Mini CPC Behind-the-scenes post (Patreon)

Sorry guys, I owe you many more behind-the-scenes posts! I know I don't have it listed as one of the rewards for this Patreon, but I like to try to make one of these once a month. This season's episodes are just real difficult though and I'm always surprised I've been able to finish each episode in one week (it would be purely impossible without all my amazing art assistants' work~!! 🙏)

But this week I thought it would timely to briefly talk about submitting music to WEBTOON for their original comics (it is unfortunately not an option for Canvas / Discover comics 😔). 

This season of CPC generally has more music / sounds stuffed into each episode than the previous episodes have had. It's not always that there are more full-on songs I've composed, but often there are more transitions, brief musical moods, or SFX, etc (especially with these last 4 general episodes I believe).

It's super fun and wish I could do it more often, but there are some strict limitations on submitting music for Original Webtoons in terms of the overall amount of music, the transitions, the timing, etc. I'm not allowed to talk too much about it, nor am I able to show at all what the editors do on their end, but I think I can briefly talk about what I do each week for submitting music.

Each week, I submit a .zip file to the WEBTOON editors of the entire episode's comic strip that's been sliced into ~100 smaller panels (you can sort of see a few slices in the image below). I use a command-line tool called ImageMagick to do this really quickly (it's awesome and I highly recommend it if you don't mind that kind of thing...). I also submit a .zip file of all the MP3s for the episode.

I then make a document that breaks down when each track should start and stop (based on those sliced panels). WEBTOON has a few type of transitions we can choose between each track, which is so cool!, but there can only be one type you can choose for the entire episode. That makes it a little trickier to think about what to choose, especially given the rollercoaster of moods this comic sometimes has in one episode lol. It's also why sometimes the timing / transition of the music may not seem 100% perfect in WEBTOONs. We work with what we've got! :)

Here's a peek at the document I submit to editors each week for the music:  

I don't know much about what other creators do, but I have to imagine some editors must groan when it's their turn to upload my comic and they see this document and follow these stupid detailed instructions D':  And sometimes there are little problems and I have to bother them to fix one of the tracks, and it's probably not worth the headache for everyone involved. --But I just love making music for the comic too much!! >_<;;  I'm very thankful to all the editors for putting up with me for this long...!

So anyhow, I don't know if any of that makes sense, but I hope it gives a bit of insight into what one WEBTOON creator does each week!