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Because Webcomics are a medium dominated by inexperienced or non-professional artists, some degree of Art Evolution is more the default than the exception. Please do not list transitions from monochrome to color.


  • 8-Bit Theater has gone from this to this. It's quite funny to see Art Evolution in a Sprite Comic.
  • The first 21st Century Fox strips were barely legible black and white pencil sketches, since then it has upgraded to full color and occasional animated gifs.
  • Academicon Ex Virtus changes really quite rapidly, even adopting full color pages.
  • Acrobat starts off with rough uncertain lines and slowly changes to smoother confident ones.
  • Adventurers! went from this to this, and is lampshaded here.
  • The Adventures of Dr. McNinja started out in stark black and white. Then in issue 6, Kent Archer began shading the pages in Photoshop in addition to inking them. In issue 8, a computer problem forced Hastings and Archer to start posting updates without the proper shading. Positive reactions from a vocal portion of the fanbase led Hastings and Archer to run a poll to see if the fans preferred the comic shaded or unshaded. After the results were in, the authors Took a Third Option and hired Carly Monardo to color the comic.
  • Akuma's Comics started with mostly recolored sprites and standard white speech bubbles made in Paint. As time progressed the sprites became more detailed and distinct from their bases, and speech became rendered as black text on grey speech boxes.
  • Alienby Comics: The art style becomes more colourful and detailed over the course of the series. Compare the very first comic to a more recent one.
  • Similarly, All Over The House has evolved from crude, angular characters in its first few comics to rounded, coloured and shaded characters after only a few months. Compare this first outing to its latest episode.
  • AntiBunny started out with a scribbly all pencil style, and gradually evolved into a more detailed and clean inked look, going from this to this.
  • Applegeeks has had numerous changes in art style, most noticeably between #195 and #196, and had a recurring alternate artist, for yet another shift.
  • Apricot Cookie(s)!: The ribbons in Cream Tea's hair are shown as the Union Jack drawn over a ribbon shape in her first appearance, but in later appearances, it changes to a simpler pattern of stripes.
  • Archipelago starts out very scribbly in book one. Each progressive book gets a little better, with excellent quality work appearing in book 6. Compare Paollo before his kidnapping in book 2 with Paollo while he's being rescued in book 9 - you'll be forgiven for not recognizing the guy.
  • In the first chapters of the ComicFury webcomic Armless Amy the artwork was very simple and undetailed. In the following chapters, the characters designs became more detailed and the pages had a better use of lighting effects in order to have a more fitting atmosphere for the story.
  • Avania starts with rougher line art, limited grey tones, and simple hard shading in the first three chapters. The hard shading is dropped starting in chapter four, but the artwork becomes more polished with clean linework and detailed greyscale rendering of light and shadow as the comic goes on.
  • Ava's Demon has full color single panels, that only continue to get more detailed and impressive. Compare this with this.
  • Beyond the End has gone from this to this and is still growing with the series.
  • Bigger Than Cheeses underwent the biggest Art Evolution ever. Here is the very first strip and here is one of the latest ones. Thankfully, the jokes got better as well.
  • Inverted by Billy the Heretic. It started at barely passable and ended up looking like a twelve-year-old's doodles.
  • The art in early The Bird Feeder strips is noticeably different, very rough, and extremely inconsistent. Later art is more refined and consistent.
  • The Bikini Bottom Horror has improved greatly during its run. For comparison, chapter 1 to chapter 17.
  • Bittersweet Candy Bowl shows this very clearly, going from lined paper with a simple grid layout to its current form of inventive panelling and exquisite toning.
  • Bomango's art-style became more detailed (and less cartoony) over time, going from this to this.
  • Breakpoint City Lampshades it, combining it with some Self-Deprecation:
    "God, could you imagine if someone was always changing the look of their comic?" "Eh, they probably wouldn't last very long."
  • Brutus starts out with laughably terrible art but progresses toward a simpler, cleaner style over time.
  • Lampshaded in this busybee comics strip, showing how the artist's self-representation and style have changed drastically over the years
  • Starline Hodge's Candi
  • Charby the Vampirate, the author summed it up in this picture. She added that if she could draw as well as she does now when she started the comic, the characters would have looked like this. The ReVamped pages show just how far the art has come when compared to the pages in the old archive they're replacing.
  • Chasing the Sunset has gone from "crude" to "gorgeous". Alien has gone back and redrawn the prologue, so now it's "decent" to "OMG PRETTY!"
  • Chibi Miku-san, as can be seen with the first strip and the remake of it 230 strips later.
  • Chuck and Beans. This is the earliest strip on record. Compare that to a recent one.
  • Ciem went from this to this, without even changing game engines!
  • The character designs in Cobweb and Stripes, particularly on the two leads, have dramatically improved over the course of the comics. Compare chapter 1 with chapter 17 to see the difference.
  • Coffin Comics can be seen with this due to a transition from pencil to digital and again later on when the style was upgraded.
  • The art of College Roomies from Hell!!! has gone from "those are supposed to be people?" levels at the beginning, to "damn, I wish I could draw half that well." The six characters in the first comic and the six in the second? Same people. (And yeah, that one guy did pick up a tentacle for a left arm along the way. Just read the comic.)
  • Colour Wheel was initially started drawn on paper and coloured with marker; the artist switched to digital at the beginning of Episode 1. Also compare the art in the previous link to the art at the beginning of Episode 2.
  • Comedity: This got a good Lampshade Hanging in one strip.
  • The Comic Adventures of Left & Right: The first few dozen comics are smaller than the current standard and "do not have the Nintendo seal of approval".
