With thousands of webcomics out there, getting webtoon readers can feel like a daunting task. And while a strong social media marketing plan certainly helps, first you should ensure that readers will click on your comic in the webtoon apps themselves. Which means that your webtoon’s banner, thumbnail, and cover needs to be as eye-catching and intriguing as possible. Not to mention, you need a synopsis to hook readers in and make them want to find out more.
So, we’re gonna go over some best practices for in-app webtoon promotion, to help you stand out from the crowd and get as many webtoon readers as possible.
How to create a good webtoon thumbnail
The most important image you will create for your comic is your thumbnail. Most platforms use thumbnails when listing comics in their apps, so your thumbnail will be side-by-side with dozens of others. You need to make sure it stands out, says something about your comic, and makes people want to see more. So how do you do that?
Before we get into the tips, I want to share some helpful advice from our recent Reddit post on the subject. This user works in marketing, and they suggested surveying the webtoon apps before you choose your thumbnail.
Always put yourself on the side of the viewer. Browse the comics yourself and see which thumbnails pop up the most for you. Getting that click on the thumbnail is the most important step since otherwise, no matter how good your comic is, readers will see nothing.
Once you’ve got a feeling for what thumbnails jump out at you, it’s time to create your own. Here are some best practices to ensure your thumbnail gets clicks.
People love faces
It may be tempting to use a gorgeous landscape from your fantasy world, or an object that’s important to the story, but figures, if not close-up faces, are the best for getting reader engagement. Characters drive story, and the thumbnail should showcase your comic’s star players!
Check out these thumbnails in Webtoon’s trending section…
All of these thumbnails feature close-ups of the characters in the story: there are no full figures, the faces are clear, and they’re posed in interesting ways that tease the character dynamics.
Keep it sharp
Remember that people will be viewing your thumbnail on a very small screen. Your illustration might look perfect at full resolution, but once it’s been resized and compressed a lot of that image quality will be lost. Sharpening the image is essential to keep it looking crisp and in focus. Also, when images are made smaller, they often look darker. Increasing the brightness and contrast of the image will help with this too.
Sometimes it helps to resize your illustration to smaller dimensions (eg: 100px/100px) and seeing how it looks. That will give you an idea of how you need to adjust it in order to keep it looking sharp, bright, and clear.
But remember, Webtoon will also use a bigger version of your thumbnail for promos like the trending section (as with the above image). Your changes in sharpness will need to look good whether the image is big or small.
Know your genre
Tailoring your thumbnail to your genre is a great way to appeal to your target audience. You’re communicating a lot of things with your thumbnail, and setting the vibe for the comic is key. Romance aficionados are looking for something very different to fantasy fans, and your thumbnail should show that you’ll give them what they want.
Let’s look at some examples.
These are the thumbnails for the most popular Webtoon Canvas slice of life comics. The slice of life genre tends to be upbeat, grounded, and wholesome. All of these thumbnails feature predominantly bright colours and wide, smiling faces. “This is fun!” These thumbnails say. “It’s chill and grounded!”
The main characters are clearly featured, with clues as to their dynamic or what the story is about. These are the kind of thumbnails you’d click on if you just wanted something light to read that you can pick up and put down easily.
Meanwhile, over in the romance section…
Things are certainly steamier over here. A lot of chemistry can be communicated by one image alone. If romance is your genre, think about the dynamic between your leads. Are they drawn together by desire? Do they bicker often? Does one have a crush while the other is clueless? These dynamics can easily be communicated by your characters’ poses, intriguing the reader by showing them what kind of romance the comic will explore.
A note on the BL / GL thumbnails: some webtoon platforms (like Naver Webtoon) do not have separate sections for boys love and girls love, but put them in the general romance section. To make the sub-genre clear, creators will write “BL” or “GL” on the thumbnail.
Finally, let’s spirit away to the land of fantasy…
This section is a lot more diverse. We can easily see which comics cross over with the romance genre (Punderworld, Strange and Wild, Dragon’s Mercenary, and Fathoms of Atonement) thanks to their paired-up characters, or the BL/GL written on the thumbnail. The other thumbnails give clues as to their plot.
Which leads me neatly into..
