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Bah, here we go - Death By Pixel
OmegaVelocity
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
I bring forth tonight to you fine gentlemen another comic (about gaming, no less!) that has a distinct artstyle (heavily influenced by Gabe!) with a writing style you will have perhaps recognize (perhaps from our friend Tycho!) about a number of gamers (entirely original concept!) chilling out and screwing around and making jokes about your typical vidja games. And honestly? I'm aware of the consequences I will suffer from putting my comic up here for critique. These are the Penny Arcade message boards; if a comic contains any of the above elements (standalone, even) it is automatically deemed a terrible ripoff and thrown into the shredder to burn until entire millenia have passed; this I am well aware of.
I am expecting harsh comments on my "rip-off" art-style, pointing out that my own artwork has been heavily influenced by Krahulik (completely disregarding that he may have indeed used his favorite artist's style as a basis for his own; anyone here familiar with a man by the name of Stephen Silver?) and that this is the worst possible thing in the universe an artist could ever have happen to them. I will then recieve suggestions that I try my own take on real-life anatomy to try and develop my own style; thank you, I'll get to that on my own. I appreciate your warm support for the style I have obtained in this past year.
I am expecting equally harsh comments on my writing, perhaps strung too close to Holkin's own magnificent writing gifts. Maybe my writing is too wordy and elaborate for my own good; with any luck I should be able to forget all that I have learned from reading his wonderfully-crafted newsposts and revert to the writing skills an ordinary kid my age should have instead of this fresh take on the English language and the mysterious world of words and letters that lie within.
I am perhaps most of all expecting the harshest comments to stem from the fact that this is a comic about games, technology and the world that revolves around this wonderful subject. As we all know, yes, there are plenty of gaming comics out there, and as we all also know virtually every single one of them isn't worth reading due to the saturation of the webcomic world that has taken place since this aforementioned world crawled up from the depths of the internet in the mid-nineties. Of course if it is a gaming comic it simply must have no redeeming qualities: no matter what, the art will still be shitty, the writing terrible, the characters bland and forgettable. There is nothing that will ever break the mold since Penny Arcade is obviously the only decent gaming comic out there, and even the greatest attempt by the most creative individual on the planet could not change the fact that the two guys in charge have never missed a beat, never made an unfunny comic, always made wise business and never sold their IP to any Alaskan parties in some freak book publishing accident. As we all know, they are perfect and have never made any mistakes or copied off of other's innovative ideas; as such, we must stay confined in our overflowing little genre because of their absolute perfection because of just how terrible we must be. Oh, a gaming comic? How awful!
However, in an attempt to better myself in ways other than repeatedly hearing "hay get ur own artstyle" or "oh god it's another gaming comic", I would hope that at least a portion of you are above this level and will be able to point out the smaller differences I could make to my comic to make it somewhat better in the long run, however long that run may turn out to be. I'm not here for the fame, the money or the success. My passion lies in the field of art, I've been labelled as an above-average writer by quite a few for years now and if nothing else I do like me some video games. Maybe this is the mutated offspring of those personality traits? I couldn't tell you, myself.
Am I rambling? Yeah, I probably am. Link's at the bottom, and keep in mind I realize that as a fourteen year old I still have a ways to go; I'm sure plenty of comments will follow reminding me of this fact, so I appreciate your taking note of what I already know, folks.
Thanks. And kudos if you had the attention span to read all of that.
http://www.deathbypixel.net
I am expecting harsh comments on my "rip-off" art-style, pointing out that my own artwork has been heavily influenced by Krahulik (completely disregarding that he may have indeed used his favorite artist's style as a basis for his own; anyone here familiar with a man by the name of Stephen Silver?) and that this is the worst possible thing in the universe an artist could ever have happen to them. I will then recieve suggestions that I try my own take on real-life anatomy to try and develop my own style; thank you, I'll get to that on my own. I appreciate your warm support for the style I have obtained in this past year.
I am expecting equally harsh comments on my writing, perhaps strung too close to Holkin's own magnificent writing gifts. Maybe my writing is too wordy and elaborate for my own good; with any luck I should be able to forget all that I have learned from reading his wonderfully-crafted newsposts and revert to the writing skills an ordinary kid my age should have instead of this fresh take on the English language and the mysterious world of words and letters that lie within.
