OT: Webcomicry Advice?

Tetramorpheus · Post by **Tetramorpheus** » Fri Aug 17, 2007 11:03 pm

Please delete this message if its too OT, with my apologies.

I'm writing this message because the people on this message board might be some of the most likely to help me.

I've done several web comics over the years, most ending fairly shortly afterwards and with results that still linger here and there on comicgenesis. (No, I'm not going to plug them. This isn't about that). I did them because they were fun and I liked them and they were a solid creative outlet. And, finally out of college and away from my friends (who all but killed my creative time), I want to do another, maybe one with a little more last too it. There's only one small problem.

My computer went caput. (no, this isn't begging for money either).

I was lucky enough, during HS, to have access to both Adobe Photoshop and Dreamweaver for free, as my father did some web work and let me ::ahem:: borrow them provided I didn't use them for commercial purposes. With my old computer dead, however, I have trouble accessing them because the temporary computer I have is a PC, and my old one was a Mac. So I guess what I'm asking is... does anyone know of any decent programs like to those twp available without, say, a several hundred dollar pricetag? Freeware even? I'm not looking for anything near as high and mighty... just something with the same base capabilities.

Just thought I'd ask. Again, Allen, feel free to delete this post at whim.

Allan_ecker · Post by **Allan_ecker** » Sat Aug 18, 2007 6:44 am

And miss out on a chance to rave about materials?

If you're willing to put down a little money, Photoshop Elements is only about 100$ and gives you layers, custom brushes, tablet pressure, the works. The Photoshop tools it doesn't have are mostly related to batch jobs and so on. (You miss out on a few brush options along with QuickMask which is a nifty instant frisket dealie.) Elements is also generally bundled with Wacom tablets, so you might look into that.

For free, well, there's always the GIMP, which can do the basics, like filters, multiple layers, and so on. I'm ambivelant towards it but I know some people swear by it.
http://www.gimp.org/

If you do get a tablet, I'd recommend checking out Inkscape, a free vector-based program which actually does do pressure-sensitive brushstrokes. If a bit buggy in places.
http://www.inkscape.org/

When I started UmlautHouse I was using an image manipulator I got for 10$, whose capabilities were very limited (NO LAYERS!!!!) but which had the ability to scan, resize images more or less intelligently, and add text. Badly.

Odds are if you have a scanner, you already have something at least that functional.

If you have any more process/tool questions just ask-- I've done a fair amount of work on some pretty amazingly narrow shoestrings!

Tetramorpheus · Post by **Tetramorpheus** » Sat Aug 18, 2007 9:05 am

No... layers?

::chair tips over backwards in shock::

I don't know how I'd live...

Buck · Post by **Buck** » Sat Aug 18, 2007 1:22 pm

The Gimp is free. It can't hurt trying it out.

Tetramorpheus · Post by **Tetramorpheus** » Sun Aug 19, 2007 6:46 am

Thanks for the advise, all, I'm looking into them.

On the other note, does anyone know of any web page assistant programs like dreamweaver and (the ancient, but the first one I used) claris home page? I expect most people here are... technologically advanced enough that html presents fewer difficulties to them, but my knowledge of it is limited to figuring out and nudging little bits of the code, not creating the whole thing from scratch.

What I could really use is an application for this that 1. Can do tables well (its surprising, really, how many can't) and 2. Can handle roll overs.

As before, any suggestions will be greatly appreciated.

Allan_ecker · Post by **Allan_ecker** » Sun Aug 19, 2007 7:09 am

I'm against webpage authoring tools on religious grounds, so I won't be much help. You'll notice the source code of my pages (once you strip out the horrific code bloat CG stuffs in at each tag) is really, REALLY simplistic.

Buuuut obviously for religious reasons I won't be any help on this one, sorry.

Kels · Post by **Kels** » Sun Aug 19, 2007 2:37 pm

I do all my web authoring in Notepad, dammit!

Who's this "Dreamweaver" person, anyway?

GreatLimmick · Post by **GreatLimmick** » Sun Aug 19, 2007 11:44 pm

kels wrote:I do all my web authoring in Notepad, dammit!

Who's this "Dreamweaver" person, anyway?

Isn't it the song Wayne heard when he met Cassandra?

Tetramorpheus · Post by **Tetramorpheus** » Mon Aug 20, 2007 8:12 am

Well, far be it for me to tempt anyone from their religion, though I am curious as to what religion's tenants ban such programs, and what the blaphsemy is behind such prohibition.

Oh course, being raised on macs, I'm not really new to being under fire on the grounds of electronic Holy Wars...

DetailBear · Post by **DetailBear** » Mon Aug 20, 2007 12:42 pm

I can offer no "pro" advice on html authoring programs, as I also do my coding in Notepad, and I think CSS's are an abomination and heresy. From web-paging friends, I do hear the constant advise of "Don't use FrontPage!!!!"

Alfador · Post by **Alfador** » Tue Aug 21, 2007 6:12 am

Editpad here. It's like Notepad but with tabs!

Schol-R-LEA · Post by **Schol-R-LEA** » Tue Aug 21, 2007 5:13 pm

Wow. I almost feel wimpy. I tend to swap between Bluefish, Scite, Gnu Emacs, XEmacs, Screem, and Amaya, depending on what I'm doing and on what system. Ironically, I mostly use Emacs on the Windows box, not the laptop.

(Actually, I'm probably going to go back to using Gnumacs most of the time; I was trying the others out but it gets frustrating to go try to do something only to notice too late that I'm in a different editor. Scite is nice, but nothing special; same with Bluefish. Amaya has support for validation going for it an nothing else; it's a terrible editor and an even worse browser. I haven't looked at Screem enough to judge it, but so far I'm not impressed. As for XEmacs, well, I don't need tabbed buffers and inline images that badly, and Gnumacs is getting better at that sort of thing anyway, at least the Gnome version. And just about anything else I want to do that it doesn't support is just a search and maybe a little eLisp code away. True, it can be like driving an SUV at times, but I've got plenty of memory and the nifties are worth a bit of sluggishness. If I want a lightweight editor, I'll fire up Pico, goshdurn it.)

Tetramorpheus · Post by **Tetramorpheus** » Thu Sep 06, 2007 3:14 am

Another question, oh most beneficient and patient ones!

::bows, offering up sacrifice::

To anyone who knows:

How does one add a comment or text on a specific day in the daily archives without changing the dailytemplate required for autokeen? (such as the link below, as an example) do you have to change the page after it's created, or is it a matter of uploading a substitute page, or... ?

::bows again, finishing with genuflection and a *shave and a haircut* riff::

Allan_ecker · Post by **Allan_ecker** » Sun Sep 09, 2007 8:54 am

It's actually quite straightforward, because AutoGenesis lets you treat text files as legitimate parts of your update. I'll occasionally put text into a file marked 20060503B.htm along with a comic called 20060503A.png and AutoGenesis will put the text file after the comic, (alpha order) and integrate it into the web page for me.

You can do this with multiple-image comics as well.