Webcomic Above Thread :o

[[AOD]]

... does anyone remember this thread? ...

Anyone?

?~AOD

[Escushion]

(I hope that my comic isn't so horrible as to make this post the tombstone of this thread....)

This would be really funny, except you don't seem to have a comic since there's no homepage on your profile and no URL in your signature.

[Noise Monkey]

*cough*

[Escushion]

That wasn't there before! No one will ever believe me, but it wasn't! It was just the words; no image!

Might've been related to yeahduff and my comic's archives not loading at the same time too, so some server-related thing.

In that case, it's just really funny .

[McDuffies]

That wasn't there before! No one will ever believe me, but it wasn't! It was just the words; no image!

Likely story. We'll beat the truth out of you.

[TBAC]

COILING SPINE


First impression from the Banner:

Don't have a clue, but with the words "end of the world" and the spine wrapped around the globe, I can imagine. I always like the apocrapha, revelations and all that jazz, so this should be fun.

First Impression from Site:

I like the Red Tartan background. It's different. The first nit-picky thing is that it doesn't look like the advert is centered at the top of the page. Again, very little. The comic is in black & white, or rather shades of gray. Wasn't expecting that.

Site Design:

First thing is the comic comes first. I like that. Nothing annoys more than to click on an interesting banner and have to search for the comic amidst blogs and misc. The navigation buttons are below and I almost really like those too. The "First" button is a skull attached to a spine, but it took me a moment to realize what the "Previous" and "Next" buttons were, a trailing spine. If the spinal column had matched up across the buttons I would've spotted it quicker I think. (This became clearer when I dived into the archives.)

The buttons for "Links", etc are beige which is an odd color choice. But maybe that makes them stand out some more, who knows? The fact that the Forum button is dark blue with some bright eyes is interesting, though I had to look very close at each of them to tell what the pictures were.

Also, I did click on the "Download Zombie Noize" font, but got a 404. I'm checking Blambot, so until then I realize I'm not viewing the page with the font of choice.

Comic:

The beginning is certainly intrigueing. Though when it was loading I thought those were people in that monumental blast. When the pixels cleared I was a little disappointed. But still, starting with a bang is always good. Duly noted was the fact that the comic started around Halloween of last year (2004). A nice time to start an armageddon comic.

ART:

I've seen incredible comics like Zebragirl and I've seen stick figures/sprites. This is somewhere in the middle. I do struggle now and then to make out what is being shown. Still, at least there is an attempt to show scenes from different perspective. If the art were a little better, I think this would work beautifully. Rather than B&W/Gray as I first thought, there is some color. Desert colors, too, which makes more sense now for the Link buttons, etc. The characters are fairly 2 dimensional. A minimum amount of shading, and oddly muted colors. I'm always knocked out by the number of people who promptly get their logo/character on a T-shirt, and this one doesn't disappoint. Cafepress has Kadeo ready to go already. And here I am bashful thinking, eh, who would want to buy a T--shirt from me? Kudos! Go get 'em!

STORY:
This is set in the future where civilization has collapsed and Eath is being visited by "Others", namely Kadeo, a jagged, lizard type skull in some fairly cool western clothing, complete with long black coat. The update schedule is pretty consistent, even if the first story line is essentially Kadeo shooting a bunch of people for reasons as of yet unknown to me.
I can't help but think that more can be accomplished as the creator learns to compress his story line. The whole first story arc I think could've been accomplished in a few well planned comics. Read more short stories, examine some 1 panel comics. Nothing teaches you how to develop a story quickly without sacrificing quality better than those who have mastered it. On the plus side, the story definitely picks up when Kadeo & Damien team up.

I see this as a first project, a first comic. I expect the art & writing will get better on subsequent comics.

[Escushion]

Thanks for the feedback. Just a quick question: Do you think I should have some sort of expositional text between the cover shot and the real first comic? I originally thought the conversation with Jimmy early on gave all the information a person needed, yet people still seem a bit confused as to what's going on. There's going to be some exposition in late December that makes the curtain and Kadeo's condition very clear (as they're being explained to people who don't know about them,) but should I just let that be it or should I put something at the beginning. I really don't want want to spell the comic out--to me that reeks of bad writing--but would title cards at the start explaining the basic situation (the others, Kadeo's condition, etc) be helpful or redundant?

As for the story bit, I've learned from my mistakes in "The Station" . Everything from the end of that storyline onward I've been keeping a good editing eye on. And thanks especially for the art feedback.

Teddy Bear Anti-Christ

Banner: I like the tweakiness of the banner, as if it's psychologicly unstable. I think you could improve it by putting the title at the end though, between the flashes of Teddy's face and the beginning. For some reason the flashes seem like it's building towards that, but then there's just blackness and the beginning again.

