Webcomic Critiques Wanted

Matt_SFC

So we've been up for two weeks now, thought I'd stop and come up for air to ask how we're doing. I have to say getting these up three times a week is tougher than I thought it would be especially with the blogs.

Let me know what you think:

We also included a bonus greeting card today as kind of a promo item for the Extras section of the site:

The_Glad_Hatter

The first things that come to mind:

The my own worst enemy script has way too small writing. My brain just wanted to skip it. and it did. sorry.

In the strips, the header takes up space the art could really use. your detailed drawings (like the weird parent couple are better than most of your drawings.. your characters end up pretty small most of the times..

The sixth panel isn't really needed ( according to me..)

and in the worst enemy comic you switch persons from left to right.. it's a bit of a discussion point in the world of comics, but i think the consensus is that you best try to avoid it (since it doesn't server a purpose here..).

and writing-wise.. i'd be tougher to myself on the editing board.. less words= often better. (your speech bubbles are ginormous!)

also: i do not get the first strip.

Matt_SFC

Thanks for the quick run down. I'm with you on the edits, I think that as the series goes on I've seen myself cut down on the text a lot. These are the earlier comics I wrote. I've written about 40 or so now (we wrote ahead of time to keep ahead of the deadlines although we are sprinkling in fresher ones as current events seem appropriate topics.)

I like the title bar, some of the titles will be jokes in themselves so I like that it's the first thing you read. I think if do our job on the text edits there will be more room for the art as well.

With the left to right thing, we are trying to shake up the positioning on things, just because we do notice a lot of comics end up being criticized for being talking heads. Thanks for the pointer though I hadn't heard that, it will definately be something we take into consideration when placing characters.

After reading your post and looking at "Happiest Place for a moment" I see what you mean. The verbal high five in panel 6 is a bit unneeded.

As for the first comic, it's a golden girls lake placid reference.

DeeLock

I definitely don't read the headers. You need to grab the user's attention with the comic not the title.

Some of the jokes are pretty lame. The first comic just doesn't work for me. It doesn't make sense and you basically have the poster in there just to explain the joke which is a strange decision to me.

The second is the most successful but you just completely killed it with that last panel! The parent's expressions when they look at each other knowingly are spot on.

I'd be worried about falling into webcomic cliches with your characters. Fat slob who smells and good looking douchebag that gets all the girls.

Work on the writing more than anything at this point, less is more!

beavotron

hahahahah
oh god
the last one
the second panel with the guy laughing, i like that panel

really, i chuckled a few times, so you've done what webcomics are supposed to.

Matt_SFC

I thought the Golden Girls comic was pretty clear especially with the recent Bea Arthur news. I'm may not have been correct in my assumption. The lake placid poster was more there to signify the obsession without putting up wanted posters of betty white or turning the apartment into a set from Seven.

I don't think we'll be discussing who gets the girl much in the comic so you won't have to worry about that. I don't see actual relationship stuff being subject matter that I'd be interested in exploring. And 'fat slob that smells' I knew I shouldn't have volunteered to let my character roll around in the mud with the swine flu.

I like to look at comic me, as a character that happens to be fat, not a fat character and hope I can continue to write it as such. Also I'd like to point out that Don is not good looking and that windbreaker that he always wears looks like he bought it in the the old ladie's section at Sears. The suit that he wears in Swine Flu Card, makes him look like a young Don Knotts.

Edit: Thanks Beav, always glad to entertain. Missed your post when posting this.

ManonvonSuperock

I think the last comic would be more successful if you stopped it after the second panel.

I also didn't read the comic with way too much text in the middle.

And I don't read the headers. There's plenty of places on the website you can put the title that's not taking up a 3rd of the image. the waste of visual retail there is pointless.

Also, lower the saturation in your backgrounds. In the last comic, the devil poster is visually competing with the foreground because it has a higher saturation.

Keep up the comics. I expect them to be shorter, easier to read, more efficient, and better as time goes on.

beavotron

hahahah oh man if the second last one just ended after the second panel it'd be totally golden.

manovan is right.

JohnTWM

I thought the comics were ok, and they got a chuckle out of me, but you, as the writer, might consider reviewing a few of PA's "Mr. Period" comics. There is a lot of missing punctuation and one or two missing spaces. Examples include: "She took my family now I'm taking hers." Should be "she took my family. Now I'm taking hers." Or "She took my family and now I'm taking hers." Or "She took my family so now I'm taking hers" (but i think the period is the best)

Another, "So I've been watching this new reality TV show it's pretty great." Should be "So I've been watching this new reality TV show. It's pretty great."

srsizzy

I'm surprised at how nice people have gotten around here...

