Castle Builder ~ Flower Picking with Testosterone

[Castle_Builder]

What up y'all?!

It's now been a full month and so I thought it time to ask for crits akin to what I've dished out since I've been here.

GENERAL FACTS:
~ Updates 5 days a week M-T-W-R-F
~ b/w except for "special" color strips which are mainly Holiday strips
~ daily gag mixed with story

ABOUT THE COMIC:
Castle Builder is a Fantasy story that focuses on the life and times of Smoken. He's just an average kid, a nonmagical mortal, who's trying to grow up in a world where magic is all around him.

A friend of mine calls it, "Calvin & Hobbes mixed with Harry Potter."

It's still in the developmental stages and the storyline right now is just getting to the "big adventure," but I think it's a fairly decent read.

Let me know what you think and PLEASE be honest. If you hate it, let me know and tell me why so I can consider your input. Of course, if you love it, that would be nice to know too.

Here is a "taste" of what it's like:

http://castlebuilder.comicgenesis.com/c ... 051005.jpg

edit/yeahduff/ image too wide.

[Anywherebuthere]

I like your art style, and the humor is quite good.

Bookmarked.

[Castle_Builder]

I like your art style, and the humor is quite good.

Bookmarked.

Thanks!

[Corgan_dane]

Your strip is very good, actually! I hadn't checked it out yet, but I just did, and I like it very much. At first the font was a little hard for me to read for some reason, but I got used to it.

Excellent.

Heck, I'd pay for a book of strips this quality.

[-Rain-]

oooh, bookmarked, too.

This is one of the cutest things I have seen in a long time . And as far as I have read, humor for all ages, which I think is rare in webcomic strips... love it!

[Drowemos]

Well draw, Originalish, and funny. I am a new fan.

[Castle_Builder]

Hey all, thanks for the kind words.

I appreciate your taking the time to check out my comic and then letting me know what you thought.

corgan_dane ~ You made my mouth drop when you said you'd pay for a book of stips. IMO That's the best compliment a cartoonist can get. HOPEFULLY one day I'll be able to present that opportunity.

Rain ~ Thanks! One of my goals when I started developing the idea for this comic was to create something that I would have no fear showing to my parents or my kids (I don't have kids, but if I did . . .). I'm old fashioned and enjoy stories that can be enjoyed by all ages.

drowemos ~ You hit upon one of my greatest fears. Originality. I don't want to do something that can be seen everywhere else. Granted EVERYTHING seems to be influenced by something these days, but I endeavor to create something different so that my world begins to generate it's own comfortable feeling for my audience.

Thanks again!

[Blackaby]

Actually looked at this one a little while ago, I

[Princess]

When the sample comic was loading I thought that there would be a body or something floating in the river! I was kind of dissapointed when I saw it was a fish....but it's not your fault.

[Castle_Builder]

blackaby ~ Crits! Good, good. I see exactly what you are saying. I'm still trying to get comfortable writting in this format. Generally I write verbose fiction in novel form. Chopping down the diction and trying to tighten things up is proving harder then I remembered it being when I did comics a few years back.

Like you say, hopefully the storyline I am doing now will flesh out some of the "original" content and help me to explore different ideas.

Hopefully as I do more, the process will become more fluid and this will translate to my audience.

As for the lines, I've had a couple comments on this before. I set my monitor at 1280x1024 and it seems more or less okay, but I noticed on my dad's computer which is 600x800 it looks all "fuzzy" like you say. Not sure what to do about this, but I'll look into it.

Thanks for the comments! I'll work on the hands etc. those are good points about which I sometimes get a bit sloppy.

~~~~~~~~~~~

princess ~ A body would have been an interesting idea. *steals it and tucks it away for some other day*

[Blackaby]

It's actually better to use less commas that you do in MOST of the strips - but some of them you're conspicuously lacking any commas.

I'm on 1024x768 on my plain monitor at home (well whatever those dimensions are, I forget) and the same on the LCD at work.

[Castle_Builder]

Okay. I adjusted all the strips increasing the contrast by 25 which made the lines darker and hopefully cut down on the fuzzy.

And I'll keep the coma thing in mind in the future.

Thanks again.