A forray in continuity...

beams

Howdy.

I doubt anyone even remembers, but literally years ago, I posted on here asking for advice on some colouring for a comic I had been working on. You may, or (most likely) may not, recognize this fellow:





Well, it's been a long time coming, but after at least a half dozen full overhauls, my PLP (platonic life partner) and I have finally put our works on the internet.

If you like what you see, head on over to www.erolcomic.com and check out the first four pages of the first book in the Erol series: Intangibles.

I've already heard that people feel it's starting out kind of slow, and that updates once a week aren't enough, but I've been told a thousand times that consistency is the key when it comes to online endeavors (blogs, webcomics, etc), and I firmly believe that. We don't want to set a schedule that we can't meet.

Rest assured that things do pick up, and quickly at that.

Updates will be every Monday, so keep checking back.

I'd love to hear what y'all think.

Aldo

I really like the style, it reminds me of the great Belgian and French artists. Hopefully you will have some dialogue in your comics soon, because that really helps with connecting to the characters.

*bookmark'd*

Mykonos

I checked out your site. Not bad. Great art, and yes, consistency is key - which you have as far as quality is concerned. However, your only on week four (assuming based on your for uploaded pieces) and you need to concern yourself with the potential of burnout. I think its good then that your updated once a week, as it gives you alot of breathing space. Not to mention vgcats update weekly (lately its been once a month) and they've managed to pull in a hefty audience.

Now heres my concern with the story, in relaton to your weekly schedule: It's slow.

Let me explain. (I'm very bad about putting thoughts into words so bare with me and my wordiness and redundency)

Webcomics are like the gameboy's or cellphone games of graphic novels. They provide an instant gratification before we move on to something else. When I start my mornings, after checking my email i make a quick run through my bookmarked comics - about six - and move on. The entire process takes me about three or so minutes. Now, as add as I am, I see a page of yours and click on until the next page...then i'm done. click click click click. Same guy walking through [nicely done] environments amidst heavily worded boxes of his own reflections[?]. Now, that's a not a bad thing, by any means, but I'm far from being grabbed. Its too calm and slow, which I wouldn't mind if the volume was made available to me, but seeing as you update only weekly, how long will take for me to see something happen? I may not wait long, especially since I have no idea where your going with things. In summery, its like reading Watchmen, one page a week (and it took me till around page 10 to get into it, or ten weeks in your case)

This comic requires an update atleast three times a week at the pace its going, and I would recommend that you make a post on your newsblog that your going on a haitus and starting making a months worth of material. Honestly, you should have done that before you even started it.

So yeah, great art, suprisingly decent writing, but way too damn slow.

Aldo

To add to Mykonos' post~ most "serious webcomics" I check on update fairly often, so they can just tell their story in a timely fashion. Some others fail at this and every time a new page gets released I have to read the last few pages to remember what the hell is going on.
I don't mind doing that in some cases*, because I like the artist or just want to know how it will end, but that's my fanboyism, not something you can expect from your average reader, they'll just move away or maybe check once every few months to see what's up.


*not Megatokyo--Fuck that guy.

bombardier

If he wanted to achieve any kind of Internet Success maybe he would consider changing the pacing or update schedule, but that's pretty unlikely to happen nowadays. He's best off just going at his own pace and enjoying what he's doing, because that's what it's going to end up as in the end: something he enjoys doing. See: Lackadaisy Cats or McGibs' Locust.

People hop around the internet with retarded fast pace and if anything is not instantly fresh or updated, it's considered 'slow'. Learn some patience and be glad someone is making some free entertainment.

This argument is as bad as when people complain that Penny Arcade doesn't update right at midnight on a new comic day.

It's a nice comic. As for the artwork, the skies are a bit bland. I think you can put a tad more effort into them than a gradient fill.

Mykonos

That's true Bomb, seeing the effort put in to his venture though, I decided to give him insight into an average webcomic reader. He's already doing what he loves, he doesn't need website for that, but if he wants to attract and maintain an audience he should plan accordingly. Appreciation may be a greater incentive then money, but some methods work better than others when trying to gaining fanbase.

beams

@ Aldo

Thanks mate. The dialogue kicks in very shortly, and things start moving a lot quicker. Consider these meditations a prologue, setting the emotional tone for our young protagonist.

@ Mykonos

I've heard the same type of comment from a lot of people, and while I would love to update 2 or 3 times a week, it's just not possible. My partner and I are both full time university students in non-art related fields, so time is precious. We even waited before going live to accrue a buffer of pages to keep updates regular should life get in the way. Come january, we're going to have a lot more time to work, so hopefully that means more updates. One thing we really do want, is a fanbase. We've been working on this project and keeping it largely to ourselves for years now, but the plan was always to get it out into the public eye. If that means updating more often to produce a more reliable fanbase, then so be it. But we've been sitting on this for far too long. We just had to get something out there! Thanks a lot for your detailed response.

@ Bombardier

Southern Ontario represent! The skies definitely need work. I think there's an even more embarrassing one coming up. That being said, we had a steep learning curve with the art (and writing, I guess) for this. The artist has a tendency to over-detail things, including backgrounds. While this can make for some pretty fantastic pieces of art, it's not necessarily conducive to making the page-generation machine turn more quick-like. We're still trying to find that balance. And we're still working on our texturing skills, but that's another story...


As a sidebar, this isn't exactly the right forum for it, but if anyone knows anything about setting up an RSS feed, I'd love to hear from you (adam@erolcomic.com). People have been asking about one, and I'm clueless. I tried looking for a tutorial, but to no avail.

yannish

This post has several purposes:

1. Introduce myself, the afore mentioned artist and plutonic life partner of beams, interweb man-god.

2. Shell out thanks to Mykonos, aldo, and bombardier for the kind words and the crits. The complaints of 'slow' haven't fallen on deaf ears. We're sortof going for a quality over frequency thing here, and we're hoping that pans out for us. Still, when we sense a page-a-week will be particularly exasperating, we'll do our best to double-up.

3. Bumpage.

For those desiring more crash-bang-boom, please stick with us for page 7... AND BEYOND!

vrempire

Man..I really like your style of simple colour but great perspective (i'm referring to second picture), beams.
reminds me of Mike Mignola, the Hellboy guy. One page per week. If the story is good, 52 pages story can stand a chance to be one of best seller.

Tam

Man, this is going to be so petty, but it's "foray" with one r.