Make Nothing Special a little better

[Nothingspecial]

Hello folks,

My comic is currently on a reduced summer schedule, giving me some time to tinker with it and try to make it better. I'd love to receive some feedback from you guys on what would make the comic better and where the biggest problems are.
The comic's name is Nothing Special and you can find both it and it's predecessor, Crazy Eskimo, at http://nothingspecial.keenspace.com . There's a fairly sizable archive (a couple years worth), so you should be able to get a good sense of my style (both drawing and humor-wise) to use in your critiques.
Feel free to be as honest and harsh as you want to be, so long as it's constructive. I know my comic needs work, otherwise I wouldn't be posting here.

[Nothingspecial]

Apparently, my comic is AWESOME. Since nobody has any criticism to offer, it must be perfect just the way it is. Thank you all for contributing to my growing ego-mania.

[YarpsDat]

Well, I'd like to see some shading.
And perhaps some more detailed backgrounds.
And perhaps linewidth varying. (for starters, draw backgrounds with thiner lines)
Though the cartoony style seems to suit you.

About the jokes... it's hard for me to judge, I'm not too much into funny comics. o_@

[ZOMBIE USER 19235]

first of all, i LOVE your layout. it is awesome!!!

your style is very cute also, very traditional comic-y-like (i can see it in the sunday newspaper comic section ^^). though the storyline is very random (is it supposed to be that way? ;P) i think it's pretty funny.

like yarpsdat said, i would like to see some backgrounds too, and maybe some shading. overall i'd say that you're doing pretty good though!

[Nothingspecial]

Well, I'd like to see some shading.
And perhaps some more detailed backgrounds.
And perhaps linewidth varying. (for starters, draw backgrounds with thiner lines)
Though the cartoony style seems to suit you.

About the jokes... it's hard for me to judge, I'm not too much into funny comics. o_@

1) Shading. Yeah. It's something I've thought about incorporating, but I only wanted to do it if I could do it consistently and I didn't want it to get in the way of the production schedule. I currently Photoshop my comics at work on my lunch break, so once I get ahead enough (so I have 5 lunches to work on a week's worth of comics rather than 2), then you'll get some shading.

2) Backgrounds. I HATE drawing backgrounds. Just always preferred drawing to people to landscapes. Still, they are a great way to ground the comic in a location that folks recognize, so I'll work on including them more often.

3) Line widths. I do this a bit already. Generally my backgrounds are done with a thinner line if they're farther away, and the lines are definitely thicker when I do closeups. However, I've suspected (and you confirmed) that the range isn't that broad (I generally use micron pens - 005 for backgrounds, 01 for normal stuff, and 02 for closeups with going back over the lines to broaden them). I'm now planning to make the line differential greater (005 for distant backgrounds, 02 for nearby backgrounds, 05 for regular stuff, and 08 for closeups... or something like that).

first of all, i LOVE your layout. it is awesome!!!

your style is very cute also, very traditional comic-y-like (i can see it in the sunday newspaper comic section ^^). though the storyline is very random (is it supposed to be that way? ;P) i think it's pretty funny.

like yarpsdat said, i would like to see some backgrounds too, and maybe some shading. overall i'd say that you're doing pretty good though!

Thanks! Though I can't take total credit for the layout. The concept was mine and I've tweaked it a bit, but the backbone of the art and design was done by my friend Sarah. You can find more of her work <a target='blank' href="http://www.gwynham.com/"> here</a> (though, when I last checked, her graphics were down for some reason).

I did indeed cut my teeth doing newspaper comics (it was called Crazy Eskimo and it ran in my school paper for three years), so I'm used to the format. I also figured I couldn't expect my readers to remember anything that happened the previous week, so I feel into a habit of short/sweet storylines. Thus, the randomness was born.

[YarpsDat]

You do? erm... I didn't notice, perhaps because in the strips I read the backgrounds were very limited...

Perhaps you make the effect to weak? ie. if you have a guy pointing his hand in the general direction of the reader, I'd say the hand should get thicker lines, and the couch he's sitting on should get thinner lines...

Or perhaps you could benefit from the second level of enlightement:
make the lines on the shaded part of the object slighlty thicker.


ie: 005 for backgrounds, on the light side, 01 for the bg on the shaded side.
01 for the normal stuff, on the light side, and 02 for the normal stuff on the shaded side.

That way you'd undoubtfully get some 02 lines close to some 005 lines, making it more obvious.

[Nothingspecial]

You do? erm... I didn't notice, perhaps because in the strips I read the backgrounds were very limited...

Perhaps you make the effect to weak? ie. if you have a guy pointing his hand in the general direction of the reader, I'd say the hand should get thicker lines, and the couch he's sitting on should get thinner lines...

Or perhaps you could benefit from the second level of enlightement:
make the lines on the shaded part of the object slighlty thicker.


ie: 005 for backgrounds, on the light side, 01 for the bg on the shaded side.
01 for the normal stuff, on the light side, and 02 for the normal stuff on the shaded side.

That way you'd undoubtfully get some 02 lines close to some 005 lines, making it more obvious.

The keyword was 'a bit'. It was by no means as prevalent as it should have been and I only used the thinner line on backgrounds where the background was far away in the distance. The main place where you would probably have noticed it was when I had a close-up panel. I'm not surprised that you didn't notice it before because I agree with you that I need a greater line-width range to make the effect more prominent.

[Nothingspecial]

Hello again,

With my fifth anniversary of comicking recently passed, I wanted to try to revisit this topic. Some time has passed since the original comments were made and I've incorporated some of the suggestions that were given (though I'm still working on having time to do regular shading), so I was curious what folks though of the changes. Good? Bad? Noticable?