Votes, Comments, Rank, Pageviews, or Rating - which one drives you to make more pages for your comics? huh!?

Comments!

It used to be pageviews and rank, but now it's comments and input. Actually that's wrong, what drives me most now is improving myself and my comic making skills, comments are really uplifting though :)

When I visit DD comics, I'd normally give some encouraging comments and ratings. In 2007, I even made DrunkDuck Speesheez to help promote other comics to my own viewers and received a great response from the community. It's mid-2009, I'm kinda curious about comics' authors and community's behavior when it comes to evaluating DD comics today. Now hit the reply link down there and share your motivation, please! ^^

da_kasha
Comments!

> comment on my comics too, I'd love it!

Skullbie
what drives me most now is improving myself and my comic making skills

> Wow, I should have added that one. But, I think, we'll need someone else's view just to improve our craft and an audience to share our stories with. ;)

timlight
Votes, Comments, Rank, Pageviews, or Rating - which one drives you to make more pages for your comics? huh!?

NEITHER!

What drives me to create is the internal need to tell stories.

I HAVE TO tell stories or else I'll burst... or return to the old habit of inventing tales about my life, kind of like "oh, hey, I knew this guy who was a skater and we called him "bone" cause he had really hard bones. He once tried to do a trick on the railing in our staircase and ended up rolling downstairs for FOUR FLOORS STRAIGHT and didn't have anything worse than a couple of bumps" or similar tales.

But I'll admit rank and pageviews were neat to observe and trying to guess whether the pageviews bump was caused by a flock of returning readers or just one person going through the entire archive.

The main drive for me (besides the fact of do my art and put my stories out there) is the comments.

I love the fact that some guys and gals keep coming and tell me that they are enjoying what I'm doing. It feels actually pretty good.

I mean if I had 500 hits, awesome. But the fact that the same few people keep posting comments is really great...

attention and pageviews. i really wish i never found out how to check pageviews, because now i do it obsessively.

Personally, the only real motivation is the strive to get better. Because believe it or not, there is always someone better than you. I thrive on that.

Oh, and I'd say comments and pageviews. Mostly comments though. Because you could have tons of readers, but if nobody wants to get involved in the story (like interact with other fans, ask the creator questions, etc) then I suppose it's not really fulfilling the webcomic experience, now is it?

Comments, comments, comments...!
Comics are a form of communication. Its fantastic when readers decide to communicate back.


I'm also somewhat driven by INERTIA.

What drives me to create is the internal need to tell stories.

Nice short skater story there. I'll tell you a story: I googled "thousand words" and an interesting result came out from the 14th website - if a picture is worth a thousand words, write about it! What if a comics' picture in a panel is worth 1000 words, should we get 1000 words about it too? Ha-ha!

I love the fact that some guys and gals keep coming and tell me that they are enjoying what I'm doing.

I like that answer! Are you open to negative criticisms too?

NickGuy
attention and pageviews. i really wish i never found out how to check pageviews, because now i do it obsessively

You got it, NG! We need to know who's visiting our works and who's really into it. ^^

Ryuthehedgewolf
if nobody wants to get involved in the story (like interact with other fans, ask the creator questions, etc) then I suppose it's not really fulfilling the webcomic experience

I feel you there. It's good to have regular comments, but I want someone also to say to me that they like my characters, plots, etc.

Actually, I sort of lied when I said comments. I just really like to draw but I rarely know what. I used to draw fanart but that got boring so I decided to do a comic C8 comments are my favourite by-product of this.

I’ll comment on some of your work later, I need to be in the right mood for these things - if I forget pm me ^^

When I go on one of my random haituses a simple comment saying how much they enjoyed the strip is more than enough to bring me back.

That and skool's recognition : D

I can't wait to see what happens next.

I use to really pay attention to pageviews but now not so much.

I'm happy I have a bunch of readers that are willing to post comments on my work. It shows me that its connecting somehow.

I like all of my readers that don't comment just as much as my regular commenters though. :)

It's not always easy commenting for every page especially if you read a bunch of comics.

Ultimately what drives me though is completing the story. Because, I feel you can't truly judge something until it's finished as a whole. And when I finally finish (which won't be for awhile) I want people to look back and say, "Man, that was a pretty damn good webcomic."

I'd keep going without any of those things. I have a story I need to get on paper before it vanishes into oblivion or takes over my mind.

Comments and interaction with readers is the biggest pick-me-up. The only bigger morale boost is receiving spontaneous fan art. (It happens rarely, but when it does, it's like winning a door prize or lotto.)

Any raise in pageviews or stats is a nice little pick-me-up, but there's also the flip side to that. If you depend on those for motivation, then drops in those things can be depressing. I'm happiest when enjoying the readers I have rather than following the ever-changing stat tides.

timlight
I love the fact that some guys and gals keep coming and tell me that they are enjoying what I'm doing.

I like that answer! Are you open to negative criticisms too?

Of course! As long is polite... I mean, if somebody tells me that I'm failing in this or that, that's awesome...But bashing for the sake of bashing is just not cool.

So far, I don't think that there are many trolls here on DD, wich is really great.