I am perhaps most of all expecting the harshest comments to stem from the fact that this is a comic about games, technology and the world that revolves around this wonderful subject. As we all know, yes, there are plenty of gaming comics out there, and as we all also know virtually every single one of them isn't worth reading due to the saturation of the webcomic world that has taken place since this aforementioned world crawled up from the depths of the internet in the mid-nineties. Of course if it is a gaming comic it simply must have no redeeming qualities: no matter what, the art will still be shitty, the writing terrible, the characters bland and forgettable. There is nothing that will ever break the mold since Penny Arcade is obviously the only decent gaming comic out there, and even the greatest attempt by the most creative individual on the planet could not change the fact that the two guys in charge have never missed a beat, never made an unfunny comic, always made wise business and never sold their IP to any Alaskan parties in some freak book publishing accident. As we all know, they are perfect and have never made any mistakes or copied off of other's innovative ideas; as such, we must stay confined in our overflowing little genre because of their absolute perfection because of just how terrible we must be. Oh, a gaming comic? How awful!
However, in an attempt to better myself in ways other than repeatedly hearing "hay get ur own artstyle" or "oh god it's another gaming comic", I would hope that at least a portion of you are above this level and will be able to point out the smaller differences I could make to my comic to make it somewhat better in the long run, however long that run may turn out to be. I'm not here for the fame, the money or the success. My passion lies in the field of art, I've been labelled as an above-average writer by quite a few for years now and if nothing else I do like me some video games. Maybe this is the mutated offspring of those personality traits? I couldn't tell you, myself.
Am I rambling? Yeah, I probably am. Link's at the bottom, and keep in mind I realize that as a fourteen year old I still have a ways to go; I'm sure plenty of comments will follow reminding me of this fact, so I appreciate your taking note of what I already know, folks.
Thanks. And kudos if you had the attention span to read all of that.
http://www.deathbypixel.net
OmegaVelocity on
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This is borderline sitewhoring, and it's a Webcomic, and it's hilariously derivative, so if you don't want the wrath of god to rain down on this thread you'd better post some specific comics (IN PICTURE FORM, IN THIS THREAD)for review pretty quickly.
That good enough? I'm not so sure I want to have to deal with the wrath of god, here.
http://www.deathbypixel.net
http://forums.penny-arcade.com/showthread.php?t=6108
http://forums.penny-arcade.com/showthread.php?t=27116
http://forums.penny-arcade.com/showthread.php?t=25899
http://forums.penny-arcade.com/showthread.php?t=27250
Guess not, huh?
http://www.deathbypixel.net
- Why are the panels so damn big? These are 4-panel comics - I shouldn't have to scroll to view the entire thing, and I'm sure we can see just fine if it was sized smaller.
- Don't use photos as your backgrounds. Please.
- The writing on that first strip you've posted is pretty bad. That third panel had me cringing. Specifically, the second word bubble.
- Your art style looks very generic, and the subject matter is very generic. Tell me this: why would I read this comic if PA runs circles around your comic with regard to both art and writing? Seriously, you're bringing nothing new to the table with this, so who's going to read this stuff?
You'll ignore that though. I'm sure. Branch out dude. Compiling a lot of styles into one will give you something better than this carbon copy. I'm not going to tackle the writing or anything, just say that if your doing this because you love art and its your passion love it enough to branch out and not rip off the artist you love. Do it for your sake. There are so many other cartoonists, study your balls off until you figure what is right for you. Go to a museum, study till you figure out what classic things you like. When you take in hundreds of sources, what you will end up with will be something unique to you.
And photo backgrounds are lame.
Iruka, that's what I've been doing. If you noticed at the beginning of the comic, the style was entirely different than what it is present-day; this was due to people noting that I should probably study up on artists that I enjoy and try to get a little bit of a mix of everything. At this point I'm well aware of Gabe's prominence in my artwork but other artists have been creeping in lately. I'm sure you haven't noticed, but I've been putting a number of subtle Jhonen Vasquez tricks into my artwork, mixed with some facial emotions I learned from John. K of Spumco, whose cartoon's I've been watching since I was a kid.
It may be hard to tell, but I don't like a stagnant art style, either. I do try and mix things up when I can. As for the resemblance between the characters, it was entirely unintentional but things started to clash once my way of drawing things started to merge with Krahulik's, at which point the similarities became increasingly more obvious. That much I'll acknowledge.
Thanks for the other comments; even if they're not positive, they do help, and they do hit the "small-spot" problems I've been trying to find and weed out as of late as opposed to the generic suggestions I outlined in my monologue above. Keep them coming.
http://www.deathbypixel.net
I hope by this you mean you've been reading his blog where he goes on and on about specific acting and design, and not trying to copy his style/expressions.
