Why is it only cute jokes?

[jonathancowen]

Felt this for a while, but I'm not one for moaning.... The 'Comic pick of the day' updates from Tapastic are biased towards cute jokey one-liners. I understand these are safe and inoffensive. But, why not share a dramatic page from a new artist, one that grabs your imagination and makes you check out the rest of the comic? Obviously, I'm including myself in this (Plug : http://tapastic.com/series/Red-and-Cyan ) but I'm sure there are a lot of artists who put SO much effort into their work and never get plugged.

Why be so safe? We're in the business of story telling, not one-liners!

[Jinglestan]

Well, technically speaking, a good one-liner takes storytelling skill to come off as effective. so they are still in the business of storytelling lol
but I think the "comic pick of the day" is meant to be a short one liner type deal to read real quick as one of your "morning routines" or whatever. If a dark, deep, intense page was featured, either the audience wouldn't get the context, they wouldn't have the buildup to that point, no emotional attachment, etc,etc and it'd probably just kill the overall effectiveness of the comic if the person saw the intense page THEN went back and read your comic.
I'd say the collections and top banner are more aimed at featuring a series rather than a daily strip... and the site advertises collections quite well.
...........but that's just my two cents on the matter. lol

[jonathancowen]

Yeah, I do agree with you, but many times a page can be shown on Tumblr or whatever, and it still resonates enough for me to check out the rest. I'm just saying what's been on my mind for a while. Don't be afraid to try something that's not cute and funny. Just speaking my mind!

[Drezz]

Don't forget - there is a large contingent of overseas readers who are familiar with that type of humor. Much like North America where the "comic strip" format is more popular when displayed on the internet - the 'comic pick of the day' is probably selected based on its popularity.

I wouldn't worry so much about trying to make the main page - focus on making your comic the best for your readers and tell the stories you want to. With enough support, you'll make the main page too.

[jonathancowen]

Thanks for the support, but I'm not so bothered about making the main page. It was more about diversity in the comics that are pushed. I agree with your point about comic strips.

[UzukiCheverie]

I agree with Jinglestan on the matter. "Comic pick of the day" is meant to be read on the go or as a daily routine, etc. Uploading a nice looking story page would lose its context and its overall effect, and gag comics are better to read on the go.

If you want to find the story-type comics that aren't so one-liner'ish and such, you can always use the Browse Series function and filter out what you're looking for, then just browse to your heart's content (:

[michaelson]

We're hoping to push out more feeds-style pages in the future that can cover more than just cute/funny/short comics.

We do an insane amount of data collecting and testing on the front page in order to optimize each area for new and returning readers. One such facet of the front page that has been working incredibly well is the Best New Webcomics Feeds which was primarily built in order to showcase newer artists alongside the more popular gag style strips for a trickle down effect.

I thought it would be a little too confusing to sprinkle in comics that didn't fit the tone. It's important to give a reader an expectation of what the Feed is going to be like so that they'll return rather than having a wide array of content that could potentially confuse them.

Like Jinglestan said, we have other venues to showcase series that tonally don't fit into the Feeds page with collections and top banner sections. Also, the Most Popular section is all automated so anyone can make it on there.

I do agree though that we should try our best to promote a wide diversity of content and we are hard at work to restructure the front page as well as small UI tweaks to hopefully accommodate everyone.

[jonathancowen]

Cool! All sounds good to me. It was just on my mind and had to voice it. Problem solved!

[TotemEye]

I think you guys do a great job! I fall in love in Tapastic more and more every day! v
My DA is starting to collect dust hehe...

[MylCreates]

I'd very much agree on this matter. Although when joining Tapastic I always did get that vibe it was a very "daily strip comic-a-day" kind of site (which almost deterred me from posting my own work as I felt like I would not fit into the community), and the format of its episodes very much supports that kind of comic format. I would like to see more longer-in-depth stories featured on their homepage since comic-strips aren't always my-cup-of-tea, but shrugs like any site it is like a business and needs to comply with what the masses want and it's what defines them.

[L4213]

actually that gives me an idea, wouldn't it be nice to promote the more story oriented peeps of tapastic by adding something like an "episode of the week/month" because the daily pick, just like what everyone says is like a on the go reads that peeps can just read on and not get as invested in.

and having a comic pick for story oriented comics is hard. the featured comic would have to be sometime old for a reader and would always "or so i think" have to be at the start of the chapter and not just a specific page in order to fully draw in a person to read. epsecially if the comic pick was just the latest episode's first chapter without the rest of the story, it would feel a bit too much cliffhangery, now imagine that popping up in the daily pick every so often.

just my two cents on the opinion. :3

[UzukiCheverie]

actually that gives me an idea, wouldn't it be nice to promote the more story oriented peeps of tapastic by adding something like an "episode of the week/month" because the daily pick, just like what everyone says is like a on the go reads that peeps can just read on and not get as invested in.

