UH vs UH2

[Allan_ecker]

So we've been through a couple story arcs, met the characters, and seen how stories play out.

What do you think? What's better? What's worse? I want to know how I'm doing with this new project.

Oh, and if it's about Rhonda seeming to be pure evil, I'm already working on it.

[Zaylas The Bard]

I'm really enjoying it, particularly in seeing how the characters from UH have 'changed' as they've grown older. It's also fun seeing how their children are, considering who their parents are. I can't really think of much to say, Staples has fried my brain, or rather, the idiots we have to call customers have.

As for Rhonda, she doesn't seem that evil. Look at the last comic, she took the time to track Alice down to make Alice swear she wouldn't 'out' Pierce, so it's obvious she does care for him... I think, anyways.

[Sylvain]

UH2 definitely has a more sustained and consistant story arc. Even the EvilCon segment of UH1 did not come close to what we are seeing so far.

The characters have strongly established - but still developping - personalities. Very three dimensional people too, with faults, quirks and qualities. They are all a bit extreme, but this is a comic.

We are kept guessing all the time (this forum is proof of that), and usually find out that most of our guesses are off the mark. Which is fine with me, for I like unexpected developments in a story.

So, good job, Allan, keep it up!

[Micro_Fur]

*The pine marten carefully calibrates the ego-meter* I'll be blunt, though I have wonderfully enjoyed reading your creation, I must resist over-praising you Allan. First off, if we didn't enjoy it as much, why would we even bother posting anything on this forum pertainig to your work? Simple, in order to avoid over-feeding your ego to the crittical point where you would feel over-confident and thus slack off on quality and depend on the religiously devoted readers to give you praise, we keep it hungry and thus encourage you to maintain your standards. Conversely if we were to fail to feed it, again you would slack off; but this time due to a dropping level of self esteem, this would be catastophic and is clearly why tou seek affirmation from your readers.

And if you managed to wade through that pile of psychological bs you clearly have no self esteem issues but are REALLY bored/lonely, in which case get off your bum and go out and do something! *the ego-meter reading swings voilently pegging the meter at both ends of the scale*

Ok, so I am a hypocrite sometimes, what I'm trying to say is that we love your work and hope you keep cranking them out for us cheap bastards to read when we have too much time on their hands!

Micro_fur - I'm a little teapot. . .

[Cyril_Dran]

The comic needs someone other than Pierce to be at the butt of some of the jokes.. it's been kinda one sided so far. The jokes are funny, and the characters are good, but watching Pierce get repeatedly bashed can only be so funny for so long.

[Allan_ecker]

*The pine marten carefully calibrates the ego-meter* ....

My ego has MORE than adequate fusing: I went to public school in the US. And don't worry about this being a "fragile time" for UH2. Although the actual script buffer is only a few months long, I have sneakies and shinies* planned out for literally YEARS.

The request here is for *specific* comments, positive or negative. I want to know what is especially good or especially bad.

Cyril's comment is just about bloody perfect, for example, since it highlights a specific problem: Pierce is playing all the "straight man" roles. In UH1, I had Saundra, Jake, and on occasion Cal to act as different "targets" for the wit and loopiness of the Volairs, Amandas, and Dr. Lyses of the world.

The first big storyline in UH2 has been All About Pierce, so we really see him tormented, worse in fact than I had originally intended. Thus far, I've found that complaints about balance in this comic have amounted to pacing issues; the comic is spaced pretty far apart, so if I leave something sit for a while, that "while" turns into a few months.

This was supposed to be just one (or possibly one and a half) really bad day for Pierce, but it's pretty much the whole damn comic so far. Trust me, other characters WILL GET THEIRS.





*Sneakies are devious plot twists, shinies are Cool/Cute/Naughty/Badass moments.

[Micro_Fur]

*Throws his hands up in disdianful dismay* Thats it, either I'm overshooting for comedy or I just plain dont know how to aim. Here I thought someone would make a welcome sarcastic comment about my closing remark, but instead Allan nit picks the least funny line I wrote to poke at him! *Hangs a sign on self that reads 'FORUM CHEW TOY'* Don't worry I bathe more frequently than most people I know, it 's one of my obsessive compulsary habbits.


Micro_fur - Where the *@$# did I go wrong?



I hate this time of year, someone PLEASE shoot me! For the love of all things merciful, make it all go way!

[Allan_ecker]

Micro_fur - Where the *@$# did I go wrong?

*pat pat*

It's okay, I hang out on other forums that are densely populated with people who say crap like that in dead seriousness. I must've been saturated.

Plus, I was looking for an excuse to brag about all the sneekies and shinees I have planned.

Oh yes they will be GLORIOUS!!!

[Nyamaza]

Oh yes they will be GLORIOUS!!!

I like him!

[The_Fox]

Oh yes they will be GLORIOUS!!!

I like him!

You would.

