Stick figures? A different approach.

MATPHAT

Hey y’all.

I’m just popping by to ask if you could take a look at my art and tell me what you think.
Most importantly I’m curious if the art concept, which is kind of 2D/3D amalgam, is easy to understand and enjoyable. My experiment is to discover if stick figures in a semi three dimensional world are viable as an art style to tell a story.
I’m new at all of this and I’m afraid my writing and art shows it, but it’s something I’ve been itching to try for a while now.
So, let me know what you think please!
If you’d like to see more go to Sticknia.com

Stickman.

McGibs

The problem with stick figures in 3d space is that they inherently dont have any depth (which is rather important in 3d...).
A stick figure works alright on a 2d plane because his arms and legs and whatever dont have to move forward or back, so its easy to read. But as soon as stuff starts moving back or forward, there's foreshortening and things are crossing in front of other things, etc etc. It because exceedingly difficult to read. The viewer cant tell whats in front or whats behind, or whats foreshortened or whats just short. The guys at the back on the bar (fighting?) are an example, same with the guy's legs on the barstool.

Also the big problem of line and shapes. The snake guy doesnt work because his body is forming shapes by intersecting with itself. If the "line" had form and was like, a tube or a pipe, it would work better, but its just a line.

Then mixing simplistic stickfigures with more detailed environments and objects (like the skull..thing) is very conflicting. It makes the stickfigures seem even more rudimentary. If they were stickfigures within a very simple and distilled universe it would work better, but because you gave depth and detail and form to everything else BUT the figures, it just stands out and doesnt fit. Create characters that fit into the enviroment, and give your figures some form.

Reminds me of the bazillions of shitty stickfigure flash animations (which primarily use stickfigures because they are easy to animate)

So no, I'd say this doesnt work. Stick figures usually dont.

NightDragon

Agree'd, for the same reasons.

Metalbourne

I'm going to bring up another reason why it doesn't work:

Stick figures aren't easy to tell apart. Stick figures also don't have a very prominent silhouette. It's very hard to make a character from a stick figure alone.

MATPHAT

Hi! Thanks for your input all.
One question, are you basing your opinion on the shots above, or did you go check out the comic?
Sticknia.com ?
I was hoping that a build up in the action and detail in the comic would "naturalize" the effects of the style and that people might get used to how it looks based on that progression.
Maybe I'm off my mark though.
If you haven't checked it out, would you?
And I agree that because the figures lack a lot of variation, that a prominent silhouette is important. If you look through the comic you'll quickly notice that all the primary characters do have pretty significant variations in shape. Ones that I hoped would provide that immediately recognizable silhouette.
Is it fail?

Metalbourne

As a general rule, we only critique what's in the thread.

MATPHAT

Is it alright to paste one of the comics here then?

Heartlash

Yeah, Gib's point holds very true for those last three panels especially. It's hard to tell what's going on with the body parts when the limbs and motion lines are all represented in such a similar way.

NightDragon

So...how is this 2nd comic any different from what you posted originally? The same issues remain. I understand this is just another part of the comic you've already created, but...I don't really see the point in posting something that's essentially going to get the same critiques.

MATPHAT

Ah, I thought that it would be more clear sequentially?

Thanks all. Much appreciated.

NightDragon

One of the only ways I can see this being improved (as far as readability goes) would be if you keep the background lines very thin, and make the character lines very very heavy. It's not a solution, but if you're set on keeping the stick-figures (not recommended, as mentioned), that may slightly help the situation.

MATPHAT

Thanks Night, I'm going to play around with some of that and see what I can come up with.

Delzhand

I think that you can probably get away with extremely thin, stick-like characters, but not stick figures in the traditional sense. Make the upper torso a bit thicker, and maybe use an artist's stick figure (add a line for shoulders and hips).

Also, on your backgrounds, they're an uncomfortable mix of perspective and orthogonal views. Right angles are not your friends if you're going for any sort of depth.

Nappuccino

It seems like you're a good enough artist to do something better than use stickfigures.

Also, there's a lot of empty space outside of the panels which I don't think helps anything.

MATPHAT

New comic is up if you guys would like to rip on it a bit more.
I needz teh inputz!

mully

you ought to post it in here so it doesn't look like you're trying to direct traffic to your site

Shiekahn_boy

Read them.

Honestly, one of the things that drag people to comics greatly is eye candy.

Yea, it's cool that you try something different. But a stick figure is a stick figure. No depth, no nothing.

I think you are capable of better. Try to create a simple style if you want to, it's just that i can't really differentiate between many of the characters. i have to look at the head to see who is who most of the time. I think that you can make this comic better is you put a little more effort in and just draw something that doesn't have a common silhouette.

You need to do better then this. You got a lone warrior story and those are a dime a dozen. If you don't show me a better style I'm not going to be very interested in your work.

Shallow, but It's true. The style you picked is easy to produce. It's like you're being lazy.

Radar6590

The only successful stick figure webcomic I've ever heard of is Order of the Stick. And that's very simplistic and flat, plus utilizes color to differentiate shapes. To avoid sounding redundant, I basically agree with everyone's critiques in here.