Site: The title banner is really awesome. I like the design, and the "anti" letters flashing. The one problem I had was that I couldn't find the comic at first. I thought maybe I'd stumbled upon the beginning, so I tried some links... nothing. I know you say we "might" have to scroll, but I didn't really catch that it meant you'd have to scroll right there to find the comic down below. I think there's room for improvement, in either moving the comic up or making an explicit "scroll down" sign.

Otherwise, the place looks good.

Comic: The introduction comic is good; it lets you know what you're in for (to an extent) and it's funny. In fact, the whole comic is my kind of humor, so it clicked well with me.

Art: Teddy looks great. Some people would be tempted to over-complicate him, make him too detailed, but I think keeping him in simple design was the right way to go. After all, he's a teddy bear. Lucy could use some work. Her facial expressions are spot-on, but her body bends a little weird, a little too stiffly. I like the color-work too, as what I did to an extent with my comic, where certain colors pop out of the black and white. It's an effective trick; I'm surprised more people don't use it.

Also, I know it's early so maybe this will change, but I think it's really cool that you don't see the adults at all. Even when Uncle Jerry enters the scene, it just sticks to Lucy and shows his shadow over her. The rest is conveyed in voices.

One thing I'd improve though is taking the asterik uses out of the dialogue bubbles. It gives it too much of an internet chatroom feel and takes away from the situation. Rather than *SLAP* or *whimper*, I'd put them in text outside of the speech bubble with a border on the letters. In the part with the slapping over and over, you could line the left side of the panel with them, interrupted by the mother's words.

Writing: Very small scope, which is cool. I'm not sure whether giving Teddy an origin took away from him or not, but it being a good gag overrides that I suppose. The divide between Lucy and Teddy is good in that you can really see how broken she is even when Teddy's making all these morbid jabs at the situation. I don't know if he's an Anti-Christ though; honestly I think he's got the right idea with Uncle Jerry . But the comics are consistently funny and the scope is small enough that there's not really a way to steer wrong unless you enlarge it.

In short, keep doing what you're doing. Only thing I'd really fix is the site a little bit. I came in with the intent to review, so I was willing to search a bit for the comic. But a passing reader who just happens to click a link will only stay with it for a couple seconds if they don't find the comic, and then that's a potential reader lost. Keep up the good work.

[Ryuko]

Escushion, shouldn't you review AOD's comic? Since you posted after him and all. (THIS IS NOT A REVIEWABLE POST)

[Escushion]

I didn't realize we had to put tags for non-review; I wasn't posting to do or get reviews, I was posting to alert him of his banner situation (I swear it wasn't there before!) By that logic, I should review Noise Monkey's, McDuffies should be reviewing my comic, and TBAC should've reviewed McDuffies. I certainly don't expect them to, as those weren't posts for that sort of purpose. I'll remember to put tags from now on.

(Not a post for review!)

EDIT: I can still do AOD's at some point, but I doubt it will be today (possible, but unlikely as I have a lot of work to do.)

[Ryuko]

(Technically we're not supposed to be posting non reviews here at all. We're supposed to use the discussion thread for that. But it's disappeared and I wasn't sure you'd check it...)

[Escushion]

Okay, let's do this.

The Third Rail

Banner: I like the banner. It's simple, it has a good, white-on-black-airbrush effect to it. The only problem is that you don't realize it's a face unless you stare at it a little. I think it the image were more clear, you'd get more clicks.

Site: The site's also simple. It doesn't really need to be complicated. You chose a good shade of green for over the black, so that it doesn't hurt to look at.

However, the site has a few problems. One is that the links (Main, Art, etc) are too small and out of the way. They should be more noticable if you want people to take notice of them.

The big problem though is the transition from "It's the End of the World" to "The Third Rail." I can see you want them on the same site so that any of your works could be put on there, but whole layout issue of it is confusing. If a person just wants to dive into the comic, they shouldn't need a footnote on the main page specifically for that purpose. I'll tell you why diving in is bad in the next sections.

I'd stongly suggest a dropdown box for diving the comic. That way, a person can select which comic they want to read. You could put it right over the strip. It would help things greatly.

One last suggestion: upload the crossover comics to your archive from the other people's comics, with their permission. That is the mode of most crossovers and it's ridiculous to have people clicking out to the other person's site to see it. You should definitely have their link right below, and they should have those comics in their archives, but not having those on the site is a little ridiculous. The best crossovers usually share the comics between sites. Also, a couple of the links don't work.

