Webcomic Above Discussion thread

[Christwriter]

As the Webcomic Above thread gets all tangled up when people start talking about reviews IN the thread, this is for questions, comments, or general griping.

CW

[Jackhass]

Lazy bums...too many place-holders in the thread and not enough actual reviews!

[Black Kitty]

Heh, sorry. ^^;; I read all of Blue Skunk yesterday actually. Just that I read it after correcting homework from one of my classes...so it probably wasn't the best time to write critiques.

Going to read it one more time before writing the critique.

[Jackhass]

Hmmm...looks like a review of my comic is up. [Goes and reads it].

Ah, thanks for the good review Protectmyballs! Good to know you actually think it's funny...I'm fairly confident about the quality of my artwork and characters, but I'm never really sure if the comic is actually funny or not. When you spend hours making a comic you tend to lose all sense of whether what you wrote was actually humorous.

The sheep (if you said his name I missed it) looks very familiar, is he an original design or were you inspired by something else?

I had an old comic called "Of Monkeys and Mutton" around a year before I started Zoology that starred the sheep and monkey characters exclusively. Maybe you remember him from there.

[Netpoet]

Artwork: I'd say the artwork is bloody top notch. I can't think of a higher superlative than that, to be honest. It's detailed, clean, precise, colourful...yeah, top notch.

We're not fit to lick her boots.

LOL... I'll pass that on to Michelle... and buy her some boots. :p

Writing:
At times the writing seems a little too dungeons and dragons generic, especially when first telling the reader about 'our warriors, our thief, our healer...' etc. They just felt a little to cliched in terms of labels for me.

That's actually a problem with writing a fantasy story in and of itself... wonder if we should have named them "warrior" "rogue" etc... ah well, too late now.

Site: The artwork surrounding the site is, again, top notch. I get the impression of it being part of a leather bound tome in some respects. I'm not sure if the title bar is supposed to be centred or not, so that could be a coding error, and from some pages, clicking on a link opens up the next page in a frame inside. I don't think that's entirely intended either.

Which pages showed up incorrectly, if I may ask? Everything showed right to me when I checked it from home and work... and which browser are you using? (Might be a browser difference thing)

As for extras, there are galleries with impressive official art, and character bios with great sketches of the characters involved...including the ones that at this stage started the story dead. I'm assuming (but don't take this as gospel) that they play a part later in the story in some fashion.

heh... death is rarely permanent in my worlds... yes, they'll be back.

Overall:Bloody top notch. A few bits that sat awkwardly with me, but far more to balance anything like that out. For reading, you may want to check it out every month or so so you've got a few pages to read, otherwise you may lose sight of the story with so long between updates, but beside that, well worth a look.

Did I mention it was top notch?

Cheers.

Thank you. I'll pass this on to Michelle when she gets back from the 'con.

>Net

[Vorticus]

I'm wondering if I'm going to get reviewed.

[Sam_Charette]

I'm wondering if I'm going to get reviewed.

You will be. I'll be reviewing you and Go For It! tonight.

[Black Kitty]

I'm wondering if I'm going to get reviewed.

I was going to review you actually since I was partly responsible for messing things up. But if Sam_Charette's going to do it then uh...yeah.

On another note, Netpoet mentioned in his review earlier that he was interested in what I can do with a serial comic and brought up the Temptation Alice sketch. That sketch was what sparked Wanderlands and Dimestore Productions finally started the final round of Small Press Idol. So now I can show people my Wanderlands pages.

Just sharing.

[Sam_Charette]

But if Sam_Charette's going to do it then uh...yeah.

You can just call me Sam. Really

[Nightgaunt]

On another note, Netpoet mentioned in his review earlier that he was interested in what I can do with a serial comic and brought up the Temptation Alice sketch. That sketch was what sparked Wanderlands and Dimestore Productions finally started the final round of Small Press Idol. So now I can show people my Wanderlands pages.

Just sharing.

So wait, did the old guy end up eating the bunny girl? I'm curious to see how the rest of that story turns out.

[Nicotine]

Thank you Tdot for that review!

(When I first started Noir, I thought it was a horrible idea . But now I'm determined to make it better).

[Dutch!]

