Your personal challenges on your comic?

[MangoTango]

I hope you do so! And I wish you luck on your comic <3

Hmm by the way, been seeing you in the fan art trade thread but are you available for an art trade?

Here are samples of my art;

And you could see more here; https://tapas.io/series/Hidden-Time

I want to have an art trade with someone here for the first time soooo lol

[kissatr]

Yeah, why not, I like your artstyle! It may take a while, but I'll do it.

[MangoTango]

Thanks! Would you be down for two characters or one? If two I can go for two of your characters as well! Also gimme a min to sort out the ref sheets lol

[Shanny8]

Personal challenges- my arms are going to hell. I ripped through the 1st chapter when I first started this webcomic back in 2016, and now it seems like my arms keep having pain spells which causes me to slow or stop production for periods of time altogether- I'm on chapter 3 and I had to take a break halfway through Ch 2 and then around the Christmas holidays in 2017...after finishing Ch 2 in 2018, I took a 4 month break so that my arms could get the rest they needed...when I started Ch 3 in Sept 2018(actually started working on pages in August), I felt okay, then my arms went to shit again in late October; I was able to hold off until December(little small breaks here & there, but was still able to get some pages done) and took another holiday break. I started back up in January, but the issues came back(I was also doing a lot of OT on my RL day job), so I've ramped production down(a couple of cons also affected things as well)...

[Kat]

So I'm a newbie at comic making, aside from whatever I did in 9th grade. One thing I'm struggling with in particular now is consistent prop placement. I have been having a heck of a time trying to keep noodly little props consistent-ish and I keep noticing errors after I'm finished with a page. These panels, for instance, were really tricky because I was thinking about it so much and there are still inaccuracies. I don't know how big of a deal it is to a reader, but as an artist it's very challenging right now! I feel like I should have set up a model or something to keep everything consistent, but I'm not sure where to even start with that. How do people handle prop placement consistency, and does it involve witchcraft?

[TACOBERTO]

Alright I've got a few challenged I want to address in my comic "Light and Dark":
Clean up and focus on the story. Set a clear and tangible conflict
Speed up the pacing without making it feel like it's going from being too slow to being too fast
Solidify character motivations
Have a clear vision of where I want the comic to go and be
Figure out who my target audience is
Uploading pages on a consistent schedule

Now art related things aren't really in my control as I'm a writer working with two other artists who are in charge of the visual aspects of the comic but I would like:
More experimentation with the art style
More diverse and clearly defined body types and builds
Consistency in character designs
More varied and dynamic shots
Introducing more of a retro 80s color scheme and aesthetic I had originally intended Light and Dark to have:

Light and Dark | Tapas

[Chita]

Woow, your comic surely looks interesting, and original too! I think I've never seen a comic around here about Michael Jackson.

About the challenges I'm facing, well... First of all this is my first comic ever, and it's gonna be a long one (around 700 pages). Other issues I'm worried about are backgrounds, perspective and anatomy, I keep overthinking about them all the time.
Also I have plot related issues, since I've got the feeling that the story is moving far too slow, luckily none of my readers have complaint yet.
And finally, my biggest challenge is time... well, the lack of It actually. I'm on first year of uni so things are pretty new for me and I've gone through many challenges, so it's hard to find time to make my comic.
Here's the link btw:

Burning Shadows | Tapas

[chocolatteboss]

Peasant Queen | Tapas

My challenges are similar to yours I guess, lack of time, challenging poses and events that I need to draw, changing art style... The good thing about making a comic though is that it helps you practice all of the above. After doing this for a while I notice that I started to organize my time, I began to learn how to stay consistent, I learned how to draw the things that I thought I couldn't draw, until I tried.

I know that you may think that you are not good enough as an artist to draw the upcoming things in your comic, I felt the same way... but once you start actually doing it you will realize it is easier than what you think. Your most difficult thing you'll find is all in the mentality.

[Kann]

Thank you~! ;w;

I'll have to look into those 3D programs. They seem like a good idea and interior design is especially challenging in backgrounds. XD

I really like the artstyle of your comic and I'm curious about what story is like~

[denaliah]

Wanting to tell the story the way I want to and being neurotic about what the readers think? I mean ultimately its about me telling the story I want not about people pleasing, but when I lose subs, I'm tempted to think "did I do something wrong?" or is this just a slow week, or they just were just expecting something else. The most subs I have the more I lose I'm making a story that fits in fantasy/superhero genre, but really its about personal development and it has a lot of drama/dialogue scenes. While the core audience is mostly loyal, sometimes I struggle keeping the attention spans of younger 12-16 year olds that dominates webtoons I even made the decision to jump into some action scenes earlier and move the dialogue scenes later on just so people won't lose interest because there isn't enough going on.