That's essentially the same thing as what we have now, just not as frequent. And story episodes will still seem out of context to those that don't read it because it'll be a pick out of a huge pot of episodes.

[jonathancowen]

I'm really sorry but I don't agree about this 'out of context' thing. I see plenty of pages on Tumblr and facebook from comic books and it doesn't bother me I don't know the whole story. Movie trailers do that all the time too, show you a random moment. Mostly I think 'wow, that's interesting' and I check out the rest, rather than go 'uh, I don't understand'.

Well, that's what I think anyway.

[UzukiCheverie]

I'm really sorry but I don't agree about this 'out of context' thing. I see plenty of pages on Tumblr and facebook from comic books and it doesn't bother me I don't know the whole story. Movie trailers do that all the time too, show you a random moment. Mostly I think 'wow, that's interesting' and I check out the rest, rather than go 'uh, I don't understand'.

Yes, but movie trailers give you many different bits of information at a time to give you the basis of the plot; not all of it, but enough to go on so that you'll have something you'll want to see when you watch it in theaters or on DVD. They don't just pick one random scene from the middle of the movie and show it to you - if it were like that, then that would be out of context and unless we read the original novel/comic if there was one to begin with, most of us would be confused. Movie trailers are a collaboration of points and information; single pages from varying stories pulled one-at-a-time out of a pot with no direction given at all can be confusing. YES, there are some pages that can make sense on their own, and yes, those pages could probably make it in the Daily Comics feeds, but there are very few of those that won't confuse people and are still good enough to make it and to be considered readable (in the sense of level of entertainment) on the Daily Comics feed.

[jonathancowen]

YES, there are some pages that can make sense on their own, and yes, those pages could probably make it in the Daily Comics feeds, but there are very few of those that won't confuse people and are still good enough to make it and to be considered readable (in the sense of level of entertainment) on the Daily Comics feed

Art is subjective, so saying it wouldn't be entertaining or readable, is only your point of view. I don't agree with you and that's cool Surely it's up to the person picking the daily comics to pick an interesting page? Anyway, I've said what I wanted to say.

[VelinquenT]

Yes, art is subjective, but quality standard does not depend from person to person.
You just may not see that it's bad. With a similar situation might faced all people who are learning how to draw, but individuals stopped to grow and start screaming something like "It's just that how I see." Sorry, but it's might not working this way.

[michaelson]

Yes, art is subjective, but quality standard does not depend from person to person.You just may not see that it's bad. With a similar situation might faced all people who are learning how to draw, but individuals stopped to grow and start screaming something like "It's just that how I see." Sorry, but it's might not working this way.

I'm not really sure what you're trying to say.

Surely it's up to the person picking the daily comics to pick an interesting page? Anyway, I've said what I wanted to say.

I tried doing that when we first launched the Best New Webcomics section on Tapastic, where we mixed all different genres into it but once I started to only feature short gags, the return rate of users increased dramatically.

I supposed creating another section that only features long form narratives is possible, but in a feeds style format, I would imagine that the reading experience would be downright confusing. Imagine reading 10 pages of out of context stories back to back - it's not ideal.

This is especially true when you try to think of the fact that there are two types of readers we want to engage from the homepage: 1) a new user who has never been to Tapastic before and 2) returning user. For the first group, I would argue that being exposed to a story in median res would be jarring and not the best way to try to get them to become a member of the second group. I can see something like this working great for returning users, but there's no way for us to cater to them specifically (yet). So currently, the front page operates to address the needs of both.

Hope that helps.

In all, I'm really enjoying this discussion and am grateful that we can dissect the issue.

[UzukiCheverie]

Art is subjective, so saying it wouldn't be entertaining or readable, is only your point of view. I don't agree with you and that's cool Surely it's up to the person picking the daily comics to pick an interesting page? Anyway, I've said what I wanted to say.

I meant it in the sense that it's providing something that readers will want to come back to read. Readers are more likely to come back to Tapastic from reading a funny gag comic rather than reading an out-of-context page where they had no idea what was going on in it. Not saying they won't enjoy the story stuff when they do start reading it, but that'll be more for when they find those stories and start from the beginning, rather than getting thrown in the middle of all bloody hell.

[VelinquenT]

Sorry, I can't explain better, I'm not a native speaker.