Dutch! wrote:So those of us making our comics for a few are not as worthy of the internet as those who are aiming to mass produce another genre cliched piece of work whose primary goal is to mass readers?
Sounds a little... wrong.
Seeing as it's not what I said, that might be why it sounds wrong.
Obviously the internet is a great tool for sharing comics. It's much easier to keep track of them, make them look nice (mm, archives,) and show them to friends who don't live nearby if they're on the internet. So win for the internet.
But if your intention is fundamentally to create a comic which is for your own personal expression and you don't care about readers, then things like update schedules aren't all that important. Same for advertising. There are aspects of the internet-comic thing which you just don't need to care about as much, because while they might be relevant to someone who is trying to get their comic popular, they're not relevant to you.
By contrast, if your goal is to have an extremely popular comic, then you may have to have different priorities. This means things like advertising, a regular update schedule, and broad appeal. To draw an example from print comics, Garfield is one of the most popular comics ever, not because it's good (it's really not,) but because it has a few jokes recycled 10billion times, people like grumpy cats, and it 'updates' every day.
Now, can you do something for yourself and still be popular? Sure. People have done it. Look at Penny Arcade or Something Positive. But PA coincidentally happens to have an extremely popular subject matter (gaming), is pretty funny most of the time, and has a regular update schedule.
If your personal comic doesn't have extremely broad appeal, then your choices become more limited. A comic about math, say, while uproariously funny to math majors, will never be popular with the general public.
I can say, I'm going to make my math comic anyway, and math people will like it, and that's that. And that's perfectly fine. But it means I'm going to have different priorities when writing my math comic than if I were writing a comic aimed at, say, people who like dogs.
princess wrote:
QFT!
This thread is so shaming for me :oops: I am the worst updater ever. If I am unhappy with how something looks I will delay the update until I fix it.
Aww, honey, you know we love you. ^_^ Besides, your comic feeds directly into my LJ, which makes the updating irrelevant to me (aside from me sitting around going 'want more comics!')
princess wrote:But it does matter! You probably upped your skill level doing it- and people DO notice these things, even if it's only subconsciously.
You're right, of course. But I think I would have been better off producing paintings of Mongol yurts which people would take seriously as 'art' (hahaha). (I'm vaguely trying these days to get out and do artistic things which aren't comics, in the hopes that improvement out there will make the comics improve...)
I am the worst updater ever. If I am unhappy with how something looks I will delay the update until I fix it.
I guess what I'm saying is that while it's fun to make something superamazingawesome, most folks are only going to spend a few seconds looking at it.