I didn't laugh or smile, I agree that the dialog is too dense, I also didn't get the first one, I'd say the punchlines are pretty soddy and in some cases totally absent. Story arches like "My doppelganger is loose!" are pretty hard to pull with a new comic, given I don't like or care about the characters enough because they haven't proven themselves to be entertaining. It's worth making if you enjoy making them, your art will hopefully improve, and the writing could use a lot of work in the "funny and worth reading" arena.

I gotta say, I'm not sure what one is supposed to say about people making new online comics at this point. It's been happening for over 6 years, and less than 1% of them are successful and worth reading. Just hope you don't expect a burgeoning audience. I mean, it's a hobby that we're supposed to offer critiques on, but I'm not sure what to critique. I don't think humor/writing improves that much over time when it comes to comics; all the good ones were funny from the very beginning. If you're not quirky/original enough, your supporters are going to be people that like you and are incredibly stripped for things to keep them busy. As it is, it's a chore to keep up on all of the comics that I do.

Mustang

I have to agree with srsizzy, this is okay, but it has by no means struck a winning formula yet. It's far too wordy and the art falls dramatically flat in some spots (the couch perspective in comic two is particularly bad). That being said, I think it definately has potential, but don't go buying a new maserati just yet, there is still much work to be done before I could consider this a good comic. And before you ask, your Maserati buying potential does directly hinge on my approval of this comic.

Poj

So, I actually visited your website (I have the same type of setup on mine, with a comic/blog combo), and I was going to reserve judgment on the title bar above your comic, but now I would definitely tell you to get rid of it. It barely works with the comic by itself, and it doesn't work at all in a situation where you have the exact same title twice on the same page, without visitors even having to move the scrollbar. I don't want to pass judgment on your website since that's not the subject of debate here, but I do think it provides further confirmation that you should ditch the title bar.

It also sort of looks like you suffer from some consistency problems. I'm a big fan of the second comic you posted due to the fact that there's a really nice balance between art and text. The pacing is also good in that one. Maybe you should try just giving three-panel comics a shot a few times to see how it goes? The four-panel ones look too crammed.

ManonvonSuperock

srsizzy wrote: »

I don't think humor/writing improves that much over time when it comes to comics; all the good ones were funny from the very beginning.

Writing humor is like any other learnable skill. It improves over time with practice, feedback, and experience.

beavotron

penny arcade wasn't funny at all in it's early days
the only reason it made it this far is because it was the first of it's kind, it found a niche.

Matt_SFC

John, editing isn't what I'd call one of my strengths. I can see that I'm going to need to make it one if this is to continue.

Mustang, I think we have something here, but you're right, there's some definitely some work that needs to be done in the Step 2: ???? portion of our path to Step 3: Profit. Also, do you work at a Maserati Dealership, because I bet your Roosevelt Mustache sells the cars on it's own.

Poj, thanks for taking the time to visit the site in regards to the title bar aesthetics. I think we have a few three panels up (3 on the site), I didn't put them up because I have a review thread over on the hijinks ensue boards and didn't want to repeat the same discussion. Looking at the 5 panel comic there, I think you're right about the panel positioning. I mean the wordy text lends to the claustrophobic feel in those panels, but I think it wouldn't be quite as bad if we moved the last two panels to underneath the first three. Then we'd have the opportunity to play around with the art a bit more too.

SrsIzzy, I can't say I agree with you on the humor side of things. If you genuinely don't like a thing about it already, it's going to be very hard for me to win you over. Although I think some of my later comics are funnier (the ones we haven't drawn yet). I understand that the success rate for webcomics is low, I did a lot of research before we decided we were going to do this 3 times a week. I figure at the bare minimum it forces me to write 3 times a week (and Don to draw) which we both love doing. Maybe in the process we get lucky and some magic happens. And just in case you hadn't heard I'm a Mustang approval away from a Maserati.


Thanks all for taking the time, it's appreciated.

Matt_SFC

Mano I see what you're saying with the color saturation too especially where devil poster and Don's Hair are fighting a battle for supremacy.

Poj

There's also no rule that says all the panels have to be the same size. If you're going to do a three-on-top and two-on-bottom format, you might as well make one of those bottom panels the size of two of the top ones (if that makes sense). That way, you can either squeeze in a little more dialogue or, even better, a little more art.

ManonvonSuperock

you also need to work on keeping your characters uniform in proportions.

JohnTWM

I'm an english major, so writing/editing is the thing I do most. I find what works for me in the editing department is to read it out loud. If you find yourself pausing at some point, then you probably need either a period or a comma there. Deciding which requires a review of your grammar though. There isn't really a trick for it, you just gotta memorize the "rulebook". A good rule of thumb is that if it can stand alone as its own sentence, it probably should be its own sentence.

