Webcomic Hate

[Guildmaster Van]

After bringing up John Solomon in the Pet Peeve thread, I began thinking.

I think looking into negatives can be a good thing for the webcomic community, as the community seems content placating or simple ignoring the "comics no one likes". We may look down our noses and huff loudly at a sprite comic or make a sarcastic nudge at someone, but we never ever look to one another and brazenly point at another and call them on their flaws. Nor do we truly admit our own. We simply laugh about it and continue on, never really questioning any of these issues.

There's a dozen "What inspires you?" threads, but no "Where I should improve myself" threads. There are "Critique me" threads, but no "Evaluate my writing style" threads.

I'm a firm believer that a key in becoming successful, at least in terms in creating a good product, lies not always in finding out what you're doing right but sometimes in exposing what you're doing wrong.

So I'll be honest about my webcomic experience. Maybe there's something to learn from my mistakes.

Doing a webcomic was harder than I thought. I was wrong, and I admit that. I was a dumb kid with big shiny eyes, and I did my comic in such succession because I could do it in such succession. The transition from teenager to adult taught me about the reality of time management. Of responsibility as an author. I now understand that people who are the most successful in this business are where they are because they know how to treat their comic like a nine-to-five job. IN SPITE of being funny. IN SPITE of being well written, or drawn, or clichéd, or whatever. It is this attitude which is the heart of ANY successful comic - because being well drawn or written or appealing to as many crazy subcultures is worth shit if you don't stick around.

Beyond this cardinal offense, I never took the time to read what I was writing. Like, really read it. Yes, I read it in the sense of flowing of one page to another to assure the story made some sense, but I never read it as a whole. Where was it all going? What was I leading up to? I was using "story" as a sort of plaster to stick in holes between punchlines. Even the most random stories and cartoons had something stringing them together. Even Family Guy has that. A premise, a setup, and an execution. White Hydra in the beginning lacked that. I didn't have my shit together, and that sort of killed it for me.

Of course, I am an ARTEESTE SACRE BLEU - I had to go back and figure out what wasn't working for me. So I read, and thought, and retooled, and recreated, and re-imagined, and expanded, and re-expanded, and sat down with a completed work. In my head. When pencil hit paper, however, things went wrong. I made storyboards, but that wasn't the problem. I have always liked my art, so that wasn't it. It was like... like the lulz were gone. The fun I had making the comic went away once I had locked myself into a set of imagined boundaries. As a result, what I created came out even worse than the original - to me, at least, and I know some of you. Even worse, the jokes felt strained. In this second attempt story and joke switched roles, and now it was the jokes that were the plaster. Do not want.

So now what? I work on my craft, and I learn from sound advice, but more importantly I learn my own mistakes.
And sometimes the mistakes of others.

This leads me to the crux of this post: share your webcomic hate. Not your theoretical comic pet peeves where you make veiled references to certain comics, but really what you've come to dislike or hate in your own work. If you have to complain about your art, then at least point out what you specifically think you need to work on. Heck, it doesn't even have to be about your comic. If something has always troubled you about someone's work (Someone other than every big webcomic evar), then this is the moment to politely give your in a neutral discussion. This is all about improving ourselves and "webcomic intellectualism" after all.

Even I'd like to know from people who read my work what they thought was weak in my comic. Some of the best unflattering comments I got about my comic was back in late 2004 some guy bashing me on an obscure board or blog site comparing me to Tauhid Bondia, saying "Fantasy parody done right and wrong". I was "wrong" (Obviously, ha ha), but it was educational in that it gave me something to reflect on (Chiefly that Spells & Whistles is a fantasy parody, and White Hydra was more of a fantasy parody of life)

[Wendybird]

Hey, where's your comic so we can tell you what we hate about it?

My comic wants to be a book. It started its life as a badly-written first draft of a fantasy novel, and it's never quite learned to be a comic. I haven't been able to fit in any action yet. It doesn't come into the original plot for a while. And I love creating characters and writing dialogue for them; it's decent dialogue, as far as it goes, but that translates to comics as a bunch of heads and word balloons floating around.

It helps that I do have somewhere I'm going with the plot, but it also can cause problems. I strive to add fun and entertainment to every page, and so side stories are proliferating. I had one joke that ruined a character's reaction to a certain piece of news, so that I had to rethink the character in order to get her to a place where she'd take the necessary action to move the plot along. Since then I've tried to put plot concerns before humor when they seem to conflict, but this makes it more a book and less a comic. A comic update should contain entertainment. Otherwise it's useless as an update, even if it belongs in the story in the long term. As I push ahead in the plot I'm afraid I'm losing the element of weekly entertainment. Not that my jokes are all that great. It's my first attempt at writing comedy.

