10 Things You Should NEVER Do In Your Webcomic

so you want to make a web comic do you if you clicked on this video there's a pretty good chance you're either thinking of starting a webcomic in the future or you've already started one and are looking for some additional advice in which case hi I'm star and welcome to my channel I've been making webcomics for over a decade and I want to help you make your comic the best it can possibly be webcomics are incredible there's so many talented creators out there who decide to make webcomics Just For the Love of creating and sharing their stories with the world and most of them can be read entirely for free online I mean come on how cool is that however a lot of folks starting on their webcomic Journey can fall into various storytelling artistic and marketing pitfalls that can hinder their Comics pretty significantly myself included when I first started making webcomics I made a ton of mistakes mistakes that I've learned from and now want to help you avoid which brings us to the topic of the video where I'll be going into detail on some of the biggest things you should never do in your webcomic as well as why you should never do those things and how to avoid them but first let's do our usual hey star what you drawing so you guys might have seen some of my other videos with tips and tricks about making webcomics but did you know I wrote an entire book on the topic because I did how to webcomic The Ultimate Guide to making online Comics is a fun and educational book that teaches you everything I know about making webcomics in one convenient package the first edition of the book came out in 2021 and I'm now currently raising money on kickstartered fun to print of the second edition which has been revised and updated with over 70 pages of additional new content to teach you how to make your comic the best it can be the kickstarter campaign is live until May 5th and if you support the project on Kickstarter you'll get a discount on both the physical and digital editions of the book and be among the first to get your hands on the new edition the link to the kickstarter campaign is down in the description oh and the art in the background is me drawing the cover for the book so yeah anyway let's get into the video here are 10 things you should never do in your webcomic things you should never do in your webcomic number one don't start your comic with a long info dump Exposition heavy prologue we are starting this video with a controversial one oh boy so this one is a big pet peeve of mine personally but I know a lot of other folks agree if your comic starts by dumping several pages of dense lore heavy World building right off the bat it can be a major turn off to your potential readers the start of your story should have some kind of interesting hook that makes the readers want to keep reading it should not be a barrier of Entry people have to slog through to get to the actual story nine times out of ten throwing a bunch of lore and names and history at your reader without context doesn't make people interested in the story you're about to tell them it'll probably just bore them if I open up a new webcomic and it spends the first I don't know 10 pages going on and on about 1 million years ago the gods ruled the world and then they fought and everything caught on fire and then the world was made of fire but then the fire was conquered by the water and the the fire stopped and the Gods learned how to get along and also created people and the magic of the realm and the temples to the East and the West that housed the holy archaic artifacts that could destroy the world and the people created robot but God didn't like a robot I'm probably just gonna close that Tab and never come back if I'm reading a webcomic I want to feel like I'm reading a story not a dang history textbook now if the lore is a big part of your story and you have to get it on the page right away so people understand it there are more Artful ways of doing it that don't involve just eating 10 pages of dense world history into your new readers faces avatar The Last Airbender does this pretty well they introduce the concept of bending early on Via dialogue between the two main characters instead of being exposited directly to the Watcher you understand it because you can pick it up from Context Clues and conversations between the characters other stories introduce World building by just having the characters exist in the world and talk about it naturally or over the course of the story and you as the reader get it because you can pick up the World building just by watching the story take place in that world if the storytelling is done well enough you might never need the World building exposited directly into your eyeballs because you'll be able to learn about the world naturally through context long story short please don't make me read the entire world history if you're setting in the first handful of pages I see this really often from less experienced writers and it honestly drives me up the wall introduce your story introduce your characters give me a reason to care a hook to keep me interested and work in the world building and lore of the world naturally over the course of the story moving on to things you should never do in your webcomic number two never draw at 72 DPI so let's have a brief talk about image resolution because this is something I didn't learn until embarrassingly late in the game and some of you might be falling into this problem too if you don't know when working in digital art you have the option to set your Arts resolution imagine a one inch by one inch square your image's resolution