Matt_SFC

Poj, I was just going over that with Don in an email, sending some examples etc. He's been doing cartoons his whole life but paneling is something that he hasn't had as much practice with.

John, frighteningly enough I was an English Major too, without going into too much autobio stuff, I had an eye condition that impaired my vision for about three years. Needless to say, not reading and not writing has made me pretty rusty as far as the grammar rodeo is concerned. You're right about reading it aloud, it's something simple that I could be doing, that will filter a lot of the grammar snafus.

Manon, do you mean in proportion to one another, or do you want to see them the same size in every panel?

ManonvonSuperock

I mean, the proportion of the head to the body, the body to the arms, the eyes to the head, etc.

Like sometimes old green shirt is way fat, and then he's a completely different shape in the next panel.

sometimes blue jacket's head is real wide compared to his neck. sometimes it's not.

it needs to be consistent.

Matt_SFC

Ah ok thanks.

Matt_SFC

Ok here's the next two:

While we did hack and slash the text a lot on comic 1 it still ended up being a little wordier than I'd like--I think the proportions came out a bit better in this one. And comic two, well I'll wait and hear some critiques before I give my thoughts on it as it is a little different than most of what I've put up previously.

ManonvonSuperock

you've still got the problem of boring me with too much text, which causes me to stop reading, and you've got that goddamned useless banner still at the top. you want your comic name and individual strip title on every page? do it like they do in the newspaper. small, black text.

you also seem to be dropping pop culture shit without a purpose. it's not funny, but i now know that like most people in the world, you know who and what van damme and back to the future are.

EDIT: good use of the low saturation in the background crit on the top comic.

completely ignored it in the second one though.

Mushiwulf

The horizontal flip in panel 2 (and 3?) is a bit confusing, especially when both characters look the same.

Poj

I actually don't think there's too much text here, and I'm not too bothered by the colors. None of the jokes really split my sides (and I still don't like the title bar on top), but I'm not majorly offended by any of it. The last panel was a little confusing in the last comic only because the speech bubbles aren't staggered in a way that I can understand who is talking when.

Matt_SFC

Poj, I could see that about the speech bubbles.

Mushi, yeah I'd hope that it's implied based on the conversation going on, but you're right there's no reason to do it so it doesn't really need to be done that way.

Mushiwulf

What really got me about the swap was the panel where one of them gets chainsawed. I had to go back and reread the first few panels to figure out which one he killed.

Matt_SFC

Mushiwulf wrote: »

What really got me about the swap was the panel where one of them gets chainsawed. I had to go back and reread the first few panels to figure out which one he killed.

That's intentionally ambiguous.

Matt_SFC

Here's today's. You'll notice no banner.

ManonvonSuperock

this breaks the 'don't make webcomics about making webcomics' rule.

good job on the lack of a banner though. try to choose a less obtrusive font for your copyright down the side. something thin or 50% gray would be nice. Also don't bother spelling out copyright and remember the space after the copyright sign and the next word.

also, what's up with the third dude?

Matt_SFC

Third re-occurring character, he won't be in the strip every day but will be introduced in a couple of next weeks comics. Unless something very news worthy happens over the weekend he'll be in at least 2 of next weeks comics.

And I'm ok with breaking that rule as long as it's not every day, self masturbation is ok, but you really should shower inbetween.

Floofy

Just few things:

I went to a talk with Dave Gibbons a couple of weeks ago and he had a few things to say which really concern your comic

Comics work best when they're interdependent- the words brings something to the table that the image doesn't, vice versa. Look at some of the funniest PA strips- they rely on both writing and visual playing off each other and saying something different but related- right now you're still at the stage where most of the time the image is just illustrating the text.

Also, still way too much text- and in places too many panels- you need to put more trust in the viewer's ability to make leaps of logic and find the joke rather than explicitly stating it out.

Badsalt

I just started doing my own webcomics as well. And we've been back and forth on what's funny and what's not. We have about 20 strips. Of which half we actually like. So it takes time. And the art is always going to be an issue, your always going to want to be better. The biggest thing for me is always the word count. If you can do it in less...just do it in less.

Pretty funny none the less.

ManonvonSuperock

Floofy wrote: »

Just few things:

I went to a talk with Dave Gibbons a couple of weeks ago and he had a few things to say which really concern your comic

Comics work best when they're interdependent- the words brings something to the table that the image doesn't, vice versa. Look at some of the funniest PA strips- they rely on both writing and visual playing off each other and saying something different but related- right now you're still at the stage where most of the time the image is just illustrating the text.

