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New Webcomic
chief364
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
Hi, this is my first forum experience as well as the first webcomic site I've ever created. I was hoping to get some constructive criticism/insults from people about my most recent post. Nothing you say is going to deter me from making more comics, so don't hold back. Be brutally honest. BRING IT.
http://notapuff.com/
JENGA
:x
http://notapuff.com/
JENGA
:x
chief364 on
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I mean the art work is stick figures. I looked at your site and you can do better. I'm not going to say you should or shouldn't expend the effort on your comic. I mean, hell XKCD is still going strong with stick figures, and the day Buckley moves beyond copying and pasting the art that he's been using for the past several years I'll be shocked. Unfortunately, my own arting skills are quite limited. If you're looking for art critique, you should make a post in the Artist Corner forum, they're far more qualified and able to give advice on arts. They're also quite willing to bring on the brutal.
I'd recommend you post some of your art as well as the comic in the thread, just so they have stuff to work with.
Well, if you want, and I quote, for us to "be brutally honest"...
No, they're not funny. In the slightest. You have a really, really long way to go in both the art and in the writing department. I mean, keep doing what you're doing as it's the only way you're going to get better. At the present though, it's terrible.
What's inspiring you? What are you pulling your writing and jokes from?
Quick question, how old are you?
Panel 1: Artwork doesn't make it clear that left guy is pulling the last remaining block from the bottom of the stack. Text leaves it ambiguous. Cut the wording down a lot... instead, set up some conflict.
"Bet I can pull out the last bottom one..."
"Try it! I like to win."
Inset: it works
Panel 2:
"Hey, it worked!"
"Wait a second... it's floating!"
Panel 3: waste of space - delete it.
Panel 4: Good
Panel 5: "I think I broke gravity." Delete the hawking reference, it's not funny. Change the position of the guy on the left, legs are identical to his position in panel 4.
Second comic is not funny, and hasn't been since 2002.
Because I asked you where you your ideas from and you said "daily life". The humor in the strips reminds me of things you see middle-schoolers/high-schoolers do (again, you said "be brutal"). I'm thinking you're very young and don't really understand effective humor.
"Now we're floating!"
"... you broke gravity. To win at Jenga. Do you realize what this means??"
Panel 5:
"Somebody needs to call Stephen Hawking?"
"No! If gravity doesn't work, there's nothing holding the-"
To prove to you that I understand effective humor, I've won the Tosh.0 caption challenge twice in the span of one month (I hate the show though :P) as well as a Rename this Video. As an added bonus, none of my captions that won were vulgar in any way whatsoever, which is quite a feat considering the nature of the show.
Tosh.0 doesn't equal effective humor. Sorry. All those other things you listed? I find humorous at times, but what you're doing doesn't remind me of them at the least. Keep on working at it, 'cause that's how you get better, but right now you've got a very, very long way to go. Branch out a little in your humor too. Right now it's a pretty banal selection. It's very typical college kid. I'd try something a little darker and dry. Watch "Withnail & I".
The best place to start learning comedy are the old two-man stand up routines: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abbot_and_Costello
You have these characters making expectations and breaking them in unexpected ways. That's how comedic delivery works, 1) Make the audience understand a situation, 2) Set up their expectations, 3) Deliver something unexpected that plays off of what they were expecting. It doesn't sound funny, but if you look at any successful three panel strip that's how they work.
There are other formulas, hundreds of them, but all take careful craft to produce. Take your time, spend a week or so on each comic if you have to, and do some research into how comedy works.
I think the second comic works better without the second panel existing at all.
You can get some great critique there.
If you plan to just use stick figures forever like XKCD and you just want to improve your humor writing you should put this in the Writer's Block.
As suggested above, you should probably open a thread in the Artists Corner and take suggestions there about the art as well as the writing to improve your humor and pacing.
There is a difference between content and composition. Some people dislike landscapes and some people love them, that doesn't mean you can't tell a well made landscape from a hasty/poorly designed one. Composition of humor is very important in telling a solid joke to any community and learning the techniques of comedic delivery is the best way to gain more tools to use to reach your target audience.
Content is subjective, certainly. Composition is universal, the tools you use to express the content.
The humor itself is entirely subjective, though. The composition and content of certain comics that I think are awful are great for others. I'm not saying his humor is fine as is, since it could use some work, but it's not utterly terrible in my opinion.
It really DOES have a PBF vibe to it, obviously its not as good. But to write it off without any merit I think is way off base.
It needs to be tightened, but the "composition" is pretty good.
Plus the first script tries, and admittedly fails, to do "stupid" humor with obviously intelligent background. Which if done successfully, is hilarious. The concept of taking the bottom piece working and it just floating is pretty stupid(not in an insulting way), then if you mixed that with actual physics and the ramifications of that, showing knowledge and intelligence, it will provide a funny dynamic between the stupid and smart. The problem is, just referencing Hawking isn't smart enough to make it work. XCD does this a lot. You KNOW the dude writing that is pretty fucking smart, so when he does something absolutely silly or immature, it resonates. Perhaps instead of stupid I should use silly, or ridiculous, but when contrasting with intelligent, calling it stupid handles the point better.
That being said, the second comic is pretty bad. I get that you probably found the concept of suppositories instead of pills to be funny. Heck, right now, Im enjoying the idea of someone trying to commit suicide by ODing on suppositories. Its relatively amusing. But I don't think its funny enough on its own. And the matrix just isnt remotely relevant enough to work as a setting. And the Richard Gere thing is a pop culture tidbit that is lost on most people and even still, doesn't really work.
its from like the early 90s. Its not a good reference.
EDIT: I changed my mind. It turns out that I'm incredibly open to suggestion. Hey, there's another comic idea...
No, in this case the third panel was the punchline. The comic falls flat without it.
Also, I redid the Jenga one.
I guess whether or not one percieves my comic as dark depends on how desensitized to stick figure violence one is.
Also, be careful of two things - writing for a specific audience, and publishing the first joke that comes to mind. You can write jokes for us all you want, but you're alienating everyone else. If your punch relies on an inside joke then it is a bad one and needs restructuring.
@gamefacts - Totally and utterly true gaming facts on the regular!
I think it works just fine without the explanation (third panel), though.
Panel 1 sets up the joke much quicker than your panel 1, and is a better setup for the "oh what a wacky misunderstanding!" punchline.
Panel 2 shows that the stick figure is trying to implement requested change. (In yours he already has a gun in panel 1 which makes it unclear when he made the decision to shoot the other guy.) If I was a better artist I'd have left out the "hmm".
Panel 3 has the punchline, rather than a panel 2 punchline with a panel 3 Buckley overexplanation. It's clearly a "dark" scene, with the added meta joke of still being drawn faintly and hard to read.