Story Sanity Check

[Maximuscoolman]

Well should you like, smite me or something then?
I'm in a guild now, a Troll only one. The leader is caled Voltair which I thought was worth mentioning here.

Keenspace is back up.

And while I'm thread hijacking again, I thought I'd say that Father of the Pride has started over here now and I think it's great.

[Cyril_Dran]

Hrnn. I personally didn't notice the discrepancy in Griffin's clothing.. I guess I assumed she changed inbetween here and the ship.. I'm used to comics where the characters change wardrobe from time to time (Marcie from PVP has changed clothing and drawing styles twice since her conception), and Griffin's actions and personality already blazons her character onto her charater model, if you know what I mean..

I, personally, have no trouble following sudden scene changes.. If anyone wants, I can direct them to something I wrote that, if this confuses you, will make you want to shoot yourself after the 8th page. Of course, this is coming from someone who loved the Silmarillion because of all the symbolism and stuff, so...

In any event, I think the comic is a great step forward from UH, in as much as Allen's now blending visual story telling elements with concrete story telling, which will eventually allow the strip to move much more swiftly.. you don't have to waste comics on transitory "We're on the road" stuff, then spend several comics with them standing there expounding on their situation.

I guess what I'm trying to say is.. Yes, Unit Zero is starting off pretty rocky, yes, it has it's mistakes, but, overall, this series has a much better start than most serial art experiments.

ANY ways. I can't wait to see what happens next! And.. for U0 wallpapers... hrm. http://umlauthouse.keenspace.com/d/20050211.html , the bottom panel, I think would be a good, light hearted wallpaper.. Er, I'll post this on the wallpaper thread too, since I should have in the first place @_@.

Edit: Fixed the comma. Thanks, Maximus.

[Maximuscoolman]

You got a comma in that URL, it makes it 404.

[Allan_ecker]

Thanks, Cyril, for seeing what I'm -trying- to do rather than what I've actually DONE. If at least some of you are deciphering the design intent of this comic then I know I'm on the right track, if not fully nailing this particular execution. I fervently hope that by the time I get into my second large melodramatic comic (e.t.a. two years), I'll be able to weave a storyline that is simultaneously transparent to beginners and satisfying to veterans. Umlaut House, for all its narrative cogency, does not employ the setting as a significant part of the story. A character getting out of a car could be getting out of any car at all and it would make no difference to the story. I want very much to tell the kind of story where a single panel with no words in it at all tells -volumes- and where the pictures and words play nearly equal parts in carrying the story load. Some people, I think, read Umlaut House in part for the cute facial expressions, but were those expressions at any point telling as much story as the words?

So expect lots of experiments from me. Expect me to fail often. Because I'm going to. But every now and then I'll do something right, and isn't making some new mistakes and new successes better than making the same right choices over and over? I would go so far as to say making the same right choices over and over would be equivelant to one very BIG mistake.

PS: "Silmarillion"?

[Cyril_Dran]

Ah, another who knoweth not. The Silmarillion is the greatest work of Professor Tolkien. It's a prequel to the Lord of the Rings trilogy and the Hobbit that tells of the beginnings of Middle Earth and the lands to the west.. It's mostly about the race of quasi gods, the Valar, the equivalent to Lucifer, known as Melkor to the Valar, and Morgoth, "The Enemy" to the Elves, which are known better in that book as the Eldar.. The book isn't as entertaining as it is immersing.. Tolkien has an entire world of his own condensed into something over 500 pages...

Again, it's kinda dry.. there are long portions of the book that tell about the development of the civilization, and big speeches like the ones from epic poems and stuff.. but, it's also my favorite Tolkien work. I strongly reccomend it to big readers... and warn anyone who isn't a very avid reader away from it like the plague.

[Alfador]

I tried the Silmarillion a few times...see, when I couldn't get through the Fellowship of the Ring at first, I figured I just wasn't an experienced enough reader. So a few years later, I tried and finished the whole LotR trilogy in high school. Twice; once for myself, and again so I could get credit for it in 9th grade English (or LAR Language ARts).