  • In Coming Up Violet, the comic has gotten noticeably better in the few short years it's been out. Its predecessor Fur Will Fly had quite a bit of this as well . . . possibly. It was pretty hard to tell considering just how much the art shifted from arc to arc. There were at least three different artists.
  • In Complicated Ness the comic becomes more detailed as it goes on. This slowed the updates from two pages a week to one a week.
  • The Artwork in CoyoteVille grew to more resemble Looney Tunes style artwork.
  • Crossed Claws goes through quite a bit over its run, starting with clear lines and flat colors and evolving into a more painterly and stylized look as it progresses.
  • Ctrl+Alt+Del went from kind of scribbley to clean and consistent thanks to a file of body parts, and later he goes back to drawing all the characters individually. Buckley is currently experimenting with watercolor textures.
  • Curse Quest: The quality changes drastically from the original to the reboot, then again after page 15, where the artist decided to go and redo the first 14 pages to match the new updated style.
  • While the art in Curtailed has never been bad by any means, it's definitely improved over time.
  • Cwynhild's Loom has changed significantly since its beginning. The artwork can often shift significantly between updates and has leaned more towards realism over time. Cwyn's hair is a prime example.
  • The Cyantian Chronicles: See the first comic in Campus Safari. Then see the current Akaelae strip. Very different art style, definitely better art quality.
  • Dan and Mab's Furry Adventures is a long-running series, and over time has evolved from being very crudely drawn to being very well drawn as the artist learned how to draw. The artist herself has commented that looking back at her old art is painful.
  • Da Pukas: Most of the Pukas have stayed the same since their first appearance, Alegre being the only exception: she started out with a squat and stout design similar to her fellow pukas, but as time has gone on she has gotten taller, bustier, and her already broad hips have continued to grow wider. Also the artwork went from B/W to color.
  • Darkbolt: From 1999 to 2003 Sean updated his art style so that it looks way more crisp and clean than before, in 2005 he started with full color pages every weekend or every so often and by 2008 full color pages were being done a lot more.
  • That Deaf Guy: The first strips (Feb 2010) are in greyscale, but the shading changed in June of that year, then colour was added in October. Aside from that first year, the style has remained consistent.
  • Demonseed Redux: The webcomic was initially published in monochrome. From Act IV the comic is in full color.
  • In Deviant Universe, you can see this best with artists involved in the project for a long time.
  • The Devil's Panties were more the scribbles of this comic personality but portions and cleaness of the lines has gotten better with time.
  • Completely averted in Dinosaur Comics. Part of the comic's gimmick is that it always uses the exact same image for every single comic. The only thing that changes is the dialogue.
  • Dominic Deegan has definitely become cleaner compared to the old scribbles.
  • Dork Tower: 1997. 2013. Any questions? No? Good.
  • The creator of Dragon City and Jix is constantly improving his art to the point where the beginning of the comic doesn't really look like it was drawn by the same person as the current comic.
  • Dream Catcher has had a noticeable improvement.
  • Dreaming Freedom: The art at the beginning was incredibly detailed and rendered, but almost too much; it made every character look somewhat unhinged and off. The art style becomes more streamlined and stylized, but this actually works in its favor.
  • Drowtales has gone from quite frankly sucky art, to impressive. The early example there is even a larger step up from the original chapter 1 art than the page it's being compared to, it just kept improving.
    • The artists completely and utterly despise their earlier chapters and work on Drowtales and would much prefer all evidence of their earlier story and art were destroyed forever.
  • It's not surprising that this is the case in Ears for Elves, given that it's the artist's first comic. The artist admits that drawing is a learning process and she's experimenting with styles and tones.
  • Earthsong's artwork improved over the years to the extent that the creator completely restarted the comic from the beginning. And, unusually for such endeavours, successfully completed the comic.
  • Elf Blood's art has progressed in leaps and bounds over the past year of its life. Change tends to happen fairly slowly and organically, but the biggest change was also the earliest, changing to full-color from black white and screentone after a few weeks of publishing. Consistency in the art style seems to have settled in in the last story arc or so, resulting in fewer obviously off-model characters, and the backgrounds are improving in level of detail as well.
  • Ennui GO!: The general art style shifts drastically as it goes on, including shading and more rounded and realistic body proportions (while still maintaining the rather cartoony style). Compare Izzy, Noah, and Hashim in this early strip to this page from near the end of the comic's first part.
  • Here's Summer and Carrie from an early Everyday Heroes page — and a more recent one.
  • Evil Genius has an interesting take on this trope, as main characters' design is still the same as it was in the very first strips, but new ones, as well as backgrounds, are significantly more detailed.
  • The art in Evus was great from the start, but the quality has increased considerably even just over the course of a year.
  • Existential Comics: Corey hired a Noah Latz to help him out and the art style took a noticeable turn to the better.
  • The long waiting period between updates made this quite pronounced in Fake News Rumble. The art started out fine, but composition and overal quality improved with every new chapter.
  • The Fan started with ugly thick lines, inconsistent text boxes, and lots of gradient fills. and went with them for a long time. The most changes occurred during episode 3, when the author finally learned how to use layers properly, and halfway through the episode, when the thick lines were abandoned in favor of sketchy lines due to technical issues. This filler comic illustrates how much the art changed during the course of the first three episodes. The latest change happened halfway though episode 4 when the sketchyness was turned down. This is a more recent strip, for comparison.
  • Fanboys has gone from this to this.
    • Lampshaded here as the creator re-uploads the archives to a new site.
  • Also got a lampshade in the "Full Circle" arc of Fans! where the heroes encounter themselves from the past. How do we tell the two groups apart? The ones from the past are drawn in the old art style.
