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A noble endeavour I'm sure.
SaintElmosWire
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
Drawing a webcomic as a way of forcing myself to work on my art and various adobe skills. Also the site as a whole is a nice little outlet for the mixed media I'm involved in. Like or dislike at will and feel free to comment. Here are the first 3, sorry about some of the art being illustrator brush whoring I'm just getting to grips with it.
Tell me what you think, just remember it's very early days and I'm largely doing this for practice and to learn a bit so don't be too offended.
[Edited to hold back on image spam]
Tell me what you think, just remember it's very early days and I'm largely doing this for practice and to learn a bit so don't be too offended.
[Edited to hold back on image spam]
SaintElmosWire on
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If you want crits on your comic we're happy to oblige but post the actual pages/strips here in your OP.
That being said, you have an interesting art style so you should post more work in the thread.
Roger that, will rework the post in a moment.
I'm not saying take it down or anything... I want to rephrase in case I came off like an ass or anything. I really do like your art style. It's unique.
Video game comics can be good too, and I like your take on Skyrim and Wow. It's just that you have two relatively clean comics minus a little language and then BAM! HITLER KILLS JEWISH KIDS!
You should think about what kind of audience you want to reach, and what kind of material you want to associate your name with. If you want to do jokes about the holocaust that's fine, go for it, a lot of people will probably laugh, but at the same time you might find that the one person that just read through your entire archive and saw 10 really good comics and then ended on mass genocide ended up not putting the link in his/her bookmarks.
That' just my .02 though, so by all means ignore it : )
My only art crit is with your choice of word bubbles. they're a little hard to read. You might want to try out some different fonts/sizes. Also, try not to have a lot of font size changing in a strip. It's one thing when a key word or two are bolded, but when it changes back and forth between bold and regular and the font size changes it gets harder to read. Also Also, try having a uniform line width for the bubbles.
They way you have it makes it more difficult for the eyes to naturally move left to right. I had to go back and forth to take in the text which makes me concentrate to get the joke, which causes me to forget the joke.
What kind of brushes are you using? I like the way your colors look more painterly than just a color fill.
I take your point on shifting gears fast with bird seed to Hitler, still deciding on an exact tone for the whole thing. But I do want to be able to say virtually anything I want, so perhaps going balls out early is good (Could be wrong)
You're also exactly right about the bubbles and font. I couldn't quite decide what font to go with and was initially struggling with the pen tool for decent curves and that's why they ended out harsh and square. The bubble's themselves have grown on me though, the text will likely change.
As for the brushes, It's mostly ink sets and some watercolor free downloaded ones. Often I use darken blending and slightly lower opacity to let stuff layer better. I'm trying to get in the habit of wherever I put a big color filled section, putting in another just over it without a stroke and letting it be two toned or shadowed. I just take the original color and darken it a tiny bit.
Sorry if any of that is doesn't make sense or is obvious, writing it down is just helping me look at the style a bit closer and think what I want.
Thanks for the feedback
You can say what ever you want, the internet is a highway for free expression. Keep in mind, however, that your content will dictate what kind of audience you attract or turn away.
True, so from here on let's assume that I'm looking for an audience who would be willing to go with the Hitler/SWTOR joke, but that the tone of the comic overall won't always be that level of tasteless.
In fact, I think there probably is a funny joke in there, but you didn't nail it.
You may want to head over to the LICD forums for pointers then. Sohmer is a master of taming and encouraging the crowds that would find that sort of joke amusing.
I'm well aware of the possible hilarity using Godwin's Law and whatnot, but running over children as a hidden back story to the holocaust might not be as hilarious to any audience as you might think. People use Hitler and the Nazis in jokes all the time on the internet, but it's really all about context. Here you are implying support of the murder of children through careless driving and the extermination of a people via your context. You are making it seem like a game, something positive in our society, and something that is achievement-worthy. That's probably not your intent, but that is what you are conveying here.
If it is your intent, well then that's something else entirely.
Edit: Sentry hit it right on. This is salvageable in some fashion, but you have to be very careful with context when working with highly offensive material.
Could you elaborate, like what you think might have helped?
I am of the opinion anything can be funny, provided it's... you know... funny. If the joke isn't working but is at its core something you can build on, which i think this one MIGHT be, then the reason it's not working is your delivery. For one thing, you can probably do this same joke without it being as tasteless and offensive as it is, understated is almost always funnier anyway... it's the difference between David Cross and Larry the Cable Guy. The last panel is unnecessary, the first is wordy and awkward, the second works but gives no context for the sudden shift in the third. It's overall disjointed and somewhat nonsensical, even with the context of being a SWTOR joke, this is on top of the tasteless subject matter.
