Talk:Webtoon

Definition
I haven't found support for this definition. On the other hand, I have found two uses of the word for closely related ideas:

"A WebToon is a cartoon-style table of contents for HTML documents on the web, using imagemaps that are pictures of people talking. The people have word balloons above their heads; the word balloons serve as links to relevant pages. A WebToon adds the human touch to web interfaces, and makes web pages more approachable, interesting, and easier to navigate. " (Page 1 http://science.nas.nasa.gov/Pubs/TechReports/NASreports/NAS-98-014 How To Make A WebToon, Pamela P. Walatka,, NAS-98-014, December 1998, walatka@nas.nasa.gov, MRJ Technology Solutions, NASA Ames Research Center: http://74.125.155.132/search?q=cache:eJQ1ARhYzFIJ:www.nas.nasa.gov/News/Techreports/1998/PDF/nas-98-014.pdf+webtoon+definition&cd=6&hl=en&ct=clnk&client=firefox-a)

and

"A ‘webtoon’ is referred to as a cartoon to be posted on the internet. ‘webtoon’ falls into the subcategory of ‘digitoon’. ‘Digitoon’ is a shortened form of ‘digital cartoon & comics’. Webtoons, webcomics, and webanimations are web-based media that off-line media such as cartoons, comics, and animations are digitalized by computers and they can be subscribed to online. " at both http://www.ssueye.com/news/articleView.html?idxno=814 and Soongsil Times, Aug. 2008, p. 27.

Both refer to static cartoons with word balloons. Kdammers (talk) 13:01, 2 July 2009 (UTC)


 * Five years later and no replies, but I guess few people read this article stub. However, the article is now suddenly more relevant to an English audience, as Naver/LINE have begun to translate their webtoons into English (via the LINE Webtoon mobile app, and webtoons.com), and is likely to cause confusion.
 * I agree that the definition presented here is wrong. It is what somebody would guess webtoon meant, but it is not what it means in practice. However I don't think the definitions cited by Kdammers are relevant either: in common usage, Webtoon very specifically refers to digital manhwa-style comics, typically in color, published online. It might even be possible to find good references for this definition, now that LINE Webtoons exists. —WOFall (talk) 22:50, 14 August 2014 (UTC)

Spottoon
Is there a way to add Spottoon to this article. After Line, this is the only other webtoon platform that services English-language readers. www.spottoon.com Syc916 (talk) 01:47, 28 October 2015 (UTC)

Linkfarm
This article (and related others) seems to be in violation of WP:NOTLINKFARM and WP:EL. Is it, for some reason, exempt? —[ Alan M 1 (talk) ]— 21:31, 15 March 2019 (UTC)
 * Agreed, I removed the section with all the links to portals. ansh 666 02:09, 9 April 2019 (UTC)

Discussion about "Webtoons vs Webcomics"
Here is a link to the discussion about webtoons vs webcomics that was made a while back. Please refer to it when making changes to the page. AquilaXIII (talk) 01:29, May 7, 2019 (UTC)

Problems with the Origins and history section in particular the Generations section
I got curious about how the Korean visual arts crowd ended up coming up with this generation's concept. I ended up trying to follow the one reference that had an active link only to find it described the traits of the 'current'(at the time of publication) Webtoon. I tried to track down the plain text reference* that was linked with the concept and track it down.

* Han, Chang-wan (2012-06-30). 애니메이션 연구6(Animation studies6). 한국 애니메이션 학회(Korean cartoon and animation studies). pp. 124–139.

I went to the Korean Cartoon and animation studies website and tried to find the book in their catalog using both a keyword and then a manual search but couldn't find it. They have two journals series listed I check both. I ended up finding some potential alternative entries that probably has the information on how generations came about. here they are:

"Discussions about Expanded Fests of Cartoons and Multimedia Comics as Visual Culture: With a Focus on New Technologies" I'm interested in this article as a source because of sections 3: Characteristics and Visual Culture of Cartoon Media (also seen it translated as Formation of a new visual culture (language)) 4: New Technology and Cartoon Image (New technology and cartoon images). it sounds like this could be related to the development if not the progenitor point of the generations concept.

"The Current Service Status and the Developmental Direction of Webtoon 2.0: Focusing on the Changing of User Interface and the Applying of Multimedia Effects" literally an article discussing webtoon generations if I could read it I'd confirm its contents and be done by now.