Also, still way too much text- and in places too many panels- you need to put more trust in the viewer's ability to make leaps of logic and find the joke rather than explicitly stating it out.

I think the word you're looking for is codependent, and you're right. Comics should provide a synergy between the text and imagery. If the image doesn't add anything to the joke, don't illustrate it. If the the joke works on a purely visual level, don't add dialog. Every word and every aspect of the image should serve a purpose.

Matt_SFC

Fluffy, I'm not sure if you're talking all encompassing about all of them or are critiquing the last strip in general. The only reason I bring this up, is with the exception of the Bea Arthur/Betty White comic, they're all from way earlier in the project that is our comic.

I'm really comfy with where today's was at in terms of text to art/panel ratios. I'm also ok with doing less, but I thought today's worked on all angles.

And Bad Salt, I'm in agreement when you talk about working out the funny kinks. I like all of our comics for one reason or another and they at least make me smile, however some of them are much funnier than others. I realize also that I'm not going to make every person laugh every day. I don't read any web comics that do that. If you know of any please direct me that way. (some come close, amazing super powers for one.) But we definitely want to improve our flow as far as the medium is concerned. As for the two of you talking about the subtleties of synergy can you give me a couple examples from any of the strips of something you'd change especially as far as the art is concerned. I know cutting back on text on some of the earlier ones would definitely help this. I just want to know if there was something that you felt was missing specifically?

Badsalt

In talking about my own strips, it's always been trying to make the physical action/comedy line up with the words. And making sure I don't overuse my bubbles. Interestingly, when I draw the comic, I have no problems. When I work with my artist, I run into issues. Which comics do you want me to take a particular look at? I can talk about individual ones or actually just what I saw. As far as that I'm going to do a quick review right now and repost in a minute.

Badsalt

Okay, so I'm going to start and go through a few real quick, and see what you think here. For example, early on in the comic "Where Bad Comics Go" you could drop the first strip, and start with the awkward silence. Which was drawn very well, by the way. "Happiest Place for a Moment" you could cut the beginning and ending panels. Just reword the beginning.

Before I read further, the PA forums comic, . I liked the art, and the humor was there. I enjoyed it.

"My Own Worst Enemy" this comics problem is almost all in text/font. It's just hard to read it. This is one of the downsides to ComicPress, and why me and my friends, by that I mean my friend...are trying to make our own website, to give us the dynamic size we need/want.

In "Always Double Back" I enjoy the humor, but I don't know that it's earned yet. I don't know the relationship between the two guys, or even who is representing who. The issue here being, why is one dude making fun of the other for being gay? Etc. I get it, but I'm not sure it should be there yet.

Anyway, I hope it helped, to some extent. Those were just basic critiques. I have to agree to your point that it's really quite impossible to actually create anything people like every time. It just won't happen.

And on the topic of synergy, I don't know your process, so I can't even begin to try to make it better. Who writes who draws, do you both do both? Etc. For me, I come up with the ideas and then try to knock out the dialogue for Darwin's Cookie. But lately we've been doing the full write out and sketch out ahead of time because before, I'd write one thing, he'd draw another, and then I have to rewrite the damn comic.

Sorry for the long post. 2ldr and all that.
-D

Matt_SFC

We have a similar process. I write it, including some basic direction. Then he does some story board like sketches. Once I like those he does the black and white drawings. Once we both like those he'll color it. We have the advantage of having known each other for 15 years so there's enough trust that we both tend to get involved in the other's half of the process from time to time.

Thanks for taking the time for the full run down. And as for the TLDR, I'd always rather hear more than less.

Always double back...it's a very valid point. We really don't know the orientation of either guy at this point, so joking around about sexuality comes off a bit more awkward than it should.

My own Worst Enemy, really annoyed me a lot after looking at it the day after posting it. The problem was, that we did a lot of edits for the two comics in the series following it. The third actually had more text than it when started so we spent a lot of time revising that script. So much time, that we didn't notice how wordy the first strip in the series was until after the fact. If I had it to do over again I'd cut it a lot.

Badsalt

That's the whole point though. Go back and look at PA's first 20 comics. Look at CAD's. They're funny, sure, but they aren't great. The art isn't there and neither is the writing. But they decided they wanted to do something and they did it. And now look at where those guys are. That's really the dream. If you enjoy it, as I know I do, all you can do is keep moving forward. Good luck man.

By the way, any time you want to throw me some critiques on any of the stuff on my site, please do.
-D

ManonvonSuperock

what you should really be doing is getting the artist on with you, and posting your strips in their loose pencils with handwritten dialog, so that you can improve it based on the critiques here before you finalize it.