Story Sanity Check

[Allan_ecker]

Are you lost here? Am I making any sense? Have I become too wrapped up in my storytelling to tell if I'm telling a story?

[Cyril_Dran]

I picked up everything but "Arnold and Griffin plotting the demise of their superior officer" so far. I'm looking forward to the remainder of the rabbit's backstory as well.. it seems he may have had as colorful a life as Arnold did.. or at least something close.

[Maximuscoolman]

I voted for 3, everything seems fine so far, but I can really say I know how it ends because the story hasn't really started yet.

[Randyg]

I have no bloody clue what's happening, and was wondering the other day if somehow I missed every other strip or something. but that's probably just me.

--Randy

[Cinni]

Story sanity check?

Sanity is for the weak.

Makes sense to me so far. I cannot see much beyond the current strip, but what I have seen forms a coherent whole.

Cinni

[Hat-Kun]

The story seems to be leaping from place to place, never staying at one point for more than two strips, making it incredibly hard to figure out exactly what's going on, which in turn makes it hard for me to care about the happenings and want to keep reading.

[Allan_ecker]

Basically, what I'm sensing is that my incoherant use of color (scenes don't flow because the colors keep changing) and my many jumps from character to character are chopping up the story into pieces so small that they can be easily lost.

This is about to change, as all my main characters (with one VERY notable exception) are now together. From here on out, the scene will only leave these folks to introduce new ones, and occasionally jump back in on the Admiral. HOWEVER, Unit Zero is going to be vying for attention against other stories over the next year or so, so we'll just have to see.

[KarlBob]

I wouldn't say "I know how it ends," but I can follow it fine so far. On the other hand, I saw the pre-strips where you told us about things like Griffin's love/hate relationship with her ship. Maybe the people who are lost now didn't see those.

So far the only jarring note for me has been proportions. Griffin's ship and the rabbit's vehicle look enormous in comparison to what I thought was a space station.

I like the color shifts when Arnold is talking to his hallucinatory lady. They really get the idea across that things seem different to Arnold when she's around.

[Allan_ecker]

Color is going to take on increasing importance in Unit Zero. Towards the end of the first "book" of UZ, the iconic content in color should rival the Matrix movies.

So far, there's only a few loose attachments of colors to meaning; Red is destruction, Green is command, Blue is order, and so on. But as the story wears on, the meanings stored in the colors of things will grow in importance and complexity until seeing the comic in black and white would be like seeing half the comic.

Or so I'd like to hope.

[Hat-Kun]

...all my main characters (with one VERY notable exception) are now together.

They..... are? *Blinks*

As it stands, I have no idea where anyone of relevance is. It's made harder by the fact that it's hard to even know who is of relevance, so....

I just....... don't get any of this. You seem to be slipping, Allan. Umlaut House was brilliant, and I really liked the fact that you chose to give it an ending (Even though I thought it was a little too soon), but it was let down with a lack of direction as to how the final scenes led on to each other. When it got on to the actual marriage ceremony, it pretty much just jumped up out of the blue from the random assortment of comments some of the lesser characters had. But then it worked it's way quickly up to a wonderfully romantic "I do" scene. From there however, it then went back down with the out-of-place Uncle Frank strip and the mis-timed Volair and Saundra strip that followed.

Now this, combined with Unit Zero not being coherent at all to me (I really don't get how the rest here understand it) points out that what's lacking here is adequate timing. You've got too many ideas and story fragments and you aren't giving yourself enough room to present them. What you've done for U

[Allan_ecker]

EEowch. Very true, all of it. (Except Griffin's clothes. They're consistently a blue jumpsuit with green goggles.

Here's what's up, I guess.

Umlaut House had a very well-defined rhythem. I'm really trying to stretch my way into some very new ideas; full page stories, that kind of thing. At the same time, I'm devoting less and less time per week to the stuff because of all the grad school work.

So experimenting with format and stuff and not putting in as much time is a bad mix.

But don't worry, I've got some better ideas coming up. I'm fairly convinced that everything's going to be allright eventually.

[Allan_ecker]

Um, okay, let me elaborate on that last point.

For starters: Unit Zero is not really the main replacement to Umlaut House. Those of you who miss the self-contained updates and more script-based continuity of Umlaut House, just bear with me while I get this visual story horf over with.

But...

Umlaut House started as an experiment. I challenge you to tell me that the first few storylines of Umlaut House were more coherant than the first few pages of Unit Zero. Unit Zero, like Umlaut House, is at its inception an -experiment-, not a finished product per se.

In addressing your primary concerns:

My art is a little weak here, and I'm trying to tell stories -with the art- instead of with dialog. Arnold is released from a sort of subterranian bunker thing (left of page) and onto a truck (right of page) which then goes into orbit. I tried to, using a few perspective tricks, make it obvious that this truck was moving towards a space station. The beginning and ends of the fight look like completely different places because I didn't sit down and figure out the layout of the deck well enough. The real problem here seems to be that I'm using visual elements to tell a story, but not using them carefully enough to make them all sit straight.

All of this falls victim to the long lag between pages, which is unavoidable due to my current grad school situation.

(What I'm really trying to say here is, don't give up on me just yet, and it's not that I'm slipping but that I'm trying new things and not having enough time to try them all in, and FURTHER that this will change as soon as I get out of Grad School.)

