Quote:
Originally Posted by Xion Valkyrie
I'm actually more surprised that the Koreans have embraced the whole web comics/web presence thing. I wonder if anyone can give some type of background on the whole development.
|
There's a major "portal" site (think our yahoo...before google conquers all) in Korea called Naver. It is pretty instrumental, at least as a platform, for aspiring young webtoon authors to get exposed and develop.
Here's how it works:
Quote:
Let me explain the webtoon system a bit.
In Naver (which where I read most of my webtoons), there are 3 main catagories: 1) 도전 만화 Challenge Manhwa; 2) 베스토 도전 Best Challenge; 3) 웹툰 Webtoon
1) Challenge Manhwa is for anybody. Anyone from any skill can post their webtoons up here. Most of the people are just people doing this for fun. Some are very serious about this and are amateurs with very good skill. After a while, if a Challege manhwa webtoon starts to gain popularity, it moves up to Best Challenge.
2) Best Challenge is the cream of the crop of the Challenge Manhwa webtoons. These people have been selected by Naver and promoted depending on their populairty and quality of their webtoons. If a Best Challenge webtoon has been extremely popular and has great quality, Naver will promote them to Webtoon.
3) Webtoon is the best of the best. This is where they are actually paid. They become full-time professional webtoon artists and they are paid for their work. The more popular webtoons are paid more. When a best challenge webtoon moves up to this catagorey, they have to start all over. To improve the quality of the webtoon, all the artists are required to revise their work.
-This is the basic pattern amateur artists have to go through, but if the artist is a professional or has already been published as a webtoon artist, they may be excluded from this process.
Some series that made it from challenge manhwa to the webtoon page: Pink Lady, Cheese in the Trap, Song of the Cloud, Noblesse, etc.
Some series that do not have to go through this process:Annarasumanara's author is a professional artist and has had one of his series on Naver webtoon's before. Thus, he does not have to prove his skills again.
Nineteen, Twenty-one's author and artist made it all the way to webtoons with Pet Diary a few years ago. So, they do not have to go through the whole process.
Botox's Hwang Mi Ri is a very famous professional manhwa artist. She's considered one of the most legendary of Korean shoujo manhwas (one of the earliest Korea shoujo artists to get published in Japan), and so she does not have to go through the whole process.
Depending on star ranking and hits, the pay for the author's differ. So, to show your support for your favorite series, please visit the webtoon page of the series and increase their hit number!
|
Originally posted by yuko1909 at webtoonlive.com, the people who very recently have been scanlating a lot of Korean webtoons.
As for the history of it I'm no expert to be telling tales. If I am allowed to speculate however I'd say Korea's relatively less developed manwha publishing industry versus Japan's highly developed manga industry means more opportunity for newer, more innovative approaches. Most Japanese authors and readers interact through more established conventional routes because their system is a lot more sophisticated and much larger in scope, able to accommodate authors and readers with diverse niches and demands.
P.S. I think Tower of God is already a "Webtoon" so it won't have to restart all over again.