is basically how many pixels or dots fit inside that one inch square the higher the resolution the higher the DPI or dots per inch the more pixels are inside of that space for most programs by default the resolution will be set at 72 DPI 72 dots per inch this is the standard for web images if you're reading a comic online or looking at any other image like a meme or something the pictures you're seeing will be at 72 DPI however you never want to draw your comic Pages at 72 DPI why printing 72 DPI is way too low of a resolution to use for printed works if you try to print an image at 72 DPI it's going to look really gross and crunchy the bare minimum for printed works is 300 dots per inch well above the default 72. if you ever have any dreams of making a printed edition of your webcomic you'll want to work in 300 DPI from the jump even if you don't think you'll ever make a printed edition of your webcomic working in 300 DPI is still a really good idea after all it's a lot easier to shrink down your images to 72 DPI than it is to blow them up to 300 after you've already drawn them at a lower resolution I actually know this from experience my first web comic the first chapter or so was drawn at 72 DPI and when I decided to try and make a printed Edition I struggled a lot with having my art be too small to really look good when printed and the quality of my book suffered a lot as a result learn from my mistakes always throw out 300 API or higher you will thank me later but that brings us to how do you set the resolution of your art you usually when you make a new document in your art software of choice you'll have the option to set the dimensions and the resolution as well you can also change the resolution of an existing art document but note that just increasing the resolution won't actually increase the quality of art that was already drawn at a lower resolution for best results you'll want to set your resolution higher before you ever start drawing you do this varies from program to program so I can't include guides on how to do it for every single one uh if you're unsure of how to do it in your program of choice or you can't figure it out on your own I recommend Googling how to set resolution in name of art program and seeing if you can find some tutorials from there alright moving on to things you should never do in your webcomic number three have bad lettering I know the phrasing on that one is a little weird but basically no matter how good the art and writing of your webcomic is if your comic bubbles are badly done and hard to read people aren't going to read it full stop so how do we avoid bad lettering well this is a pretty big topic but I'll run you through some of the basics number one you'll want to make sure you pick a font that is easily legible please For the Love of All That is Holy and sacred don't pick a font like this for your lettering if I get a headache trying to parse what your characters are saying I'm just gonna stop reading your comic number two make sure that your line spacing is big enough that the text is easy to read but not so spaced out that it looks like a high schooler's double-spaced English essay you might have to fiddle with the line spacing depending on what kind of font you're using uh number three is that you should also make sure your letters are horizontally spaced out enough that they aren't running into each other this can cause legibility problems but you don't want them to be too spread apart either if you're unsure of how to change these settings in your art program of choice I again recommend Googling how to change font settings in name of art program number four generally a lot of comics stick to an all caps font this is a byproduct of early print Comics having somewhat low quality Printing and all caps fonts were easier to read it's smaller more condensed and lower quality sizes however for webcomics this generally isn't an issue so don't feel pressured to use an all-caps font if you feel like mixed case would suit your comic style better and then lastly number five make sure that you're giving your text room to breathe inside the word bubbles text like this looks cramped and haphazardly shoved into a too small word balloon and I've also seen some Comics that like to shrink wrap their word balloons around the text which is I just why would you do this this is so hard to read this is a nightmare you should also always make sure your text fits comfortably inside your word balloons a general tip I learned is that you should always be able to fit a capital H in the corners of your word balloons if there's not enough space make your word balloons a little bit bigger if there's more than enough space you might consider making your balloons a little smaller additionally I have an entire section on how to do effective lettering and how to webcomic so read my book Link in the description alright next up things you should never do in your webcomic number four pick a genre just because it's popular allow me to tell you the tale of two webcomic artists we'll call them A and B A and B both want to make a webcomic and are in the idea Gathering phase of their prep work a loves making comics and because they love science fiction they decide to make a Sci-Fi comic even though sci-fi isn't the most popular genre B also likes to make comics and reads a lot of web comics on platforms like webtoon and Tapas B sees that romance Comics are super popular on platforms like those B wants their webcomic to be popular so they decide to try making a romance comic even though they don't really care much about the genre their priority is making a popular webcomic so they can be a popular