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Author Topic: Web Comic Work In Progress – Bad art, good story?  (Read 4139 times)

G-Flex

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Re: Web Comic Work In Progress – Bad art, good story?
« Reply #15 on: October 26, 2010, 12:49:49 pm »

I suppose it's easier to convey the "character X is saying "Y" and "character X does Y" things in a comic, no matter how bad the art.

Not when the art is like this. "Bob said 'Hello'." is about as expressive as what's going on in this art, and doesn't suffer horrendously from the addition of magenta smiley faces.
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Fikes

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Re: Web Comic Work In Progress – Bad art, good story?
« Reply #16 on: October 26, 2010, 01:02:40 pm »

I still feel a comic is the best medium for this story. There are parts of writing I am not very good at, like setting up a situation. I will way over think how best to describe what is happening. For example, when the ship is hit in #3. Figuring out how the characters know something is going wrong and conveying the chaos that follows is more difficult, for me, when I have to write the words to describe it.

The reason for the funny colored faces is to better identify who is who. There are 5 people on the ship. The medic: purple, the commander: green, electronics and navigation: red, pilot: blue, security: black.

See, you went overboard on the 'lol the art is so bad hahaha j/k its great and i love it' thing here. If you want people to take your pretend-bad art seriously, it can't be nearly this extreme. You're trying way, way too hard to be a Hilarious Prankster and it's backfiring horribly.

Ahh, that is depressing. While I do enjoy the “make it so bad it is funny when people take your seriously” jokes, this isn’t one of them. I knew I was bad so I figured it was acceptable to be lazy, but looking back at the askew lines and lazy circles all I see is bad craftsman ship.

If I try to give the situations a little better visuals and more realistic coloring, is it enough to get people to take it seriously?

Argembarger

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Re: Web Comic Work In Progress – Bad art, good story?
« Reply #17 on: October 26, 2010, 01:11:22 pm »

Yeah as long as you don't use really bright, saturated colors. Keep the colors kinda dull and gritty since it's a serious comic, unless there is a reason why they shouldn't be.
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Re: Web Comic Work In Progress – Bad art, good story?
« Reply #18 on: October 26, 2010, 02:12:05 pm »

Further refined the 1-1 comic. If I can get this to the level of "Not good, but good enough to be taken seriously" I'll accept that.
Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Sean Mirrsen

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Re: Web Comic Work In Progress – Bad art, good story?
« Reply #19 on: October 26, 2010, 02:38:40 pm »

Purple (or is that violet?) space stands out a bit, but I could call that at least somewhat acceptable. With some more practice, you could probably ascend into the realm of "I've seen worse" and maybe even "Meh, whatever works". :) You should really practice a bit, making halfway decent stick figures isn't too difficult. Also, black and white can work fine for a comic as well, if you can manage to distinguish characters without using color. Here's a quick one:
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
« Last Edit: October 26, 2010, 02:40:17 pm by Sean Mirrsen »
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Re: Web Comic Work In Progress – Bad art, good story?
« Reply #20 on: October 26, 2010, 03:02:30 pm »

I am going to give that drawing a couple of tries to mimic. If it turns out okay I'll redraw the characters. I'd like to establish how they look so I can continue with the story. Color is fairly important, since the cloud is green for a as of yet unrevealed reason.

Any other character/drawing suggestions let me know. I think I am about the breach the "I've seen worse" level of presentation!

G-Flex

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Re: Web Comic Work In Progress – Bad art, good story?
« Reply #21 on: October 26, 2010, 03:32:27 pm »

I still feel a comic is the best medium for this story. There are parts of writing I am not very good at, like setting up a situation. I will way over think how best to describe what is happening. For example, when the ship is hit in #3. Figuring out how the characters know something is going wrong and conveying the chaos that follows is more difficult, for me, when I have to write the words to describe it.

The reason for the funny colored faces is to better identify who is who. There are 5 people on the ship. The medic: purple, the commander: green, electronics and navigation: red, pilot: blue, security: black.

