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Hi, here's a comic about a haunted amusement park.
deadtoride
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
I was a member here under the name webofink many years ago. Back then I was working on a webcomic called "Ticket to Ride" with artist Paul Spencer. It was a black and white horror comedy based on a haunted amusement park. I lost my old email address and can't access my old account, so I'm back all shiny and new!
Now, I'm working on a webcomic with an artist called Paul Spencer and the webcomic is called "Dead to Ride" and it's exactly the same comic as before but with a better name and IN COLOUR!
We stopped updating in 2011 for a short break that turned out to be 7 years long. But we've realised we like our comic, we like working together, and we'd like it if you guys could check it out. Starting a webcomic is hard. Keeping one going is harder. Restarting? Well, it's been a LOT of work.
This is the first remastered comic:
And this is the latest
There are 60 more strips in between, and many more to come! If you have the time please let me know what you think. I'd love some tips, pointers, or general feedback, particularly about the writing.
Thanks guys!
Oh yes, the website is www.deadtoride.com
Now, I'm working on a webcomic with an artist called Paul Spencer and the webcomic is called "Dead to Ride" and it's exactly the same comic as before but with a better name and IN COLOUR!
We stopped updating in 2011 for a short break that turned out to be 7 years long. But we've realised we like our comic, we like working together, and we'd like it if you guys could check it out. Starting a webcomic is hard. Keeping one going is harder. Restarting? Well, it's been a LOT of work.
This is the first remastered comic:
And this is the latest
There are 60 more strips in between, and many more to come! If you have the time please let me know what you think. I'd love some tips, pointers, or general feedback, particularly about the writing.
Thanks guys!
Oh yes, the website is www.deadtoride.com
deadtoride on
+1
Posts
Having said that, we just updated again today and there's lots of words haha.
Panel 1: Hey fat zombie, ever have trouble chasing down food?
Yes, am fat.
Panel 2: Have you heard of Hello Flesh? Is new service. They catch food for you, bring it right to collapsed hovel, where fat zombie live, 30 minutes or less.
What a deal! *mug for the camera*
Optional panel 3: Food is delivered. Fat zombie pays for food, big smile big thumbs up.
More optional panel 4: Fat zombie eats delivery person too.
Looks like you guys have a pretty standard format, but this is the internet, you can have your comics be as short or as long as you like. Play with the format!
The art is solid, but could do with some 'direction.' Play with camera angles, not everything has to be a straight on shot!
I googled 'how to mak comics' and this was the first result, and it's actually damn good advice: https://design.tutsplus.com/tutorials/create-a-comic-how-to-plan-and-lay-out-your-comic--cms-24179
Agh, yeah. I get what you're saying and the way you've added the extra joke of eating the delivery guy is clever, wish I'd thought of that. I guess what I was going for (and the influence for this) was the really overly-verbose "standard read" that you hear on every single podcast. It just fell really flat as a joke. As far as splitting the punchline, I just like to throw more than one thing in when I feel I can fit it, I guess I'm trying to avoid having a standard punchline that you can see coming from a mile away. Honestly, this strip is not one I'd choose to really define our work. I pressured Paul to make it as cheesy, muggy, and shopping-channel as possible, but probably pushed that one idea way too far.
About the format, I agree. The "standard" now seems to be square strips or panels, that fit in neatly with og:image meta data for aggregate sites, reddit etc. We're definitely wedged in that "saturday morning comic strip" template. For the time being I think we're staying with these dimensions, because our site is built around it for mobile responsiveness, plus we have a hair brained thought that we might print a book of strips in the future. To be honest, if we did do that and all the strips were this dimension it might get a bit tedious, so perhaps we should start mixing it up sooner rather than later. We do try to do things like blending panels together, changing panel sizes etc in our strips where we can, though. Inserting smaller panels, or using one panel over half the strip, etc, to try and work inside our self-imposed template prison.
I'd love to have some large portrait/poster sized strips at some point. Paul does frontend web and I built the backend of our site, so between us we should be able to make anything work in regards to how it gets displayed on different media sizes.
When we first started we were both really time poor, so the strip was black and white and a lot of the art was recycled. Now that we've "rebooted" we're taking our time with it. Only 2 updates a week instead of three, which takes some of the pressure off. We're trying to mix up perspectives a bit and add more "art" to the strip rather than just be talking heads a'la most of the first dozen or so strips (although that last Hello Flesh strip is talking heads, but that's part of the shtick I was going for).
For example the beginning of our current "labyrinth" arc has a real mix of everything. Perspective work with the reflection, a mix of panel sizes, vertical action in panel 4, etc.
