Game Over - The comic that makes fun of stickmen

Plague · Post by **Plague** » Tue Jan 03, 2006 10:02 am

Hey, I just finished my 20th comic today, so I figure it's time for some comic pitching!
"Game Over" is a webcomic drawn and written by myself. The stickmen are a purposeful endeavor, I always liked the idea of a gag comic with stickmen in the lead.

Earlier the other day I browsed through the CG archives looking for other stickmen comics.
The closest I found were Ugly Girl and Stickman Limited. I really liked the way "Stickman Limited" was handled. It's a very "clean-feeling" comic, without too much useless background or character issues that would make the comic unreadable.

"Game Over" is a gag comic starring a variety of interesting characters, with more on the way. Many of the jokes and punchlines revolve around today's media, and some are just plain funny happenings. I don't plan on this to be the greatest comic ever done, nor do I expect high praises from my audience. But my goal is to achieve a fanbase that wants to come back and read my comics when a new one is ready.

Now that I have finished my own first 20, I hope that you will all take the time to read through and enjoy my work, however limited it may be.
Here's my site, please take a look if you will.

http://www.freewebs.com/gocomic/

(Yes I know i'm using freewebs, it's temporary until I get this
hosting thing ready here at CG.)
Caution: You may find this comic more entertaining if you are up-to-date with the latest in Movies, Games, and Media. If not...well it's still going to be pretty funny.

http://i4.photobucket.com/albums/y108/P ... Over22.png

edit/yeahduff/ image more than 550 px wide.

Jeffy · Post by **Jeffy** » Tue Jan 03, 2006 2:19 pm

good luck

Ignacio · Post by **Ignacio** » Wed Jan 04, 2006 8:02 pm

My girlfriend and I read through the entire archive and thought it was hilarious. The characters, while simple, are somehow endearing. Favorite one was the snowman strip. Great stuff! =D The one thing I'd recommend is watch the placement of your bubbles, as it really threw me off in the sample strip you posted here on the thread. Make sure we can obviously tell which bubble should be the first one read in each panel. Other than that, great job.

Plague · Post by **Plague** » Wed Jan 04, 2006 8:17 pm

Hey thanks, i'm glad you and your girlfriend liked it so much! And yeah, I noticed the word bubble problem shortly after posting that strip. I'm going to try and watch that from now on.
By the way, I try to update the strip at least once a day, with some exceptions, so make sure you check back in every once and awhile.

834n · Post by **834n** » Fri Jan 06, 2006 8:57 pm

I got a good chuckle out of that. I agree about your word bubbles though, it is often hard to tell who is talking first in a panel. Remember, people read left to right and top to bottom, so the order of speech bubbles should be generally the same in each panel.
Good luck updating every day. That seems like quite a commitment. I'll have to check back on it every once in a while. (and Von Blocksburg is a good element)

Plague · Post by **Plague** » Fri Jan 06, 2006 9:41 pm

Well, in my newer comics the word bubble issue should be taken care of after #23 so I hope you enjoy it. And as for updating once per day, if I miss a day I plan to do double the next day. Such are the advantages of having a comic which is easy to draw.
(On a side note, I have new font which I think looks much nicer than the old.)

Edit: You ever notice that the comic pitching forum gets hardly any traffic?

834n · Post by **834n** » Fri Jan 06, 2006 10:34 pm

Plague wrote: Edit: You ever notice that the comic pitching forum gets hardly any traffic?

*Sit's back and watches the tumble weeds go by.*
Yep.
But I think that's because in order to criticize, one must read. And that can be a quite the task.

Nutcracker · Post by **Nutcracker** » Sat Jan 07, 2006 2:14 pm

Great comic, I love the jokes and expressions. Your art, although minimalistic, seem to be improving. Bookmarked.

