I am a cartoonist, too
'22 text + 6 none text' paragraphs, 1333 words, 8091 characters(incl. spaces) - About 5 pages
Created 232 days ago, Updated 134 days ago
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When I was a kid, I liked reading comic books. I, like other kids, used to go to a cartoon cafe in my neighborhood, and sat there for hours and read comic books like Woo Young Ko’s Romance of the Three Kingdoms (which is based on an old Chinese story), giggling. Even after I graduated from college, I used to meet my friends at a cartoon cafe, which became more modern but still had the same business model. We would make an appointment like “let’s meet there around 4pm.” and it was not rare that the earliest arriver waited for 1 or 2 hours reading comic books.
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From here
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The comic book industry in Korea is currently at downturn, or more precisely the traditional business models are. Since 2000, cartoon cafes’ sales shrank to one third of what it used to be. The main cause of such drop attributes to proliferation of technological enhancement such as Internet, game and PC cafes. Young people, who would have come to cartoon cafes, now prefer PC cafes where they play online games.
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An interesting change is that many professional cartoonists have moved to game companies because their ability to draw fantastic visual and graphic was highly appreciated by game companies. From a slightly different angle, game is, in some sense, an advanced version of cartoon.
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Then, is comics truly doomed industry? Probably not. As mentioned above, game industry could be regarded as the successor of cartoon industry. Also there is an online cartoon industry. Like many other media related industries, comics is heavily affected by digital evolution and Internet technology.
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Online cartoons can be purchased just like any other digital contents and can be even rented on the PC monitor. Naver’s cartoon, well known for its intelligent search and one of the most popular online cartoon distributor, runs under rental model. Users can rent online cartoons at 20~30 cents per night. Users can also purchase a one-day pass for $2 enjoying any choices of cartoons available.
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Not all cartoon books are digitalized as yet. There are still some cartoons only available in the form of books. However, online cartoons are not simply digitalized version of cartoon books. We found an interesting fact that digitalized cartoons feedback to comic books. Nowadays many cartoon artists publish e-cartoons first to test marketability or obtain an opportunity for book publishing. At Naver’s cartoon corner, most of best selling cartoons were also available in paper form, but 70% of newly released cartoons were only available in digitized form.
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Thanks to the characteristic of digital media, low distribution and shelf costs, online cartoon publication can be easily achieved with low risk. Whereas paper book publications can only be executed carefully and selectively based on potential to be a hit because publishing through existing offline distribution channels involves high printing and shelf costs.
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Such characteristic of digital media was exemplified by the huge success of cartoon called “Apartment” created by Kangpool, who started to gain popularity by publishing romantic comic strip on Daum (#2 web portal after Naver and before Yahoo! Korea) in 2003. ‘Apartment’ was originally published and became a hit in “World Inside cartoon” of Daum and was made into a movie film later.
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UCC (User Created Contents) cartoons illustrate even more dramatic evidence that online cartoons are no longer simple transition from paper book cartoons. There is a corner called “Challenge! Cartoonist” where anyone can publish its self-created cartoons. To publish cartoon in the corner, one simply needs to upload jpg files which can be created by using graphic programs or scanner for pencil and paper drawings.
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The usual challengers are professional comic artists who are not well-known or comic-artist-wannabe’s, and that is why the competency of some of the works in the corner is quite high. Anyone successful in challenge obtains the opportunity to publish someplace else too. It is the gateway to becoming a popular professional comic artist.
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The challenge corner contains over 3,000 live cartoons as of August 2006, launched in January of 2006. On average, newly published 20~30 cartoons are meeting comic readers everyday in the challenge corner; the average number of newly released cartoons in paper book form runs around 20.
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The challenge corner certainly contributes to increasing diversity by opening up the door for many people although some of the cartoons in corner are shorter than normal ones, which makes apple-to-apple comparison a bit difficult. Along with supply, demand remains strong as a few popular cartoons are read by 3,000 users within 15 days, which could go up to 20,000 depending on the magnetite of popularity.
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More extreme example of UCC is Naver’s “Toon”. Toon is more broad-base service than Comic Artist challenge. Toon is filled with pretty much amateurs’ work with average length of 4~10 cuts. Toon can approach broader base of users mainly due to the short length of the cartoons (or more precisely the atmosphere which accepts short cartoons) and provision of web based cartoon tools and components to produce cartoons. Its catchphrase was ‘Draw by clicking’.
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Our intern made 8-cut cartoon and posted it in 30 minutes (including coming up with a nonsensical story) even though he didn’t have any experience prior to that (his cartoon reached more than 20,000 views a few days after posting and made it to the weekly best, which surprised us very much).
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When we analyzed one-week sample data of Toon’s, the dependency on hits was significantly smaller than that of a large bookstore. The analysis result was somewhat expected to be that because Toon doesn’t rely on celebrity comic artists or related brands. Further, length was short enough to make people to be more adventurous and less hit-centric. Toon also provides effective filters which enables users to post, search and browse in the ocean of UCC cartoons.
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The most surprising fact from the research on Toon was the number of new comics comes live on the site. Averages of 700 new cartoons are posted on Toon on a daily basis. This is enormous compared to 20 in paper publications and about the same number in online semi-pro cartoon corner, Challenge! Cartoonist.
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Insert longtail comparison chart.
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And that increased variety seems to have resulted in increased selection by people. Comparing how much the hits were contributing to the total usage, we get the result that Toon was more longtail-oriented than the large bookstore’s comic book section.
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Why such enormous diversity? The first reason is probably the short length. You can create (and view) a lot more 8 cuts than 80 pagers. Some people laugh at the comparison, saying we cannot compare apples to oranges. ‘That is not a full comic book!’ is what they say. I fully agree that we are not comparing apple to apple, but that’s the point. Make it short and people will read more! I would like to discuss about this at the end of a book in another chapter.
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Another reason, which seems equally if not more important, is the easy-to-use web based drawing tools. Challenge! Cartoonist, also run by Naver, does allow very short cartoons of a few cuts. However, it does not have attract as many people as Toon, even if it offers better chance of becoming famous. Maybe true amateurs does not like the ‘chance’ of becoming popular as a cartoonist, having other careers or career aspirations? Maybe. But the simplest answer is that Challenge does not provide easy drawing tools.
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Toon’s success cannot be treated lightly because it isn’t easy to find such magnitude of success in terms of scale of voluntary participation and the level of creativity in contents. Even Naver’s ‘Knowledge iN’, which is the most well known success in UCC era in Korea and was benchmarked by Yahoo! Answers, is primarily knowledge gathering based on (questions and) reactive answers rather than users’ creative contents, which can be called user-generated but not really user-created. Toon is user-created and demonstrates the true potential of diversity made possible by creative mass, and that is mass niche.
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