The Importance of Reading Other Comics

At times, you might find yourself struggling to come up with creating new pages and plot lines for your comics. It might but that the structure of page is not as impactful anymore or it could be that a pose that is proving difficult to land. This was the problem I was coming up against in one of my recent projects.

So I decided to do the one thing I had forgotten about that was a daily habit for me when I was younger. And that was finding new comics to read.

Much like an author who reads, it is important for webcomic creators to get outside their bubble and see what is out there. Now the reason one might hesitate to do this, is that it is really hard to not feel intimidated by how good other artists and writers are, particularly when starting out and comparing yourself to them seems nigh impossible to prevent.

But here is where the golden inspiration lies. I began to lose myself in the works of these amazing creators, on all levels of skill, and I have walked away renewed. The double edged sword of creativity is that, the more you practice, the faster you improve. The flip side of that being that you barely see it as it is in increments but I can assure you it is happening. And reading other webcomics shows you how you can do things differently. Taking the time to not just enjoy, but study another’s work, can fast track a lot of skills and allow you test them in your projects.

But more than that, you are supporting a fellow artist who has had to go through all the challenges that you are currently facing and, hopefully one day, a budding artist like yourself will be looking at your work, both inspired and at awe at how far you’ve come.

Do you read many webcomics? In what ways have they inspired you? And join us on Sunday evening for our Quackchat at 5:30PM(EST) where we’ll be talking about this topic!