Then I tried the Silmarillion. Got about as far in it as I had Fellowship so many years previous. With all the coursework I've had at the university level impinging on my ability to read massive amounts of books in my spare time (and the availability of the Internet impinging on my motivation) I'm not sure if I'd have gotten enough skill points in Literature to blaze through Silmarillion at this point...but I'm almost due for another try at it.

The difference comes in how well I'm able to get "into" a book. Most things I can get into quite easily--'s why I'm such an avid reader. But some things, like the Viking sagas I was reading for a class two and a half years ago (PLEASE don't ask), I just can't get into a groove with.

[DetailBear]

As a small insight into my psyche, The Silmarillion was the Tolkien book that I could not put down until I finished it. I found it more riveting than the Trilogy.

[Cyril_Dran]

^_^ Same here, DB. I personally found the huge attention to detail fascinating, and Tolkien writes his characters so well, you can often predict actions for long recurring characters like Feanor, Melkor, about half the Valar, and some of the bigger Eldar. The humans never showed up more than once, and the Dwarves were nearly neglected, unfortunately. I need to read it again, cuz I forgot half the names of the Valar, and I started listening to Blind Guardian's "Nightfall in Middle Earth" which makes mad references to the Silmarillion... I'll like, hear a reference like "The Lord of Water", and be like "He's that one guy that liked the one tribe of the Eldar" and have no idea of any of the names..

Anyways. I'll save further Silmarillion ranting for private communications, if anyone really wants to hear me incoherently babble on about the book.

[RandomScribe]

Back to the original topic...

I personally haven't had any trouble understanding the plot thus far. I'll grant that I've been reading all of the commentary on the forums, but none of the individual comics have left me scratching my head and wondering what just happened. Aside from the occasional problem with page breaks (which I've already elaborated on), I felt the whole thing flowed pretty well. Part of this is due to the fact that often I don't pay all that much attention to detail, so I don't pick up on the sort of little things that confused people such as Hat-Kun (I never would've noticed Griffin's outfit changing color, for instance). Reading his comments and looking through the archives again, I can definitely see where he's coming from.

You've said you're trying to tell a story with the art, but there are times when there simply isn't enough visual detail to make up for what the dialogue doesn't say. For instance, here I looked at the gray shapes in the first panel and read it as "table." (Can you see what I mean? The dark gray is the rear wall, and the lighter grays are the base and surface of some sort of table or console?) So to me the scene appeared to be Griffin Steelwill (Rudan?) and Arnold lying on their stomachs under some sort of table. Not that I consciously considered any of this--I just looked at the panel and thought "table" and moved on without stopping to think whether it made any sense. It's sort of like how I read the Uncle Frank strip under the impression that (s)he was an old flame of Rick's who was jealous of Jake. Never mind that Rick is gay (gay, gay, gay, etc.); when my initial snap judgment isn't blindingly illogical, I run with it.

But I looked at the strip again just now. And then, like the proverbial Escher cube turning inside out, it finally hit me: the lighter gray areas of the first panel aren't a figure against the ground of the darker gray. The whole thing is ground--it's the curved interior of the circular space station.

That I feel proud for figuring that one out suggests that this strip probably wasn't as clear as it needed to be.

Let's start with the characters. I immediately read the image as them lying on their stomachs--but to be honest, I really only got that because I remembered what had just happened in the previous strip. If you had shown me that panel out of context (keeping in mind that the background is basically useless), I would have been equally likely to guess that they were shrugging in an extreme sort of way or seated in chairs with headrests. As I said, though, with the context in mind it's easy to interpret the pose correctly. Even so, however, the fact that their bodies are completely hidden behind their heads and shoulders doesn't exactly prime the reader to look at the scene as a 3D one. One expects to see a flat, horizontal perspective, which is exactly what almost every panel has been so far--and thus a corridor becomes a table.