  • Fathead's art has changed dramatically since it began. Compare early comics with more recent ones.
  • In Fite!, each strip has a header with portraits of the main characters. However, by the start of Round 4, the art had evolved to the point that Lucco and Guz's faces in-comic no longer matched the old header pictures. The header was updated a few strips later.
  • Since 2017, FireSoup and its characters have gotten many changes such as preferences of clothing, physical details such as eye shapes, and even changed the physique sometimes such as making Ramy chubbier a few years after this comic was released. This trope even caused the comic’s art-style to be somewhat inconsistent in the first pages.
  • Fluffy Bunny Domination: The main character's features have notably changed, becoming less detailed with a much larger ponytail and a standard outfit. Many recent strips use the same 3 colors for the background and unnamed characters.
  • Forest Hill's artwork has significantly improved since its beginning. Compare the original first page with the redone version and see how much better the artist has gotten.
  • Freefall has seen modest amounts of art evolution, especially from the full-page magazine comics to its current webcomic form.
  • The Gamer Cat started off somewhat chibi looking as seen here, but eventually became more detailed as the strip went on seen here
  • The art of Gifts of Wandering Ice evolved from pages with sketchy contours and simple one-layer coloring to much more complicated style in a year. Countours became thinner and more neat, shading inproved a lot, and characters became more realistic.
  • A Girl and Her Fed switches from quick sketches to high details and color in just one strip. Check out this strip and compare with this one.
  • Phil Foglio's skill at drawing anatomy in Girl Genius has improved, for the first couple of years, he was especially prone to making character's heads too small for their bodies (Klaus and Othar were the most common victims) and the occasional giant hands or freakishly long forearms. He's straightened out now, though, and it's one of the best-looking webcomics out there. note 
    • Although there is still the odd slip.
  • Girls in Space. Art style develops throughout the story.
  • In an unusual reverse example, Girls with Slingshots has actually become less realistic and more cartoonish over time. Compare Hazel and Jameson in the first strip with their more recent look.
  • The artwork of Jackie Lesnick has been evolving constantly through her entire career as a webcartoonist, and is particularly noticeable through her time drawing Girly, a comic that started out as very animesque (much like her past projects, Wendy and CuteWendy), and eventually evolved into something more organic. This is also very noticeable in her porn comics, sometimes starring characters from Wendy.
  • The artwork of Goblins: Life Through Their Eyes has changed so much over the years that the first page of the archive, rather than the first strip, is a page showing just how much the art has evolved. Most recently he has begun shading the comic to dramatic effect.
  • Go Get a Roomie! is one that shows a rapid, but even progression of art quality that is quite staggering, to be honest. The proportions start out with very small bodies and larger heads and the lineart was done in sharp, scratchy lines. The art quickly transitions into computer-done graphics with soft, flowing, and tapering lines. Chloe goes from drawing things like This to this and this.
  • The style of El Goonish Shive has changed drastically over the course of its run. Compare Nanase and Justin in this strip (the redhead, and the blonde guy), and in this strip. (Yes, they are the same characters albeit one of them got a haircut.)
  • The art for Gunnerkrigg Court has always been well-executed and evocative, but over time Tom Siddel's use of perspective and anatomy has become far less stylized. Unsurprisingly, this Art Evolution accelerated when the comic became profitable enough that he could quit his day job and devote more time to preparing each page. Compare this scene in Chapter 2 with this flashback to the same scene in Chapter 18.
    Forum Comment:"The art has changed so drastically that her entire head had turned 90 degrees anti–clockwise."
    • Lampshaded here, where the characters recap the entire events of the comic to another (mercifully offscreen).
      Tom Siddell: The first few chapters of exposition looked a little weird.
  • Hanna Is Not a Boy's Name started out rather well, but became amazing within a few months.
  • Hero In Training has changed so much that the author has completely re-done the first chapter.
  • The Illustrated Guide to Law improved dramatically in its first year. The author has acknowledged that, at first, he didn't think anybody would be reading it, so the art was done quickly and inconsistently. But once he realized he had an audience, he started putting more effort into the art.
  • Imp goes from this to this.
  • The Inexplicable Adventures of Bob! — Check out the very first spaceship roof crash compared with a recent giant robot jumping on Bob's roof. For that matter, check out the early Princess Voluptua compared with a more recent version.
  • This trope can even apply to photocomics: If you take one of the older themes in Irregular Webcomic! and compare the first strip with a more recent strip (for example the Cliffhanger strips 24 and 2297), you can see how far David Morgan-Mar's photography skills and/or equipment have improved.
  • Juathuur goes from black-and-white with occasional color strips in "One Way or Another" to fully color with more fully fleshed-out character and background designs in "Gatecrash" with a slow but steady art evolution overall.
  • Kagerou shows vast improvement in the time it's been going, and the artist has done an obligatory side-by-side remake page to show it. Although, the remake shown there doesn't quite do justice to Luka's improvement. This does.
  • Kaiten Mutenmaru: Mutenmaru starts out with an oval head, thick lines, and a reflected light on his bald head. He gets a rounder head in The Training and loses the reflected light in the second season, which uses thinner lines than before overall.
  • Kevin and Chad had its art style changed from Thick outlines to all-thick in just a month.
  • Aside from the generally improving styles over its course, Keychain of Creation pulls off a major evolution in comic #319, which goes from partial stick-figures to fully fleshed bodies. For bonus points, it hangs a huge lampshade on it by having the evolution occur as a function of Secret and Marena's sorcery initiation, implying that it's actually one of the rules of the universe.