But. Uh.

Okay, a lot of rambling just happened here. Like, twice in a row, even.

I'm wondering if this is what Jennifer Reitz felt like in the early days of Pastel Defender Heliotrope. But seriously folks, I do know Unit Zero is kind of pitching around here.

But I have plans to fix the problems.

And other plans for comics.

But I need time.

And there isn't a lot of it.

At the moment.

Blanket statement:

If it sucks, please bear with me, but do tell me what you see wrong with it; I'll be listening.

[Hat-Kun]

EEowch. Very true, all of it. (Except Griffin's clothes. They're consistently a blue jumpsuit with green goggles.)

Nuh-uh.

http://umlauthouse.keenspace.com/d/20050211.html
Green

http://umlauthouse.keenspace.com/d/20050215.html
Blue


I'd like to comment on the rest of it, but right now I have a guild meeting to attend on World of Warcraft. I'll see if I'm not too tired to post later.

[Edit]

Except I don't since it's been moved from today, to not happening, to going to happen anyway regardless of what the Renegade Angels thought, to possibly happening still, then on to what I've just found out and tomorrow.


*Ahem* Back to business, I'm sitting here reading through Umlaut Hosue again and I accept your challenge. It makes much more sense than Unit Zero does. The introductory part at the start is obvious to understand. From there it moves on to Rick saying he's getting a job and moving out, each strip leading cleanly in to each other. They wouldn't completely flow if put side-by-side, but as they are separated by a page it doesn't disrupt things at all, as opposed to the way U

[Maximuscoolman]

Bah, I still don't have a guild. What server do you play on?

[Hat-Kun]

I playeth as a Human Paladin (Almost level 43) on Llane in the guild Twilight RenegadeAngels.

Go TRA.

[KarlBob]

EEowch. Very true, all of it. (Except Griffin's clothes. They're consistently a blue jumpsuit with green goggles.)

Actually, on February 11, the jumpsuit was green. It was a different green than her goggles, but green nonetheless.

Now that you've pointed it out, I see some of your color associations. The big head honcho is fully dressed in green. Our lapine friend has green accents. He's less powerful, but he still has authority over Arnold. Arnold's hair announces his affiliation.

Two characters are a bit puzzling in this scheme. "Lady Mad Death" whose ship is a study in chaos, is wearing blue. Is that to imply that her innate order is all that keeps the ship together? Arnold's mystery lady has bits of all three colors, but that hair seems like another warning sign.

Edit: Oops, color change has already been pointed out, with links even.
"So. We kill him." "Agreed." made perfect sense to me. The only thing out of place in that strip is Griffin's hair color. Yes, she's contemplating destruction, but having her hair turn red and then turn back to brown might be taking it a bit too far.
Right up front, let me say that I can't draw my way out of a paper bag. That having been said, I still have to point out that the station seems way too small. From the floor, we might be able to see some of the curvature, but as shown it looks like the floor curves up immediately behind their bodies. Still, kudos for drawing something complex. Pushing your limits is the only way to expand them.

Edit #2: What a difference a vowel makes. Lapine friend, not lupine friend.

[Kesh]

I'm following it well enough. Just waiting to see what their mission really is, and why Arnold was necessary for it.

Honestly, I have no complaints as of yet.

[Allan_ecker]

A very important difference between Umlaut House and Unit Zero is that Umlaut House has consistent pacing and does not use visual cues of any kind to explain what's happening. It is possible, for nearly all the comics in the series, to get what's going on just from the text.

In Unit Zero, I'm using some pretty subtle cues, ones easily lost in the artistic "white noise" generated by my experimenting, not just with panel layout, but with character design, color, melodrama, and all sorts of other things.

I think maybe it's best that I do this experimentation on a comic nobody cares about rather than learn by horribly butchering the UH storyline. (Also, people'd be a lot more forgiving of my mistakes, filling in details for me, and generally spackling over poor form with prior knowledge, so I'd learn less.)

Here I'm getting some very clear signals on what is obvious and what isn't, and that's important.

That said, some pretty jarring and inexplicable things happened early in UH, and I like to think part of that is due to me experimenting with the four-panel format. Perhaps a little more learning will let me do full-page, color, melodramatic strips that really SING.

Only a month and a half of Unit Zero left! Then we'll go on to something more dialog-driven, which, to hear it, will be easier to read.

As for the top-corner notice, I'm kind of shooting for subtlety, so ideally the scene changes will be obvious as soon as they happen. At least once Unit Zero gets properly off the ground.

As for Griffin's color-changing jumpsuit, it's that bloody seafoam color that looks different in different conditions, so this is just more "art noise".

As for my ego, at least let me say this is due to experimentation and not deterioration.

[Maximuscoolman]

I playeth as a Human Paladin (Almost level 43) on Llane in the guild Twilight RenegadeAngels.

Go TRA.

Bah, you Paladins are the worst of the Alliance, you claim to fight for good yet you're always picking on innocent NPCs that give me quests. At least us rogues don't claim to be noble.

Honour amongst thieves! (I play Horde on Dunemaul)

And by the way, Keenspace is apparently down.

[Hat-Kun]

Please don't start that, Max. I'm tired of hearing people complain about my class.