I like the comments because I love the feedback, just want to know how much people like my comic. And the rank/pageviews let me know just how much people like my comics. So It's all three of those.

da_kasha
I'll comment on some of your work later, I need to be in the right mood for these things - if I forget pm me ^^

Hey, don't worry about it.

zaymac
Ultimately what drives me though is completing the story. Because, I feel you can't truly judge something until it's finished as a whole.

Sometimes we're driven by the story, then there'd a writer's block – yikes! How can we finish it now without feedback, right?

usedbooks
I'm happiest when enjoying the readers I have rather than following the ever-changing stat tides.

Key word is ever-changing. Nothing's really permanent here, so it's a must for a DD author/artist to maintain his/her happiness in any endeavour. Excellent! ^^
bashing for the sake of bashing is just not cool
Yep, bashers (aka spammers/haters) will always be rude. Solution: ignore and report to command center, ha!

Walrus
I like the comments because I love the feedback

Um, positive feedback will definitely boost us. How about the negative opinions? How do you handle them? 8D

timlight

Walrus
I like the comments because I love the feedback

Um, positive feedback will definitely boost us. How about the negative opinions? How do you handle them? 8D

The negative I usually ignore. Unless they're actually right. In most cases it's "Omg n00b u aer a disgrase to dd." And that's how they spell it. If they can't spell, they usually don't know what they're talking about.

I think that one of the greatest things about DD is that, most of the time, people is really helpful.

So far, if Im doing something wrong (specially with my spelling, since Im mostly a Spanish-speaker) DDers tell me so.

Considering that as webcomic artist we lack of the HUGE help of an editor (most of the times), that somebody is willing to do beta-reading or only pointing a mistake is a great help.

Once upon a time I was completely addicted to page views. I'd check my stats constantly and even analyse them. I was interested in other people's stats too and being an admin, I could see those as well. It was fascinating. :)

For a long time now though it's been the complete opposite: I HATE looking at stats! I avoid all page-views like I'd avoid dog poo on the ground. Eww! I don't like to look at them for anyone.

I've always liked comments since the start.

Out of those, yeah, comments. but really I just want to improve my drawing skills. I always love reading the archives of other webcomics and seeing how the artist's skills have evolved so much and how awesome they are by the end.

Koshou
I always love reading the archives of other webcomics and seeing how the artist's skills have evolved so much and how awesome they are by the end.

I'm very much with you on that. One of the factors that helped me get started was seeing how other comics improved over time. Gave me permission to learn on the job a little.

I like reading and replying to the comments I get, I obsess about page views and my rank. I shouldn't though, but it seems to be quite important.

My irresistible sass.

Comments definately, but also the story. I know a few short scenes in the future of my comic and that's it. I am eager to see where I'll get it. It's kinda odd, but it does keep me drivin'.

Story-telling.

I've often imagined myself in a great hall lit by fire simply telling a story. Then having my head cut off because it sucked. Not really, they were a lot more tolerant of bad stories back then.

If I did it for any other reason I'd be sorely disappointed and extremely depressed all the time because my comic has generated none of those other things.

But then I have two strikes against me at the first page view. Barbies!, ew photography! There's the pitch and... he's out.

Hmmmmm....of the choices here, comments. I'm with those who don't care about pageviews and stats. To me, those are just numbers, and people who only care about numbers are only interested in measuring their wang online. Of course, there's some that use stats for marketing, research, ads, all that stuff, and there's no problem with it. But people that only care about the amount of readers and not the quality of readers kinda bother me. On the other hand, people that have a small band of readers and claim that their readers are somehow better quality than those comics who have lots of readers come off as incredibly arrogant. How does the number of readers happy with your work make any single individual less valuable to the author? People complain when I get depressed over one harsh/troll comment, when left and right people are over-complimenting me, but why should I not let the opinion of one individual affect me? If every single positive comment means something to me, I can't just ignore the one that isn't!

I'm sorta like a comment elephant in a way too because I almost never forget, but if it is something that left a real impact on me I certainly don't forget!

But, because of reader comments I've improved the way I illustrate, proportions, outfits, hair, storyline elements, how I render backgrounds, my inking techniques, and my understanding of what photoshop can do without the need for filters and I learned from many mistakes...and I think that this has been far more valuable to me than knowing how many people supposedly clicked on a link to my comic and gave it a quick glance before dismissing it for something they're already familiar with. The ones that stick around will usually tell me, and that's a lot cooler to me! The people that comment on and read my comic are like friends and family to me and I love them all, and it depresses me for weeks if I find out even one has stopped reading altogether :(

If I didn't get any comments however, I'd still be doing the comic anyway, it'd just still be to entertain my closest friends. However, since I intend to make comics my career, feedback is essential to me, and I admit people being excited about the story and speculating does motivate me quite a bit!

bravo1102
But then I have two strikes against me at the first page view. Barbies!, ew photography! There's the pitch and... he's out.

I'm of the opinion that anyone who refuses to read your comic on those grounds is a fool and doesn't know what they are missing! I for one, think your work is incredible, I just sorely need to catch up on it and time isn't on my side lately, I'm supposed to be working on comics right now!
(by the way, good used of Deadites and Evil Ash!)

Comments make me feel like there really are cool folks out there actually reading my work. Otherwise I feel so alone in the universe, a leaf flying on the wind — sorry got carried away there.

Comments do the trick. They are just so damn personable.