Like most of the visitors to this board, I am nurturing my great American long-form comic project.
Ok, now my question:
What are your thoughts, as readers and producers, on what is the ideal release interval / minimum volume of content per release for a long-form web comic?
What does making people come back several times a week get me? (momentum and notoriety, I guess?)
Anyway, there ya go. What do you think?
Tim
Thoughts on a release schedule for a long-form comic?
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Tim Mallos
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Good questions Tim. It all depends on what you want to accomplish. For long format weekly would be good. Daily will up your readership, but that is not practical for long format. The size of your update will depend on you too. How much work can you produce on a weekly basis? I tried weekly with mine, about 10 -15 frames each installment using flash and it burned me out. Size doesn?t matter (in online comics) but being regular does. Before a babble on any more, weekly would be a good goal and size is whatever works for you.
Hope that helps,
Randy
http://www.mermbut.com
Hope that helps,
Randy
http://www.mermbut.com
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Greg Stephens
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I'm agreeing with Randy on this one. For a long-form story, an update of once a week is probably sufficient, but it also depends on how much material you plan to release at once.
Examples to follow (or not, I suppose) are comics like the Makeshift Miracle or Megatokyo, which tell continuing storylines and update three times weekly. Megatokyo generally uses more panels and dialogue per installment, but Makeshift Miracle's story seems to be progressing at a faster pace.
Of course Scott McCloud has done this both ways- releasing a lot of material each week with Zot! online, and then going to both of the opposite extremes with Morning Improv by posting one panel per day. Story length with M.I. varies, but the current Meadow of the Damned has run long enough to have at least two parts.
Because I've been tending toward larger comics with more panels and words then I used to do, I'm considering resuming at a weekly pace, which will hopefully be easier to manage.
There's also Argon Zark, which updates infrequently- sometimes months go by between new "pages"- but is still one of the major online comics around.
On the other hand, Sluggy Freelance manages to tell a continuing story 7 days a week with lots of action and dialoge.
OK- bottom line- there's all sorts of precidents, so just pick a schedule that you think you can maintain while also keeping to your own artistic standards.
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Greg
<font size=-1>edited to fix links I messed up the first time.</font>
<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: Greg Stephens on 2002-02-14 13:44 ]</font>
Examples to follow (or not, I suppose) are comics like the Makeshift Miracle or Megatokyo, which tell continuing storylines and update three times weekly. Megatokyo generally uses more panels and dialogue per installment, but Makeshift Miracle's story seems to be progressing at a faster pace.
Of course Scott McCloud has done this both ways- releasing a lot of material each week with Zot! online, and then going to both of the opposite extremes with Morning Improv by posting one panel per day. Story length with M.I. varies, but the current Meadow of the Damned has run long enough to have at least two parts.
Because I've been tending toward larger comics with more panels and words then I used to do, I'm considering resuming at a weekly pace, which will hopefully be easier to manage.
There's also Argon Zark, which updates infrequently- sometimes months go by between new "pages"- but is still one of the major online comics around.
On the other hand, Sluggy Freelance manages to tell a continuing story 7 days a week with lots of action and dialoge.
OK- bottom line- there's all sorts of precidents, so just pick a schedule that you think you can maintain while also keeping to your own artistic standards.
_________________
Greg
<font size=-1>edited to fix links I messed up the first time.</font>
<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: Greg Stephens on 2002-02-14 13:44 ]</font>