comic creator both A and B start posting their comics online at the same time and as is common and expected they both start out with a relatively small audience of readers they don't have a lot of subscribers and don't get a lot of comments a is a little saddened by this but continues to make their sci-fi webcomic because they love sci-fi and they love making their comic and sharing it with people who also like the genre B however gets frustrated because of their small readership if romance Comics are so popular why isn't my romance comic popular they say after only a few months of posting b gets so frustrated by their lack of success that they quit making their comic altogether so what can we learn from this story if your goal is to make a webcomic you should make something you're passionate about not something you only want to make to get popular if we're being honest with ourselves most webcomics don't make much if any money webcomics are a hobby for most creators and even though some can earn revenue on platforms like patreon 99 of webcomics never even come close to making a living wage most webcomic artists make comics as a hobby or is a way to boost their portfolio or to improve their art and writing skills not necessarily as a way to pay the bills so if you're working on a comic fueled by your passion don't you think it makes more sense to make something you're passionate about doesn't it make more sense that you'd want to make something you enjoy and have fun creating I understand the desire to make something that's going to be popular but if it comes at the cost of your own personal enjoyment then maybe consider why that popularity is the most important thing to you one of the biggest pieces of advice I have for making webcomics is to be your story's biggest fan it's much easier to stay motivated to work on your comic if you genuinely love what you're making if you choose to make a comic based on only what's popular and not what you personally enjoy the likelihood of burnout is much much higher and since building a regular fan base for a comic takes time usually several months to years before you start seeing real traction focus on making something that makes you happy not something that you think will make you famous in a similar vein to the previous tip things you should never do in your webcomic number five make a comic just for the money this one has started fights in my Tick Tock and YouTube comments but I mentioned in the past but I still fully stand by it despite what some people might think webcomics are not some kind of get rich quick scheme you might look at hugely popular Comics like lore Olympus and think wow look how popular that comic is they must rake in a ton of cash I will also make a webcomic and get famous and make lots and lots of money however I'm coming at you hard and fast with a hammer called crushing your dreams webcomics are not a get rich quick path to guaranteed success making a comic is not going to guarantee you a lifetime of success in a stable job making a webcomic even a successful one likely won't be the Catapult a huge financial gain some people seem to think it is building a fan base takes time it'll probably take years of consistently posting your comic before you start to see any meaning full Financial gains from it I've been in the webcomic scene for over a decade now and I know people who've been making webcomics even longer than me struggle to earn even a small amount of revenue from their work I've known people who've quit their jobs to focus on making a webcomic they think is going to make them Rich only to crash and burn when their attempts at making money from it fail and they have to crawl back to a day job to make ends meet it's not impossible to make a successful web of comic and it's not wrong to want to be successful with a lot of hard work and a lot of luck some folks are able to make their webcomic their full-time job but bear in mind that for every success story you see there's a hundred maybe even a thousand people who failed now again I'm not saying you shouldn't try to make money off your comic I'm not saying you shouldn't try to get financial support for your time and efforts if you're able to Garner financial support to help you keep your comic running and support you then that's amazing and if you can work your way up to earning a livable wage for your webcomic then that's awesome I'm super proud of you that must have taken a lot of work and it's really impressive what I'm saying is that if you start making comics with the expectation of making a million dollars and being Mega famous if your only goal with making a webcomic is to make money from it you're likely going to get disappointed most people making webcomics Do It For the Love of the craft and the joy of creating not the love of the success it brings and if you're relying on that success alone to motivate you you probably won't succeed at all food for thought I'm the subject of money let's talk about some of the ways you might try to make it shall we things you should never do in your webcomic number six run a crowdfunding campaign before you've actually made the comic for many webcomics folks one of the biggest Milestones is to take their webcomic from this computer screen to the page I.E printing a physical edition of their comic but unlike posting a comic online making physical versions tends to cost a lot of money depending on how many copies of the book you're trying to make and a ton of other factors and that cost can be really prohibitive to many artists enter crowdfunding on sites like Kickstarter Indiegogo and others comic creators can run crowdfunding campaigns to