datachasers wrote:
to address Naked elfs comments -
one ive had over 20 years of "hand drawn " artwork so thats covered ..
the amount of experiance with making a comic .. none. until now
this is my first shot. i use the CGI because its a "replacement" for tools i cant use effectively anymore .. ( its painful to hold a pencil for long periods of time ) i realize that my work is that of a newbe in story and plot and probably in camera work -
I didn't mean to imply that you lacked (or needed) hand drawn artwork. (This is in response the the comment about sketching out the layouts, I presume?) Obviously reading your comic tells me nothing about your hand-drawing skills one way or another. I simply think that a quick sketch of a layout, and I mean sketch, with crappy stick figures, can be helpful for planning layouts and getting an idea of where you want the figures to go. I'm not talking about producing anything of 'quality' or which would be destined for anything other than the trash once you're done with it.
Also, for all that people are talking about 'taking time to learn technical aspects' and blah blah, there is a huge gulf between learning to do a technically good piece of art, say, a portrait, and doing a comic. And different kinds of comics (manga, conventional comic book, strips, free-form, etc.,) all have different 'styles' to them. Just because someone is really good at drawing manga doesn't mean they'd produce an effective newspaper-style comic, simply because the requirements of pacing and panels and storytelling are different.
Or to put it another way, oh man, yeah, I understand what you mean. I spent months just trying to figure out how to make it clear to the reader which character was *talking*. I could draw the characters fine, but I kept fucking up the word balloon placement. (BTW, I can always tell which of your characters is talking, so good job.) This is also why my closet is full of crappy comics which will never see the light of day :P
Anyway, too many people I think try to break comics down into 'art' and 'writing'. I think it's more than that, although art and writing are both important, a comic isn't just a bunch of pictures with some text sitting next to them. It's the way they're put together that makes the comic. I think pretty much *any* art technique can make a great comic, so long as it's 'put together' correctly.
and i will at some point probably revise and reformat everything .. but as far as re-sizeing it , im loathed to shrink everything ( but i probably should ) when i find a way to make them smaller without sacking a lot of quality ill do it
I think you're using .jpg currently (I noted some compression artifacts). You might be better off using a different kind of file, like .png. Also, cropping. You can have a large figure in a small frame if you crop.
this thread wasnt suppost to be about "my" comic in anycase but a general over look of the medium because i was wondering
My apologies for making things personal; it just seemed to me that on some level your concerns about people's opinions on CGI comics boil down to wanting people to like your comic, and I don't have much experience either with people or CGI comics broadly, so I try to direct my comments to where I hope they'll do the most to help.
" Then again, I'm an elitist asshole, I think that no matter what medium you're using to make a comic, you should be trained in SOME form with classical techniques and theory. " is junk except in the fact that you think no - one that uses cgi is good unless they can also "draw" is unfair.. you dont like it .. i get that. ok? ( refraining from saying something stupid, hopefully i havent yet ) bleh..
*scritch scritch*
I am not sure that person meant it personally. I think they just meant that they're an elitist asshole. Hell, I'm an elitist asshole. It's a good thing to admit to oneself. That's why I don't eat Hershey's chocolate and turn my nose up misused apostrophes. But that doesn't mean I dislike your comic (or that the poster had any opinion either way about it.)
davidcsimon wrote:
Yeah, but judging by the quality of most traditional comics, I'd say that the majority of them skipped that learning period too. Sure, there are a number of really well-drawn comics out there, but there are many more *badly* drawn comics.
XKCD sucks as far as art, but I still like it as a comic. And I have no reason to believe that the guy who does 8 Bit Theater can draw. Hell, Something Positive has pretty damn mediocre art. (My husband finds the art in S*P bad enough that he won't read it for that reason.) But they're all still considered good comics by a lot of people.
