Comic Fury Webcomic Hosting - Audience Catering and You: Sacrificing Content for Fame

I used to avoid "arrow to the knee" references, but then I took an arrow to the knee.

When it comes to making webcomics I've always had the ideology that you should make what you want to make, and if other people end up enjoying it as well that should be considered a bonus.

Fanservice is part of Cinny's character, she's a show off. Your average CF reader is too young for most of my pop culture references.

I don't worry too much about "purity of purpose" as ink LaRue is a non profit entity. If I wanted internet fame I'd be posting pink kittens and guys getting hit in the nads.

I've been an avid webcomic reader for years and I actually use that for inspiration,I find things they've poked fun at and approach them from a different angle. The majority of webcomics have game jokes from the viewpoint of the gamers while mine has it from the viewpoint of the psychiatrist who's job is to deal with the characters.

Of course I'm trying to develop the regular characters of the series so they can carry jokes by themselves eventually.

In.
Arrow in the knee... is what it says.
Lotsa people get that wrong.
I've played enough Skyrim to know by now.
I've played more Skyrim than any person should ever have to play. o_o;

Meh, I only use elements that I like because I know there are people who think as I do out there. Sure, these people are scarce so I kinda gotta advertise to find them, but I would never sacrifice the story, characters, or style for a bigger audience. I'm happy with what I have, because at least -someone's- going to hear my voice and remember my story in the end. (At least I hope they'll remember it. Could be that isn't entirely memorable and I'm just fooling myself.)

It's no real mystery as to why my comic doesn't get as many views as others. My style is sketchy, not many people enjoy the kind of story I'm going for, I have newbie experience at getting stories like this across. But even with the small audience derived mostly of people I've wound up making friends with, I feel comfortable this way. Sure I still daydream about what it'd be like if I had a fan-base as big as Homestuck but... I won't get into what I think about Homestuck. :/

And yes, thank you, all the things that have been said about Nuzlocke are reasons as to why I CAN'T stand nuzlockes. There are some other reasons, but you guy covered the vast majority.

[/themosti'veevertypedonCFforumsinawhile]

...... Are you talking about a Pokémon?

I want my comic itself to be good on its own terms, so I try not to borrow too much. Especially in the case of meme jokes and pop culture references, that stuff goes in and out of style really fast and will make my comic seem dated and passe in less than a year. However, on my tumblr that stuff is okay because that's for cheap jokes and silly stuff that makes me laugh in the moment. It won't be part of the reader experience in the long run.

Fanart is a different story, though. I like to do it and think it's fun, but while my fanart stuff gets a lot of attention, that attention doesn't usually follow through to my comics. So as a promotional thing it's pretty much useless.

If I were at some point in the future to make a comic based on some pop culture thing, it would be 90% bad puns and 10% overanalyzing.

Why? And really, whose problem is it? If I decide that I want to turn it into a serious noir drama and the people who read it (who I am obviously pandering to in this scenario?) are cool with it, it seems like everyone is happy. It's not like there's a webcomic secret police waiting in the wings to haul me away for 'losing the spirit of the work' or even selling out, if that's what it was.

If we're happy doing it, and the people who are reading it are happy reading it, everyone that matters wins.

This, pretty much. Except the Homestuck part.

I will admit though that back when I first started making sprite comics, I filled it full of Megaman references. As time wore on and I developed my spriting I began picking away at the Megaman references and making them disappear. Alexander and Lucas: The Old Archives is the last example where I had clear references of Megaman, even having the robot Bass, his creator Doctor Wily (who I made the father of one of my main characters: Cindy) and the robotic dog Treble make their appearances as secondary characters. Alexander and Lucas: Rebooted! still has references to Megaman, just not as apparent, the names are barely changed but the characters are: Cindy Willy and her father Albert Willy, and Mark Lighte and his father Thomas Lighte.

My next project: Overcome, will finally erase all references to Megaman or any other game, through the story, characters and my spriting. I have been thinking of including robots to the mix, just not the ones like Megaman games have running around. Characters will no longer have any connection to Megaman characters, names have been changed to remove that and characters who bare a resemblance to Megaman characters are being reworked.