I'm going to read through that tutsplus link, that looks like a great resource. I also took a look through your tumblr, you're an amazing artist. I really appreciate you taking the time to give us some pointers and advice. I try to stay 4-6 weeks ahead of the comic for my scripts, and we do a lot of back-and-forth revisions to try and land somewhere we're happy with, we're still trying to find our voice, I think.
Humor is extremely subjective, and it can be hard to give good feedback on it. I'm just going to give off some of my first impressions, but I hope you won't take it as an effort to be discouraging. Generally with comics I think anyone who is consistent with their schedule and putting in effort will find their readers in time.
In lining up with Acadias advice, I agree with the comics being a little oddly timed. I looked through your archives and noticed you seem to actually be trying to set up pretty long jokes up to bat. There's a lot of call backs for a strip that's only 60 deep, to the point where some of them just feel more like repeated jokes (the DND, the chuck/vomit thing). I feel like this is pretty common in TV series (archer, for example) where you are expected to watch in order. With strips, I more or less expect the joke to be contained.
This strip: https://www.deadtoride.com/strip/a-fate-worse-than-firing for instance, seems to speak to you not actually wanting to make a short strip. Clearly this isn't funny unless you are in on the joke, but you wanted to make a strip where you assume the reader is on the joke. The "go read this comic" note is the equivalent of saying "No wait, this is funny, here, let me explain..."
To pull on an example a bit, This PA strip:
https://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2018/10/24/australiana-part-two
Is based on a series of strips from a while ago. It's in a series itself, but it also gives you everything you need to know when you get to it. He's on a plane, he's taking more ambien than he should, and you understand why the scene unfolding subversts his expectations. There's nothing in your comic I linked that would give me even a hint as to what was going on in the last panel. Does a new reader even know its a dnd game? He could be at a dinner table.
When you choose a strip format you also have very little time to tell a joke, like, so little time. When you look at comics like SMBC, xkcd, perry bible fellowship, or even something that's a bit more character based like Whomp, they can hold their own on any one strip. Its to the point where a random button on their site does not detract from the humor of any strip you encounter. For something longer, they are generally actually titled to say "I'm setting up a three strip joke - Part 1". You don't have much downtime to build your characters, and strips have a natural delay between them in the form of updates, so asking your audience to laugh because of something you set up 4 weeks ago, exclusively, can be a tall order.
If you are thinking, people are coming for this cast of characters and scenario, there's just a part of me that wonders if you are better off making pages in a longer format, even if they are self contained in mini chapters of just a few pages. If hearing that doesn't feel right to what your vision is, then you should probably focus in on how independently clever something is.
Heya, Paul has an account and has been reading this thread, he told me he's planning to join the conversation soon. Is the slowness here just a seasonal thing? I don't remember AC being this slow when I was here in previous years, but just assumed it's because of Thanksgiving.
Most definitely. We're working pretty hard to keep on schedule, releasing Mondays and Thursdays (Australian time), plus posting to social, aggregate sites, etc. We've only been back at it for a couple of months now, and nobody really read us before, so it's like a hard reboot.
It really isn't easy trying to get pacing exactly right. We bounce the strip back and forward a bit now, and I'm spending more time trying to balance out the dialogue and trim the fat, so to speak. I need to learn to just drop a script if I'm not happy with it. That one you're referencing, a fate worse than firing, I wasn't 100% happy with but thought "eh, close enough". That's entirely the wrong attitude and the fact you've picked up on that really speaks volumes.
We had a discussion about callbacks early on. That whole thought process is predicated on the idea that people reading our strip from the beginning will get the joke, and so long as it's not distracting (or the only joke in the strip) then it shouldn't take anything away. The "fate worse than firing" strip, yeah. That's a bad one, the callback to a previous strip was the joke and that's a terrible idea. It was a conscious decision I made to make that callback. I wasn't going to have the "see strip #" text in there, but Paul thought it might be needed. The fact we even let it get to that point speaks volumes, really.
Our vision with the comic is that it's semi story driven, semi one-off jokes. We run some 2-6 episode arcs occasionally, like the teacups or the current Labyrinth arc, and the rest of the time have one off jokes. The universe keeps evolving with our characters. The issue is, like you say, getting readers on board. If you start watching Arrested Development from midway through season 3 you'd wonder if you just had a stroke (completely not comparing my dreck with Arrested Development).
I really needed to hear what you had to say, I'm going to approach each strip now with the eye of a new reader; would I understand it? Would I like it?
Out of interest, are there any strips that you think work, or that don't need much improvement? It would be helpful to know what works, if anything. I have the whole labyrinth arc wrapped up (don't worry, no callbacks) and I'm pretty happy that each strip works as a self-contained joke on its own.
Thanks again for your time, it really means a lot to get this kind of feedback. It can only help us make a better comic!
