Why are we doing this?

[DarkRubberNeck]

I'm doing this because of many reasons. I enjoy drawing, I want to learn to draw better, I want to become better at digital art, I want to tell a story to the world. I have many different reasons and although uni makes it hard to post often, I still enjoydoing it anyway ^_^

[Wendybird]

long story...

I went into college thinking I wanted to be a fine artist. Thank God I didn't get into art school, because I came out of college wanting to write fantasy novels. But for some reasons I won't go into, I moved to Chicago and worked at an ice cream shop, far away from the coauthor of the novel I was working on. Then I thought maybe I'd start a webcomic.

It was bad. It had no plot and no humor. Then it stopped.

About a year and a half later, after a couple of starts and stops on the novel, getting married, going to Africa and a few other things, I came back to the first draft of a children's book I wrote for a college project. It was pretty bad, but it had possibility. I liked some of the ideas and some of the characters that went into it.

Then I thought, "I'll make this into a webcomic."

"And Dammit, I'm going to finish this project."

I love writing and I love drawing, but that wouldn't keep me working on one thing. Probably neither would money or fame.

Basically I continue to work on this comic (as opposed to other projects) to convince myself that I am capable of continuing a project until it is done.

[Tinfoil]

I just like to poke fun at my friends . . . and me too.

[Socialcrawl]

I do it because I like to see peoples reactions and their enjoyment from reading the comic.

[Synapticismss]

for fun! and no other reason.

[MrSlamm0]

Mainly because im obbessed with Shadowrun lol. My group has been playing for about 8 years now( Closer to 9 now really) and we have had some really great aventures I would love to see go into comic form. Unfortinaly I have no art skills so I have to piece them together with photo shop..but hey I have fun doing it and I know a few people read and like them so that makes it worth it to me =)

[Garasade]

I know that the comic I was working on had some semblance of theme long ago but now I just draw to experiment the practical rate of wear on the pen tip of my tablet.

[LibertyCabbage]

Vandalizing paper makes me feel subversive.

[Dotty]

I assumed insanity, but I may have been wrong.

[Paradox]

Originally I did it because...well...what else would I do in my University lectures?...

Now I do it because I not only enjoy it, but because I need SOME outlet for creative pursuits or I will go stark, raving, potato-in-a-sock, BONKERS! I'm mostly a writer, but my writing muse has been somewhat subdued for a long time, and without something creative to do I'm lost. I also now feel I owe something to my (few) readers and this helps me to continue when I reach a point of "I dun wana!!".

[PatrickOfUnlifeStudios]

I guess I'll have to start at the beginning. My current comic is a spin-off of an older comic, which was based off of a forum I frequented. That one was mostly for me and my friends and our random online adventures. We stopped going to that forum after a time, but we still talked to each other regularly through AIM chats. So I thought it was time to move on from that comic and thought that I might as well branch out to the general audience while I was at it.

So my current comic, Unlife Online (link in sig), is still largely based on and made for my online friends. They are my most loyal readers and they urge me to continue with it. But now I have some other loyal readers as well (I think. I know I have a lot of hits that aren't my friends, but how loyal these readers are, I can't say for sure). I get fan mail maybe once every few months and I really love their support too. The fact that I create something that brings people joy fills me with pride.

But I think I still mostly do these comics for myself. I love creating and even though I'm quite often lazy in my art and content, every so often I'll draw a real gem of a comic. I've contemplated ending the comic many times, but then I look through my archives and watch how my art and style grew over time and it never gets boring for me. Plus, as many others have said before me, it's just something to do.

[Mon Ami]

I'm with Wendybird, I want to prove to myself that I can complete something on a long term goal.

Not to mention if you treat your comic as an experiment where you can mess around with not only the theatrical elements of the plot but also in the sense of artistic style and different elements of the work then it does become fun. I want my comic to be constantly changing; I don't want the same thing and have no qualms with experimenting. Even if I don't get any readers, I'm doing it mostly for me.

Hell I'd have to be considering the lack of interest and readership.

[Takuun]

Long story, so grab a drink now.

Why I am even trying to do this? Well cause I never got a creative outlet as a kid. I was too busy as a kid to have anything to do besides reading. Grandma got me a subscription of spectacular spiderman when I was like 4 or so. From then on I was in love with reading comics. When I learned about webcomics I loved reading them even more then the big corporate stuff. I got to not only write to the artist but I got actual responses from them.

It was magic to me. So when life hit me hard and I was in college and nothing was bringing me joy. I sat down and began clicking through archives of old comics. Comics that had long since stopped updating. Yet they were still there. Some had ended well, others got a spin off, and others simply stopped. I looked at them, at my overbearing collection of comic books, and at the pure joy it all brought me. I thought about how it was them that brought me joy. How I could do the same for someone else. How I had thousands of old stories lying around from old english assignments, and I figured why not. All I would need was someone who could draw.


