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Webcomic startup

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Mollinda:
Well I've been comicking about three months in all, as a serious venture anyway. I've always doodled but my mate Will made me put it up on the interweb. I've only done two weeks so far but already my art work has improved.

Mine is http://www.teaforthree.co.uk

tasteslikeevil:
Heh. Apparently this has become the secondary comic pimping thread. Oh well.

The only advice about making comics (or really anything in general) that I've found really helpful is, above all else, MAKE SOMETHING THAT YOU WOULD WANT TO READ.

Stay true to that, and you're bound to fly pretty straight.

Rone:
Along with that, if you're planning to put a lot of time into drawing, make a comic of something you would want to draw, because you are going to be doing a LOT of it.  So if that happens to be giant robots or dinosaurs or random blobs of man-eating goo or whatever design a story where you can draw those things.  

For me it was things with claws and wings.  So I settled on a story with angels and demons.  It's worked so far, and I've been doing mine for...Three years?  Four?  Yeah...suffice to say, a long time.  May yours be just as long, if not longer...

Luke:

--- Quote from: Levi-chan ---Please god no MS Paint. Oh god no. I think the internet has seen enough of the scourge of it. ;)
--- End quote ---

I was only half-kidding when I said MSPaint. Thing is, as Sonet gloriously proved, you can make some real quality work in Paint if you know what you're doing. The program has such a bad reputation only because everybody tries drawing everything free-hand with the pencil tool. I draw a webcomic (linked in sig) entirely in MSPaint, and I use the pencil tool only for correcting - all the base work is done with the line tool. If you feel like it, you can look through the more recent comics (not the first ones, good God) that I've drawn and tell them if they look good for the program I use.

But, yeah.

dingosatemybaby:

--- Quote from: fenmere ---First off, I strongly believe that no one should ever, for any reason, be discouraged from doing a web comic, ever...
--- End quote ---


Thanks for the inevitably more eloquent rendition, Fenmere.  The one thing that frustrates me so far in this community (at large, not this board) is the "oh you suck don't bother" attitude.  It's the Web.  It's free.  That's the point.  I'm well aware of the limitations of my art, how much I need to learn the intricacies of the medium, etc, etc.  I wouldn't be learning anything if I was keeping these in a box under the bed.  Hell, learning to create good comics is the easy part; learning to fall on your face in public and keep going is harder.  Constructive criticism is a lost art form, and that's a shame.

So to hell with them.  Go nuts, do what you want, don't be afraid to experiment and (yes) fail miserably a few times.  If you put real effort into it, perservere through the tough patches, listen earnestly to criticism (even if you dismiss it, which is an equally important lesson to learn) and stay true to whatever made you want to pick up a pen/mouse in the first place you'll also occasionally succeed.  More importantly you'll learn.

As for the Web part, there's free hosting aplenty.  If you know your way around PHP there are a few "ready-made" products for Webcomics like iStrip and CUSP.  I use a set of scripts from Snafu but will probably make my own or switch to iStrip (which has the advantage over CUSP of being supported, plus a few features like RSS that are nice).  

There are also full-service places like SmackJeeves.  Just search Google for free webcomic hosting and you'll get...161,000 hits.  I know nothing about them, don't endorse them and I'm sure you'll get an earful from this gang about the pros and cons of using them.  It's not my area of expertise.

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