LibertyCabbage · Post by **LibertyCabbage** » Sat Jan 07, 2006 9:24 pm

reminds me of when i first pitched on cg. in a bad way. comics are a combination of art + writing and since you have terrible art ( i don't think i'm offending anyone by describing the art that way) you need to have incredible writing to make the comic work and unfortunately i found the writing to only be about average.

i hope my experience is worth something, as when i came to cg i was in the same boat pretty much, i couldn't draw at all and it didn't matter to me since all i cared about were the jokes. however, after some time and a lot of criticism i've really developed an appreciation for art and after practicing my drawing for almost a year i've finally gotten to a level where i feel like i'm a competent artist and it matters to me. i dunno if i'd suggest doing the same thing since it's been very difficult, or possibly finding a good artist to draw for you (which is probably even harder unless you pay them), but basically what i'm trying to say is that you shouldn't consider the art to be unimportant. there are a few comics with bad art that are good but it's only because the writing is awesome enough to pull it off.

if you're going to try to achieve that level of excellence in writing where you can ignore the art, then disregard what i'm saying and good luck to you. one suggestion, though, is that if you feel like you have to explain the joke at the end for the reader to get it, then the joke isn't funny and you should do something else.

also, Pals is another decent stick-figure strip on cg you should check out.

Fecundity · Post by **Fecundity** » Mon Jan 09, 2006 3:31 pm

Plague wrote: Earlier the other day I browsed through the CG archives looking for other stickmen comics.
The closest I found were Ugly Girl and Stickman Limited.

Ahem... http://www.ninjaverses.net

Your characters don't ever seem to change posture. Instead of moving their legs when they walk, they just have speed lines appear behind them. That's kind of cool.

#26 confused people enough that you posted an explanation. Part of the problem is grammatical. The punchline is "Am I Link?" This does not mean that he is asking Link whether he is insane or not-- that would be "Am I, Link?"-- rather, it means that he is asking whether or not he himself is Link. Without the comma, it simply can't be parsed as you seem to have intended it.

Umm... yeah. Those are three random thoughts.

Plague · Post by **Plague** » Wed Jan 11, 2006 7:21 pm

Hey, I finally got my confirmation from CG and my site working, so you can finally enjoy my comic in the manner it was supposed to be presented. May I introduce you to:

http://gameover.comicgenesis.com

I've already got some of the simple things like a calendar and buttons on there, and i'm working on changing the background a bit, that stale white can be hard on the eyes.
Enjoy!

Edit: I like your comic fenducity, the ninja stickmen are done nicely.

LibertyCabbage · Post by **LibertyCabbage** » Wed Jan 11, 2006 8:21 pm

if you're going to put so much emphasis on the writing, at least check it for mistakes when you're done ... the latest comic has mutant spelled as "muntant" and gnaw spelled as "knaw" ...

you're updating daily, though, so at least you're not being TOO lazy

Plague · Post by **Plague** » Wed Jan 11, 2006 9:58 pm

Yeah I noticed after I posted it that the comic was misspelled in some places. (probably due to the time of the night I made it) and i'll try and get that fixed. I figure i'll get better as I go, it's still pretty early on in the comic for me to really have the hang of all of this right now.

And yeah, updating every day is fun and sometimes challenging, it keeps me on my toes, that's for sure.

Subhuman · Post by **Subhuman** » Thu Jan 12, 2006 9:23 am

Updating daily makes your art suffer, though, unless you have a ton of time on your hands. I agree with LC - the writing is generally okay, but not good enough to compensate for the mediocre art. Even if your comic has a very basic art style, it still needs some polish. Ugly Girl and Ninja Verses are good examples of this - they're stick figures, but they have a clean, unique look. Your stick figures look like they were drawn in MS Paint in about five minutes. If that's the look you're going for, okay, but it's not very appealing or original.

If it were me, I'd update around three times a week and spend some extra time cleaning up the art and working on better punchlines. (The Planet of the Apes reference wasn't bad, though.)

LibertyCabbage wrote:also, Pals is another decent stick-figure strip on cg you should check out.

Aw, thanky.

N3k1dsk1llz · Post by **N3k1dsk1llz** » Fri Jan 20, 2006 1:58 am

I thought about doing a stick man comic once. Then I realized, I can't draw stick men very well on a computer. Don't really know why that is. Plus the only program I could draw in was paint. And nobody I know likes .bmp images.

You have some good stuff there. You won't get any awards for art or story, but it's very entertaining. I guess that's the point though, right?

Reactor · Post by **Reactor** » Wed Feb 08, 2006 5:10 am

You missed my comic. I have two stickmen as characters -- Haboo Sillyface and Haboo Soilyface. Other characters are more fully formed -- I basically adapted the art style to the fact that I have very limited drawing ability! But I think I've given my stick figures some personality.

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Game Over - The comic that makes fun of stickmen

Game Over - The comic that makes fun of stickmen

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