- Jarylan

[Cassol203]

As for Rhonda, she doesn't seem that evil. Look at the last comic, she took the time to track Alice down to make Alice swear she wouldn't 'out' Pierce, so it's obvious she does care for him... I think, anyways.

It just hit me on the way home today. I, at least, have been searching for entirely the wrong dynamic between Rhonda and Pierce. Let's see her general actions: Ribbing, with care that she tries not to exhibit, and utter physical repulsion in a romantic sense...

Add the fact that they've grown up together, or nearly so, and it seems to me that Rhonda is treating Pierce not as a friend, but as a <i>brother.</i>

Sorry if that's been said before or was immensely obvious.

[Zaylas The Bard]

It just hit me on the way home today. I, at least, have been searching for entirely the wrong dynamic between Rhonda and Pierce. Let's see her general actions: Ribbing, with care that she tries not to exhibit, and utter physical repulsion in a romantic sense...

Add the fact that they've grown up together, or nearly so, and it seems to me that Rhonda is treating Pierce not as a friend, but as a <i>brother.</i>

Sorry if that's been said before or was immensely obvious.

*scratches chin* Actually, now that you mention it, it does make sense. I certainly never saw it that way either.

[Andrick]

Like siblings? No. I've seen how different gender siblings act and that (Pierce & Rhonda) ain't it. Pierce is way too passive and Rhonda way too malicious throughout all the antagonism between the two.

Those two act more like long-time forced friends. Locality and amiable relations between the parents bears this out and it shows in the "off" feel of the interaction of Pierce & Rhonda. Look at how much Pierce is affected by Rhonda and how Rhonda wants to actively effect Pierce negatively. It is a toxic relationship and it appears to have been that way for a long time considering how casual Rhonda is about her actions and how resigned Pierce is to being victimized.

Step-siblings! They behave like step-siblings. Step-siblings (some) see themselves as being stuck with each other and don't really feel that family bond with the "other people" that they now share such intimate space and knowledge. That kind of broken-family thing lends itself to this kind of mischievious/(sum of Pierce's anxiety-despondence) interaction.

It's been a mean pummeling of Pierce so far and I don't think it's going to let up. UH2 has been relentless in jokes at Pierce's expense and that will color my opinion of any future jokes at his expense as being not funny, like kicking puppies. Reading the comic has stopped being fun already.

[Allan_ecker]

Harsh.

I mean, I know you're a zero-tact operator and all, but OUCH, dude.

This is a known bug, ticket number AR004. Assigned to the Character Development Team on 10/14/05.

[Cinni]

UH vs. UH2:

Round one.

The art is better, the flexible panel structure created some timing issues. This is all known.

Pierce and Rhonda's relationship is looking less than healthy, at least from the current snapshot, but this also is known. That Pierce has consistently been on the business end of almost all the jokes so far is something that won't seem too bad looking back on the short first bit of the archives, but looks harsh now.

Characters do look donsistant, though, and the intravening years do show on the original UH cast. You can see they've grown up a bit.

Haven't got anything new to add, really, save that I would very much liek to see people flesh out as the comic winds on, and really hope that it lasts long enough for us to really get to know the UH2 cast.



Cinni

[Allan_ecker]

One thing I can safely say, after reviewing my plot roster:

UMLAUT HOUSE TWO WILL BE AROUND FOR A WHILE.

[Nyamaza]

alright, here we go! *gets on his reviewers hat, gets out the barbecue for flame creation as well as the candy treats for praise*

In terms of paneling, UH2 has been alot more free then UH1 This has playedd well for the stories thus far, allowing the panels to give a feeling of timeflow, as well as making a browse through the archives feel more like reading a story then browsing organized art. (can't think of a better way to describe that).

For the art style... well, it's pretty close to where it was at the end of UH1 (no surprise there). occasional nitpicks are possible (like the fact a suitable 'roll-up-inside' quilt would be much thicker then indicated in the most recent comic). The character artwork tends to be rather flat (and I'm not talking cleavage/bulges here). The lack of any shading keeps the artwork in a "South Park limitation", feeling as though the characters are less a part OF a scene, instead being on TOP of a scene. basically, as wonderfully 3 dimensional the character's personalities are, a common trend for both series is having 2 dimensional drawings. This is not necesarilly BAD, as it gives UH a specific look, but it also does put in a limitation as well.

