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[Fikes]

10-27-10: Sean Mirrsen has taken over some of the art for me, starting here http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=69132.30

UPDATES 10-26-10: I have redone the first three comics. You can find the link at the bottom of the post.

This comic is called West of Sol. It follows humanities massive expansion after narrowly winning a war against an invading alien force.  Our victory spawned a golden age of mankind during which we have seen solar systems discovered and colonized.

I intend this comic to be dark, violent, and depressing.

*** READ THIS FIRST

There are two reasons for this post:

#1) I have no idea how to write a comic. I think this all works, but I can honestly say I have never even read a proper comic. Please DO critique: Character believability, comic flow, cell orientation, and writing style.

#2) I am a terrible artist. The art in these comics is flat out horrifying. I hope to be able to use this tread to track down an artist that will do this story justice. I am willing to offer (small) monetary compensation for someone with the correct art style. It won’t be anything impressive, but I am more than willing to buy someone a game or throw some money at a pay-pal account.

A few more things to go over. I didn’t spell check the first slide. I don’t know why but I didn’t even think to write in word and paste it into paint (yes paint damnit, it will be bad). Please don’t bother commenting on the spelling of the first installment as it will have to be redone. The others are fair game.

You can feel free to comment on my art style or make fun of it or whatever, but I don’t seek to improve there. I know I am bad, I am okay with that.

Around installment 9 or 10 (not exactly mapped) an overused plot will show up. I am sorry about that. I had this idea long ago and decided it was time to write it. Never mind that the disaster scenario has been done 100 times before.

I am also very uncreative with names. Feel free to offer those up

If you are interested in doing the art, shoot me a PM with a sample.

Alright, more background later, on to the comic.
Re-Re-Re-Updated first comic: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=69132.msg1670712#msg1670712
Older attempts:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Re-Updated first comic: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=69132.msg1670407#msg1670407

Updated first comic http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=69132.msg1670166#msg1670166


Old first comic:
 

New Second comic and third comic.
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=69132.msg1670712#msg1670712

[ein]

Can't read it.
Get a better font.
Can't critique anything else if I can't tell what's being said.

[Dasleah]

Yeah, you may be going for the "I'm going to be lazy on the art because I'm a good writer" angle, but even that won't fly if the font you use is so damn unreadable.

[Fikes]

The next ones are better, but that is an accurate dipiction of the first installment. Does this work better? I'll remake the first one tomorrow.

New second comic here: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=69132.msg1670712#msg1670712

Old one

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

[Argembarger]

Yeah, the font is better in the second one.

Might I recommend saving your comics in .PNG format?

Other than that, the gross, massive difference between the quality of the writing and the art is actually kind of hilarious, in my opinion. You could consider doing it on purpose unless you get complaints. (You probably shouldn't listen to me in the first place though anyway.)

[Fikes]

I actually screwed up the format on the first several, then started putting them into png. It would be really really easy to go back over the images and resave them... but I don't have them here.

I honestly kind of considered doing the art myself, but later when things get a little more visceral, I want it depicted well.

Number 3

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

I'd really like the comic to show confusion, and I try to do that by making the lines "non conforming". It looks like shit, and it actually gets worse in the next slide, but the idea is that when things start going really bad, it is hard to look back on them and remember their exact order. That is what the characters go through, so that is what I want the read to go through.

What happens here is the ship, which is as close as I can draw to a space shuttle (I love the space shuttle) , gets hit after going through the atmosphere. See the smoke? Isn’t it obvious?

[Retro]

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.

[Davion]

This is horrible.

[Cthulhu]

It doesn't matter how good you think the story is if the art is so bad it makes me want to uninstall my browser.

[Fikes]

Update 1-1. Let me know if this is a little more presentable.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

I put probably 45 minutes into this, and it still looks pretty bad. It isn't a joke, it is actually kind of embarrassing. I am fairly clumsy to begin with. Even if I was a better artist I still lack simple tools, like a scanner. So, for now, we have the paint adventures of an ill fated space crew.

Again, I am willing to compensate someone for actually making this comic visually appealing.

[Cthulhu]

Why don't you just write it?  Like, all text?

[Ephemeriis]

Why don't you just write it?  Like, all text?

Indeed.  Why not?

The whole point in a comic is the addition of visuals.  You convey things with images, rather than with words.  Which isn't necessarily better or worse, it's just different than, say, a novel or short story.

If you've got an interesting story you want to tell, but you can't draw pictures, there's absolutely no reason why you have to try to make it into a comic.  Just write a story.

Stories can be episodic.  You don't have to deliver the whole thing in one nice, big, polished package.  Throw out a few paragraphs here and there - just like if you were doing a comic.

[G-Flex]

Visual style has to match the overall style you're going for. You can't write a serious story and then pair it up with godawful, confusingly-colored circle-faces.

Assuming this isn't just a joke, I concur with the last two posters: There's no reason for this to be in comic form. Assuming this is a joke, it's not a very good one.

[Sean Mirrsen]

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. I'm having problems of that sort all the time when writing things for my games - part of the reason why I'm in a kind of a mental lock at the moment. I really suggest the OP to switch to stick figures though, they are much more presentable than what goes on now. For example, the faces are alright in the last one, so just adding some stick-bodies to them and maybe some sort of background to explain where they are will help the comic side of the work a lot.

[Ephemeriis]

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.

Seriously?

Ephemeriis slowly looked around the shadowy room.  "Anybody home?" he asked, hesitation in his voice.

How hard is that?

It's easier to keep track of who is saying what when you've got a name attached to the text - like "Joe said" - than when everybody is just differently-colored circle-headed stick figures.

It's easier to keep track of what is happening when you've got text describing the action - like "Bob pushed the button" - than when you've got stick arms poking randomly-colored shapes.

If you can do visuals, by all means, do them.  You can certainly convey an awful lot with a decent image.  Draw a picture of some guy getting punched in the face and about all the text you need is "Take that!" and "Ooof!"  You don't need to explain who is doing what, because people will recognize your characters and the action from the image.  They can see that SuperHeroMan is punching VillainGuy.  You don't need to write it all out.

But if you can't do visuals...  They just see a green stick figure kind of pointing at a red stick figure.  Not terribly expressive.