TWCL

[TheHiddenElephant]

Hello, all. My name is the Hidden Elephant, or at least it is to you....

Like so many of us here, I'm a content creator, more specifically, I am making a webcomic. Imagine that.

I was hesitant to join forums like these, mainly because I have no idea of what I'm getting myself into, and there's that whole 'Time Sink' thing due to be a college student with what feels like a poor grasp of time management skills. Still, I have done so, because I have a webcomic, and that webcomic must grow. Well, I'd like for it to grow....

Anyways, I'm not sure if it's polite to post a link to the webcomic in this introductory thread, but I may as well. Otherwise, people would start asking.

The webcomic is set in a fantasy world with Arabic and Polynesian stylings, and seems to me to be more a journey than anything else. It is still young, at 17 pages as of the time of this post, but that's no reason not to get going. I host it on deviantArt, not that I'm sure of its reputation here, and update it every Tuesday and Friday.

...Oh right, the link!
Link: https://thehiddenelephant.deviantart.com/art/The-Wide-Ocean-Page-1-702674288

[smbhax.com]

Welcome to the forum! : )

Congrats on starting a webcomic. ^_^ There probably are some people around here who would reflexively look down their nose a bit at a webcomic hosted on dA, particularly when you can set up something that's easier to navigate and probably under the nose of a much larger webcomic readership for free at places like ComicFury, Tapas, and Line Webtoon, but if dA is what you like, then by gum, there's no reason to care what anyone else thinks. : D
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[TheHiddenElephant]

smbhax.com wrote:

Welcome to the forum! : ) Congrats on starting a webcomic. ^_^ There probably are some people around here who would reflexively look down their nose a bit at a webcomic hosted on dA, particularly when you can set up something that's easier to navigate and probably under the nose of a much larger webcomic readership for free at places like ComicFury, Tapas, and Line Webtoon, but if dA is what you like, then by gum, there's no reason to care what anyone else thinks. : D

It's actually what I know I have experience with. My very casual research suggested that webcomic-hosting sites have you need to qualify for them, something that I admittingly had no confidence in. Furthermore, I know dA is host to many random passerbys. With a generous helping of tags, I can, in theory, send out a large enough net and snag some errant inquirers.

[MK_Wizard]

Hey there! Welcome and hope you like it here!

[smbhax.com]

TheHiddenElephant wrote:

It's actually what I know I have experience with. My very casual research suggested that webcomic-hosting sites have you need to qualify for them, something that I admittingly had no confidence in. Furthermore, I know dA is host to many random passerbys. With a generous helping of tags, I can, in theory, send out a large enough net and snag some errant inquirers.

Those are good points--although the sites I listed, you don't have to pass any kind of qualification in order to start putting your comic there. Tapas and Line Webtoon have sort of "premium" comic series where the author actually gets paid, and you do have to qualify for those gigs, but they both also just have an open hosting tier where anyone can put their comic. : )

http://comicfury.com
http://tapas.io/
http://webtoons.com/

A few more:

http://smackjeeves.com
http://theduckwebcomics.com

So anyway, there are options in case you ever want to host in multiple places or something. : D
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[TheHiddenElephant]

smbhax.com wrote:

Those are good points--although the sites I listed, you don't have to pass any kind of qualification in order to start putting your comic there. Tapas and Line Webtoon have sort of "premium" comic series where the author actually gets paid, and you do have to qualify for those gigs, but they both also just have an open hosting tier where anyone can put their comic. : ) http://comicfury.com http://tapas.io/ http://webtoons.com/ A few more: http://smackjeeves.com http://theduckwebcomics.com So anyway, there are options in case you ever want to host in multiple places or something. : D

Any particular recommendations? I'm looking more and more into swapping over to a Hosting Site, and using my dA account (Plus whatever else I got) for either advertisement or art bonuses.

[smbhax.com]

TheHiddenElephant wrote:

Any particular recommendations? I'm looking more and more into swapping over to a Hosting Site, and using my dA account (Plus whatever else I got) for either advertisement or art bonuses.

Of the ones I listed, Tapas and Line Webtoon seem (I don't hard numbers, mind you) to have the largest audiences; they also seem to favor manga-style drama or young adult cartoony humor comics. They offer pretty much nothing in the way of site customization, and are fixed in a pages-in-a-vertical-column layout that may be a little foreign to non-manga-type comics. I put my horizontal format, single-panel sci-fi comics on them anyway, but it isn't the most convenient reading format for them; even so, I've already picked up a decent number of subscribers on each, but I get far more reader interaction on Tapas.

Tapas URLs are in the format "http://tapas.io/series/[series abbreviation]." Line Webtoon URLs are in a rather more unwieldy format: "http://www.webtoons.com/en/challenge/[series name]/list?title_no=[five digit number]." Neither URL format is really suitable for marketing; in other words, you would probably just have to tell people to look up your comic name on Tapas / Webtoon in order to find it, rather than being able to give them a URL they'd remember.

I somehow get the impression that Line Webtoon came first, and Tapas followed and pretty much copied their format. Tapas' interface is "slicker," but something in their layout makes it chug for a while when I go there to try to upload a new page.

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ComicFury offers nearly complete HTML-level page configuration as well as plenty of ready-to-use template layouts, and runs in a single-page format that is probably more familiar to non-manga readers. I don't think their audience is as large as Tapas or Line Webtoon, but they are fairly gregarious. There is a much more "indy" feel on ComicFury; it is made and run by one dude, and he is active on their forums--and their forums may be the most lively webcomic forums around (hm well Tapas has a fairly large forum, come to think of it, but it feels like a more streamlined, corporatized thing).

ComicFury gives you a URL in the format "http://[comic abbreviation].thecomicseries.com," and if you don't like "thecomicseries," there are a number of other domain names you can select from, I think. Also, I believe you can set up a CF comic to run under your own domain name (ie [mycomicname].com or whatever domain you pay to register), but I haven't done that with them so I don't know the details.

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Smack Jeeves is similar to ComicFury in the high level of customization. I think there may be more readers on SJ than on CF, but I get very low levels of interaction from them; very generally speaking, the SJ readership seems to favor romance and manga-style comics.

SJ comics have URLs in the format "http://[comic abbreviation].smackjeeves.com/."

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The Duck offers Western-style page-to-page reading, but no customization. I think the readership may be the smallest of the sites I've listed, and the site has gone through various technical upheavals in recent years; it has been stable in its latest, pared-down configuration for a while now, but they don't give the impression of having much in the way of any remaining technical budget, and my impression is that the audience that remains is almost exclusively a small, hardcore, fairly chatty bunch that have stuck it out through thick and thin; I don't see a lot of new readers, although maybe that's just my own comic's problem ; ).

The Duck comic URLs are in the format "http://www.theduckwebcomics.com/[full_comic_name_with_underscores]."

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So, each one has a different vibe. I would definitely recommend visiting each one yourself to see what they're like.
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