Artwork: I'd say the artwork is bloody top notch. I can't think of a higher superlative than that, to be honest. It's detailed, clean, precise, colourful...yeah, top notch.

We're not fit to lick her boots.

LOL... I'll pass that on to Michelle... and buy her some boots. :p

Yeah,and keep your inferior tongue away from them!

I get the feeling I've thrown in another uncommon phrase there...

Writing:
At times the writing seems a little too dungeons and dragons generic, especially when first telling the reader about 'our warriors, our thief, our healer...' etc. They just felt a little to cliched in terms of labels for me.

That's actually a problem with writing a fantasy story in and of itself... wonder if we should have named them "warrior" "rogue" etc... ah well, too late now.

Yeah, it seems to happen a bit with these sorts. It felt almost as though they were self aware enough to realise they were playing those specific cliched roles. It may also have been they way they referred to them as 'our warrior, our healer, our thief', etc.

Can't recall exactly which pages played up on me, but I think I opened up the character one, and then from that nav bar everything opened as a separate page into the character table. Or something. I'm using Mozilla if that's any help.

Glad you found it helpful and enjoyable.

Cheers.

[Netpoet]

Just a note: review of Hopscotch is done.

>Net

[McDuffies]

But if Sam_Charette's going to do it then uh...yeah.

You can just call me Sam. Really

Or call him Trogvald. That would be funny.

[Sam_Charette]

But if Sam_Charette's going to do it then uh...yeah.

You can just call me Sam. Really

Or call him Trogvald. That would be funny.

But why would you want them to confuse me with you?

[Sam_Charette]

Woot! I been reviewed! And, because I'm horrible and can't leave anything alone, my reply!

One thing I might recomend is toning down the size of the comic itself. The level of detail in most of them isn't so high that shrinking a bit would hurt anything and would at least reduce the file size a bit for those with the dialup.

I've actually been thinking of doing that, but haven't gotten around to it. When I first designed the site, I wanted to make sure that it fit on an 800x600 resolution screen, so we decided that the comics should be 750 wide and no more.

But recently I've started to, ya know, pay attention and I've noticed that our file sizes are too big (later ones have been scrunched down in KB) and that most comics do just fine with dimensions that are, what, half the size of what our comic is?

So yeah, this is definitely something I've been thinking about, and will get to once I have the time. I just don't know if I should go back and shrink all of the old ones, or if I should leave them and start fresh. If I go back, then some might not shrink very well. If I don't, then I can't redesign the site to take advantage of the new small size without worrying about the archives. Thoughts?

Overall I'd say it's good. The shifting art style and switching to and from continuity can be a little confusing but that may just be for me. Keep it up.

Although I haven't had any complaints about the continuity (since it's rare that there's a storyline between comics) I have been told about the shifting art style, so that's definitely not just you. In the only other critique we've received this issue was raised.

But that aint gonna change

Essentially we both like to draw, but neither of us seem to be able to keep a comic going on our own, so until we can it'll be a 2-artist jobbie. And even though it looks like there's more than two styles, that's not the case. That's just my lack of artistic skill that keeps me from having a standard style

Thanks for the review!

[K-Dawg]

My Chat Rouge review is done as well.

[Warofwinds]

TTG review up.

[Dotty]

Wow, Levi! Thank you for the review....I'm glad I seem to be doing something right

Just wanna touch on the humor part you noted....I don't really try to be funny most of the time. My goal is to be more "cutesy" or "all around fun". I want my webcomic to be remembered like one of those 80's cartoons you remember fondly....kinda like Transformers, or He-Man, or Ninja Turtles. Ghostbusters. Thundercats. You know what I mean....

....but don't change a damn thing in your review, because simply put, there is no way you could've possibly known that. I'll definitely try and work on humor, as I realize it's the one thing my comic isn't really really supremely awesome at.

The other flattering things you had to say though...wow. You really made my day. Thank you!

[Netpoet]

TTG review up.

Thanks, warofwinds!!! I'll pass the review on to Michelle (since you had some good points on the artwork) when she gets back from the 'con.

The backgrounds really make the page for me. No skimping here. When I say wood, I mean WOOD. Patterns, texture, color