I'm also guilty of still using the head of Megaman from Megaman 7 in my sprites for Alexander and Lucas: Rebooted! I made the bodies myself but even then they look like complete copies of the Megaman 7 style. With Overcome I'm using a sprite base I made myself from scratch, there's not a single pixel of a copyrighted sprite in these bases and designs that was either copied or taken from another sprite.

You could say I'm trying to "overcome" my old ways and make something completely original.
Actually, that's exactly what I'm trying to do.

EDIT: I also forgot to add that before reading this thread I had no idea Nuzlocke comics were so popular. Until I read one here on Comic Fury I had never heard of them before. The challenge sounds interesting to me so I give the comics a shot, no doubt there will only be one or two that will keep my attention no matter what.

I thought I'd take another survey of my own comic:
I've got on my PC, 270 strips. Within those 270 strips, are 227 references to other things. Either concealed as objects, dendritis or jokes. Some are overt and some not so.

"If you copy from one author, it's plagiarism. If you copy from two, it's research."
- Wilson Mizner

Plagiarize,
Let no one else's work evade your eyes,
Remember why the good Lord made your eyes,
So don't shade your eyes,
But plagiarize, plagiarize, plagiarize -
Only be sure always to call it please 'research'.
- Tom Lehrer, "Lobachevsky" (1953)

I'm kind of more talking in the lines of what happened to YU+ME Dream, and how a ton of fans got pissed off because of the complete sudden genre change in the middle of the story, from typical lesbian high school romance to a completely surreal nightmare/dream world. It might have been the creator's intention all along, the story was written to do a 180 degree twist, but it clearly didn't sit well with a lot of people. Of course, some people were highly intrigued by the story change, but many weren't.

I think that just goes more with basic storytelling problems than audience catering. Still, if you want to do that sort of thing, nobody is stopping you. Some viewers might hate you for it though.

If something doesn't feel genuine to what I'm trying to create in my personal work I'd feel gross including it just for popularity, or to appeal to some current fad. Doing that results in a lot of predictable, mediocre, identical comics. The one thing I think does come in on that list, like other people have said, is pop cultural references, though not regularly. Or topical references to current events and such. But that's the cultural landscape we have, the characters are aware of what's happening in the world around them. I think references like that can be used to make a social commentary or satire, but I also have seen pop culture references be used in a lazy way. Like instead of developing characters or a story, or telling a clever joke, someone just makes some reference and we're all supposed to find it funny simply because we recognize it? that's lazy humor.

Funny thing is... I did do someone a fanart picture once...

Only once, ever... mostly because I'm afraid that my attempts at "art" look so ridiculous next to anyone else's that I feel terribly ashamed of myself if I post them.

But I once did a fanart for a comic that, on the grand scale of things, isn't all that good. HOWEVER... I mostly did it because I consider it one of the "most improved" webcomics I've ever seen. That is to say it started out as possibly the most atrocious weeaboo manga fanwank comics known to humankind... but with careful application of cerebus creep and some quite surprising art evolution, it actually got moderately good with a little time. As such, given the comic's roots and all, I felt I wouldn't be mocked all too harshly for supplying a little fanpic...

... O'course somebody still informed me immediately that I'd drawn the hands too small... ._.
Well, it isn't like I can do anything without getting it wrong.

That kind of strikes me as the opposite of what this thread is about.. This was about pandering to the audience for fame, right? YU+ME Dream sounds like the author chose their vision of what they wanted to do with the story over fame and reader appreciation.

But I'm of the opinion that the Creators are free to do whatever they want. If they value fame and attention, anything that they choose to do with their creation to pursue that goal is perfectly valid. If they value a story that avoids pop cultural references entirely, and view it as some sort of purity, then that's cool too. So long as the creator is happy with what they've got at the end of the day, and it fulfills whatever goals they set out to accomplish, I think it's a good thing.

I've noticed a lot of the people who choose purity thinking that it is some higher purpose have gotten upset when the success and fame didn't accompany it though. They want the world to appreciate their vision for what it is, and unfortunately the world doesn't always give a crap about someone's vision. In the end, so long as people are honest and realistic with their goal setting, they can be fulfilling their objectives in whatever way best suits them.