Okay, here's the thing: You're using visuals in order to avoid aspects of writing that you know you're deficient in. But here's the problem: Creating those visuals takes effort in itself if you want it to be at all effective, and you're obviously more deficient in that, to the point that it looks strikingly bad and detracts from anything you're trying to do, but you probably don't notice because you're more sensitive to language than aesthetics. Trust me, you'd be better off verbally describing things, even if you don't think you are. You're struggling with really basic tools and concepts, here, and it'll probably take you a lot more effort (and education) trying to get the visuals to simply work than it would take you to just describe things effectively in words.
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forsaken1111

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Re: Web Comic Work In Progress – Bad art, good story?
« Reply #22 on: October 26, 2010, 03:37:28 pm »

Cool idea for a story though I have to say.
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Sean Mirrsen

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Re: Web Comic Work In Progress – Bad art, good story?
« Reply #23 on: October 26, 2010, 03:40:07 pm »

I tried to remake the 1-1 strip, but realized that doing it in Paint.NET with just a mouse will take way more time than I'm willing to devote to it. It'd be a lot quicker with a tablet, and would look a lot better with such low standards.
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
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Multiworld Madness Archive:
Game One, Discontinued at World 3.
Game Two, Discontinued at World 1.

"Europe has to grow out of the mindset that Europe's problems are the world's problems, but the world's problems are not Europe's problems."
- Subrahmanyam Jaishankar, Minister of External Affairs, India

forsaken1111

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Re: Web Comic Work In Progress – Bad art, good story?
« Reply #24 on: October 26, 2010, 03:41:40 pm »

Is it apposed to say 'startgate'?
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Sean Mirrsen

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Re: Web Comic Work In Progress – Bad art, good story?
« Reply #25 on: October 26, 2010, 03:45:34 pm »

I dunno, I just copied what it said in OP's strip. Maybe "stargate" is too cliche?
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Multiworld Madness Archive:
Game One, Discontinued at World 3.
Game Two, Discontinued at World 1.

"Europe has to grow out of the mindset that Europe's problems are the world's problems, but the world's problems are not Europe's problems."
- Subrahmanyam Jaishankar, Minister of External Affairs, India

forsaken1111

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Re: Web Comic Work In Progress – Bad art, good story?
« Reply #26 on: October 26, 2010, 03:51:20 pm »

Gates in general are cliche, but whatever.
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Fikes

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Re: Web Comic Work In Progress – Bad art, good story?
« Reply #27 on: October 26, 2010, 04:04:29 pm »

It is supposed to say stargate. I got it correct the first time and wrong the second.

Sean, if you want to do the art for the first series for me, I'll buy you any steam game you want (or throw some money at a paypal account).

I am putting a lot of effort into learning the art side, which was not the intention of this thread. The simple fact is that this story benifits way more from being a comic. It is hard to see at this point because it looks like some first grade finger paint project and, as previously stated, really detracts from the story.

I am trying to learn just enough on the art side to keep the talented people from going "Too ugly, I'm leaving" in hopes of attacting someone to take over.

Sean Mirrsen

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Re: Web Comic Work In Progress – Bad art, good story?
« Reply #28 on: October 26, 2010, 04:15:50 pm »

I'll give the 1-1 strip a shot with the stylus tomorrow, then we'll see if I can make art for you or not.

I'm not into Steam games though (and buying games in general, tbh, not many are worth it), and I live in Russia, which IIRC, poses a problem with PayPal transactions going my way. So me getting "reimbursed" in one way or another is questionable anyway.
« Last Edit: October 26, 2010, 04:20:26 pm by Sean Mirrsen »
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Multiworld Madness Archive:
Game One, Discontinued at World 3.
Game Two, Discontinued at World 1.

"Europe has to grow out of the mindset that Europe's problems are the world's problems, but the world's problems are not Europe's problems."
- Subrahmanyam Jaishankar, Minister of External Affairs, India

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Re: Web Comic Work In Progress – Bad art, good story?
« Reply #29 on: October 26, 2010, 04:17:40 pm »

I am going to keep writing, I'll put up the comics at atleast the quailty of 1-1v3.v4. Which can be seen here.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Also, here is how the characters are going to look from now on.
Spoiler (click to show/hide)

I think the art is just on the side of acceptable, I'll update the other 4 I have posted and continue the story, up until the point where I find an interested artist. I want to get to the plot already!

Here is the updated 1-2v2.
Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Updated 1-3v2. This one still looks poor. I think the ship getting hit by some sort of flying mortor thing is hard for anyone to draw.
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
« Last Edit: October 26, 2010, 08:27:35 pm by Fikes »
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