So I created my webcomic purposely to be in a traditional comic page format. At the time, I didn't really care about exposure because I just wanted to make my first series, but now I do sorta care! However, I am not about going back to “fix” or change my art because I believe in keeping it as it was originally (it shows my improvement as an artist). But then again, I decided to post here, a smaller community. Webtoon is not gonna have such a tightly knit community, so I do wanna make the most of this place. I do care about numbers, but not really either. I just want a community I think.

I don't really know exactly what I am asking here haha, but I wanna discuss it anyways as a young artist.

Personally I hate the vertical scrolling style because I associate it to less care for each picture (as people who do that stuff professionally have to churn out too many pages weekly), but then I suspect it is a generational thing (I'm still more used to the good old paper comics).
Anyway if you want to change, I think you can just change abruptly during your comic and not care: in my first webcomic I changed from traditional/BW to colors/graphic tablet in the middle of the story, and I never used a tablet before so the first pages were terrible!
More generally I understand the logic of consistency but, you are not making a professional product, if consistency prevents you to experiment this slows your growth, just experiment and see what happens.

Why not both?

Experiment. Try a few scrolling pages, you might find that you hate doing it. I find the format unwieldy to create and downright annoying to read. They can be endless and go on forever.

I created my first few merely by combining several conventional comic pages and stretching out panels and balloons. Putting a whole “chapter ” on one scroll would create a file my last two laptops could barely handle.

Then I went back to doing smaller pieces and only assembling the long scroll for the file I'd be posting. Still experimenting. I can never post anything on Webtoons because my comics feature nudity and I really don't want to censor things for a sensibility I find ridiculous and hypocritical.

dpat57 wrote:
Why not both?

Yeah, good point honestly. I just don't see the two formats as compatible with each other. By that I mean, changing a traditional comic to a webtoon means rethinking the flow or pacing of a page. Maybe unfortunately I like to be intentional about that change. So I'd rather create a webtoon from the ground up in that format. However, I see some people convert their comic, and it works out just fine for them. That's really convenient and good for them. I am just personally conflicted about it.

marcorossi wrote:
Personally I hate the vertical scrolling style because I associate it to less care for each picture (as people who do that stuff professionally have to churn out too many pages weekly), but then I suspect it is a generational thing (I'm still more used to the good old paper comics).
Anyway if you want to change, I think you can just change abruptly during your comic and not care: in my first webcomic I changed from traditional/BW to colors/graphic tablet in the middle of the story, and I never used a tablet before so the first pages were terrible!
More generally I understand the logic of consistency but, you are not making a professional product, if consistency prevents you to experiment this slows your growth, just experiment and see what happens.

That's all very truuuue. My comic has been a way for me to just practice from the start! Artstyle-wise, my comic was a way for me to dive headfirst into traditional art. That worked out very well. I'm currently brainstorming the way I can change up the format. So just trying scrolling format definitely wouldn't hurt!

Also I think the scroll format came out of convenience for reading on smart phones. But it definitely sacrificed alot to get there. I'm in a privileged position to be taught the way of traditional comics (college), so I'm maybe a little stubborn to change because I like it so much. :,)

Scroll format is different from infinite canvas, right?
I like infinite canvas because of the flow or whatever. But scroll style has all those pauses/space between every panel. It makes it feel overly dramatic or something. Plus I like making oddly shaped panels and trying to squeeze as much as I can into a single A4 sized piece of paper.


I suppose if your comic uses mostly rectangles, the transition to webtoons would be a matter of: increase canvas size horizontally, cut, and paste. But something would definitely be lost in that process.

I make my comic in both formats, it's drawn in traditonal page layout but with an eye on how it's going to work vertically. I have a lot of tall panels and if I want a horizontal panel I need to think about how that can be split into two or more parts. That gives me some problems and I like having problems to solve, because it forces you to be creative. On my site you get one or the other, depending on the device you're using. If you prefer one format over the other I would go with that. Make the comic for yourself and find your people.

Personally I wouldn't post on Webtoon because I don't have that type of comic and if I did have that type comic, I wouldn't post it on Webtoon. Build your community for your own benefit, not for the benefit of a huge corporation.

IIRC you dont need to convert it, you just need to make sure the text is legible on something as small as a phone without the reader needing to keep zooming and panning.