  • Khaos Komix has gone through an immense evolution, to the point that the author was so displeased with the old ones they rewrote and redrew them. Three times. At the moment, the art style is a bit inconsistent, as the Retcons have been done where there were plot holes, leaving patches of the previous style between newer parts. The old versions are available on download as .zip files.
  • Khatru's creator has blamed some of the comic's Schedule Slipage to his fiddling around with the art style.
  • Kitfox Comics started in 2011 with flat-colored half-dressed animals, occasionally slipped to line art, tried very different drawing tools in 2013, reverted to the old style later same year and gradually improved the quality. By 2016 most civilized characters wore multiple articles of clothing (allegedly savage goats remained naked). By 2019, when updates stopped, the characters became fully dressed, highly detailed and even shaded. Like this.
  • The early Kurami strips on DeviantArt look a lot different to the modern ones, in terms of both art quality and character design. Here's an illustration.
  • Visible, not that it needed it at all from the start, in Lackadaisy. As you progress through the comic, you see the lighting becoming more expressive and detailed (thanks to computer rendering) and the characters becoming more proportionate and closer to human body types. Every panel looks like an authentic 1920's photograph.
    • Compare the first comic to the latest one.
    • Special mention goes to Zib. He first appeared as the one furthest to the left in the fourth panel here. Look at him now.
  • Last Res0rt evolves so rapidly that you can tell when Rachel's worked on other projects between strips thanks to the jumps in quality. Compare this strip drawn in May 2007 to this one from May 2008.
    • And for good measure, here's May 2009 and May 2010.
    • The characters themselves get a fair bit of evolution as well — The two most obvious examples are Adharia's face (which is slowly becoming more lionlike as opposed to, say, a bear or a wolf) and Jigsaw's eye stripes, which gradually creep further down her face.
  • Least I Could Do has had significant changes in style over the years. Compare this comic to this one, this one, this one, and this one. The style greatly changed to a more realistic, detailed, and colored one. This is less due to "the artist getting better" and more due to "changing artists several times over the course of the comic."
    • The evolution was demonstrated in this strip as a celebration of the 2000th strip. For record, the second from the left was the first known version of the character. It's up to Wild Man Guessing as to who the first guy is.
  • In another mostly stick art comic, Left Handed Toons has improved considerably — particularly Drew. This is probably because the artists are getting used to drawing with their left hands. Compare this and this.
  • There's a lot of art evolution in the first 10 comics of Level 30 Psychiatry due to the comic being a year in development before launch and due to coloring and text duties being split. For comparison here's the comic when done by the writer, Guybrush20X6 in pencil, when done by GigaNerd17 on the lineart, text and coloring and with GigaNerd on the lineart, TheMightyBox doing the colouring and Guybrush20X6 on the text.
  • leveL has an unbelievable amount of Art Evolution going from a rather bland manga-like style to THIS.
  • The Life of Nob T. Mouse went from poorly hand-drawn sketches as demonstrated by the first strip to a far more rounded, streamlined style including subtle shading and backgrounds, like this strip from 14 years later.
  • Lightbringer: While the writer, Lewis Lovhaug, did eventually get a new illustrator for the comic his terrible (by his own admittance) drawings did improve over time to become less terrible.
  • Lighter Than Heir: The art noticeably improves over time. Just compare one of the early strips, such as those from the basic training arc, with a later strip, such as any from the out to sea arc.
  • Although Lint [1] is not as popular as some other examples here, the absolutely enormous difference between early, black-and-white, amateurish art such as this can barely be recognized as the gorgeous, textured masterpieces like this. And it's gotten even better if more Bishouneny.
  • Little Nuns While the illustrations remain detailed, the early instalments had the characters drawn more proportionally and the color palette was more subdued. As time went on, the characters' looks were exaggerated more, and they began showing more cartoonish traits.
  • L's Empire has a case where the Pixl's hideout slowly becomes better detailed. This is a clue that they're in a developing universe.
  • M9 Girls! switched artists after chapter 4. Somehow, the storytelling has subtly changed to fit the new art style. The evolution of the individual artists is also noticeable in the time between their respective runs in the comic.
  • Mac Hall started by emulating then-current Penny Arcade strips. It ended like this. As of its Spiritual Successor Three Panel Soul, Ian is still getting better.
  • A Magical Roommate quite visibly improved during its first strips, and still manages to maintain its trademark stick / animesque hybrid style.
  • Mayonaka Densha's artwork has gone from being flat and and toneless with very disproportionate characters and little to no backgrounds to this and this within the space of a couple of years . The author made the choice to partially or completely redraw some of the older pages which she deemed particularly bad or inconsistent with the story, just look at the old and new pagesside by side
  • Medic Pics: Over time the comic includes more detailed backgrounds and shading on the characters in the foreground.
  • MegaTokyo also changed quite a while during its run, with a cartoonish style that gradually becomes more realistic and with a more detailed shading. If you want a reference, compare strips #9, #500 and #1025.
  • Though the art in Ménage à 3 was good from the first issue onwards and the art style overall has remained pretty consistent for such a long-running comic, the series slowly shifts away from a straightforward Archie Comics style and occasionally incorporates a few manga features like enlarged eyes.
    • Compare Zii from early in the run to a more recent incarnation. She seems noticeably younger now, although it's possibly due to her not wearing makeup in the second strip.
    • Lita (Zii's cat) has gotten decidedly less grumpy and ugly-looking since her first appearance. Maybe hanging out with Gary is having an effect on her.
    • Between Yuki's first appearance and her later depictions, there's an obvious difference in her eyes and facial shape.
