Mistakes

[VeryCuddlyCornpone]

Complaining because I wrote myself into a corner. My next few strips were supposed to center around one of my characters, still at boot camp before being deployed to France in 1918. The chapter is currently about two weeks into the month of June. Now, I know that his division was deployed in June. But I was stupid and neglected to look up the date that they got there until now. They arrived at Brest on June 8. So not only is he already there, he's already been there for a week.

I have options- 1. Rewrite the tiny piece of history to suit my purpose, because who will care (me)
2 (and more likely) Devote a whole chapter to him later, chronicling the time before he left through the time he got there.

Dammit. It's the stupidest little mistake but now it's pushed everything all over the place.

Ever realize you made a mistake/plot hole and it was not going to be an easy fix?

[Mastermind]

I had a "shitty beginning" issue with my first comic (which is on break now). There was a lot of stupid subplots and characters that would not fit in the later story and were generally pointless. There was probably a way to rewrite it but I was lazy so I deleted every strip that even mentioned the old characters and it turned out surprisingly consistent. The risky part was the introduction but at least it's short and simple. and I'm the only reader anyway
If I ever make a major mistake in my new comic, I'll might insert something before that. I'm not good at explaining stuff later and it would be a shame to delete a page
Good luck on your quest!

[Dutch!]

After not featuring in School Spirit for possibly well over 100 strips, I started including Mr Kelly, the principal, into some strips again several hundred updates ago. Now... originally Mr Kelly had a moustache. When he reappeared (without very little 'real' comic time having passed), all of a sudden it was gone and I didn't realise my mistake until several strips of that arc had gone up on the site.

After slapping my forehead a few times, I popped in a silly little joke to sort of explain it away, and that ended up opening the doors on an entire storyline based on that throw away explanation joke. It actually turned out quite well, because 'Mr Kelly's Memory' has become the most popular and respected story arc in the entire archive.

To end on a happy note... Mr Kelly grew his moustache back soon after.



And then last week I drew one of the girls with the other girl's hair style and didn't notice until it was too late again... so two strips later Grace cracked the poos at her and told her not to steal her hair style... that error wasn't quite as hard to 'fix up'.

[VinnieD]

Couldn't you just edit some text on the older strips to change around the dates? Seems to be the simplest solution.

[Terotrous]

I notice little errors every now and then when referencing old strips for colour schemes and such. I'll usually fix them right then.

As for other types of drawing errors, I know there's nothing resembling consistency about which arm Dirk / Gustav hold their swords in. I actually do know what their handedness is supposed to be, but since the dialogue usually determines where characters have to be positioned in a scene, it frequently looks awkward to make it correct. I doubt anyone's paying too much attention, and I could just lampshade the issue anyway (that's basically what Comic Creatorz is all about).

[robotthepirate]

What've you done to pin them down in the middle of June? Or can you just slide the timeline back a little bit?

In my first comic my main character Eric's pitchfork used to change the number of prongs because I originally drew it with the wrong number and then that flaw was pointed out to me. I occationally drew one character without his mustache, but I glossed over that fact. One character who had been transformed into a goat was later left turning into lots of different animals because I couldn't draw the goat again. And several times in the comic I simply forgot to draw his pitchfork so I wrote little jokes around it.

It wasn't a very good comic.

So far in RTP I've mainly just made text errors. There are a few expressions I'm not completely happy with and I've had to photoshop my images a few times but I've mostly gotten away with stuff.

[RobboAKAscooby]

I unthinkingly wrote out all the hints to Max's royal secret except a portrait in the background of a couple of pages and even that was pointless by the time all was revealed since the character designs changed a fair bit.

The bigger mistake was some of the storyline I kept in.

[VeryCuddlyCornpone]

To those who've suggested changing the time: It's mostly petty, but this chapter is just really supposed to entirely take place in the month of June, and for some reason I'd feel like I was cheating if I changed it. I came up with a solution, since the whole thing is supposed to be the character having a flashback anyway, I'll just have a different character having the same flashback. So, problem mostly solved, it just needed a little jiggling.

[Cope]

In such circumstances, I just keep going and hope no one notices.

[McDuffies]

I made similar errors like you in Little White Knight, Cuddly, regarding whereabouts of characters and hey, that character wasn't even in that country on that year, that kind of stuff. Thing is, when I had to choose between strictly adhering to the known facts, or altering them somewhat so that I could maintain the story the way I envisioned it, I chose the second. I already took a lot of liberty with known hystorical figures, so I did what I had to do to keep the story intact. So there's a lot of small leeway, a few years added or subtracted to certain historical events, and if someone was really into that stuff, they'd notice, but that'll hardly ever happen.

Also there was a time when I almost drew a character eating a potato, but noticed and turned it to an apple before the comic was out.

[robotthepirate]

Besides. Time isn't fixed, it's all wibbley wobbley. That's what the man in the police box says anyway.

I reckon if you keep it as is the only people who will know will be yourself and war fanatics. Oh and us, whoops!

[VinnieD]

I think the only continuity error, I've made is having a couple of younger characters appear in a prequel story that takes place two years prior, in which they really should look different. Most other things I can chalk up to shifts in art style or intentional minor retcons such as changing the spelling of a character's name.

[MixedMyth]

I make no mistakes. Ever. EVER. >_>

[Terotrous]

I make no mistakes. Ever. EVER. >_>

*Hunts through RLF archives looking for mistakes*

[robotthepirate]

I make no mistakes. Ever. EVER. >_>

*Hunts through RLF archives looking for mistakes*

Pfft. Any excuse for site traffic. Wish I'd thought of it.

[McDuffies]

Besides. Time isn't fixed, it's all wibbley wobbley. That's what the man in the police box says anyway.

I reckon if you keep it as is the only people who will know will be yourself and war fanatics. Oh and us, whoops!

If someone who was an expert for that time period read, he'd know. Whether he'd accept artist's licence is a matter of several different schools of thought, but my comic isn't postmodern or anything, so it needs a modicum of accuracy.
I've actually read articles where people condemned historical fiction as a genre for being deliberately, well, fictional.

[VeryCuddlyCornpone]

It was actually an easy fix once I started thinking outside the lines. I'm going to be taking enough liberties elsewhere that I'd like to stay pretty true to history when I can

[Spaceprincess]

I tried to keep the plots so vague and convoluted that any mistake is impossible to notice. Plus having wizards and time travel makes it easy to explain any inconsistencies.
I have had to bend things to make them fit with plot lines I've already established. Since the plot has evolved differently then I had originally imagined.

[RobboAKAscooby]

If someone who was an expert for that time period read, he'd know. Whether he'd accept artist's licence is a matter of several different schools of thought, but my comic isn't postmodern or anything, so it needs a modicum of accuracy.
I've actually read articles where people condemned historical fiction as a genre for being deliberately, well, fictional.

That's kind of similar to why I turned Maelstrom Heart into a sci-fi - originally it was set in the here and now with the band on a world tour (as opposed to the star system) but I knew that there'd be people bitching about all the inaccuracies so I created my own world(s) instead.

Flying Tigers is going to have the most potential problems since it's set in 2011 but at least the town is fictional and there isn't a lot of concern with the external world in the story.

[McDuffies]

It is the oposite of what I did with LWK, originally it was gonna take place in some imaginary medieval-like setting, then I realised there's nothing in it that can't be placed in actual past.