~Ross
Ross mentioned that you had requested I join the thread and I'm happy to do so. I haven't been in these forums in a very long time. I went by art monkey around 2002 - 2003 and then the forums reset at some point and I lost that username. This is the first time I've used it since I re-signed up in 2011. It's a shame to hear the forums are dead, I remember it being very lively.
I wanted to thank you @Iruka and @acadia for taking the time to provide feedback. That you took the time to write us means a lot and the critique was super helpful. Thanks again!
This comic is a blast to produce, Ross and I have been having a great time creating new content for the website. The most important thing to both of us is consistency. Consistency in updating and also consistency in growth. We don't claim to have it all figured out just yet but we're having a blast working it out. Failing often is something we embrace in order to create a better product (the comic). Call us out, give us tips: this is all awesome stuff.
So at the moment, we have been experimenting with the strip format. We update every Monday and Thursday and we alternate between short arcs and one off jokes. Strategically, we're trying to provide an experience for both new readers and continued readers. You nailed it @Iruka when you likened the format to archer or arrested development, that's pretty much exactly what we were going for with the call-backs. I totally agree that it has on-boarding issues for new readers and we're still experimenting with the format to hit the right balance. I agree that it's not quite working just yet, however I do believe in the vision. I think we're not ready to give up on that yet, so we'll continue tweaking and see if we can hit the sweet spot. I encourage you to continue reading and report back to us if it's not working in another 2-3 months time.
@acadia - Just to touch on your comments, the strip is in a 4-5 panel format for pretty explicit reasons. I totally agree with you that we're living in a digital age and the freedom of going with a more dynamic layout can be considered a missed opportunity. The reason why the strip dimensions are locked down are because eventually we will want to offer the comic in print format. I know from experience when putting together books, it's an absolute nightmare if the layouts change from strip to strip. Depending on the resizing of the strips to fit the page you end up with inconsistent font-sizes in the bubbles and odd white space surrounding the page layouts. While it may be a missed opportunity for digital, it's was an early conscious decision to keep the comic layout consistent. Eventually, we want to produce a square sized collection, with 2 strips per page. We update in blocks of 2, so it makes sense for us to have the weeks strips always ending on a page turn.
The other reason why we have a locked down layout is because we're very mindful of keeping our production on time. I find 4-5 frames do-able in the 3-4 day turn around. If we chose to create a more vertical style comic with larger panels, they're going to take a longer time to produce. Because we value consistent updates, I'd prefer to have a less dynamic canvas than missing deadlines. This issue of managing time actually feeds into the other thing you mentioned:
You mentioned about the art direction could use some more variance. I completely agree with you. It just comes down to time. When Ross and I first produced this comic, there were a lot of talking heads. Like... a lot. Since we rebooted the storytelling has been a lot more dynamic, but it's still not where we want it to be. Most of the time while producing the comic, it comes down to "what can we achieve with the time that we have". That dictates a lot of what comes out of the gate.
For example this comic: https://deadtoride.com/strip/the-hall-of-chuck - I had to draw a maze establishing shot, a mirrored backdrop, an establishing shot of the house of mirrors and the series of Chuck falling down the canyon. That ate up my week buffer completing that comic. I was happy to spend that extra time on the comic, but you can imagine that if I didn't have the buffer, the outcome would have had to have made some compromises. So the main thing I'm focusing on with the comic at the moment is finding the balance of speeding up my process to afford more time to composition. I love dynamic storytelling and I see the next 6 months as being my time to get that process slick.
That was a lot of typing, but I really appreciated you both commenting, so I wanted to give you a decent response.
Hope that helps guys. Please continue providing critique, we love to hear it.
Also, if you're enjoying the comic on some level and are interested to see how it goes, or want to be part of the journey with us, we update Mondays and Thursdays at www.deadtoride.com
Thanks again
- Paul
I just wanted to round off my advice with a few more points. If you believe in the structure of your jokes, you are so early on that there's no reason to be married to a panel structure. Page structures are popular because it says the same thing to a reader that trying to pop in at season 4 of a series does. If you want people to read from the beginning, that's totally fine and a legitimate way to build up humor, you just need to tell people that.
60 Strips is a shallow pool of content. Thinking of print early on is a noble endeavor, but there's no art police who are going to come beat you down if you reboot your format and don't include these old strips from 2012. There's no consistency police who are going to kick in your door if you try a couple things out before committing to a restriction.
I do understand the time restrictions and don't want to downplay how real as fuck that is. Comics are hard. I also think in 2018 the average webcomic reader is either someone who has read a lot of comic in the past and only reads a few now (like me) or a person who reads and keeps up with a lot of comics (see the SE webcomics thread). A ton of your potential audience, then, has run the gambit of formatting from offbeat choose your own adventure to mixed media, partially animated sequences. There's a lot of incentive to think critically about your formatting. People will have some patience if you choose the format that best tells the story and supports your humor, but they will just as quickly move on if it doesn't click for them after reading a few strips.