    • DiDi is defined to be an impossibly statuesque and voluptuous sex goddess. In her early appearances (e.g. here), this means that she looks like a giant inflatable living Barbie doll. Artistic evolution eventually makes her much more plausible (as here), if still something of a fantasy figure.
    • In her earliest strips, Sandra appeared gauche, with an emphasis on her freckles and bubbly curls. Her appearance soon shifted, if only to reflect her more confident (and kinky) demeanor when she got drunk, but her more recent appearances definitely make her new status as a trainee model fairly plausible. (Her appearance in her own comic, with a completely different artist, is almost unrecognisable. This becomes particularly noticeable when Ma3 and Sandra on the Rocks Crossover and run in parallel, making it easy to compare the characters.)
    • Even Gary's had some work done; in early strips he was gangly and a little goofy-looking, but now he's adorable and Grade-A Mr. Fanservice. Then again, that could partly be a reflection of the way that some of the other characters (and the audience) come to realize that he looks pretty good naked.
  • Metempsychosis has shown a good amount of improvement so far, particularly in the backgrounds of each panel. The first, second, and 3rd planets are the most noticeable examples.
  • The art in Mike: Bookseller has gotten a lot neater since it began in 2003.
  • minus.. At first, the eponymous character's Idiot Hair looked quite normal and possible in real life. However, very soon after that Ryan Armand starts to make minus's ahoge thicker and longer, to the point where it looks more like a ponytail than a few hairs that refuse to be combed.
  • The art style in Misfile has gone from heavily shaded, more straight-line art to a lighter and more rounded look so gradually you never notice the shift while reading it. However, it is quite jarring if you go back and read some earlier panels. Compare this to this
  • Miscellaneous Error went through very rapid Art Evolution over its first 4 strips. It's almost as though the author was an amateur with no prior experience or something.
  • MK's The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde has very clear artistic evolution. The lines cleaner and smoother as the story progresses, colour palettes are more refined and details like backgrounds, special effects and glass reflections are added gradually.
  • Molten Blade has undergone gradual art evolution... definitely a change for the better
  • Monsterful Has shown tons of improvement in both it's gray-scale and colored versions, including lineart, coloring, shading, texturing, lettering and though not as widely used, in backgrounds as well.
  • In Motherly Scootaloo, a Tumblr comic that can be found here, the art gets better as the story goes on, going from black and white to color as well.
  • MS Paint Adventures shows marked improvement with each successive adventure, as well as significant evolution within the longer adventures.
    • Problem Sleuth went from this to this in a little less than a year.
    • One year after that in the latest adventure, Homestuck, we get this update, dramatically demonstrating how much Andrew Hussie has improved at animation in the past few years.
    • In a subversion, although Hussie improves markedly as a writer and animator throughout the run of MSPA, his drawing skills have actually suffered due to lack of practice. Most of the elaborate visuals in Homestuck are contributed by other artists and then compiled in Photoshop. This is perhaps to be expected as Homestuck has evolved far beyond the typical webcomic format and now requires a completely different skillset.
  • MS Paint Masterpieces started like this. Now, it kind of looks like this.
    • And now it looks like this.
    • Took a minor back step thanks to DisgruntledFerret's hard drive crash. But still head and shoulders above most sprite comics based on Mega Man.
    DisgruntledFerret: That isn't my best explosion, but I've lost most of my ready explosion graphics. That's the worst tragedy of all, I think.
  • The creator of Mulberry posted a picture on his DeviantArt detailing the evolution of the title character.
  • My Deepest Secret is known for having an adorable art style. The art doesn't become any less cute, but as it goes on the characters do appear more mature and their age, and the shading and coloring vastly improves.
  • Narbonic and then Skin Horse. It's most obvious as you look at how Shaenon Garrity does her fills and backgrounds.
  • Nature of Nature's Art 's 10%+ story has artwork that improved significantly near the end of the incredibly long battle between Meander and Quintet versus Rule and Polarizing. So much so that looking at the older strips is actually a little jarring, even after the artist re-drew a few.
  • The very first Nedroid comics were hilarious, sketchy, and experimental like this one. Over time his style smoothed out. Experiments still pop up but never break too hard from the established style.
  • Never Satisfied: Though Corny frequently retouches already-published pages, there's a stark difference between the saturated colors and thick lines of chapters one through three and the more mature style of later chapters.
  • New Life lampshades this with the help of a malfunctioning calender app. In reality the comic had only been running for six months although there's supposedly a year's worth of evolution.
  • The Night Belongs to Us: The figures get more realistic, the shading more subtle. Compare chapter 2 Ada with chapter 9 Ada.
  • Niklas and Friends has gone from looking like this in 1998, to looking like this in 2005.
  • Not a Villain has this in spades. While the story revolves around three different art styles for the three different "realities" of the story, each reality's style has changed a great deal from when it was first introduced. It is particularly apparent when you compare this to thisand this to this. Lampshaded (in the second case) by saying that they had an "avatar change", although the creator admits in comments that she has just been improving as an artist.
  • No Need for Bushido underwent a massive Art Evolution, going from artwork that wasn't bad, but wasn't very good, either (as seen here) to something lifted from a spectacularly well drawn cel shaded movie (as seen here, with iiiiitty bitty spoilers. Teeny tiny ones.). The best part is that it was a gradual shift, rather than a more sudden one.
  • The Noordegraaf Files has done this. FAST. compare this tothis. The second page is only 24 pages later.
  • Nuzlocke Comics and its spinoffs tend to experience this, enough so that for some people it's as much a part of the challenge as the gameplay restrictions are. For the main series, compare then and now.