Tease the plot
You may only have a small panel, but a lot can be established by a thumbnail — and teasing the plot is sure to intrigue potential readers. You don’t have to be super complicated in how you do this. In fact, let’s go back to Webtoon’s fantasy tab. Specifically, these three thumbnails…
The Weekly Roll features a knight, so we know the story will feature knights and action with Dungeons & Dragons vibes. The Moth Prince features two characters of seemingly different species, hinting at a human discovering a hidden fae realm. Meanwhile, The Beast Of Hadingley Hill has more of a gothic look to it, with candlelight illuminating a concerned, frowning face. This thumbnail makes me think of mystery and intrigue, reminding me of Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights.
I inferred all these plot points from the thumbnails, then checked the comics’ synopses. Each of my guesses was correct. That’s how much you can communicate with a thumbnail!
Stand out from the crowd
Now you have your thumbnail, there’s one final box to check: see if it stands out!
The same Reddit user from earlier suggested this method…
Take a screenshot of the comic app, and make a mockup with your thumbnail next to the others on there. Step back, glance over it, and see if yours is popping up compared to the others.
This method will help you ensure that your webtoon thumbnail is bright, sharp, and draws the eye — even when side-by-side with others.
How to create a good webtoon banner
Banner images are horizontally rectangular, and are used by webtoon platforms in their in-app promotion to shine a spotlight on specific comics. Therefore, they should act as an advertisement for your comic — while thumbnails can be more intimate and intriguing, giving the reader a glimpse of what the pages of the comic hold, the banner is your chance to show off the strengths of your art style.
Having said that, though, some of the most popular webtoon creators use the same image for their banner as they do for their thumbnails.
This isn’t a bad tactic, as of course re-using images will reduce the amount of work you have to do. However, some illustrations look better as banners than they do as thumbnails, and vice versa.
Banners vs thumbnails
For the example of The Empress’s Two Wolves, I actually think this illustration works much better as a banner than a thumbnail. It’s a bit too dark as a thumbnail, and the smaller version of the image makes it hard to tell that three people are the frame. As a banner, however, it works perfectly, and you can see lots of intriguing details that give context, like the way the heroine’s left hand rests on one man’s shoulder, while her other hand is grasped by the man behind her, a pearl necklace curled around her arm. All of this detail gets lost in the thumbnail.
Thumbnails allow you to really zoom in on your comic, and they work best with illustrations that are simple, clear, and tease a character dynamic or plot theme. Banners allow you to be a bit more complex in your imagery, showcasing your style well. And that’s not to say that you can’t use a close-up for your banner.
For example, this banner for Light Within Shadow features an intense close-up of the main character’s face, and the result is striking and eye-catching.
Because the banner is bigger than a thumbnail, we can see that the other side of the character’s face is in darkness, with a blue glowing eye shadowed by white hair — in contrast to the brown hair on the right side. This could hint at a radical transformation for the main character, or perhaps the left side of the face is an antagonist who acts as the lead’s narrative foil. The face is also peeking through thorny branches with glowing flowers, implying some kind of spooky magical forest (considering the comic’s fantasy setting).
Once again, we’re getting a lot of context clues from the banner, with only a few details in the illustration. This banner also showcases one of the strengths of the creator’s artistic style, which is their incredible use of colour and light.
Using symbolism
Here are some more well-done webtoon banners, with details that utilise symbolism to hint at tone, themes, and plot points.
Once again, the banner allows us to see small details like the strange weapon in My Daddy Is A Villain, the tarot table and floating candles in Love & Other Wicked Things, the disembodied hands and eyes in Marionetta. These elements add intrigue to the image, giving us clues about the plot.
Symbolism is employed to great effect in these banners. My Daddy Is A Villain has a title that implies a dark plot, but there are childlike pencil drawings of flowers scattered throughout the banner. This implies some dissonance between the kid lead character and their father, hinting that this is a comedy with an edge.
Love & Other Wicked things features the symbol of a heart around the characters, connected to the infinity sign winding its way around the characters’ hands. This implies that they are romantically entwined, while also hinting at the role magic plays in their relationship (is one putting a spell on the other?).