raise money for the printing of their comics in exchange for copies of the book and other rewards being sent to backers crowdfunding can be a valuable resource for creators looking to make physical edition of their online webcomics however there are some people who try to approach crowdfunding with a different goal in mind I've seen many crowdfunding campaigns for people trying to earn money for their webcomic who haven't made a web comic yet they haven't even started writing or illustrating it instead they're taking the just trust me bro path to marketing their comic and trying to convince people to pay money for a series that doesn't even exist yet imagine someone showing up on Shark Tank without an actual product to show just an idea of something cool that might be successful and might do what they say it does eventually do you think that person is going to walk out of the presentation with financial backing probably not backers on crowdfunding platforms are like investors show them something that's worth them spending their money on and they're more likely to support you show them nothing but Promises of something that might be good eventually and you won't be getting a lot of bites I won't be including any actual examples here because that feels pretty mean-spirited considering the topic of the video but you can go on to Kickstarter and see past projects that failed they still get archived on the site even if they don't meet their funding goal so so many failed comic kickstarters are ones that tried to get money to make a webcomic rather than to do something cool with a comic that already exists and while there may be a handful of times this has worked I personally have never seen a successful crowdfunding campaign for a webcomic that hasn't already been written and drawn in advance make your comic first then worry about monetizing it but hey here's a reminder that if you're enjoying my tips and advice so far I've got a whole book full of them that's funding on Kickstarter right now depending on when you're watching this video and the best part is that how to webcomic is already entirely written and Illustrated which means that if you support the book on Kickstarter now you'll have the book in Your Hands by the end of the year so that's pretty cool Link in the description and we're moving on things you should never do in your webcomic number seven aim to make the perfect web comic that everyone loves so here's the thing about perfection it doesn't exist You could argue that some form of perfection exists in some Fields like math where you can get a perfect score on a test by knowing that two plus two equals four and answering all the questions correctly but art is a field that's highly subjective and is dependent on not just the taste of the Creator but also of the audience viewing it an art piece that one person considers perfect can be seen as Terrible by someone else one person might love your art style but others might think it's not their cup of tea the truth is that no one webcomic will be universally loved no story is perfect you could make a comic with amazing characters immersive and in-depth World building and a riveting and compelling story but some people just don't like web comics they're boring so instead of trying to make your comic appeal to literally every single person on the planet focus on making something that you love if you tell the story you're passionate about other people will be drawn to that it won't be perfect but it will be yours and that's something much better to aim for anyway but what if we're talking about perfection on a more technical level getting the art to look just right or constantly tweaking your story and dialogue until it's perfect in your eyes well I hate to be the one to break this to you but you're running a Fool's errand like I said before Perfection doesn't really exist in art constantly erasing and redrawing a character's face over and over trying to get the perfect expression or rewriting a scene over and over trying to get the perfect flow of dialogue is likely wasting your time and doing you more harm than good no comic page will be perfect no story will ever be perfect there will be plenty of times when you're less than enthusiastic about the page you just finished but artists are so much more critical of their own work than Their audience and your readers won't see all the same flaws that you do learn to call a page done and move on it's difficult at first but it does get easier with time and on the subject of trying for Perfection things you should never do in your webcomic number eight redraw old pages with a little asterisk next to never because of reasons I will get into the Eternal page remake Loop can be a killer for newer webcomics imagine you've just finished the first 10 pages of your shiny new webcomic but then you look back at your first page and think wow I've gotten so much better since I drew that first page I should redraw it and then you redraw the first page and it looks better and that's exciting so you end up redrawing the second page too and the third and the fourth until you fully redrawn the entire 10 pages all over again then when you look back on the redrawn first page again you think to yourself wow redoing all of those pages made me even better at making webcomics I can see so much improvement already I could make those first Pages even better if I redrew them now and then you redraw page one for the third time and then page two and page three and pretty soon you don't have a webcomic you have 10 pages running in an infinite Loop I see this a lot from folks who are just starting their first webcomic I understand that