  • While Oceanfalls never loses its style completely, the addition of more and more detail is definitely noticeable as time goes on. Just look at this panel from 2016 (fairly close to the start of the comic), and compare it to these panels from 2018 and 2022, respectively.
  • Off-White had a rather dramatic change. Just compare this and this, or this and this
  • The Order of the Stick has retained its simple stick-figure art, but it has become somewhat smoother and less scratchy, and the characters occasionally have new details added to them (with Lampshade Hanging). This is a lot more noticeable in the panel lines — they started out all over the place, and now they're completely straight. The sheer detail in the background of panels, even pretty simple ones, has gone up quite a bit as well much of the time.
    • The character designs have also drastically improved; when the artist had to take some time off due to a hurt wrist around the hundredth strip, he took the opportunity to improve the character designs, adding details like a clasp to Elan's cape (which had been superglued to the back of his neck or something before that) and the runes around the bottom of V's cloak. Over time he has started using more standard character models, making the art far more consistent and slip-ups less frequent.
    • There's been another art shift as of strip 947. Arms are now flesh-colored (though still fork-shaped), sleeves and pants legs have appeared on clothes, and shoes now show a flex when characters are walking. Characters not previously depicted with boots now have them, including goblinoids, who were previously drawn with three lines for feet instead of the single line of humanoids; their boots have clawed toes to maintain this distinction.
  • Averted in Ornery Boy in terms of character art, but definitely evolved when it comes to handling Flash.
  • The Other Grey Meat The characters have undergone significant changes from their original design.
  • The evolutions in Our Little Adventure came in three major waves and a few small adjustments.
  • Out at Home's artist has been in art school for the duration of the strip, and man, does it ever show. It went from wonky black-and-white pen to animation-quality in only 14 months!
  • Lampshaded in Ozy and Millie here with an Art Shift.
  • A Path to Greater Good went through at least five distinctly different sprite styles, plus one more in the hiatus filler. It started with pixel art on high-resolution vector background with "brown cartridge paper" effect, tried more detailed style of pixelated computer games of early 1990s (think VGA PC, Atari ST or Amiga), tried smoother vector art (twice) and settled with more retro style of 16-bit consoles. The reboot, Hero Oh Hero, continued with the latter. It still evolves, albeit not as drastically: 2013, 2021.
  • Penny and Aggie used to use a cartoonish art style reminiscent of Archie, but gradually moved towards a more realistic style. To put it in perspective, compare the very first strip to this one recreating the same scene.
  • Penny Arcade. This is the earliest strip on record. This is that same strip redone for the 15th anniversary of the comic, in November 2013. This is Penny Arcade now.
    • As of October 2008 there's a noticeable difference between the drawings in the comic and on the header of the website.
      • What's more, with Lookouts, Automata, and Jim Darkmagic, the artist proved that his art can be even better, in many different styles.
      • Lampshaded in this comic; the corresponding front-page post has Tycho praising Gabe for the leap that has occurred over the years.
    • Played straight in a November 2011 Newspost add-on, featuring graphics showing the evolution of the two main characters over time.
    • Lampshaded with some self-deprecation in this comic about a game that allows shifting to a retro art style.
  • Pixie and Brutus: Pixie started out as a gray kitten. As the comic went on, she gained a bandanna and her fur became a light yellow.
  • PK Comic shows a definite improvement in the art over just the first few comic strips
  • Planes of Eldlor: The artist has stated that she is intentionally using this comic to evolve her skill and style, which is already somewhat evident in the comic archive.
  • The rationale behind Planet of Hats is to improve the author's drawing skills and provide entertainment.
  • Poharex went from this through this to this over the course of six years.
  • Polk Out's improved a bit, as seen here and here.
  • Power Of Ether starts rough and very quickly improves to a higher quality. Compare the first comic to one just 2 chapters later.
    Damien (The artist) :Well, I think we finally got to the point where the bodies start to look human-esque.
  • Precocious:
    • Compare Strip #1 to Strip #28. See a difference? Good. Now look at an even later strip, like #87. Big difference, eh?
    • An even more dramatic comparison is at the bottom of this page.
    • It later regresses, at least in detail. In chronological order: eliminating color strips altogether; eliminating almost all backgrounds or inanimate objects; positioning all characters at the same depth (with few exceptions). Color is back, for now, thanks to a fan contributor.
    • However, now backgrounds seem not to be as much of an issue anymore, and there's even some varied perspective.
  • The Princess (2009) has a few evolutions. The most noticeable one is the leap early on from monochrome to full-color.
  • PVP has undergone several art evolutions, which are often lampshaded. Comparing the most recent strips with the oldest ones, shows a dramatic shift in style over the years, though except for a few large leaps, these have largely been gradual changes accumulated over time.
  • Questionable Content is in a constant state of incremental artistic alteration, as artist Jeph Jacques likes to try out new things and use the strip as a means to improve his skills; his motto is, "If you don't like the art, come back next week, it'll probably be different". To see just how drastically his artwork has shifted over time, check out the difference between these five strips.
    • And helpfully brought into focus by the direct comparison presented here, and by these two.
    • And again. You've got to hand it to Jacques, he's not a man to rest on his laurels.
    • Several years on, it's kept on evolving: compare the relatively generic look of the characters here with the variety here. The particular look of mild "Ewww" on Bubbles' face here would have been beyond his capacities a few years ago.
  • The art in The Rifters went from being pretty shaky and having small characters and inconsistent word buuble to looking much more professional in about 10 entries. Compare number one to number ten
  • In the Rascals, the original artwork has greatly improved in form of style, story telling, and paneling.
