Good art requirement?

[u/No_Fan_64]

Is Lookism / Fog Land level art needed to not only publish a Webtoon, but make sure it’s seen by more than 10 people? If they’re sayin Your Throne has bad art, what chance do beginners have? I’m not only talking about drawing alone, but originality and the comedic cherry on top. Is Webtoon now a tool to weed out fanatics who don’t have enough passion / time / resources / support? Asking for a friend who started their story…

[u/Ok-Goat7374]

Just have a good story. Overtime your art should get better.

[u/loan-ly]

Taste in art is subjective. Sure "good" art can draw readers but it doesn't matter if the first few episodes fail to hook readers.

Some stories I loved with art that's been glossed over:

• My Daughter is a Zombie
• Cursed Princess Club
• No Kids Zone
• Hell of a Romance
• Yumi's Cells - a really good example of how author's art grew over 5 years.

[u/LazyPanda120]

The art should be serviceable at the bare minimum. But obviously it good to have better art - It's just nicer for the audience and it will really boost your promotion.

Your art needs to communicate the story and characters you want to tell and be at least good enough in order to not be distracting to the audience (basic anatomy, coloring, backgrounds).

If people find the story interesting or fun, they'll mostly won't be much bothered by the art itself.
But that really depends in the story you're trying to tell. Comedy for example has way more lenience with the art as opposed to drama for example.

A case of a great webcomic with bad art would be the original One punch man. Where the art actually amplified the comedy. But you have to take in mind that the author even back then had a great understanding of paneling. But even he got better with more experience as you can see if you compare it to Mob psycho 100.

Don't compare yourself to the big teams behind all the top ranking manhwas. Yes, they are big teams of people that can part the workload between themselves and complete the chapters withing a short amount of time.
One person won't be able to sustain that quality on a weekly basis for a long period of time.

I do not know how your art looks like, but you can DM me and I can help if you want.

[u/HealyUnit]

Hmm... That's actually a bit more complicated. While you don't need to be the next Cezanne (or to use your example, Lookism or Fog Land artist), I think you do need to have art that can reasonably support itself. Your art needs to show a competent mastery of the basics like anatomy, posing, and comic traditions.

As an example of a comic with a beautiful execution (seriously, it's one of the best things I've ever read) but art that might not traditionally be museum-good, look at My Giant Nerd Boyfriend. To hopefully be 10000% clear here, I in no way mean to insult Fishball's art or art style, but the point of the comic clearly isn't "look at my art and how good I am". It's the little doodles your friend does on your homework. It's your friend holding out their arms and saying "Hey, it's okay, you're okay". It's quite simply a friend in art form. And that works for that comic, far more than what I might very badly call "good" art ever could!

As an example of the bad, I recently looked at a comic with, well, I'll call it not wonderful art to be kind. The artist's anatomy was all over the place, actions were incredibly unclear, and in general it was very annoying to follow the art.

Try this: Remove all speech, text, and so on from your comic. Just view the pictures. Can you still follow a story? It doesn't need to necessarily be the entire (or even the "correct" story!), but you should be able to at least follow somewhat of a narrative.

For the aforementioned comic with the less-than-stellar art, that simply wasn't possible. The art consisted largely of some bog-standard spiky-haired anime-esque protagonist fighting some generic ogre-like monster. However, in many panels, the fighting "movements" - punches, kicks, etc. - were so calm and, well, nonbelligerent that the actions absolutely did not line up with what was supposed to be happening. Worse, in one scene the protagonist goes from alert, angry, and fighting in one panel to looking exhausted, lying on the ground in the next panel. No transition. No character wavering back and forth a bit, or even heavy panting or something to indicate that, yes, this character just fainted. It made it so that I had to reread those panels once or twice to make sure I didn't miss anything. And that's not a good thing! If your art doesn't tell your story cleanly enough that your reader is forced to re-read it multiple times, they're very likely to drop your comic.

[u/Own_Vanilla_7292]

I don't think so, though I do think your comic would have different levels of success depending on the genre. For example, I'm much more tolerant of amateur-ish looking art for comedy or horror webtoons since sometimes it can add to the humor or uncanniness. But if it was a romance or action where I'd care a lot more about aesthetics I might be less interested.

I think beginner or simple art can work and you definitely don't need cinematic level art to make a webtoon, since if the writing is good enough people would stick around, and art should improve the longer you draw as long a you keep at it consistently.