And thankfully, there are no webcomic police to haul you away for doing it wrong. :D

As far as audience catering and pop culture references, I've never really cared for the latter. In fact, sometimes it really bothers me. Especially when it feels gratuitous or for the sake of ratings. Most pop culture references just take me out of the story.

When I write something, I want to offer the reader pure escapism so that they have a world they can call their own. A little reference here and there is okay, sure, as long as it is true to character, but I'd rather give my stories a timeless feel.

As far as catering to the audience, usually when I write a story I already have the entire thing mapped out from beginning to end, even if it's a long running series. If you are going to cater to an audience at all, I think it's still important to have a basic foundation for your story so you already know where it might be headed.

However, in regards to the web comic format, I do take the feedback that I get from people into account. Like if people are feeling a certain character, it might help persuade me to keep that character around a bit longer, but I would never let it completely change my story or anything like that.

I guess what it comes down to is, audiences are always going to have different opinions on your material. And there's no way you can cater to all of them and please everybody. You just gotta write what you know and stick with that.

That's what I was talking about when I was giving the whole, "changing your comic into a crime noir suddenly." It's not audience catering, it's anti-catering where the creator does what they want, despite the fans instead of for them. Which can be just as bad as audience catering itself.

I dunno, I come from the line of thought that comic creators (or film makers, or anything) are entertainers first, and they owe something to their audience, i.e. a really good story. If they choose to cover their work in memes, fanservice, and other audience catering, they are quite possibly entertaining their audiences, but their actual content gets lost. While it's important to do what makes you the creator happy, if you're publishing it to a world-wide audience, you are at least responsible for someone's entertainment.

My philosophy is that the audience has graciously given you 10 minutes of their time (or even less with webcomics), give them something that'll make them beg for more, not make them hit the X-button as fast as possible. I think of making comics like serving a really great dinner to guests, I want to make sure they're satisfied and wanting to come back for seconds. Different goals, I suppose.

But yeah, people who are doing the "purity thinking" stuff should never expect fame or attention in return.

I never really got that way of thinking.
I mean it might be justified if you were paying, and they were selling... like some sort of explicit agreement / contract / whatever...
But when it comes to free webcomics... the reader's role is a completely passive one. The comic belongs to the creators, and as such it is 100% their choice what they do with it... It bugs me even when readers just make suggestions about how it should go, let alone when they get angry about how it does go. The webcomic is a gift, and it is just damned rude to get pissy about a gift, no matter how inappropriate it might be.

I guess I kinda pander to the masses. Siduk embodies a lot of of fanservice-like things, the main one being she's topless for about half the story. But it's nice that I can kinda bundle up a lot of fanservice into one character. Eawin is the cute shota-type and Diosa is the tall, dark and handsome-type. I'm trying to avoid making my heroines too archetypical, but that's a bit too idealistic. I'm sure Akari and Wynna will become Sue-ish at some point.

And Aglon... well, Aglon is Aglon, and he needs therapy for sure.

This discussion reminds me of my diagram of the transformation of art into entertainment:

ARTIST > ART|ENTERTAINMENT < AUDIENCE

This supposes that there are actually two active sides to entertainment, the productive side and the receptive side, but they're both transforming the work. The artist creates a comic or film or song with some kind of intended meaning encoded within it. The audience receives it and decodes the message through their own cultural filters. What the artist intends isn't always what the audience interprets. This might have unexpected consequences like any misunderstood form of communication.

This can also be cyclical, because once they get the message, members of the audience then become artists, and reinterpret the original message in a new way, like fan fiction or film remakes.

Pandering to an audience is similar to selling a product to a demographic. The unexpected consequences and misunderstandings are carefully eliminated so the creator and audience get a predictable result, like McDonald's or Ford manufacturing a standardized product.

If you want a completely passive audience, it might be possible through brainwashing and setting strict social protocols, like in a cult religion or fascist movement. Then you could "gift" them anything you want.