A 6-Year Webcomic Journey With 'When the Moon Ate the Stars' - 2025

A recount of the challenges and what I've learnt over the years of making my first published and completed webcomic, 'When the Moon Ate the Stars'.

Development & Concepts

The vet guy who loves animals

One day as a young'un, I watched Fantastic Beasts & Where to Find Them and was very inspired by the main character, Newt Scamander. I drew up a guy who was a magical vet who very much loved and cared for animals in the July of 2018.

I didn't think of starting a comic on this idea yet.

Later in the month, I drew up a single page comic strip about a princess who goes out undercover as an ordinary citizen to view the city freely. She comes across prisoners being dragged out by soldiers in public to transfer them to another prison. The princess makes eye contact with one of the inmates.

Below is the comic strip (reading direction is right to left).

快点！快点！means 'hurry up, hurry up!'

After brainstorming some comic premise ideas, I decided on one idea to finalise into a comic series - but I wasn't so serious on it yet. From September to November, I dilly-dallied with character designs and concepts. Below are the character concepts.

At some point I wanted to make the world of When the Moon Ate the Stars have mythical races. I was inspired by an artwork I made one day featuring a girl with stripe marks on her face. I added this feature onto the main character, Yingyue.

The artwork that inspired part of Yingyue's design

I didn't do much planning and jumped straight into script writing. After writing the script for episode seven, I went into drawing episode one. I don't like planning too much, even now—I like to give myself space to change the story direction along the way.

The story direction and ending I wrote when I first planned is dramatically different from what I made it now.

I started by drawing on a touch-screen laptop that was only compatible with a universal stylus. I couldn't vary the line widths without pen pressure and didn't have much skill with lineart, which is why my line art looked blocky before.

Now I draw using a Wacom drawing tablet.

Recount

Originally, When the Moon Ate the Stars was started purely as a practice for the 'real deal' and was supposed to take less than three years to complete.

I didn't think finishing a 'practice' comic would take six years, but here we are.

Technically, it's been over six years because though I published my first episode on April 20, 2019, I began writing and drawing up the first episode in December 2018.

When I began posting, I was extremely confident in my ability. I believed getting 1k likes on my first episode in three months was a no-brainer. I thought I was one-of-a-kind on the Canvas upcoming scene: 20 to 50-frame episodes, consistent uploads, fantastic art, and advanced composition and framework. I thought I would become a featured artist on Webtoon in less than a year.

This phase went on for two to three years. During this time, I cared about how many likes, views, and subscribers I had, despite this not being my 'magnum opus' comic. I pursued social media such as Instagram and Twitter to get more followers for my comic.

It led to inevitable burnout and depression over constantly checking my stats. I was frustrated—why couldn't I get 1k subscribers for my comic like other artists on the platform? How did they get their audience so easily? What was I doing wrong?

I had 70 followers on Instagram after a grueling year of following trends, doing DTIYs, art challenges, and drawing whatever tag was popular. I had zero followers on Twitter (I think it's because I had no idea how to get followers on Twitter, ha-ha).

You can see in my older blog from 2021 complaining more about this - 'Quitting Social Media as a New Digital Artist'

In late 2021, I was burned out from doing my comic again. On and off I had to take a hiatus to restock my backup episodes (the gap between the episode I am currently working on and the episode that will be published) and my posting schedule was reduced from every fortnight to every three weeks. I drew almost every day and developed pain in my arms and hands.

I went hardcore and started delegating simple base colouring, shading, writing and simple everyday tasks like holding a spoon and using a cursor to my non-dominant hand. Even after so long, my non-dominant handwriting is like a child's. I went to the neurologist to check for carpal tunnel syndrome in 2024, but I didn't somehow have it.

Later on, in 2023 after quitting Instagram and Twitter, I began a Tumblr account. I'm still using it today, mainly to post my art.

In Episode 73, I made a dramatic change in formatting. I got bored with the typical frame-by-framework flow, so I decided to get more creative with my paneling.

In 2024, I wasn't active on all platforms except Webtoon. Only when I had new artwork to post did I update my Tumblr, Pixiv and DeviantArt. Posting an artwork was very rare from 2024 to 2025, as I focused all my art energy on finishing my comic. After completing WTMATS, I finally have the power again to make artwork, and post blogs and videos for my YouTube channel.

Regarding stats, I ended my comic with 430 subscribers, about 80 likes on my first episode, and an average of 90 readers per upload. In 2024, when Webtoon introduced Super Likes, several of my readers gave me some pocket money through that, which I'm very grateful for. Just as a warning though for Super Likes—Webtoon does not allow you to withdraw until you reach $100 (as of 2025). You are better off using Ko-fi or Patreon if you can.

I think it's still a great achievement for a mediocre art and story. I'm grateful to all my readers who took the time to read When the Moon Ate the Stars.

I wonder...will my next webcomic series be able to get a bigger readership?

Self-Reflection

If I were to reflect on why my comic was 'never a success commercially', I think 'success' in the traditional sense is luck and what kind of audience is active in the webtoon community. I believe my mediocre art and storytelling skills also had a part in this. Regardless, in my own eyes, I view this comic as a success - without it I wouldn't have been able to improve my art and storytelling capabilities fast, as it forced me to always challenge myself to draw unfamiliar subjects and perspectives.

Since 2024, I have given up on trying to become a 'successful' artist online, only fate will tell. Right now, I'm grateful for being given the opportunity to pursue and share my passion for art, and my wonderful audience!

Thank you for reading until the end.