Comic Genesis Forums

Heres a couple strips I threw together. Mostly I just did it to entertain my friends and such, but I'm starting to like making them. Officially, I don't have a site yet, or much less even a name for my comic.

but let me know what you think. I would like to start making these everyday, but I guess I'm just looking for justification.

starting with the "animation". I wanted a real... cartoony... polygon... cellshaded kind of look. real simple, and it gets the point across. in my oppinion.

the tough part is diologue, and storyline. being that I'm doing this for my friends, I feel pressured to make it brilliant and inspiring, while keeping it funny. well I lowered my standards I guess and settled for mildly amusing.

all in all, I like it. and I guess with more support... or maybe just more motivation, I would like to do this a lot more.. and then probebly do the "getting a website and doing this for real" sort of thing.

so, long winded explaination is over.. here it is.








I hope its alright I posted it like this. I'm still a nub.

Holy heck with the text parts of your comic.... It may be a bit overkill, and the way it's blocked makes it very jumbled looking and hard to read.

The jokes seem to be pretty solid but it takes too long to get through.

IMHO I'd try scaling back the dialouge and upping the font size a bit. Also play with the size of your text block to try and help the flow/look of your text.


.02


-MrEff-

I tried it with a size larger font, but it seemed to me like they were screaming all the time. maybe thats just me.

you think it would be better if it was spaced or something?

also, it probebly doesn't help that I'm uploading it to photobucket, and the size is reduced by about 10%.

long winded diologue is something I did on purpose though. I guess presonal preference. I like having a lot to read. I guess maybe instead of cramming it all into 4 frames, I could split it up into 8 frames?

My preference is a low per-panel wordcount; even a mature, well-polished comic like Something Positive which goes into multi-paragraph panels on a regular basis tends to put me off, but given the success of Something Positive, this is definitely an approach to dialog that can work.

BUT!

I still think this comic could do with some minor re-tooling:

1: Rectangular speech baloons. These could tighten up those baloons and make 'em look more professional. There are a number of ways to accomplish this but the simplest might be to just use the round-rectangle tool.

2: Just pull 'em in tighter. Those baloons are too big for the text in them; they introduce a lot of white space that doesn't really do anything.

Otherwise the artwork's pretty adequate for the way you're going, and the dialog is at least natural and believable, even if the long dialog form isn't my taste.

yeah, I thought of rectangles.

for the speech bubbles, I'm actually using one of these comic creator programs. and I made them as small as I could before it starts cropping off the words. lucky for me though, I'm just using a trial version.

but yeah, I know what you mean. those bubbles have been pissing me off for a while, but I really wanted round balloons.





I've been thinking about it, and generally I've been using 7pt font size. but if you look at the second comic I posted, first bubble, I used size 8 to accent excitement in the voice. but it looks like it fits the bubble better. so maybe my crappy bubbles are due to font size. I will have to test this theory.

I tend to come across as harsh in my critiques, so take the following post with a grain of salt. I don't review something unless I think it has potential.

The problem with computer-drawn strips is that the line quality is usually crap. This is the case with yours. Your grasp of anatomy and color is pretty good (although the girl is waaay too stiff in the shoulders and back), but 1-pixel-wide lines just have no personality. That's why I'm a fan of drawing it out by hand, or even on a tablet. Things just flow better, and that gives the art life. But, if you don't have a scanner or a tablet, there's no help for it.

Also, I'm a snob about copy-pasting. In my eyes (and the eyes of several other members of these forums) copy-pasting is only occasionally okay in comics, for comedic effect. However, it's obvious that you've only drawn each of these characters once, and then manipulated arms and faces to fit the situation. This is not okay. People don't always stand in the same stiff position; their weight shifts. Sometimes, they even walk around. But, if you rely on copy-pasting, you'll never be able to explore that fully. In my opinion, if you can't redraw the comic fresh every day, then just don't update every day. Draw the comic to the best of your ability, and pick a schedule to match.

And I agree on the "dialogue overload" thing. 8 frames is a good idea if you want to split up the dialogue to make it more palatible. Just keep in mind that, in a gag comic, the reader wants to get to the funny as quickly as possible. It's about quick gratification. If you want to use long dialogue too often, consider writing a story comic instead.

I agree with the computer drawn point of view. I actually have hand drawn my characters, but as luck would have it, my scanner was stolen. so instead of quitting or waiting to get another one I just wanted to get to making stuff. So I definately agree with you there. But in a way it worked in my favor. when I was hand drawing things, my characters were too realistic looking and it looked crappy to me. and now I think I have a pretty good direction on the creation process. So as soon as I get a new scanner, I'll be switching back to paper and pencil, but I think I'll be retracing the handdrawn stuff with macromedia flash and coloring it that way and it will have a pretty crisp look.

and cut and paste, guilty. hahaha.

I won't say I'm going to stop, but once I get my scanner it wont be as necessacy and I'll probebly hold back 90%. Considering what I plan isn't going to be too action intense, it shouldn't even show.


but thanks for the advice guys, I appreciate it. I've been asking my friends what they think for a little while, and you know how friends are, they only want to tell you whats good about it. I NEED the negative. But you guys pointed out some good stuff that I never really thought about. so thanks.