. Webcomics are A LOT of work, you gotta at least enjoy it enough to want to do it over and over and over again!

I mean, if you have great art, but terrible writing, you'll probably have more people clicking on and subbing to your comic than if you have great writing with terrible art, just because art is easier to see up-front. But I think if the art doesn't serve the story well, or if the writing is lacking, it's going to be harder for folks to be really engaged and invested -- they might keep reading anyway, especially on tapas where it's easy to just sort of flip through all your recently updated comics and look at the pretty pictures -- but you're not going to see the same excitement you'd see if they were dying to know what happens next to characters they care about.

So my feelings are, I think it would be hard to say which people value more, but both elements definitely factor into audience engagement in different ways.

Hmm! My experience with creating a webcomic is that, especially for your first webcomic, you'll learn a LOT just from doing it, and you'll start realising "things you should've done" really quickly, and so you really have to be able to accept making something that's imperfect, but to be really proud of and excited about what you've created anyway.
The hardest thing for me was and is being realistic and honest about when I need to push myself to get it done, versus when I need to step back and take a break.

SNOWDON 2017-06-23 17:24:00 UTC #8

I personally like a variety of comics. Some of my favourites being:

The Adventures of Doctor McNinja (Comedy Adventure)
WitchThrone (Black Comedy/Fantasy)
Romantically Apocalyptic (Post-Apocalyptic/Sci-fi)
Oglaf (Sex Comedy very NSFW)
The Only Living Boy (Adventure/Fantasy)

I adore horror but I haven't found many horror comics online, besides my own.

I feel like comedy and slice-of-life comics are the most popular. Genres like horror tend to be very niche, the good ones garnering a small, but dedicated audience.

Would your art work for a comic? Certainly! But you'll need to practice at using your art to tell a story and that can take time. I strongly recommend you start making comics now and learn as you go. Yes, you can ask for help, advice, observations about the medium, but there is no faster way to get good at creating comics, learning what makes a good comic, than by doing it.

If you haven't made comics before I'd also encourage you to start small. Start with short stories. Set realistic goals that won't overwhelm you, and a pace you can manage without rushing headlong into burnout.

Start today! Plan a 1-3 page comic to start and give yourself one month to complete it. Make completing the comic within that time frame your top priority, above everything else, including the quality of the comic. Actually completing a comic seems to be the most difficult hurdle for most people who want to get into comics, because they want their first comic to be perfect and it never will be. But you can use the lessons you learn in every comic you complete and put it towards making your next comic even better.

So do that! Start with a 1-3 page comic and have it done within a month. If you finish sooner, brilliant! Start thinking about your next 1-3 page comic. Maybe step things up to a 5 page comic. Get comfortable with the medium.

shaylafarley5 2017-06-25 00:14:45 UTC #9

My types of comics are mostly fantasy, mainly because "YOU" can create the worlds your characters live and interact in.
The biggest example of this (to me) is Tower Of God. That world is so huge anything is possible.
But I also like thrillers and some super hero comics

I also tend to steer towards manga, only because that's what I grew up with and the styles very a lot. And what makes a good web comic is really the story. I've seen some web comics with amazing art but the story was a snore or they just added in random plots to keep it going or just drop it all together.

Alyssa 2017-06-25 00:52:17 UTC #10

Try researching popular Tapastic comics by genre and compare number of subscribers, maybe? As others have said, you should just make whatever genre you want, but if you're like me and love making stuff for all the genres, then I suggest scouting out the popularity pages. Also keep an eye on what genres get featured the most often. I find slice of life gets the most subscribers over all, and fantasy gets featured quite a lot on the main page, but that is just my shallow perception as I haven't actually researched it myself

Based off comics I've been reading, I find the story=art ratio is pretty balanced, judging on subscription popularity. If the art is quite mediocre, the story has to be spot on. But story isn't necessary, as many people jump all over the first page of a comic that just looks gorgeous, before the story even starts. Then I've seen ok art with quite engaging story do well, and quite good art do well with an ok story, etc. They can both be at different places on a spectrum, as long as one makes up for the other accordingly, I think.

Also, your middle link is broken