Character wise, there are currently a few issues that, while they ar elikely to be solved with time, and would pose no issue for a reader a year plus from now reading the archives, do pose problems currently.
For the following analogy, please consider "characterization volume" to be the area of a comic, times the number of times that area is repeated.
Right now, as at the begining of UH, UH2 does not have alot of characterization volume to go around. at the begining of UH1, this was not as much of an issue, as there was a very limited ammount of characters (Volair, strip 1. Saundra, strip 2. Leonard, strip 3. Jake, strip 6.) At the same time that Liz was introduced in UH, Green portal ended in UH2. but instead of 4 (really 3) characters, there are 11 (Pierce, Rhonda, Rick, Jake, Volair, Saundra, ADULT jake, ADULT saundra, ADULT volair, ADULT rick, and Eliza). Far more characters, far less characterization EACH character can get. By the time we're at now with UH2, we've had ANOTHER 6 characters introduced (Agent 305, adult ASCII, Alex, Alice, Lain, and the misterious "miss Fusselton"). By now in UH1, we were partway through the mad cientist barbequeue, with not a single extra character added since Rick (6 characters).
Long story short, many characters make for not much CHARACTER in each one. UH2 is trying, at it's inseption, to harbor a cast roughly the same size UH had at it's end. This is also the cause of all the complaints abotu Pierce, and Rhonda's characters. Right now they're extremely shallow, one-and-a-half dimension characters. We can SEE there's going to be more to them then there is right now... but we have no real show of what else there might be.
Pierce is twitchy, panicky, and selfconscious.
Rhonda is devious, rebellious, and at least a bit sadistic.
Eliza is a spy in training, and gay.
Alex is into football, and doesn't have wi-fi wetware.
Lain is into football and DOES have said wetware, and a twin.
Alice is said twin, and is touchy-feelie, energetic, and enjoys a bit of ribbing as well.
Literally, this is ALL we know about these characters. For the ammount of characters being delt with, this is NOT a sign of BAD characterization, it's merely a sign that with the flood of characters, characterization is going at a slow pace. Again, a reader a year from now browsing the archives won't see the problem as much, but for right now... well, that's how I see things as they are.

Plotlines: Overall, the plotlines for UH2 have been more developed and better laid out then many of the UH ones. Good sign of things to come, especially with the promised shineys and sneakies.

hmmm... looks liver overall Allan, you get... *takes a few of the chocolates, roasts them over the grill, then gives allan the shish-ka-chocolate*

[Allan_ecker]

What, no pizza-trophy? Mmm... baked-alaska style chocolate..

But seriously, THIS is a post I can use.

Most importantly, perhaps, is that this post gives me a specific issue that exists here but not in UH1. Umlaut House 2 is starting, at least in one aspect, -worse- than Umlaut House 1: there's too many characters too early, or at least too early to get a good sense of them.

This is because I have lots of characters that I want to show off, and because in my display of Pierce's Rough Day, I basically raked Pierce over the cast. Now, it might be okay to have Bass Releif characters until they flesh out, but we'll have to see how I feel about the finished product.

Umlaut House 2 is NOT my last comic. It's still what I'm calling an "earlier work". Telling me, in explicit terms, what I'm still missing may disparage the work, but this isn't meant to be my masterpiece, so hack away.

But, perhaps to quote my avatar, "Maybe a -little- tact?"

[Andrick]

... "Maybe a -little- tact?"

Sorry, Allan. I wasn't exactly clear with my post. Most of what I said was directed at the two prior posters, not you. The sibling comparison didn't ring true and I was expressing that to them.

The last paragraph... that was a statement. Those words coalesced from a feeling I couldn't quantify for about a week. My objectivity has evaporated regarding UH2 and that's not good. But I'll try to cobble something useful together so you at least get something out of this post.

We are currently 44 updates along in the UH2 story with three story arcs (Eliza's Routine Raid, Rhonda's Temporal Temptations, and Pierce's Bi-Terror). At that same watermark for UH, you are seven arcs along (Intro, Moving Out, Moving In, Saundra's Crush, Super Spy, Jake-in-Lurve, BBQ). The first four characters introduced had a round robin of good-natured wit that seemed to put them on equal or near equal footing in UH. The characters of Volair, Saundra, Jake and Leonard were established with fully solidified demeanors by the 44th update.

The characters of UH2 tend to emote more and say less than the UH crew. Unless this is because the characters' actions would speak volumes about them unequivocably, less of the internal workings are on display for the audience. Out of the gates Volair, Saundra, and Jake we're conspicuously loud about who and what they were as characters. Ten updates of UH was all it took for me to know who and what those three were about.

UH had more filler-breaks in the arcs to specifically chase down one character to do something typical for that character just for a situation joke... which told the audience even more about the character you wanted to portray. The filler-breaks in UH2 seemed to focus more on showing off some rote skill or revisit an older UH character(s).

I hope that's helpful in some way. I hate to think what may be my last post is just useless to you, Allan. *hands teh Allan a tin cup with beef stew*

[Allan_ecker]

Well, if it helps any, I take the fact that I'm vaporizing your objectivity as a HUGE compliment. Engaging characters, don't ya know.



This post is actually pretty helpful; it helps me characterize the differences between the two strips so that I can better evaluate the two against one another. Ongoing learning processes and all that.

As to this being your last post, don't go leavin' on my account, ya hear?