Arrested Development is ironically a great example of this, because in my opinion they had a format that 100% worked (a long running series that you needed to watch from the beginning), and then they brought it back and totally fucked up how they structured their jokes, leaving most of their fans pretty disappointed. The content needs the correct scaffolding, humor is delicate, and viewers are savvy.
Good luck with the comic! It sounds like you guys are motivated, so hopefully you'll find a pace that works.
I do want to stress that you guys HAVE achieved a pretty high level of quality, and consistency, above 95% of the other new-ish webcomic offerings out there. Iruka's point of trying not to restrict yourselves is a good one. You have been doing this for years, and obviously have a vision and direction in mind, but you ARE early on however much work you feel you've put into it. I admit that I didn't see some of the more 'technically impressive' strips. That example you gave, @Paulo has some really great stuff in it, and I would encourage you to try to hit that high water mark as often as possible. Believe you me, finding a process that produces good work quickly is a huge part of cartooning in my opinion, and you're well on your way. Just keep swimming. And practicing. I know when I did a comic regularly it completely replaced 'drawing practice' time.
@Iruka I'm in the same boat, I've only really kept up to date with PA, for some reason the weeks and months have been slipping past and there are so many things I've let fall to the wayside that I used to enjoy. I've since added some old favourites to my RSS reader, such as Nedroid, Whomp!, PvP, and OotS, so I can try and keep up to date. I feel like I see SMBC, owlturd, ExtraFabulous etc on reddit every other day, but not my old favourites for some reason.
I've been trying to re-insinuate myself into the forums here, but it's hard to wedge yourself in when you're on a new account. All the conversations have been going on so long I feel like that guy who doesn't know anyone at the party. I was fairly active here years back, but that account access is long lost. I'd love to help bring back some more activity to the AC but don't want to be a spam artist or general PITA. The last thing anyone wants to see is the top 10 threads all last replied to by me, like, who tf is that guy?
I'll leave the layout and art direction comments to Paul, but I really got a lot of really much needed and valued input regarding the writing. Things I didn't even think to be aware of. With that in mind I've written myself 10 or so commandments to help me keep on track. I'm guessing there are people out there who can just create the funny out of whole cloth and don't like to be boxed in, but I find being organised really helps me stay on track. Hell, we have a Trello board for working on and tracking scripts as well as a slack channel we communicate on pretty much 24/7.
Here are the 10 or so commandments that I wrote for myself:
- Every strip should be self contained. If it's the only strip someone ever reads, they should understand and enjoy it
- Meta Jokes are not punchlines
- Callbacks are not punchlines
- Memes are not punchlines and are barely even jokes
- Relationships are not interesting (unless they provide the funny)
- If you aren't sure about a joke or strip, then you already know it's not good enough. Fix it or forget it.
- It's okay to abandon something, the readers don't know what's next anyway so they don't care
- Long arcs are okay *in moderation*
- Misogyny is not cool. Hate is not cool. Don't be problematic, won't be no problematics
- Don't beat the reader over the head with opinions, politics, or agenda.
Nothing to be done for past strips, but going forward I'll try and work from this, and will probably update/edit it as I go.
I really love the work did on Panel 4 especially.
I think from here out Paul will be experimenting with keeping production time to a minimum, so detail might be taking a hit but it means no chances of potentially missing an update, which is a real danger right now.
Definitely full of parasites.
Also, thanks for reading! We're excited about the next batch of strips
Also I like the gag, feels a bit Oglaf.
Don't worry about this so much. I'm not sure why a lot of an artists reactions to "this room is quiet" is "I should also not talk" but you can only help the community by participating.
I think your commandments are great, and this last comic works well overall, even with the small callback, it's not distracting, and it's not the joke. You don't have to always take out the call backs, and you can reward your long term readers with them as you go along. I think being choosy about them will help you build stronger jokes in the long run, so just continue to think about them critically
@Doodmann haha it's great that you've mentioned Oglaf, his labyrinth strip is one of my favourite things on the internet.
@Iruka I'll try and make sure I'm more active in other artist threads also, for sure. This strip has some logical flaws in it that we're being picked apart for in other places, but people seem to have liked it in general, which is heartening.
It's been a little while and Ross has been busy and hasn't provided any updates to the forum.
Here's some recent strips for you:
Have a great Christmas everyone
--Paul
I favor the last one because I like visual gags, but its nice to see a bit of a range happening.
Sorry for the delay in response here, by the time I got around to replying the forums were down for the holidays?
~Ross