I really am a writer. I'm really not sure whether this project should be a comic or not. I can draw, and the story does have definite visual elements, but I don't think I'm fitting words and pictures together to their greatest advantage. I don't pay nearly enough attention to my page layout, backgrounds, perspective, interesting angles, and I rarely shade after I have the basic color down. Drawing is fun for me, but I really don't have the same commitment to it that I have to the writing. And the scripts I produce don't really call for dramatic images. It's not an equal partnership.

That said, I love my comic and I'm going to keep producing it for a good long time.

I definitely see the value of inviting direct criticism of people's comics, especially writing. There isn't really an established way of getting that kind of feedback. I also see why it hasn't been done a whole lot.

I think it's valuable to have a medium like webcomics where teens and other beginning artists can dip in their toes and get some experience and practice without any real commitment. Usually what improves the fastest is their art, but not all because criticism is focused in that area. Because a person can be funny without practicing their writing, but it's hard to be artistic without practicing art. And when it comes to more serious stories, the most important criticism takes place when the story is established, and has some real structure.

Practice also does a lot for writing, and once a more serious comic is established enough so that you can see where it needs work, it's either shaped up pretty well or the readers have quit. I'm not saying that comics with fans don't have problems with their writing, but the people who read them aren't the ones who want to criticize them. I don't go back to a comic for its artistic merit. Either the story compels me or it doesn't. I don't want to slog through bad writing just so I can write a hate list.

Compelling stories often still need work, but if they pull me in it's hard to evaluate objectively. Also, it seems awkward to me, when an artist has done so much in a story, to say, "this should really have gone in a different direction. Go back and write out the space scene. All those drawings are now worthless." Or whatever. An established story, in a comic, is very established.

In terms of writing on a smaller scale - I've been a grammar nazi for certain comics, but most don't need it, and I don't notice a lot of problems with wording that bother me.

McDuffies is an exception, but he has an excuse.

[[geoduck]]

I'm lazy, and I don't push myself as an artist. My big mistake was going daily, instead of at least taking the weekends off. I'm always facing a deadline, always need to fill the hopper with another strip, so I dash out something and shoot it off. I should cut back and work on improving myself, but my pride at my (fairly unbroken) record keeps me plodding along.

[Jackhass]

I'm...really pretty satisfied with my comic. Now certainly it's not perfect, it still has a way to go, but I've never made it a secret that I want to do this for a living. This isn't just something I'm doing for fun. In the past though it was definitely in the back of my mind that, really, the comic wasn't there yet. I think it is now, or at least it's close. I actually feel confident really promoting it and putting it out there now and it's starting to do pretty well traffic-wise.

A lot of the main problems with the comic are related to my own laziness. I just never seem to be able to get down to work until it's the last minute. This leads to some rushed comics and sometimes gets me into storylines I haven't adequately planned out. I was really disappointed by the end of the Halloween story I did last year...just flopped at the end. Most of my work in 2008 I've been pretty pleased with though...the recent Heaven storyline I think was the peak of the strip so far.

Oh and I really need to get a bloody cast page up. Christ, I've been sitting on that for about a year now.

[Turnsky]

*stuff*

nicely written, i guess the problem is that as comics develop a fanbase, and as a comic ages, fewer and fewer people will actually front up to an Artist/writer and tell them that they have room to improve, far be it for me to be critical of people's art/writing styles, i have a lot to improve upon in that regard, shifting focus from a modern/sci-fi setting to fantasy (with more wriggle room), is something i hope to accomplish with it, i may revisit things later on as i feel i can expand out further afield.

of course it doesn't help if some artists and writers don't take the advice real well and cut up rough about it, that kinda discourages constructive criticism quite quickly.
my writing isn't of course perfect, it especially shows in the earlier pages when i basically hadta start learning from scratch.

[IVstudios]

The thing I hate about my art is that I rarely go outside my comfort zone anymore. I tend to always draw my characters in the same position from the same angle (3/4 shot, standing, talking, maybe they move their hands around a bit). I've gotten good at drawing people that way, and consequently I never draw people any other way. And the only way I've been able to improve it is to simplify my drawing style. I've always had a cartoony style, but it's been getting more and more cartoony to compensate for the fact that I'm not very good at drawing realistically.