After a year of trying to find an artist and failing miserably. I began going to basic art classes at a local art school. So from there I'm here. Because I found something I've wanted to do. Because if I can bring even one person joy I'm happy. Mostly though it's because I've never been happier then when I see my comic up. No matter the mistakes, or the flaws, or the bad drawings. I'm always happy with seeing my comic up and having a finished product.

That is why I make my comic.

[Moder]

some of the reasons are
1- because i need to
2- to express myself
3- to force myself to ceate something new all the time
4- to show others what I do

"normal life" sometimes makes me forget what I really like doing - so doing a daily "webcomic" is a way of forcing myself to do what i love. crazy huh?

DF

[Cortland]

I ask myself this question often when I'm frustratedly scribbling another comic just to have it in by a certain date, but what keeps me going most days is the pure joy of seeing characters come to life on paper. Mostly, though, it's a stress reliever. Being able to unplug from the workday during lunch to draw cartoons has become a kind of therapy session for me.

[Metruis]

I started at the beginning of June with the following in mind: "DAMMIT! I'VE HAD THIS SCRIPT FOR OVER A YEAR NOW AND PLANNED TO DRAW IT AND I STILL HAVEN'T WRITTEN 'THE END' ON IT AND DANGNABIT I'VE WRITTEN A NOVEL SEQUEL TO IT AND DEVELOPED THESE CHARACTERS SO MUCH I KNOW THEIR ENTIRE STORIES AND I SAID A YEAR AGO I WAS GOING TO MAKE IT INTO A WEBCOMIC AND NOW I'M NOT EVEN DRAWING OR WRITING AT AALLLLLLLLLLLL! *headdesk* Sob I hate myself and my life."

Previously, I had sketched two pages, a chapter cover, and a couple character doodles of the characters in this story over the year and a half or so I'd been letting it stew. I'd read 'how not to make a webcomic' twice through. I wasn't drawing OR writing. Somewhere in this state of artistic ennui I'd ran into ComicGenesis and went...

"...If I don't ever do this, I'm never going to." On a whim, I joined ComicGenesis with this goal: "I want to draw this story that's been in my head for years, overdeveloping into a supermassive creative black hole." "I want to improve my art." I didn't care about readers, about anything--just that I knew if I had commited myself to an update schedule, that I WOULD update on that schedule. I was tired of sitting in my room and scowling at paper with no purpose intended for it. I had a script sitting there that WANTED to be drawn.

So I signed up on a whim, drew a couple pages, changed my style, drew some more pages, and started posting them. I was doing it... for my art. Cheesy, sure, but it was my 'why'.


About four months have passed since I drew the first finished page. I've already replaced one of those original pages because my art's already evolved. My MOTIVES have changed, I think. Now I absolutely hate myself for grabbing that mostly unedited script and drawing it before I'd fixed its flaws, I work frantically to work around my writing faults to meet the update schedule... the art's no big deal, it's still not perfect, but right now I'm stuck looking at Tuesday and going 'this page I drew doesn't work, it doesn't present the information needed right...' and suddenly I'm looking at art in an entirely different way than I did four months ago. I'm standing outside and discecting the horizon line into perspective lines to try teach myself to fix my art flaws. I'm watching movies and mentally putting them down into thumbnail sketches. I've got pages of scrawled point by point plot bits and dialogue to get over my writing flaws. I'm trying desperately to find the original maps I'd drawn of this world so I can paste them to my wall...

I've never finished anything before. I have some seven unfinished novels, two unfinished long fanfics. I have 10 pages of one previous graphic novel project I started.

...And my motive isn't the same. I have a voice in my head that goes 'you can't do it, you suck at everything, your art is awful, your writing is awful and if you leave it now you can do something different...'. I have this person who absolutely loaths my comic. I have these people on another site who frequently fuss at me because I can never update something, they complain that I never update... and an art teacher who, when I said to her face, "I do not paint," looked at me and went, "Oh, yes, you do." And sat me down with a paintbrush.

Now it's one very simple motive.

I'LL SHOW THEM! I'LL SHOW THEM ALL! AHAHAHAHA!

That's why I'm doing this. If I give up now, the critics win. If I give up now, I just admit that I can't update anything and go back to that state of artistic ennui. If I give up now, I give up my hope of printing it out and going... look. I did this.


tl;dr: I'LL SHOW THEM! I'LL SHOW THEM ALL! AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!

I also kind of like the attention.

[VinnieD]

Because otherwise the muses would not let me sleep.

[K-Dawg]

For the chicks of course.

[Dreamaniaccomic]

Because I frequently act on random whims that generally have no way of going anywhere, and this was one of the whims that worked out.

[RobertBlake]

For my own personal sanity. I would probably go nuts otherwise.