I've only been at this webcomic thing for a couple of months, but even at this early stage I've learned a whole lot about how to produce content for the web. A lot of my earlier pages and strips look pretty choppy since I hadn't quite mastered a few of the basic nuances of Adobe Illustrator and such.

I've been thinking about going back and retooling some of these older comics. I don't want to redraw them, but I would apply different color filters to the pages and I'd also use different fonts for the lettering. When I told my sister about my feelings in this regard she told me that a lot of webcomikers go back and fix up their early stuff at around the one year mark.

Actually, I'm sort of already doing this. One of the features that I'm running, "Fried Ice Cream is a Reality", is an old black and white comic book I drew with my little sister when I was in high school. I'm coloring the pages and adding digital lettering to them before presenting them here. (It's kind of where I got the idea for this whole mess)

I wanted to get a couple of opinions from the forums. What do you think about doing a "remaster" of older material? Is it perfectly kosher, or do you feel that it's a vaguely Stalin-esque alteration of one's artistic history? I do get annoyed whenever I see Star Wars on TV and there's a bunch of stupid CGI crap that sticks out like a sore thumb. Do you feel that this is kind of like that?

What about those of you who have redone old pages already? Why did you do this? Would you do it again? Do you believe that there's no such thing as a finished work of art?

I think this is an interesting issue that practically all of us will grapple with at some point or another. We'll all improve as artists, and we will then look back at our old stuff and wince uncomfortably. Should we try to retool our older material, or should we leave it as is?

Sharing our thoughts may help a few of us. (Especially me)

Most comic artists feel some need to go back and fix old stuff to some degree. Sometimes it's just little things that don't take much time, but others end up redoing their entire archives.

The problem is that anyone who reads your comic, unless you're still regularly putting out new pages on the same schedule, generally gets annoyed that you're spending your time fixing up things they've already read. Those pages are in the past and they want those future pages.

Fixing old things is usually a fairly pointless endeavour. One's art is hopefully always improving, and trying to keep old art up to the standard of new skill is an endless task. For me, the only exception would be to bring some past things in line with current- going back to change some dialogue or someone's hair color or a background to introduce Nibbler's shadow under the desk or something; because it'd demanded by the story or the direction the comic took. If it's just because someone thinks the old pages look crummy and they could do better now- by all means, do something better now, but don't do it remaking something old.

The only reason people seem to think retrofitting old webcomics is okay is because when it's posted on the internet, it seems like it's always 'current'- but there's really nothing wrong with having art you feel is inferior back in your archives. It shows your improvement, and everyone is understanding that longer comics usually have a rougher beginning. To a lot of readers, even that rougher beginning is perfectly good.

Nothing is more annoying than enjoying a comic that is moving along nicely, and then having the author say "guys, I'm taking a couple months off because I want to redo some early pages." I never come back. I know that some comics have even started over completely and took just as long to get back to where they were before they started over, in some cases several years. Maybe that's more an invenstment based on risk assessment, but it seems a pretty dangerous thing to do on a regular basis.

It depends on why you're doing it and who you're doing it for, I think.

If you plan to collect your strips into a print edition one day, it may well be worth re-working early pages to ensure they are the same quality as the later work. I certainly plan to re-letter the early chapters of my comic for this reason.

If you plan to keep your comic as "web only", however, then you need to consider your readers. Existing readers probably don't care, since they've already read the old pages and new readers won't necessarily be attracted by the changes, since they'll start reading from the last page anyway!

Also, there are many webcomic readers who actually enjoy looking at how a creator's art has progressed/improved over the course of the comic. They see that as part of what webcomickery is all about!

Of course, if you're doing it for your own benefit, then that's cool. But, as Skoolmunkee said, in order to keep your existing readership, you'll probably need to keep the new pages coming at regular intervals, so make sure you re-work the old pages inbetween those.

I went back and re-colored and re-lettered all but one of my The Surrealist pages.

I took some pages that weren't working as a whole and took panels from different places and put them together to make a better, bigger picture. On Rural Youth I did this as well and added pages to make the story more cohesive. On both I deleted really pointless pages and improved the flow of dialogue.

It took a long time and I could've worked on producing updates instead. I don't really regret going back because I can look at my archives without cringing (as much) but I also agree with the ever-clever munkee: even if my pages are now current with the skills I have developed to this point, that's only going to last until I learn a new trick or two and I have no interest in forever fixing the past. I can already think of some things I should have done differently when working retroactively.

As a final thought, it also somewhat depends on the specifics and only you can be the judge. I was fairly comfortable with my pencils throughout but my coloring (all paintbuckety, spotty and layered to over important details) was far below what I would consider quality enough to expect people to look at. I expect my figure drawing skills to improve over time and actually want this to show in my archives; I like studying how artists' work changed over time. My coloring and lettering were more a question of basic technical proficiency.

meh, i think its something that shouldnt be done. move on and produce your best work now, that way its a nice little view of progression for other people.

only if there's a good reason to do so...