And of course, Marionetta’s banner features hands and eyes, implying the characters are being watched, while strings are attached to the characters like marionette dolls. This links to the title, but also suggests themes of fate and control.
Don’t go overboard
While banners allow you to add more detail to your illustration, remember to bring your characters to the forefront. You can add symbols, but be clear about the focus of your image. At the end of the day, you can add all the visual plot clues you want, but make sure to draw the reader’s eye to the most important part of the image, which is usually the characters themselves.
How to create a good webtoon cover
Covers, also known as posters, are used by some webtoon platforms in the comic’s main page, or as an alternative to thumbnails on the app’s discovery page. Have a look at Tapas’ genre section to see how covers are used instead of thumbnails.
And here’s an example of Inkverse’s comic screen, which uses a cover as the central image.
Because some platforms use a bigger version of the image you can add more detail (just like banners), but other platforms like Tapas use covers instead of thumbnails. So, you also need to be sure that your cover will still be eye-catching even when it’s sized-down. That’s a tough dynamic to juggle! But it’s not impossible.
Beware of crowding
Although covers give you more room to play with, be wary of making it too crowded. This will confuse the eye, making the reader uncertain of where to look. A lot of webtoon creators use movie posters as a reference for their covers. Nowadays, Hollywood posters cram in as many characters as possible, so audiences can see which big-name stars are in the film. And they can get away with this, as their posters will be seen in person, blown up to large sizes on the side of bus stops and in movie theatres.
Webtoon creators don’t have that luxury. So while your movie-style cover might look fantastic in its full size on your computer, on webtoon apps your beautiful art will get lost in the noise.
Before vs after
The creator of Light Within Shadow redesigned the cover for this comic three times, going from a simple illustration of two leads, to a movie-style showcase of multiple characters, to a striking version that spotlit the comic’s lead. Let’s have a look at all three covers and see which one does the comic justice.
The first cover follows a lot of the guidelines for thumbnails. It features two characters, hinting at their dynamic: they’re back-to-back but grinning at the “camera”, implying that they’re partners in crime. However, there’s little to communicate the genre of plot. There are some blue flames at the bottom, but these will be lost when the cover is resized to be smaller. If I saw this I’d think it was a buddy-movie style plot, perhaps a slice of life or romance.
But the comic is fantasy, with detailed lore and creepy monsters, weaving elements of fantasy with characters who can wield the elements in battle. The first cover does nothing to convey this… but the second one does.
The second cover is a smorgasbord of imagery. There are multiple characters, a wolf, a book, and a dragon-like creature, along with lots of visual effects — an arm swooping down, lighting being wielded, a wind blowing, and a fiery hand. This definitely gives us more than a glimpse of what the comic contains… but it’s a lot to cram into one cover. Fully sized it would be a treat for the eyes, but made smaller (even small enough for this comparison image), it’s difficult to discern what’s going on, and many of the smaller elements get lost.
Then we’ve got the third cover, which is probably the most effective. We’re back to a simpler design, with one character at the centre. A spotlight is created by clever use of colour and shadow. She’s leaping through the air, fire bursting from her fists. Surrounding her are spooky hands, claws, and even one creature’s jaws, which serve the dual effect of drawing the reader’s eye to her, while establishing that she is fighting off supernatural beings.
The third cover is a masterclass in how to use your webtoon cover to do many things at once. This cover is eye-catching, draws the eye to the centre, communicates plot, establishes the fantasy genre, and showcases the creator’s strength in illustration. 10/10
Key takeaways
There’s a lot to unpack in this blog post! Ultimately though, if you follow these golden rules your webtoon in-app promo image will look great, whether it’s a thumbnail, banner, or cover image.
- Focus on characters
- Use poses to communicate dynamic
- Be aware of genre
- Know what your audience is looking for
- Keep it simple and don’t overcrowd
- Be mindful of how resizing affects the image
- Show off your strengths!
Thumbnails, banners, and covers are your chance to shine so at the end of the day, just have fun with them — and your readers will enjoy them, too.
For more webtoon tips check out our YouTube channel and other blog posts, head to our resources page for worksheets on everything from character design to storyboarding, and join our Discord to connect with other creators and get their advice. Stay creative!