Looking for some sort of Feedback

[Lendontakl]

Hey folks, us over at Evol Clock are starting to get a little nervous. We've been around for around seven months and 50+ strips, and we've received not a single word on anyone's thoughts. Thought we'd put a post in here and see if we could generate some idea of what people think of the comic. Love it, hate it, think it's nothing special, let us know. Thanks.

Evol Clock

[Wendybird]

I usually don't post if I think it's nothing special, but if you insist...it just bores me. I can't point to anything specifically wrong with it.

Sorry.

The humor's so dry and kind of flat, you might do better in black and white than color, which is really overshadowing everything else.

[DCG]

Thank you for the input. While it was not fun to read, your comments are appreciated.

[Metruis]

This was funny.

http://evolclock.comicgenesis.com/d/20080205.html

It was!

It took a moment but then I cracked up. Anyway.

That's where I stopped because I think I've read enough to make my judgement. I skimmed over some of your recent comics as well, don't worry, just in case things developed...

It's not FUNNY enough. There's a lot of one shot humor comics out there and it's just nothing that jumps out at me. Your speech bubbles look like some sort of program default, your font is Comic Sans and a lot of artists are adverse to it... your art is cute but it's nothing really outstanding either. Your speech bubbles look like program defaults, you didn't look for a better lettering font, you use program default textures... it's not that there's anything WRONG with it, like she said, it's just kind of boring. o_O

Sometimes you get kinda funny pages, like...

http://evolclock.comicgenesis.com/d/20080617.html

But...

You're just not witty enough to create a oneshot humor comic I'd read. It has to be really funny for me to read just for the humor, and disregard the art. I'd rather read a story telling a story, that occasionally keeps humor in it, and sometimes sacrifices humor for story. But it doesn't seem like you really have a story, that your story just exists for the jokes... but the jokes aren't really anything special. Your art is cute, occasionally the writing gets a chuckle out of me, but it's not frequent enough to create a really good comic. You probably have readers, because I know that both me and Wendybird there write page format fantasy stories... and it's just that you don't really appeal to our preferences... but I also think it's that your story just doesn't jump out. You might consider black and white, though I kind of like your coloring, you should definately work on honing your speech bubble creating skills and download a better font. Blambot.com. Get webletterer or digital strip or something...

I don't know. Are you trying to tell a story in this? I'd suggest trying page format instead of a 'punchline at the end of every strip' format... if you're not trying to tell a story, then you definately need to work towards making your jokes have more punch for each strip and making your strips stand out from the normal a bit more. No default Photoshop textures or anything like that... it looks weird when you have grass like that, and then flat cartoon coloring. Make your characters jump out of the page. It looks like you might be resizing the characters onto the backgrounds... the lines around them are very narrow. I'd really, really, really suggest thicker outlines on them, to make them stand out more from the background. They get lost in the background, which has equal weight lines. Also, no one has shadows.

I'm serious, you'll probably have people who like the jokes, it just doesn't really stand out to me. But you could make the art stand out more so these people would be more inclined to stay. Shadows, doing the texture stuff to match your style, line weight, and a different font would probably help.

You had a few jokes I giggled over... (shrugs) I think you can improve. Work on the art style to make it stand out a bit more and the people who like those jokes will be more inclined to stay, I bet. Heck, if you work on it, I might keep reading. There's potential, a few funny jokes and the art style for the people is cute... yep.

Also, it'd be nice if your nav bar at the top showed on all the archive pages.

There you go, detailed critique.

[Koad]

I think one way you could make Evol Clock better is by giving each of your characters more personality, ideally personalities that could play off each other to enhance your jokes (the great Bill Watterson comes to mind). Right now most of your characters have basically the same personality (cynical and maybe a little depressed). Consequently a lot of the jokes are sort of generic - they'll work the same regardless of which character was telling/involved in it. The one exception is the cactus guy. To me he's the most memorable character in your comic, and his jokes are unique to him. In this case it's his physical attributes as a cactus rather than personality that makes him stand out, but the point's the same. I think if you could give your characters more prominent individual personalities, and cull away/consolidate the ones that don't, it'll help make Evol Clock stand out from all the other gag comics out there.

Anyway, that's my two cents. I do see potential in Evol Clock, I hope you guys keep working at it. Cheers.

[Lendontakl]

Thanks for the input. Good to know what we need to improve on. I'll see what I can do to improve stuff, plus time to for a good font search I guess. Thanks again.

[DCG]

First off, thank you all for the detailed critiques. The site has been revamped and come Tuesday we’ll be revealing our new and hopefully improved artwork. As for the writing, that is gonna take a little bit longer to correct.