As for the background itself, there are a number of monocular depth cues you can use to make it look like a structure is curving away into the distance. If there were objects on the walls and floor--crates, lighting fixtures, control panels, what have you--it might be more readily apparent that they are the walls and floor. Better yet, a line of objects (such as evenly spaced lights) of diminishing size would create the illusion of increasing distance. If the surfaces had some sort of texture, it could go from coarse to fine; the focus could go from crisp to blurred; the lighting could go from bright to dim. And of course there's always linear perspective--a group of parallel lines converging in the distance. The trouble is, all of these solutions involve delving into a greater level of detail than you've put into most of the scenes so far. The truth is, you were going for a very impressive and ambitious establishing shot that was simply beyond the power of four blocks of solid color to achieve.

And what of the second panel, a partial view of the space station? Shouldn't that have been a clue? Well, no. To tell the truth, when I first looked at that panel I read it as "irrelevant sci-fi structure" and moved on. And can you blame me? I don't think it's really fair to expect the reader to recognize that he's looking at the same thing here and here. I mean, look at it: your depiction of the station went from "smooth white structure with spokes" to "patterened gray-and-white structure with no spokes." (Also absent, unfortunately, is the potentially distinctive central structure seen here.) In fact, it's not even surprising that I didn't read that panel as "in space"--your depiction of space goes from the universally recognizable (no pun intended) black field with white dots to an ambiguous solid gray that isn't clearly distinct from the station itself.

So I guess my point is that the strip in question just didn't have the effect you intended, at least not on me.

Positive Ending Note #1: That's okay. I had no problem with the strip when I first read it; this whole rant is based on my analysis of the strip after the fact. I got the point: however unstable they are, Arnold and Griffin are at least united in their hatred of whoever holds power over them. And the second panel made me giggle, too. So it's really the ideal setup: you experiment with your artistic style as much as you want, and when it works, that's great, and when it doesn't... well, the story and characters are always interesting enough to keep me wanting more. So whatever you do, don't stop taking risks. I promise to keep reading.

Positive Ending Note #2: You can tell a story with pictures. And you're good at it. I still really admire this strip, because using only six relatively simple images you manage to convey both the events and emotion of Arnold's story. The text isn't even really necessary. And you are getting better at depicting 3D space, if the latest update is any indication. Those breathtaking panoramas will be within your reach yet!

*ponders the significance of eye color*

--RandomScribe, who uses words like "figure" and "ground" and "monocular depth cues" to make people like Allan think he knows what he's talking about

[Allan_ecker]

Actually, I found the phrase "monocular depth cues" to be very well suited to its use. And exactly the right remedy for the weakness of that panel. There is at least one future episode which might get an edit before going up because of this advice. (The missing starfield also qualifies as a "monocular depth cue".)

So yeah, lots of art noise. But the second moment is drifting downward, and the mean is rising, so hopefully by the time I get to some of the really visually challenging parts of this story they'll nail the dismount, so to speak, without even wobbling.

All this is really practice for my "big dramatic comic", and also for the more "comic booky" aspects of future humor projects.

"Good judgement comes from experience. Experience comes from bad judgement."

And as for "Rudan", "Steelwill" is an assumed name. Either that or I fucked up. However, given what I've seen in pop culture, a little feline "I meant to do that" can turn errors into plot ideas in fairly short order.

However, having seen ungodly beautiful comics like Zebra Girl, I'm increasingly motivated to really pull hard on the strings marked "character design" and "lighting". If you haven't read Zebra Girl you really ought to give it a chance, because, for all its cramped lettering, it's one of the smartest, coolest, and most professional online comics I know.

[KarlBob]

Off Topic Silmarillion Comments:
The thing that bothers me the most about the Silmarillion is that it quickly becomes obvious that the Elves are the only really important race in Middle-Earth (at least until the time of LOTR). If you want to know something's true nature, the quickest way to find out is to ask "What do you call it in Sindarin?". The Elves never misjudge things, or misname them. If the humans call a place "quiet valley" and the Elves call it "valley of forboding" then you know something vicious is lurking there before a single character sets foot in it.

Further Off Topic MMORPG Comments:
Pallies are all right, but they're no Druids. Halfling Druids are self-evidently the best of all possible characters.
Why yes, I play a Halfling Warden in EQ2, why do you ask?
Davril, Level 31 Warden / Level 28 Alchemist of Kithicor Server, Ring of Destiny guild