Art: This is mostly a critique of "The Third Rail," but I want to comment on something specific about "It's the End of the World." You have great characters designs and you clearly have artistic ability. But ITEOTW has a very rushed looked to it, everything is scrunched together, and it's very hard to tell what's going on. While that strip is over, it's a big deterent if a causal reader hits upon "The Third Rail," hits the First button with interest, and then finds ITEOTW. It's a big turn-off. Again, dropdown box.

I think Milf himself hits the nail on the head with this:
http://aod.comicgen.com/d/20051119.html

You have artistic ability; I saw that in occasional between-comic strips. One thing that really burns me up is when someone has an ability and doesn't use it. I really don't see "The Third Rail" as fully utilizing your ability. The character designs are neat and Noir looks cool (I don't think developing the style of him would be good; he's perfect the way he is), and Milf and Vinnie look good for what they are. As far as things go overall though, you can do better. You probably wouldn't be able to maintain an everyday update schedule, yet it'd be an artistic improvement. What you have now is good for what it is and I know the simple designs of the characters were intentional. There's still the fact that you have the ability to do better, non-"high grade stick figure" art. But this is your project and the style you've chosen to do, so it's really your choice whether to fully utilize your ability or not. You're perfectly aware of that, as the linked strip shows.

Writing: I'll get the big issue out of the way: The words are very hard to read at times. Your penmanship is 20 times better than mine, but it's still difficult to read. Often it's very crunched and it takes a lot of effort to decipher. Even when you were using text for ITEOTW this was true. It makes reading the comic a less enjoyable experience and when you actually do get done reading, the joke is often lost.

That out of the way, the comic is funny. Some of the gags fall flat, but some of them really work. The premise is interesting too. There are a lot of self-aware comics and a lot of serial killer comics, but I don't know ones that combine the genre. At certain gaps the premise starts to wear about, and the Scanner story wasn't really that great (although it did set up the Kali joke for later, which made that funny), but overall it's very entertaining. I think you can do more with it, but that should come as the comic develops, so as long as you don't let it get stale, this aspect should be fine. I thought the part early on where you supply Milf with weapons and encourage him to kill was a pretty cool idea with decent potential. Manipulating the comic, with Milf going into vaster areas, and you continuing to do all sorts of things, would be a really cool idea. I'm not sure how long it would be before it wore thin, but you hint at it and it'll be interesting to see where it goes.

So, in short, fix the site, maybe get some free version of Photoshop so that you can put in more easily readable text, and keep developing the comic's writing so it continues its quality.

[Sincerely]

Coiling Spine

art
Hmm. It's good that most of the character's aren't Human, because their anatomy needs some work. Some of the monsters that make up the cast are pretty interesting to look at and to see move. Since the comic is heavily oriented around action, we get to see them move a lot. That said, as in a lot of action-oriented art, it's easy to loose track of the what's going on and and whose who. A lot of time and panel space is put into the Significant Look(tm), and while some effort has been put into differentiating Muratov and Antonina, who being father and daughter, have similar facial markings, most of the human (or human looking) characters are only differentiated by their eye color.

I admit that I'm generally too impatient to reread a strip if I have trouble following the action, so it's possible I'm loosing something that's made clearer upon further scrutiny. Also, Chiv freaks me out.

writing
I haven't read very many (if any) post-apocalyptic comics, so this premise is original from my perspective. I don't really understand some of the basic concepts behind the comic (such as why 90%+ of the cast are all freaky-looking monsters) but despite that, it's a pretty interesting and well-laid out story about gang warfare in the radiated desert of the future.

Too some extent I found many of the action sequences a little Dragonball-esque: a lot of talking, and you know from the start who is going to "win" any given encounter, just not how they're going to get there. I got a little tired of Kadeo starting off nearly every fight by reminding his opponents of how unlikely their gun was to fire.

Dialogue is hit and miss. Many of the characters have their own style of speaking (especially Kadeo and Muratov), but all of the background characters (and many of the minor characters before they get more thoroughly introduced) tend to be just carbon copies of each other when it comes to speaking, taunting, boasting, and threatening. I'd like to see some more sentiments than just rage, overconfidence, and indignation.

layout
It's relatively easy to follow the panel layout and word balloons. Though I sometimes get lost as far as what the action is portraying, it's not the fault of the layout. I like the tartan background, too, though it doesn't represent the content of the comic in anyway, I find it very appropriate. There's a lot of wasted space to the right and left of the comic, and it took me a little bit to find the buttons on the right of the comic (my computer can't handle higher than 800x600 resolution, so I'm pretty used to that).

overall
I've always been bad at writing conclusions. It's a pretty basic story. The dialogue needs work, but the major characters at least seem to have personalities to support it. The action sequences would be most helped by a clearer understanding of anatomy (even the monster characters would benefit from this), but it already holds up to scrutiny based on the author's understanding of perspective.

