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      Welcome!   03/05/2016

      Welcome, everyone, to the new 910CMX Community Forums. I'm still working on getting them running, so things may change.  If you're a 910 Comic creator and need your forum recreated, let me know and I'll get on it right away.  I'll do my best to make this new place as fun as the last one!
Darth Fluffy

What makes a Web comic work ...

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So, I've been poking around the other comics on the forum, and reviewing my own bookmarks. I've come to the conclusion that the single most important factor in whether a Web comic draws people in is whether it updates regularly or not. People will tolerate many other factors, but they won't stick around for no content. Most of the other comics in this forum have gone into hiatus, either permanently or off and on.

Once a week is plenty to garner a loyal following. Many noteworthy Web comics do well with less than that. I think Order of the Stick is about twice a month. Sticking to a schedule helps, as does using filler or guest comics during absences. Wrapping up a web comic, having closure and declaring it done, also works.

Story and continuity are hovering around the next brackets. Maybe it's best to bundle them and call them "theme", because there are successful comics that are single day joke comics; xkcd is one of my favorites. Meta-story continuity, patterns and templates for the one-shots, consistent characters; not sure what all else. Some of the failings I've seen stick out.

EGS has engaging characters, from what I gather on our forums, our members feel invested in them. Dan foreshadows, there are threads that tie arcs together, unexpected things happen, but they fit. Pretty much every other story telling comic that I like is similar in those regards. This is not true for some of our forum mates. The Wotch is around as long-running as EGS; it has the pieces to be a similarly regarded comic, but it is not. The arcs feel disjointed. They come in from left field. The characters are not compelling, they seem colorless and are hard to care about. Jason is the most genre savvy character, I feel his apathy. (Apparently so did the founding artist. She left.)

Speaking of art, it apparently lags behind in importance, not to say that it isn't on the radar. Some comics make no bones about having minimalist art, and are still compelling reads; Order of the Stick and XKCD come to mind. That said, long term crappy art seems to tie into other negatives, and maybe highlights a "staff doesn't care about this work of theirs" approach.

So, with significant exceptions, this 910 CMX forum host seems to be the doldrums for bad comics associated with The Wotch; and share many of it's failings. Obviously, I think EGS is an exception, I suppose we all do or we wouldn't be here, and I'm surprised to see LICD here; while I don't follow it, it is a better comic than most of these.

One I am particularly sad about is Cheer! It has almost everything going for it, but has been in hiatus forever. Compelling stories and characters, nice art, but it ended abruptly. It's almost like it was hosted on The FOX Channel for Web comics. I've seen it on Bad Webcomics sites, but the criticisms didn't hold water; one was the origin of the four main characters, but it picks up after that event (which occurs in The Wotch), so can hardly be blamed for what happened. It was probably too ambitious, weaving too many story lines. That's more of a 20-20 hindsight criticism.

Another one that seems better than the average bear, at least in 910CMX, is I Dream of Jeanie Bottle. The characters are at best a work in progress, but they're getting better. Jean/Jeanie is narcissistically self centered beyond belief (not really, my ex was that bad). The art is sup-par, but I don't feel like I need to bleach my eyes. But the stories are good and tie together, and the updates keep coming.

 

 

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i have somewhat the opposite opinion on several of those points; they're all good points but you've got them in the wrong order. actually updating is still number one, but being a strictly visual media art quality trumps almost everything writing related (by quality i do NOT mean realism, i mean whether your style is appealing and technical proficiency the style skewing towards or trying to skew towards realistic is actually a detractor in my eyes). also whether or not the story is coherent only matters if it has a story to tell, which actually puts it near the bottom of the list as that's a 50/50 coin toss for webcomics. there are plenty where plotlines are completed and then promptly forgotten about never to be referenced again, like some kind of monster of the week, and they make it work.

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There is actually one webcomic I stopped reading even though it had decent art, regular updates, engaging characters, and an interesting continuity of plotlines.

So why did I drop it?

Because the creator kept INTERRUPTING the continuity of plotlines to have the same characters be in SOME OTHER STORY, totally unrelated, explicitly not original (at least one was a Shakespeare play). For months at a time. The changes in characterization were routinely jarring. There was no lead-up to these shifts, and no after-effect after the extraneous story was completed.

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6 hours ago, Don Edwards said:

There is actually one webcomic I stopped reading even though it had decent art, regular updates, engaging characters, and an interesting continuity of plotlines.

So why did I drop it?

