Strips too big?

[Cdcman]

I received a few emails from people commenting that some of LoF's strips are WAY to big (March 11 and 12's strips were about 100kb each). Since I'm not on a 56k modem, I tend to forget that it takes the average reader sometimes a full minute to fully download a comic page. One emailer suggested I just slice up the strips that take up an entire page and have each of those slices posted on consecutive days. But by doing that I fear I'd be breaking up the narrative flow. I'm wondering if there are any more of you out there that find the really Big strips to be really annoying. If so I'll try to make the strips smaller from now on......

[FinalFlash]

If, in order to make the strips smaller, you would have to sacrifice any content, then do not do it. I can understand the frustration of having a slow connection, but do not let the antiquated tools of some affect the art. It would be a shame if any content were lost to accommodate impatience; good things come to those who wait.

[UltraJodan]

Don't do it man it would be a major blow to the quality of the strip. Big strips are OK I don't care if it takes me a few more minuets to load a strip. Its not the end of the world.

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: UltraJodan on 2002-03-13 15:46 ]</font>

[Kheryn]

I'm not on a modem, so I have no complaints.

I don't think you should sacrifice content, tho. Maybe have each comic sliced & put on the same page... then at least they know its loading? (if the pages could be sliced to images of reasonable size). that might just excaberate the problem though...

[Spee]

I am on a 56k modem and the strips don't seem too big to me. The artwork looks beautiful, and waiting a few seconds to read a comic you enjoy is no big sacrifice. Anyone that impatient could use a lesson in patience. And if they don't have a minute to spare they shouldn't be reading comics anyway!

[ClbDrw]

If think all of CDC's comics have been great! I really don't care if the stripps are really big. If he split them up then it would break the natural flow of the story line. Like in the fight with the Dagienite and the two Nomidites.

[Dragonwriter]

Don't cut the strips. There are people out there who would complain to you if they spilled coffee while your comic was on their screen. Heck, there are people who would complain to you if they spilled coffee while not even at the coputer, as long as you have an E-mail adress on your site.

My DSL acts up sometimes and I wait more than five minutes for comics that have half the quality of one pencil stroke of yours (pen, wahtever:roll:). The people who e-mailed you are probly just having temporary internet problems and have to immediatly complain to every living thing they think might care, never mind the fact that yesterday something 7 times as big took half as long to load .

well that's my two cents... so far this message board should have stopped you from ruining your work.

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: dragonwriter on 2002-03-14 20:11 ]</font>

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: dragonwriter on 2002-03-14 20:12 ]</font>

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: dragonwriter on 2002-03-14 20:13 ]</font>

[Dov Sherman]

A filesize of 100kb is very reasonable for a comic strip and I don't think you should break the narrative flow or degrade the image quality. It's more likely that the problem is that these people are trying to visit the site during a high traffic time for Keenspace. Making smaller sized images would be a token gesture that would not actually improve speed significantly. The only thing that would do that is buying professional-grade webhosting.

[Wireball]

I timed how long it took to download the 98KB strip on my 21.6Kbps connection (arg), and came up with 33 seconds, which is fine by me. Admittedly, the servers aren't very busy at this time (10PM PST), but when the servers <I>are</I> busy, I've noticed even small strips take a long time to come up on KeenSpace - I don't think sizing down the strips would help the response time much.

Please keep the strips big and detailed! We're willing to take the extra time to download them

[Cdcman]

thanks for the feedback, folks! Looks like most of you DON'T mind, so that's a load off my chest ^_^. I usually feel constrained when I have to limit some "strips" to 4 panels or so.

One of my main concerns was that new readers would lose interest in browsing my archives because of long wait times in between strips. And not being able to see the archives means not understanding LoF and that ultimately means not READING LoF ^_^;

But I looked again at my visitor trackers, and apparently that theory is wrong.. since I'm SLOWLY gaining readers. So I guess I shouldn't fix what isn't broke, right?

Be warned though.. the strips for next week (March 18th to the 20th) were originally ONE strip. Early this week when I got the comments about having "big strips" I kinda panicked and decided to set my butcher knife on what was to be my longest strip to date. Won't happen again. ^____^

[Not damonk]

CDC, i'm glad to see that your readers have already said what I was going to. 100Kb is very reasonable (heck, for the longest time Gisele Lagace of CCS averaged about 300K a page), and it's ALWAYS worth it.

Heck, for my own current storyline, i'm lucky if i can keep my pages as LOW as 100K! ^^;;

And I'm also glad that you've come back, sir -- I;ve mentioned it a few times, but I'll certainly be pimping it large next week, too. Your comic SOO deserves all the readers it can get.

[Cdcman]

300k! Doing the math that comes to about a meg for one week worth of comics.. and with the number of readers CCS gets, that = serious loads on bandwidth I'm guessing.. @_@

Wonder if Keenspot/space puts a limit to the size any given strip can be... ?

[PKP]

The strips are fine! 100k is extremely reasonable. You could easily bump it up to 200k, but as the strips look fine as they do now, and people complained, probably just keeping it at where you are now is fine.

As for splicing up the strip... that would be the just about the worst thing.

Just for the record, I myself am on a cable connection.

[Huijun]

I guess all you can do is to reduce the quality of the pix by a little(by using either Photoshop/PSP/some other image editing software). Either that or err... look for faster hosting?

[Monkey Gentleman]

Sheesh, the things people will complain about...
I've been a huge fan of CDC ever since I saw Little Saiyalings on Planet Namek, and recently found Life on Forbez. I was instantly hooked, read the whole archive in three days, and am loving every second of it.
DESPITE the fact that I have 56k, I had and have absolutely NO problem waiting the few seconds it took for even the largest of strips to load. Hell, I even downloaded the entire archive so I can look at it even when offline (I'll condense it eventually so you can put it on your site... it's pretty big). The point is, I couldn't care LESS how long it takes to load the comics; I just WANT them.
Thank you CDC, and God Bless!
Monkey Gentleman

[Cafeteriagang]

Don't cut the strips!!! Sure some of them are big (I have a 26.4kb cable connection) but I read them a whole week at a time with two browsers running anyways, so I don't even notice it. If the people have the time to read the strip daily (which I really wish that I did) then I'm sure they have that extra minute or two to check their mail while it loads.

I've been a CDC fan since I read Saiyalings on PN too. I didn't even know he had a website with other strips until a couple of weeks ago when a friend told me about it. I was up until 3AM reading the entire strip that night.. er, morning. It was a boring weekend until I got that email.