  • Happened to Roommates too. The early pages had a "chibi" style that gradually evolved into a more realistic and intricate (but still animesque) one. You can compare this to this.
  • Rusty and Co. demonstrates this using the original Princess sketch v.1, then The Princess as-she-appears-in-the-comic sketch v.2 where her design 'get... well, let's say "streamlined"...' — and the hypothetical v.3 — in The Order of the Stick style.
  • Amazingly averted in Sabrina Online, which has not changed its art style or quality from 1996 to 2016. With the exception of holiday strips and the final strip.note 
    • Starting from 2017 the authour continues the story with self-contained short (several months each) webcomics, that use higher resolution, colour and different panel layout (2x6 instead of 3x1, 4x1 or 5x1). As of 2021 he's been gradually changing characters' clothes and hairstyles and aging them up. He also redrew several scenes from the old comic — like Amy meeting Tom — in the new style.
  • Sailor Moon CS completely changes its art style the second issue and changes from color to a black and white format in the forth issue
  • Sam & Fuzzy, then and now.
  • The webcomics of John Allison have undergone a lot of evolution, which isn't surprising given that he's been at it for sixteen years. See Shelley, the red-haired girl in the first ever strip of Bobbins, here in 1998? By 2000 she looked like this, then this, and then Scary Go Round started, with a new artistic direction. Since then, the art has changed from digital to hand-drawn and back again twice. The art's been fairly stable now since 2006, despite a switch from pen and ink (digitally coloured) to hand-drawing on a tablet PC.
  • The Doctor Who fancomic Search For the Truth began like this. Over time, the art became more clean and details and today the Doctor actually looks remarkably like David Tennant. Interestingly enough, SFTT is technically a toned-down version of the artist's style, as flipping through her gallery will yield some beautifully photo-realistic Doctor Who art. Wordlessly lampshaded here.
  • Schlock Mercenary. The creator points this out in the annotation to the very first strip, as well as providing what he apparently considers a better starting point for new Schlockers, but invites them to see his art progress from 'bad to, well, marginally less bad' by starting at the beginning. He got a lot of practice doing a strip a day, and it showed, especially the first year. With time progress slowed, especially, the second decade, but never completely stopped. Lines become less squiggly, bodies get more realistic proportions, character gestures and emotions look more natural, amount of details grows, and flat colours become shaded more and more. Changing image of Kaff Tagon illustrates it best: 2000, 2001, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2007, 2009, 2015, 2020. Or just compare the first comic and the same scene redrawn 20 years later.
  • "Selkie" has improved quite a bit, and the artist does like experimenting from time to time. Compare this and this to this and this. Whoa...
  • Compare the first strip of Sequential Art with this callback strip of the same situation. You can't even tell it's the same character.
  • Serious Emotional Disturbances does this, but it is intentional. The artist believes that the art should grow up with the comic/characters.
  • The webcomic Shape Quest features a nice "upgrade" in detail following Chapter 3.
  • Despite the very simplistic art style & character design, Sheldon The Tiny Dinosaur manages this. It's hard to miss how much rounder Sheldon looks now compared to what he looked like at first. Lampshaded in this strip, where Sheldon compares his old and new appearances and wonders if he's put on weight.
  • Silent Hill: Promise: The first few screens do not have colored backgrounds.
  • The Silver Eye started out with art in a somewhat-decent, but unrefined realistic style. Several chapters in, it began to develop a semi-realistic comic style, which worked much better overall. At this point the author, Laura Hollingsworth, went back and redrew half of the first chapter. It continued to improve until it became quite excellent, an the extent of Laura Hollingsworth's improvement became especially obvious when she redrew the first three pages. Going to college for art probably had something to do with the exponential improvement.
  • Skin Deep has improved vastly since its launch in 2006. Compare the first page of the Orientations arc to the last page. And then take a look at Nixie Spit.
  • Sleepless Domain: The first two chapters look so different from the rest of the series that they might as well have been illustrated by a different artist entirely — probably because they were. At the conclusion of Chapter 2, then-lead artist Oscar Vega ended up having to leave Hiveworks mid-project for a job at another studio, and lead writer Mary Cagle took over both duties from that point on; for a sample, compare this early page by Oscar to this later one by Mary. In a stroke of sheer serendipity, however, Chapter 2 ends on a massive First-Episode Twist that completely changes the story's tone, and so the sudden change in art style actually helps to sell the impact rather than coming across as jarring.
  • Slightly Damned: One of the first pages, compared to the middle of the comic's run, and finally the current style.
  • Sluggy Freelance: the first comics of this continuity appear sloppier, and the artist had a less accurate perception of human anatomy. Especially egregious in his second strip, where Torg goes from looking 12 in the first panel, 16 in the next, and finally 21 in the last panel. That, and in the first strip, Riff's looking more like a troll than anything else.
    • Also, primarily starting with the "Fire and Rain" arc, the format has shifted away from "three panel strips with a punchline and full-color Sunday" to longer and more dramatic layouts throughout the week. Has a lot to do with the Cerebus Syndrome.
    • For example, compare the art in the above early gag strip with one from the dramatic and violent "Dark Days Ahead" arc from 2002. The strip, as of this post, looks like this, although the very best artwork was probably from the (long, very dark, and spoileriffic) "That Which Redeems" arc from a few years ago.
  • Sneaky Goblins gains a lot of color and changes characters' looks over time. Compare Dank from the beginning and the end.
  • Sonichu shows a marginal example. The art has remained consistently terrible, but in issue 5, Chris begins using some vaguely Animesque techniques such as the ^_^ expression, Cross-Popping Veins, sweat drops, and huge eyes.