the idea to go back and make old Pages better is a strong one but for the sake of continuing your comic you just gotta learn to let go let your old Pages be and keep moving forward your art and writing will improve over time and that's normal and good and being able to see the artist's growth over time is one of the coolest parts of webcomics now there is an asterisk on this point so let's talk about some of the reasons where it's more justifiable to go back and redo old pages one is to correct a lack of clarity so sometimes our visual storytelling isn't perfect and if a page is confusing or sending the wrong messages to your readers then it's beneficial that you go back and make those changes one of the nice things about webcomics is that you can go back and change things if needed your readers are all essentially beta readers in their own way if something isn't reading clearly you can go back and change the wording or the art or the page layout to make things easier for your audience to understand the second reason possibly the most common reason and the one that I'm trudging through personally right now is if you're planning on making a printed edition of your comic if your comic only exists online it's easy to go back and make changes as you need but if it's going to be a printed into a book it's completely reasonable that you'd want to go back and tweak the art to make it better before spending tons and tons of money on a print run but even in this instance I'd advise just doing tweaks to the art rather than just completely redrawing older Pages unless you absolutely have to for example I'm currently in the process of prepping my webcom at cast off's first few chapters for an eventual volume 1 Printing and the art in those early chapters is eight years old so I'm taking the time to go back and tweak things fixing some Anatomy errors improving the lighting and the colors and the expressions and fixing a few minor story inconsistencies and both of these reasons are why there's an asterisk on the title of this section but aside from those two reasons I'd encourage you to let your art be what it is and focus your time and efforts on making forward progress in your comic things you should never do in your webcomic number nine sign a contract with the publisher without understanding the terms in general posting your webcomics to Comic hosting platforms like webtoon and Tapas is a really good idea it's free and easy and allows you to get new eyes on your work and can be a great way to grow your audience and if your comic does well you might even catch the platform's attention sometimes comic hosting platforms will reach out and offer to officially publish a webcomic offering the Creator contract and a monthly salary in exchange for making the comic and posting it exclusively on their platform to many Indie creators this can sound like a dream come true getting paid to make your webcomic that's amazing however I offer a word of caution if you're going to get paid to make your comic buy a platform you're going to need to sign a contract and you should always be sure to read carefully and fully understand any publishing contract before signing while getting your work officially published by a webcomics platform may sound like a dream come true I've seen far too many people get taken advantage of because they got too excited and signed a bad contract I know people who signed away the rights to their Series in exchange for payment only to have their series canceled because it didn't perform well enough and since their contract stated that the platform officially owned the rights to that comic now the Creator could never continue that Series in any way ever again the platform essentially stole their webcomic and then threw it away because it didn't perform well and the artist was left with nothing I've also seen comic creators jump at the chance to be paid for making their webcomic only to be saddled with intense workloads and Monumental amounts of stress for very little pay they've pulled all-nighters worked 60 to 80 hours per week to keep up with their publishing schedule cause themselves physical injury and suffered mental trauma and got paid barely above minimum wage if that sounds scary that's because it is scary losing the right to make and publish a story that you created and love is a terrifying concept working yourself to the Bone for Bare Bones pay is demoralizing and can be physically and mentally traumatizing bad contracts are scary so while not every comic publishing contract will be this bad it's always a good idea to be very careful about what you sign read through the entire contract and get help or advice from a trusted knowledgeable party if you need help understanding the terms ask as many questions as you can and make sure you understand the full scope of what you're getting into getting your webcomic published can be a great opportunity but make sure to be smart about what you sign the terms of any contract should be beneficial to the platform you're posting on and you as the Creator the workload should be manageable and you should be fairly compensated for your work and your time minimum wage is not fair compensation in addition you should ideally get other benefits for signing a publishing deal will the platform be helping you Market your series will you be part of promotions on their website will they be able to help you hire art assistance to keep up with their required work Pace what else are they offering you as a benefit if you sign on with them if you want a bit of further reading about this subject go look up the Tokyo pop rising stars of manga Scandal and do some reading bad