Twitter
I haven't quite put much of the artistic knowledge I've gained from reading his stuff into the comic yet, but it has been showing up in a lot of my doodling, even unintentionally at times. I'd assume this is a good thing?
http://www.deathbypixel.net
Yes. Put that knowledge in the comic, ASAP. I brought up the distinction because I thought it was rather odd that you mentioned John K's stuff without showing any appreciable application of the stuff that he really has a bug up his ass about, which is specificity.
For example: currently, your character designs are all, basically, the same guy with different heads. Skinny, average height, youngish white dudes. No fatties, no muscular guys, no tall guys, no short guys, no slouched guys, no particularly uptight guys, etc. Their body and carriage aren't doing anything to show character, to show why this specfic guy is different from any other guy. The result is everyone just seems to the same, and it hurts the general interest and the reading of the comic.
Example 1:
Here you've got a gag based around the idea of physical intimidation- unfortunatly, with both characters being the same build and height, the idea of physical threat doesn't come across. If you look at the silhouettes, it's impossible to discern that the bald guy is on the verge of doing anything. By making the bald guy legitimately menacing in build and body language, the gag comes across much more clearly, as well as making the characters more distinct and interesting to look at.
Another example of body language acting not being all that it could be is that in almost every panel of every strip the characters are standing straight up, stiff as a board. Sure, you have arms waving around a bit, but as far as body language goes, that's it. People rarely let themselves stand at such rigorous, military-drill style attention- they lean over, they sway back, they hunch their shoulders, they put their weight on one foot- they use their whole body to express their thoughts, emotions, physical state.
Example 2:
In the original, even though guy #2 is getting friggin' destroyed by a hail of bullets, he's still almost straight up and down- that slight lean back is more appropriate for someone currently getting a titty-twister than getting shot. If you look at the silhouette again, it's almost impossible to discern what the heck he's doing. And the other guy- maybe you were going for the emotionless/casual violence thing there, and the silhouette is more readable- not necessarily interesting, but readable- but it seems that could still be stated stronger.
In the alternate panel here I exaggerated the posing far more to eliminate the ambiguity of the body language- guy #1 is on top, leaning over- dominant; guy #2 on the bottom, being violently blasted backwards, hand in a violent contortion- it's obvious from the body language and the silhouette that guy#2 is hurting. The original composition, if you imagine the silhouetted version without the gunshot in there, is almost entirely static- the redone compostion, even without the gunshot, feels violent and dynamic.
All in all, what you have is a decent, if generic, start. You just have to make sure that you are pushing every aspect as far as you can go towards readability and entertainment value, and not let your self get sloppy by repeating the same expressions, the same body types, the same gags, the same whatever- make everything feel as unique and specific as possible.
Twitter
It's pulled-off pretty well in the PA comics/newsposts sometimes, but other times I just stop reading half-way through the newsposts, because combined with totally new information (about new video-games etc etc), the elaborate writing is just too much for me to bother trying to take in all at once.
But I won't make any comments regarding the writing of your comic, because that's not my area.
Just thought I'd clear that one up for you.
Also, what everyone else said, especially AoB. If you wanted some advice not pertaining to "omg you ripped off PA's style", then atleast take AoB's advice into account.
You mention that art is your passion. Might I suggest that you concentrate more on your art than just trying to make this comic better? Once you have a better idea of how to make dynamic drawings then your comic will become much more interesting than a simple talking heads creation. Yes, PA had and still has in some instances, the same issue but that isn't a reason for you to perpetuate it. However, I can't stop you from making a comic and I don't particularly care if you do or not since I won't be reading it either way. I would just suggest to concentrate more on your art so that more people will be interested in actually looking at your comics.
Grifter, the purpose of that entire paragraph was to say "yes, I'm aware of the fact that it's a gaming comic with Gabe-influenced visuals, something that you've probably seen a thousand times before" so that we will have gotten that out of the way, so we could get to other, deeper suggestions like the ones AoB posted. It wasn't meant to insult anyone and if I've made myself look like a prick, it was entirely unintentional.
Kewop, is there a better place I could've posted this? I've seen plenty of "look at my comic" threads laying in the AC; am I mistaken, here?
http://www.deathbypixel.net
Yeah, generally people don't try to make themselves look like a prick and don't realize it afterwards either. I'm pointing it out so that you understand that.
http://www.deathbypixel.net
so you read the o ther threads and still felt the need to post this facsimile?
excellent
The lighting/shading you have here is pretty lazy. I'm pretty sure you have your inks on a separate multiply layer, and you're doing your flat colours underneath. That's fine, but then you apply lighting effects on top of that (actually it looks like you flattened the picture, then applied your light filters), which is in turn washing out your outlines. You don't want to do that.