I want my comic to be a hit, and I know it has elements of a hit (manga styled, better quality artwork, "cool" fantasy elements like angels and powers, and relatable characters), but not all (not fast paced right now or genre specific or target audience oriented). There's a certain extent I'm willing to compromise but I can only do so much until my story becomes unrecognizable. At least I've still stuck true to my story, but the audience did affect the way I did some scenes. I think another challenge is realizing mistakes while i'm still updating (text too unreadable, chapters too short and having to go back and condense them, and more recently I'm redoing my 1st chap/prologue since it's pure narration now.) It's a constant learning process, even though I thought I put in a LOT of planning before my launch, there's so much I didn't anticipate. Ultimately I want to spread the message and wisdom presented to my story as authentically and effectively as possible, because I genuinely want to make a difference. I'm not doing it for money or fame, BUT if I had those 2 things, my message would spread a lot easier. Still, I love it when people thank me for doing this or when they tell me a character is relatable, it makes me feel I'm making an impact. Webcomics are an emotional rollercoaster, provide yourself emotional stability, cause it will give you little to none DX

Pseudo Wings

Pseudo Wings | Tapas

[gh0stcr33p]

for me I really have a tendency to avoid backgrounds completely or use a black gradient over them in some panels because well, I'm lazy and they take forever. I also find it hard to keep up with my schedule because of procrastination

Mirror Monster | Tapas

[aqua03]

You know, pacing and keeping a schedule has been something I've been thinking about a bit as well as I get closer to launching DRGN and here's an idea I've been thinking of that could help with your comic: Longer Updates over a Longer period of time. I remember reading someone else who recommend what they did to help with the pacing of their webcomic. They had 3 weeks of 5-6 page updates before taking a few weeks to work on the next batch of pages in the meantime. They found it made the story move along faster despite the longer period between updates and gave them a bit more time and breathing room as well. I was wondering if that would kill two birds (chicken nuggets?) with one stone for you in helping with speeding up the slower pacing and give you more breathing room for Uni. I was maybe thinking of doing something similar with DRGN when I got to it as well. But that's just my thoughts on it, curious what everyone else thinks about that idea.

[Chita]

Thanks for the advice! Though I'm not sure if that would work for me... I tend to relax when I have deadlines, leaving all for the last moment so I can pricture me trying to 5 pages on the same afternoon after having spent 3 weeks procastinating. Maybe that works for you, but I think it's not my style.

[aqua03]

I'm not sure if it works for me, either. It was just an idea I heard that I might give some variant of a try when I launch DRGN. I also tend to work better with concrete deadlines as well. (Also a major procrastinator, but I've been improving over the past few months.)

Also, no problem for the suggestion! It was just an idea I was kicking around for a while now considering that many people complain about story based comics taking too long even though their chapters tend to be the same as average comics books, just spread out to 1-2 pages a week instead of 22 pages a month if they were in print.

[Zaboem]

I can half-answer this. I'm an editor and novelist who is participating in some collaboration comics with Aqua right above me. I don't supply the visuals, so I have absolutely no problem with that aspect. I think the challenge for me mighty be keepinga consistent tone. I mostly writer comedy. One page might have a couple of excellent gags. Then the very next page has only forced humor. Maybe the new jokes are great, but they get cut because they don't match the character as has already been established or they don't fit the overall tone.

[baasinsimple]

literally everything.

[Maps]

Honestly I struggle mostly with the “equipment” I use. I only have an IPad Pro that I draw with, then I upload using my HP. It’s super hard to edit and get softwares for background assistance when I don’t have the right computer for it. I’m working with what I have, but it’d be nice to have photoshop and sketchup to help me out in the future.

[whiskeyjack]

Mainly backgrounds, and perspective. Sometimes I won't be able to get the angle of someone's face quite right. It's frustrating.

[vothnthorvaldson]

I have the same issue. I generally don't worry too much about it (I have the feeling the artist is more disturbed than the reader by this kind of inconsistencies), but I have a few very, very bad cases in my comic. Like doors opening in a different direction, 2 panels later. Or French windows with shutters open then closed with very little opportunity for the character to have closed them in the meantime..

I don't have a solution, but what I have started doing is opening all the panels I have for each sub-environment in my drawing program, generally after the first draft of my sketch. It helps finding big inconsistencies.

[MangoTango]

I think it's understandable that you have to take breaks and deal with your life. Your life and health is more of a priority and your readers should understand that. But I am glad you were still able to through this finishing a lot of chapters! Be proud of what you have accomplished so far! I wish you more luck on your next work to come~ Also thanks for sharing! I feel happy and not alone when people share their pain and hardships, we're all in this together.