Because the creator kept INTERRUPTING the continuity of plotlines to have the same characters be in SOME OTHER STORY, totally unrelated, explicitly not original (at least one was a Shakespeare play). For months at a time. The changes in characterization were routinely jarring. There was no lead-up to these shifts, and no after-effect after the extraneous story was completed.

Cheer! did that skillfully, at the end; two of the characters where put to sleep and had a shared dream sequence. It made sense in context and appeared to have a bearing on the outcome that never materialized, the fantasy "abyssal" from the dream came into their real world.

Misfile appears to be wrapping up and ending. The art is on the plus side of the scale, IMO, but not great, the story is pretty good. The updates are generally regular, although the author/artist appears to be a reservist or NG, and has training outages.

I've read Accidental Centaurs both back in the day and recently and did not care for it. I dimly recall crude art in the old version, the new art is better, but not to my taste. The story is similar, but appears to have had a major rewrite. If I could compare them side by side, I'd probably  say the new version is written better; but still, choppy with abrupt transitions.

I tried to read Sailor Sun but it was too poorly thought out. Much was handwaved with no rationale.

My longtime faves are Order of the Stick, Something Positive, xkcd, and El Goonish Shive. My best recent find is Android Blues. (probably NSFW)  Great art and well crafted story.

 

 

Edited by Darth Fluffy
added rationale for last comment

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6 hours ago, Don Edwards said:

"Probably"? There are a few pages that don't have bare boobs...

Did you read much of it? Aside from the gratuitous nudidity, the art is well done, isn't it? So far, the story line is good; the meta background of the human responses seems realistic. I'm not a fan of the roller feet on the one chick, seems impractical.

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2 hours ago, InfiniteRemnant said:

that comic is actually a pretty good example of everything i DONT like in an art style.

If you care to share, I'd be curious about specifics. I like detail and realism, it has those. I'm not drawn to the nudity, while it fits the story line, it also seems excessive. A few of the more negative characters are portrayed as excessively ugly, as if people were actually visually coded for your convenience.

Of course, it's entirely your call what you like and don't like. I'm not asking you to justify it, just curious what you observed. A different perspective.

I find I want to like Real Life Comics, it hits all of my criteria, but the references are so dated, it is tedious to read. It gets better, but I haven't reached where it does that.

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in simplest terms visually, realistic is boring as fuck, and i see it as lazy no matter how technically proficient it is, because you're just copying the visual asthetic of the real world rather than creating your own. putting it on par with 'generic anime rip' art styles that haven't come up with anything unique yet. 

there's only one way to do realism well, and the better you are at it the more your work becoming gratingly similar to everyone else going for realistic visuals. the more detailed your work, the more your lazy choice of aesthetic works against you. the level of nudity in the comic never even enters into the equation.

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17 hours ago, Darth Fluffy said:

I find I want to like Real Life Comics, it hits all of my criteria, but the references are so dated, it is tedious to read. It gets better, but I haven't reached where it does that.

That was one of the first webcomic I started reading, and not long after Greg started it too, I think it was either late '99 early '00 when someone linked it on IRC, so much of it was pretty current when I saw it. Updates have been sporadic lately though due to real life (hehe). I suspect a Real Life/EGS crossover would involve Dave and Tedd creating what basically amounts to the Urteroncs but made out of video game console/PC parts and powered by magic and have it fight whatever Tony threw together.

13 hours ago, InfiniteRemnant said:

in simplest terms visually, realistic is boring as fuck, and i see it as lazy no matter how technically proficient it is,

I'll be honest, it feels very strange to call visuals that have soo much work put into them to look so realistic, lazy.

That aside, there is that "uncanny valley" vibe that super-realistic art can have which is quite understandable. I think Grrl Power pulls off detailed but certainly not realistic fairly well in that regard, and yeah there's been some art evolution, but it still manages to maintain a cartoony/comicy feel.

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8 minutes ago, Scotty said:

That aside, there is that "uncanny valley" vibe that super-realistic art can have ...

I tend to not like 3d modeled comics for exactly that reason. They look to me like plastic forms bent into shape for the comic, no life to them.

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14 minutes ago, Darth Fluffy said:

I tend to not like 3d modeled comics for exactly that reason. They look to me like plastic forms bent into shape for the comic, no life to them.

Everyone has different tastes and I have learned just to roll with it whenever I get told, "I don't like this artwork." I figure this person knows their own taste better than I do, anyway. :demonicduck:

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39 minutes ago, The Old Hack said:

Everyone has different tastes and I have learned just to roll with it whenever I get told, "I don't like this artwork." I figure this person knows their own taste better than I do, anyway. :demonicduck:

Much agree.

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