The final thing I found is what appears to be a booklet preserving the presentation done at "The Comics Forum 2018 KAN" hosted by the Korea Manhwa Contests Agency? It's 140 pages I'm not going to port that over to translate it even though I can with this PDF. it does look like it has some relevant information on the history of the industry just looking at its table of contents:

프롤로그웹툰을왜정의해야하나?:웹툰,조형과개방의역동적생산박기수 (한양대학교 문화콘텐츠학과 교수) 1장웹툰의전사(前史)로본웹툰에대한정의장상용 (만화연구가, 문화콘텐츠학 박사) 2장최초의웹툰<스노우캣>윤기헌 (부산대학교 디자인학과 애니메이션 전공 교수) 3장웹툰시대의서막을연<순정만화>의의미서은영 (백석대학교 어문학부 외래교수) 4장세로스크롤의웹툰형식을만든웹툰:양영순의<천일야화>주재국 (만화연구가) 5 19 33 39 53The Comics Forum    2018 KAN목차5장무선이동통신기술에따른웹툰의변화이승진 (경기대학교 융합교양대학 교양학부 교수) 6장스마트미디어에서구현되는웹툰의특징과의미김종옥 (한림대학교 지역문화예술센터 수석연구원) 7장SNS 미디어가만든플랫폼확장과새로운웹툰김소원 (상지대학교 문화콘텐츠학과 외래교수)에필로그웹툰을정의한다한상정 (인천대학교 불어불문학과/문화대학원 교수)부록[만화포럼토론]웹툰,과연어떻게정리할것인가?박세현 (경기대학교 교양학부 외래교수)

Prologue Why Define Webtoon?: Dynamic Production of Webtoon, Formatting and Openness Park Ki-soo (Professor, Department of Cultural Contents, Hanyang University) Chapter 1 Definition of Webtoon as a Former Webtoon Warrior Sang-Yong Jang (Manga Researcher, Ph.D. in Cultural Contents) ) Chapter 2 The first webtoon  Yoon Ki-heon (Professor, Animation Major, Design Department, Pusan ​​National University) Chapter 3 The Meaning of , which opened the prelude to the era of Webtoon Chapter 3 Meaning of  Eun-Young Seo (Advocate Professor, Department of Language and Literature, Baekseok University) Chapter 4 Vertical scrolling webtoon format Webtoon created by Yang Yeong-sun:  by Yeong-soon Yang (Comics Researcher) 5 19 33 39 53The Comics Forum 2018 KAN Table of Contents Chapter 5 Changes in Webtoons according to Wireless Mobile Communication Technology Seung-Jin Lee (Professor, Faculty of Liberal Arts, Kyonggi University) Chapter 6 Characteristics and Beauty of Webtoons Implemented in Smart Media Jong-ok Kim (Senior Researcher, Regional Culture and Art Center, Hallym University) Chapter 7 Expansion of the platform created by SNS media and a new webtoon So-won Kim (adjunct professor, Department of Cultural Content, Sangji University) defines the epilogue webtoon Sang-Jeong Han (Incheon) University French Language and Literature/Graduate School of Culture Professor) Appendix [Comic Forum Discussion] How to organize webtoons?

In particular, chapters 4 and 6 look promising. the document as a whole has some interesting info. it's just floating at this web address http://www.komacon.kr/archive_data/research/20181228164313376.pdf I don't know how to preserve it so it may not exist whenever this is read.

Honestly, I'm not even 100% sure if these links are accurate as when I tried to google translate one of the ones I ended up ruling out earlier I had it translate a piece of sample text I pulled as fear tiger~ I removed part of the text and it changed the sentence and translated it as horror manga~.

Anyways I also check the Korean version of the page and they somehow have more information than the English version yet fewer sources (guess the guy who added it just say gOoGle iT and didn't bother sighting the information.

I have a pretty bad headache after all this so whoever comes next hope you luck and you have the ability to read Korean. Funny how a simple question of why the west categorizes digital visual stories as Digital Comics, Mobile Comics, and Web Comics, and Korea does the generation method result in this crazy rabbit hole. Honestly, we could just say the answer to my question at this point is the crazy civilization that made webtoons professor a profession and not a joke title handed off as a prize at a Comicon (in all fairness though it just shows how big webtoons are in Korea).

edit... oh before I go here is some heavy reading if you are interested (in Korean of course) ISBN 9791128814976 "Korean Modern Manga History Guide" (한국 근대 만화사 가이드) it's literally the book on the history of Webtoons starting all the way back before comics were a thing until modern day. it was written by one of the aforementioned professors so it should be pretty accurate as a source of information.

ATCkit (talk) 14:53, 6 October 2022 (UTC)

Webtoon vs webcomic
The discussion thread linked above is now archived, scope I think can be discussed here.

I think enough time has passed without momentum to merge this page into webcomics that it can stay for now; please discuss here if disagree. I'll remove the template on the main page.

For my own take, I think this should be a separate article. Reasoning: clearly there's enough publishing about the role of these types of comics specifically in Korea that the topic could have its own article. That article would be called something like "Webcomics in Korea" or "Digital comics in Korea", etc. And "Webtoon" is essentially a synonym for that; a subcategory of a larger digital comic category that western comics are a part of too. toobigtokale (talk) 03:34, 31 August 2023 (UTC)