contracts are unfortunately nothing new in the comics industry and if you can learn to spot the red flag sooner you'll save yourself a lot of grief in the long run and we've arrived at our final tip of the day things you should never do in your webcomic number 10 rely on external validation for motivation I'll be the first to admit it Comics are hard so hard in fact that a lot of times you may find yourself doubting your skills it happens to everyone trust me the key here is how you deal with the hardships of making Comics what kind of support are you getting from external sources versus internal ones it's easy to fall into the Trap of relying too much on external validation likes favorite subscriber numbers nice comments tips and donations they can all be wonderful things to get and they can definitely booster your enthusiasm for your webcomic but when you're first starting out you might not get much interaction right away it'll take some time before you start getting regular readers who comment frequently and it'll be a while before you start seeing substantial growth to your reader numbers so in those early days when you aren't getting much external validation in the form of likes and comments sometimes it can be really disheartening and in some circumstances it can be disheartening enough that it might make you want to quit altogether that's why I always recommend people rely more on internal validation the love and passion you have for your Comics should be the number one driving force behind you making it you should love your characters love your story love the comic you're creating in all its facets you should be so excited about your story and making your comic that not doing it feels like torture if you can learn to support yourself and keep yourself motivated it'll make it much easier to keep your momentum going if there's something you don't love about your comic consider what you can do to change it how can you make your webcomic be your favorite thing but if you still struggle with relying too much on encouragement from others one thing I recommend is getting in the habit of saving all the encouragement you get if someone leaves a nice comment on your comic draws you fan art or does anything that makes you happy and makes you feel good about your work take a screenshot of it and save it to a folder on your computer you can easily access if you're ever feeling down you can go back and look at all the nice things people say about your work I find that keeping it all in one easily accessible place can help give you that boost of dopamine that we sometimes need to get excited about our work again and we should always strive to be excited about our work and that's all the advice I have for this video there was part of me that was a little bummed about how negative I got at some points in the script like I know the topic was things not to do in a web comic but now there's part of me that wants to make a companion video with a more positive spin like things you should definitely do if you're making a webcomic or something like that I already have some ideas on things I'd like to talk about so if that's something you're interested in let me know in the comments and maybe I'll get to make that one in the future fun fact a big portion of the information in my script was either paraphrased from or taken directly from my book how to webcomic if you want to learn more mistakes to avoid as well as a ton of things you should be doing when making a webcomic you can learn all kinds of stuff by snagging a copy of the book and reading it for yourself it's full of tons of advice on planning a webcomic writing compelling stories and characters plus general art tips as well as advice for making comics and sequential art how and where to post your comic online how to Market your Series so people actually read it how to make money off your work and tons of other topics the book is written in a simple to understand format to keep it engaging and educational even if you're someone with a short attention span like me and the text is accompanied by plenty of illustrations for both entertainment and educational purposes it's targeted at younger or novice comment creators but it has a little something for everyone no matter your experience level and in addition to being educational it's also very motivational to help you jump start your webcomics journey it's like a 200 Page pep talk straight from me to you because I have a tendency to just go off and be a little Ted talky and just try to encourage people because webcomics are cool and we should all make webcomics heck yeah more comics at the time this video was being posted the kickstarter campaign is still running for a few more days so you still have a little bit of time left to back the project and be among the first to get the new addition for yourself if you're watching this after the kickstarter is over I'll have a link in the description for how you can still snag a copy for yourself and if you're craving even more tips and advice videos from yours truly I have an entire playlist of Art and comic tutorials on my channel so go take a peek at some of those if you're interested anyway that's all from me take care friends and go make a heck and web comic and also buy my book okay bye foreign

Channel: TheStarfishface

Views: 436,992

Keywords: thestarfishface, starfishface, vtuber, comic, webcomic, castoff, webtoon, artist, art, story, storytime, print, sticker, speedpaint, speed draw, story time, how to, tutorial, art tutorial, how to webcomic, art advice, art guide, clip studio paint, csp

Id: YVSjabimkIY

Length: 32min 47sec (1967 seconds)

Published: Mon Apr 17 2023