  • In earlier strips of So...You're A Cartoonist? the creator drew his Author Avatar as a cartoony version of himself. Later on he appears as a blue bear.
  • Spooky: Early comics have sketchier lineart and the character designs are chibi-esque. As time goes on, the lineart becomes more refined and the characters get lankier.
  • Early Springaling comics have thicker lineart on the characters than later ones, due to the artis switching to inking lineart with finer-tipped pens.
  • SPRINGIETTE style has evolved, with now much more detailed backgrounds and consistent character design.
  • In Square Root of Minus Garfield, the art evolution of the Garfield strip is lampooned in Constantly Changing and Constantly Changing V2.0, wherein the first two strips use the original 70's design, and the last one is the 2000s design.
  • The Story of Anima escalates in art quality very quickly, from black and white sketches to fully colored and shaded with bolder outlines.
  • String Theory (2009) has an unusually dramatic kind as the creator gets better. It starts off as zero background unshaded outlines and ends up as full color scenery porn.
  • Striptease's evolution is an insane jump from this to this
  • Supernormal Step has some really impressive Art Evolution. Comparing current pages with the first few shows a clear improvement in coloring, background detail, proportions, and shading. Compare Hall and Eva from their first appearance in Chapter 1 with the first page of Chapter 5.
  • Webcomic/Tales of the Questor: Subverted, in that the original few hundred strips, including the first one, have a much higher level of quality than the later ones.
  • Tales from Somewhere: The first page of The Legend warns readers of the shift in art style over time, from stiffly-drawn simplistic blob shapes to realistically shadowed and textured designs.
  • Tales Of A Gay Asian is obviously a great example of this for 2 reasons 1.It is the creator Brian Morris's first comic and 2. Due to his busy schedule and other comics he draws 8 pages of gay asian weekly. Which attributes to the art change and how he is progressively getting better.
  • Trans Girl Next Door: Around 2019, Kylie began drawing in a more jagged, blocky art style, with more exaggerated movements and facial expressions.
  • The artist for Triquetra Cats collected her evolution in this image
  • Now that Trying Human is being redrawn from scratch for printing, you can see side by side how dramatically the art style has improved over the few years it's been running.
  • A minor example in Two Evil Scientists, when here it starts using smoother speech bubbles.
  • Twokinds. It started out looking like something a beginner with only a how to draw manga book as a guide, and currently is reaching near-professional quality. Just compare this this early stripwiththis later one.
  • UG Madness: Compare this (the first appearance of Dom and Ty and the 3rd comic overall) to this (the last comic, number 471).
  • Used Books From this to this over 6 years
  • Useless Dumb Fucks and the artist/writer makes fun of it a few times in the comic itself.
  • While the overall art style of Vampire Girl remains fairly consistent, obviously, the second season sees some noticeable improvements in every aspect, from the drawing and illustrations, to the layout and composition; the fact that there was an 11-year gap between the comic's original run and the rebooted second season is sure to be a contributing factor.
  • Over time, Venus Envy has gone from a crudely drawn Animesque style, to a more nicely drawn Animesque style, to its westernized current look.
  • The VG Cats artist has almost completely redesigned the two main anthropomorphic cat characters, to the point of redrawing some old comics using his new style. The art has continued to evolve so quickly that each comic has small but noticeable changes over the last. The direction of change is towards a more animesque aesthetic with much more computer-aided drafing and color work.
  • Virtual Shackles: While the art started out somewhat close to where it is now, there have been some changes to shading, ears, and lines to make things seem sharper in general. Compare this early strip to this much later one.
  • For Voodoo Walrus vast improvements have taken place since the comic first went live in 2007. Compare this comic to this. Same leading female character, same artist, but 4 years of practice can make all the difference.
  • There's been considerable art evolution in the Walkyverse, as one might expect over a fifteen-year run, but it's especially noticeable over the It's Walky run due to large number of flashbacks caused by the Cerebus Retcon. Observe: Roomies! #1, It's Walky! #1, Shortpacked! #1, Dumbing Of Age #1.
  • Another very striking example is Wapsi Square, whose initial sketchy art style quickly developed into a much more professional look.
  • Weak Hero has seen a gradual change in artstyle over two years. Putting aside the artist's improvement with expressions and anatomy, the new style is slightly less realistic and more streamlined than the old one, favouring softer colours and more stylistic features for its characters. Compare Ben Park as he's drawn in Episode 3, and then when the same scene is recreated in Episode 97.
  • We Are The Wyrecats shows improvement in anatomy and better color ambiance over time. It's also a notable improvement over the art quality of the author's previous comic, Ruby Nation, the prequel to this comic.
  • The earlier pages of Westward have a simpler and rougher appearance than later ones, though many of them have a certain charm precisely because of that cleaner, simpler approach.
  • The Whiteboard takes it a step further: not only Art Evolution, but also a medium change. The original medium was Exactly What It Says on the Tin (which has become an Artifact Title).
  • White Dark Life used to be drawn in MS paint with copious amounts of circle, rectangle, and fill tool uses before the cartoonist began using pencil and paper.
  • In The World of Kirby, until Comic #5, the art style was slightly closer to the official Kirby art style. It was then changed to where all characters with line Black Bead Eyes would have dots instead. Additionally, until Comic #13, Kirby was drawn with Blush Stickers.
  • Zap! is a good example of Art Evolution, in a positive sense. Example: Reona, Issue # 4 vs Reona, issue # 519.
  • The art evolution in Zebra Girl is nothing short of amazing. Compare this to this! You can hardly even tell they're the same webcomic!
  • Zero Percent Discount dons thicker line work and more stylish characters as it progresses.

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