NOON CHAPTER TWO (25)

SHINK

THANK YOU (AGAIN, AGAIN):

I can’t believe we hit another milestone between newsletters! 400 subscribers! Thank you everyone! I didn’t have time to make an illustration to celebrate over the last couple weeks, so keep an eye out in the next newsletter. Growing this audience has been sop rewarding, and I love that Substack allows me to have a direct connection with all of you, especially after battling algorithms on various social media platforms for years.

TIPS FOR STARTING A WEBCOMIC:

I thought that for the behind the scenes section for the newsletter this time, I would give some tips for starting a webcomic. I’m over a year into this comic, so I hope you can find some value in this advice.

1. JUST START

I see a lot of artists (I used to be this way as well), that constantly talk about their comic they’re going to make someday. Not to be too blunt, but maybe you could use the energy you use to talk about it all the time to I dunno… make it instead? I’m not saying to dive headfirst into a 600 page comic project with no experience either. Make some short comics that take place in the world of your big comic project you have in mind. You can use this to figure out your characters, your world, and if you even have that much interest in this concept in the first place.

2. DON’T PUT TOO MUCH TIME INTO CONCEPT ART

This might be a little controversial, but us artists loooooove concept art. We love looking at it all over social media. We love making it. I won’t lie either, it is super cool! It’s fun to make as well. It is a necessity for film and animation projects, where you have a large team of people working together to bring a vision to life. For a comic, it is often one artist, especially for webcomics.

Concept art takes a ton of time to do, precious time that could be put into comic pages. You have likely drawn these characters over and over again in your sketchbook. I’m not saying to completely ditch concept art, but it doesn’t need to be very polished, and it especially doesn’t need to be posted anywhere. In my opinion, this keeps so many artists from ever making their comics. I would put more focus into making a couple of short comics to prepare for a big comic, rather than being infinitely trapped in the concept phase.

3. RECOGNIZE THAT MAKING COMICS IS HARD

It’s not going to be fun all the time. I don’t feel like making comics some days, but you have to show up anyway. Set a minimum time that you’ll spend on your comic daily and stick to it. There are very few days where I don’t eventually get into that flow state and love the process.

4. FORGET ABOUT THE FOLLOWERS

Make the comic for you first. That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t try to make your comic the best it can be, but if you don’t love your comic, it’s unlikely that anyone else will. Let your light shine, and the people looking for the type of thing you’re making will flock to you. The easiest thing to recognize is a phony.

5. A LITTLE GOES A LONG WAY

When I first started my comic, I was entering my comic into the 2025 Webtoon Contest, and I was putting an insane amount of hours into my comic to live up to the output standards of Webtoon artists. On top of that, I was newly married, working full-time as an electrian, and going to school for 5 hours a week. I remember weeks where I put 40 hours into my comic. My poor wife… DON’T DO WHAT I DID.

Nowadays I put something more like 5-7 hours a week into my comic. In two weeks, I’m able to get 4 pages done. You don’t even need to do that much! One page a week is great too! Any amount of effort will eventually lead to a finished comic. Something I have also realized is that a lot of the appeal of webcomics is that the audience is joining you in the process of making the comic. Webcomics readers are accustomed to smaller updates.

That’s all for now everyone! Have an amazing week!