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[strangebear]

Okay, you have a killer idea for a webcomic (well it seems like a killer idea to you at the time!) and suddenly episodes are just filling your sketchpad and you have to draw them.
You've never drawn a webcomic before and the intial few episodes look a little demented ... but you push on, learning stuff all the time.
After a little while the early episodes look NOTHING like the later episodes .. and herein lies the dilemma. Do you leave the early ones alone, or do you go back and try and tidy them up a bit?

Looking back at Questionable Content the difference in art between episode one and the current episode is so dramatic you would think they had been drawn by different people! When I first visited and read the strip of the day ... then clicked "read first" I was sure I had been taken to another website altogether! Since getting into webcomics I've noticed this quite a few times. And I'm also asking for selfish reasons ... I've only been webcomic'ing for 19 episodes of my personal zombie love story, but already the first episode is looking SO rough and crap compared to the latest one I am itching to go back and put it "right" ... but will this open the OCD floodgates and I'll never get a new story done because I'm tinkering around with old strips!?

Anyone got any experience of this and insights?

[Keith Decent]

well, there's a couple of ways to handle this.

1. Deal with it, almost every single webcomic is like that.

2.  Keep drawing in the same rough way as you started no matter how much better you get at it.

3. Draw teh characters ALOT and the same withthe enviromments, then choose your final style.  Delay the webcomic one or two years doing this, then start drawing it, the difference should cease to be dramatic.


The first option is the most logical, really, but there you have it.

[strangebear]

Cheers Keith,
Options 2 and 3 are sadly out. I'm already up and running with the thing ... and I haven't continued to use the same crappy style as the beginning.
So its either option one or mystery option number 4 ...

PS your site really does have a whole lot of lack of content doesn't it!

[logosmonkey]

yeah if you look at my archive you'll notice a dramatic difference. For me it was impossible to delay since I never would have started if I had... maybe that doesn't make sense, see I have to start and get involved quickly in an idea or it will disappear in my ADD =P . If in a year I decide to release a book say, I'll likely re do the initial episodes for that project and keep both on the site. I've considered just going ahead and doing them when I have time as well and having the newer one posted full with a link to the original for posterity's sake. It's all in having time to do that though!

--Steve
--edit for horrible spelling =P

[strangebear]

Thanks.
I know just how you are feeling. When I got the ideas bubbling away in my brain, it was drawn them now or lose them! I knew if I didn't get the whole project underway right now I'd simply walk around chuckling to myself for a few months and nothing would get done.

I like the idea of just redoing a select few. Maybe allowing myself to redraw the first four episodes. I doubt I will ever gather them together as a book. There is too much colour and photoshop messing around to make a black and white/greyscale book work, but I may get my own website at some stage ... and that would be a moment to put fresh reworkings of the early strips up.