I would just try again to be honest. I think you COULD have something funny here... especially as a play on the "kill this" "fetch that" nature of the quests in MMO's and how people just blindly do them... but like I said, this one just didn't work at all.
This was the news post with it:
I'm reminded of the Dickwolves joke, which probably would have been a better tangent to illustrate this. For example, you have your characters (not Adolf) playing star wars and they kill a guy and get the bonus "Holocaust, kill 6million more of this alien species) then have a disgusted reaction shot. The comic as it stands seems to be opposite of your intention via the webpost.
As for the Dickwolves thing, I was on the "Stunning return to form" side of that argument. Though that is not to say that my strip up there is handled the same.
Again thanks for the help
The human characters currently don't have dark/harsh outlining strokes. They do have edge strokes but they are just slightly darker flesh tones. I can't decide if they should have dark outlines a bit like the birds. What do you guys think?
I think at least part of what is offending people is you are framing your joke as hilter is just a normal guy, and it can be construed as apologist which is not a group you want to be pidgeon holed into.
Another problem is with your story telling, after the 3rd panel the 4th panel becomes obvious therefore superfluous, your joke was executed and done at that point
Further the construction of the 3rd panel is not conveying your punchline well. First i thought it was referencing xbox cheevos and not swtor, you need to draw the questline out better so it is more easily understood by the gaming community, so your text and color should immediately bring to mind tor. It should be above his head and he should be looking up at it, pushing the caricature of hilter should also be pushed for fun as an artists but also to show he is a total dick and more expressive, horns, demonic eyes, there is a ton of 30s propaganda you can look at to get ideas.
Panel 1: A classic star wars group entering an area with the codex entry pop up and area name, "Jewish Quarter."
panel 2: Smuggler says to Trooper, "Damn it, I told you not to invite him. He's gonna make us do every bonus mission here." Standing just to the side of them is caricatured, and very happy looking, Hitler in a jedi robe with two red light sabers.
Hitler jokes are generally best done if you humanize him, like having him struggling with a baking recipe or selling stuff on ebay. Hitler being evil is kind of expected.
Yeah, this. When Nazi humor works it's not about the holocaust or what the Nazi's did, but usually about employing Godwin's Law (inevitable bringing of Nazi's into an argument), playing off of cultural perceptions of evil to the extreme (such as the Seinfeld soup Nazi), or poking fun at the media itself employing Nazi imagery (such as Downfall videos, the humor isn't because it's Hitler, but because the scene was so hamfistedly acted).
These instances of humor do not bring in the holocaust, actual Nazis and the acts they performed, murder, death, etc. It's using the Nazi cultural stereotype, not the Nazi's themselves. Magic Toaster is right, what you are doing here is essentially the same as poking fun at an entire generation of people put to death and the only people who find that funny are the folks that support it.
Conversely, look at the Dickwolves comic. The humor there is not about rape, but about the perception of players making callous decisions while rape occurs unchecked. It was (arguably) as well done as you could do this kind of joke and it still caused a lot of fallout over it with a comic as large and popular as Penny Arcade. I just wouldn't go there if I was trying to attract any reader base unless I had a solid base and a clear joke that wasn't going to be misconstrued as insensitive to one of the worst events in human history.
In a sense it reminds me of that Nazi XBL achievement pic, which was just as bad.
Here's the latest comic. I've changed the font and bubbles but not the general style. I know it's a little wordsy but how does it look?
Still, this was a good comic.
Something more readable for the main copy would work better, then if someone is speaking with malace drop in the scratchy font for effect, but legibility is always best. Form follows function.
That's quite a good idea, thanks. Does anyone know a font a bit like the standard Penny Arcade one? I find that nice and readable but still comicish.
Thank you, I think this is the sort of feel I want to go for overall
Next one tomorrow, will see if I can polish up the fonts and bubbles a bit more.
agreed with this; goes seamlessly with the art style you've got.
Penny Arcade uses Blambot Casual, from http://www.blambot.com they are a great resource but I would keep away from using the same exact font. Find something that you think is...you.
This is my favorite one from you so far. :^:
I'm not too sure the frames work but it was getting late and I like to finish things.
Oh and this is what the ill fated hitler joke turned into, since I didn't want to have a gaping hole:
Thanks for the help and feedback all, I think it's really helped.
I like what you did with the Hitler joke.
edit: yes i know there is blood splatter but it is easily missed
I did actually consider this when I was drawing it. A bang for the shot and a ping for the codex entry, but wasn't sure at the time. Looking at it now I think I might add it, yeah.