It's worth reading at least a chapter to get an idea of whether the style and content are for you.

I'm holding out for possible romantic underpinings between Antonina and Kadeo. Pffh, heehee.

[AnnaAngel]

Review for Oops, Nevermind

Site
The site's easy to navigate. The comics load quickly and fit on the screen which is great. The only thing I'm not crazy about is the plain white background.

Story
Basically, a girl (Leven) shows up at a guy's (Roth's) house and just kinda moves in without explaining who she is or why she has a dragon with her. A lot of story goes by without answering those questions (though it seems to be starting to happen now), and the plot is mostly humour revolving around Leven and Roth and Roth's friends.

The writing overall is good. The majority of the jokes work, and it gets funnier as it goes on.

Art
I thought it was plain at first, but it really grew on me as I read. The style is clean and it's easy to understand what's being drawn. Normally I like to see more shading, but I think this style works here.

The expressions are well drawn, and make for some funny moments when nothing is even being said. The tribble blob things were definitely a highlight, watching the one spin around in the microwave was hilarious

The pacing is really well done within the pages and helps pull off a lot of the funny moments. The time changes between pages can seem a bit abrupt though and a little confusing.

Overall
I'd say it's pretty good. I had my doubts in the beginning, but it grew on me as I read more. Keep it up

[Warofwinds]

I'll take Moonlight Feathers.

Edit: oh dear. Humbug, how could you

[Edit 2:] Critique

Moonlight Feathers: Definitely not for the kids. Nudity and sex. Were I any more naive on these matters I might pull an Oedipus.

Good handle on perspective in environment, with lots of physical detail. The environment was so detailed, it left me wondering why the artist hadn?t decided to bring that detail over to the characters. I personally am not a fan of this type of manga, with the pointed chins, noses and huge eyes. I think Nae should branch out a little from this type of art, and make the characters mesh more with the backgrounds by making them more realistic, but still keep elements of manga.

The first installment is very heavy on sex (girl-on-girl), but I?m 20 pages in and I?m still wondering, why the heavy emphasis? I can see it for character development (two of the girls are very horny, one (Damasu) more than the other (Nae), and the third is beautiful, shy, virgin (Annabelle) they both want. Annabelle has problems that she hasn?t yet talked too much about, and Damasu is actually the reincarnation of a woman who had an affair with a noblewoman in the 1800?s, and she?s searching for the reincarnation of her lover. Even the author admitted it: very soap-opera-ish. Because of this, I?m finding that I don?t have very much of an interest at all in learning what?s going to happen next. To me, everyone?s blurring together, and a story about romance with no deeper plot or conflict (at least nothing hinted at in the first 30+) has the opportunity to be something more, but -isn't- anything yet.

More pages in, and the only conflict is Annabelle?s inner, religious, conflict, and it only services after sex scenes. Is this normal for a soap? I keep waiting for a central conflict to drive everything forward, not just Annabelle and Damasu.

At the beginning of part one, it really starts to drag for me for about 8 pages. There also seems to be less attention to paid to character faces, and the chins could chisel through rock. But the news said school started, so I?ll lay off. I?ve got that same issue with time myself. I?m wondering how this all connects to the first chapters (Sin) though. I feel as though I've missed the memo on everything. For someone coming in without reading Moonlight or Feathers, I'm very confused. I don?t want to go and have to read the background or the original two comics to understand this one. There wasn?t enough introduction of certain characters to give them reason to be there, or to have a relationship with the main cast (like X, and the bg between Nae and Damasu).

I would ask that in the future, the text be added on the computer rather than by hand. The hand-lettering is certainly neat, but it?s not dark or bold enough, and on some pages I had to forcibly make myself squint and read.

Something I really like is the detail paid to hair, especially X?s and Greta?s. That same detail spread to skin shading could really add another dimension to the art. The clothes are also often very detailed, and the chibis are really cute.

The characters all look very different, though often I felt like the odd person left out on joke with their dialogue. Also, a common thing I?ve seen on many pages is that the heads are drawn too small. It makes the shoulders look too wide and manly.

Overall, this comic is definitely not for me. I think by next week, nothing about it will have stuck with me, and it'll get lost in the shuffle (though I may have nightmares of Yuri). I think what I would recommend is something to make it different than the rest of the comics of the same genre. Introduce more of the backplot from the original comics into the crossover. I found that interesting, but you're stuck on the little things that don't hold my interest. I don't really care about someone posing nude for a lesbian artist. I want to know more about how everything is connected.

A jumbled review, sorry. My thoughts are not in order today.

-Kez

[Humbug]

Hmm, would be fun to try, placeholder for War Of Winds.

[Netpoet]

I'll take Tales of Pylea!