You need these outlines to create contrast, espcially around things that are spitting fire, like your gun. Fire is a very tricky special effect, so you really have to take your time with it. It's intangible, so it doesn't have a real outline, and is one of the few times you might have something on top of your inked lines.
Finally, the characters themselves seem to ignore the lighting being cast on them. They have a general gradient on them from the render>lensflare you used, but it's applied to them in a completely two dimensional fashion. Lighting like that should be casting highlights and shadows, which again gives you the proper contrast and makes your picture more interesting to look at.
I did a quick paintover - now there's greater contrast around the light source, because the background and figures aren't washed out. I also changed the blood a little, and applied some quick lighting to the characters, in order to give them a sense of depth, and re-inforce the direction of the lighting.
The onomateopia ("TAKATAKATAKTA") is optional, of course, but used properly it can really help give your panels some focus. Guns are LOUD, so having a panel with a gun firing and nothing for the reader to aurilize can really work against you.
The style itself could use some shading. Look at some of the more recent PA stuff. Also, it would look better if the lines were tapered near the ends, instead of being the same thickness the whole way through.
The actual art - resize everything to 50% of what it currently is.
Milknpeaches; The characters are always going through constant, small revisions due to the fact that I'm never happy with my own art or character designs no matter how hard I try to keep at them. Matt (red hair, green hat) is probably the most obviously changed; his hair, shirt, head shape facial features have shifted entirely since his inception into the comic, something that you would (again) notice if you flipped back to the first comic and compared it to the more recent ones.
As for the size, that has always been a concern of mine, but when I resize it the text becomes too small to easily read. Using a bigger text size is always an option but then I run out of space for word bubbles; It's sort of a dead-end on that note. Any suggestions as to how to overcome this?
http://www.deathbypixel.net
Let's talk about holding your audience's attention for a bit. If you knew that ppl were gonna get bored reading that verbal diarrhea you typed in your first post, why didn't you shorten it?
I'm only gonna focus on the the post you made, and not your comic's writing style, because the reality is that your actual writing style is reflected in your first post. It's redundant, long winded, it holds no power.
I may not be the world's best writer, but I know a thing or two about holding ppls attention. I always ask myself: What do I want to say? What is the most important point? Am I being redundant? What is the easiest way to present this to ppl.
If your readers have to work too hard to understand something, odds are they aren't gonna read it at all.
EDIT:
Design your panels to fit bigger text. Anticipate your problems, don't wait till they're staring you in the face to fix them!
MT does this involve you dropping your pants by chance?
"ppl" is less of a problem than using 766 words to ask for a critique on a web comic. :P
Ummmm... what?
It seemed like he was criticizing MT's use of "ppls" in a comment on someone else's writing.
i remembered reading in a older post by MT about dropping pants to write a comic or something.
I found it funny and was just making a joke about it.
"I keep telling ppl, the first step to making a quality comic is in not wearing pants."
I will stop the derailing of this thread now
I flipped through about... thirty or so comics? From the latest one backwards and the first one forwards. You certainly have a lot of quantity. The closest I could find was something like this one:
Still has some of the same problems - it looks awkward because all you did was put a bright line on one side of your character and a dark line down the other side, which would be fine if your characters were flat planks of wood, but not so good for three dimensional people. You have to see which parts of your figures will actually catch light and which parts will block it.
And I don't mean use multiply for your shading, I mean use multiply for your inks. For your shading you should be hand-selecting the colour, as relying on a multiply/burn and dodge/screen will mess around with coloured lighting and your overall colour palette. Just keep all your shading on a normal layer, overlay isn't required for anything but special effects layers.
In any case, thanks.
http://www.deathbypixel.net
Thank you for explaining everything, Mr 14 year old
Of course your characters will slowly change over time. However, what I was talking about is that one of them looks like Gabe. Iconic black hairstyle, orange shirt, same face. For anyone to take you seriously - and you seem like someone that wants to be taken seriously - you need a new character design.
http://www.deathbypixel.net
There's nothing wrong with quick shifts. Gabe's expressions made a quick jump in improvement - everyone noticed, it became a meme, and now it's just normal.
Using Gabe's visual style as a launching point for yourself is one thing, but making your main character Gabe with brown hair and two extra spikes in back is just blatant and lazy. I mean you even gave him the same number of hair spikes on the top of his head and his shirt is still yellow.