...for example your lettering stinks OR you messed up page dimensions and the artwork doesn't fit on printed pages OR you want to strip out color and the backgrounds are mostly "painted" rather than drawn...

...which the last one is what I'll be doing pretty soon.

Our old pages look...not so good. They were done in pencils and inks and all that. At the time, the computer i had to use was also having problems and i couldn't always make everything look just right. But nowadays, I wouldn't be able to find the time to redo or touch up the old stuff because i'm so focused on the new stuff.

I say to leave them the way they are, it shows where you've come from and how much you've progressed, which makes the art you're doing now look that much better.

the problem when you go back and re-work only pages, is pretty much what everyone else has said here. you're not actively producing NEW work. especially if you've already got an established reader base. taking too much time off from updating with new work because you're too busy redrawing old stuff, can really hurt your readership.

then there is the other drawback where you only want to redraw the first few pages, and then you end up altering your entire archive of comic pages! just an endless circle of constantly redrawing and re-editing your works. like mr. lucas.

i think it also depends on what kind of comic you plan on changing and what the intentions are behind you redrawing it.

if you're doing a strip style comic....i'd say, don't touch it. seeing artists change and evolve over the lifetime of their comic strips is just awesome to many people. look at garfield and the peanuts. the progression in the style of those strips is just amazing.

if you're doing a serial or story based book, you have to be careful of a lot of pitfalls in going backwards instead of forwards.
before i posted anything on DD, i felt that i needed to re-draw the first couple chapters of PowerJeff. the art was crude and the pacing was rough, and the story was hard to read. at the time, i thought it would be great to go back and re-draw those old first chapters to make the art shomewhat consistant, make the story easier to follow and adding in a couple main characters that are in the rest of the book, but absent from the first chapter. then i could start off the story from the VERY beginning. the downside to that, while everyone that reads the comic now is reading "new" pages, i'm only halfway through my archives, and i feel like i am spinning my wheels. i get burnt out sometimes, and it's hard to keep going when drawing new stuff and progressing the plot seems so far off. especially when i throw in a new 2 page mini-adventure here and there to keep me interested...which in turn, only pushes the end that much farther away.

sorry, that was rather long winded. but i felt it would be relevant and a bit important from someone who got caught going back trying to re-work older material.

Remaking older works certainly has crossed my mind, but i've decided not to act on it solely because it would be pointless. Plus, like people have said before in this thread, there's a certain degree of pride to be had when you look at the progression from the first comic to the last. There's a big difference between those two in my comic, and i'd rather keep it the way it is now then go back and change it.

Besides, i'd only be updating the first 11 pages, and they would look out of place when you look at them in chronological order (1-11 and then like 12-40 would look like it devolved since then). So yeah, I'd have to say that unless there's a high demand for it, I wouldn't remake older pages.

waste of time

The thought has gone through my mind to fix old pages, mostly because I look at them and I think "darn, I can draw that a little better now!" but you know, when you draw so much you tend to improve a little bit every time. So if one ever redrew their old pages, they'd just have the urge to redraw them again another time. It's like an endless cycle. @_@

So, I've decided to just focus on the new stuff. I do, however, want to redo a couple of the speech bubbles on my old pages because some of them looked intrusive and could be executed a little better.

I've been at my YU+ME comic for over five years now. I did the first few pages when I was right out of high school. I've gotten loads better. It's been really hard not to constantly re-draw the old pages.

BUT when I decided I was going to do a print edition, and I had only saved 72dpi copies of all the pages, I was FORCED to re-do them. I re-scanned some, others I completely re-drew. I mostly stuck to the original layouts and such, but I'd fix a nose here and there, some bad hands, some clunky dialog. And since I'd already re-done it, I went an uploaded those pages.

I get a lot of new readers, and a lot of old readers who want to re-read, so the changes do get noticed. But I didn't let my re-drawing get in the way of posting new comics. New pages got posted on time, and I also had some nice new art.

I like the nostalgia I get from looking at old pages far too much. I love hitting the front page and seeing Artie's far too large head and oddly red nose- just makes me giddy with delight! It improves within a short amount of time, which I take pride in and would like others to see. Besides, my style changes so quickly that as soon as I'd redo the pages, they'd be out of day again. I don't really plan on printing my comics, but even if I did I think my old pages are alright compared to my new ones. In fact, some people on DA actually like my old style better, which gave me a bad case of the sads. :'(

I think redoing old pages is not only pointless, but confusing to the readers. It took me forever to realize that Earthsong and Girl Genius were redoing their pages, for a good month I was like "this stuff doesn't fit together! ):<" then I actually took the time to read and find out why. I'm sure there are bumpkins such as myself who do this as well, so I probably won't be redoing my pages anytime soon.