As for my writing, I've always disliked stories that progress to fast. So I try to write stories that proceed at a slower pace. But I tend to over do it and end up getting to points where there is a lot of nothing going on. (That's why I'm glad for/frustrated by the Short Comic thread. Having limits put on a comic forces me to speed up the pacing. It's hard though to get in everything I want without rushing the plot, and get in an ending that isn't dragged out, but still feels satisfying. Which I'm pretty sure I'm going to fail at.)

[Guildmaster Van]

Hey, where's your comic so we can tell you what we hate about it?

I took most of my stuff offline, but here's a compilation of the two versions I created - one circa 2004, and the other circa 2006. It's a 22mb dl though, and is about 100-and-some pages altogether.

I definitely see the value of inviting direct criticism of people's comics, especially writing. There isn't really an established way of getting that kind of feedback. I also see why it hasn't been done a whole lot.

I think this is a good way of getting that kind of feedback

nicely written, i guess the problem is that as comics develop a fanbase, and as a comic ages, fewer and fewer people will actually front up to an Artist/writer and tell them that they have room to improve, far be it for me to be critical of people's art/writing styles, i have a lot to improve upon in that regard, shifting focus from a modern/sci-fi setting to fantasy (with more wriggle room), is something i hope to accomplish with it, i may revisit things later on as i feel i can expand out further afield.

No author will ever be so perfect as to not have room for improvement, although you're right in how the more prestigious the author the less likely it is someone will bring it up.
Anne Rice is a good example. She needs an editor, but she's too batshit insane to admit it.

The thing I hate about my art is that I rarely go outside my comfort zone anymore. I tend to always draw my characters in the same position from the same angle (3/4 shot, standing, talking, maybe they move their hands around a bit). I've gotten good at drawing people that way, and consequently I never draw people any other way. And the only way I've been able to improve it is to simplify my drawing style. I've always had a cartoony style, but it's been getting more and more cartoony to compensate for the fact that I'm not very good at drawing realistically.

I can say I felt the same way about some of my comic. I once asked Savage Dragon's Erik Larsen on his opinion on my work, and he said that while the jokes were good, there were no memorable dynamic panels. After that, I began trying to introduce dynamic art, and sketch it on my own.
If you can make your work memorable and dynamic, then it really doesn't matter if your art is cartoony.

[TheSuburbanLetdown]

My characters are off-model sometimes, and I'm still not sold on some of the character designs. Though I've gradually been changing them around. I'm also not good at drawing fat people. A lot of the characters have a similar body type. And the lettering changes size sometimes, especially when I used different pens or run out of ink.

Still on the same storyline for 2 years. Most of that is due to only being able to update once a week. I'd like to do more, but oh well.Sometimes I think it's boring, but that may just be me getting burned out.

I'll think of more stuff I hate later. There's a lot to hate in mine.

[AspComics]

My artwork evolved ridiculously fast, so consistency is one of my problems. I've been doing good as of late, letting changes happen naturally and not forcing them.

I should really be making some practice sketches once in a while... the vast majority of my sketchbooks are just what goes into the frames of each comic.

My writing's a bit last-minute. I know what will happen for a long, long while, but I don't write out the scripts until just before sketching the next page. Dialogue, number of frames, content of frames, frame layout, all done on the fly. o_0 (Though, that's way more apparent in the older ASP pages.)

[Jekkal]

I am SLOW. AS. SHIT.

No, actually, I take that back. I've had bowel movements that move faster than my comic.

I've never made it a secret I intend to get rich (or at least get printed!) with my comic, to create the sort of thing I'd be proud to read myself -- and so I've sacrificed having a faster schedule in exchange for one I could keep. While I know this is the best approach and one that also allows me to create an extensive buffer that has saved my bacon at least once already (most recently when my laptop quite literally couldn't boot!), it has also created a slow-paced plot that on a few occasions has earned the ire of at least one fellow creator who accused me of being greedy because I wanted to tie bonus updates to donations that would make the comic twice-a-week, because somehow I "wasn't working hard enough" with a weekly comic to justify myself. Granted, I believe at least part of this is because I'm trying to balance making the comic with completing college and finding a good job (eventually) so once I finish school and/or strike a perfect balance I'll be much happier with myself.

Also, I mildly resent picking "Furry" as a Genre. As pivotal as it is to the story sometimes and as much as it makes my work stand out (and as much as I enjoy being part of the furry community) it makes promoting the comic tough as balls sometimes. About the only thing people seem to enjoy hating on more than a furry comic is badly drawn "American Manga" or Yet Another Two-Guys-Onna-Couch Comic.

[RadPal]

A lot of these gripes I'm reading are similar to mine.

Whoo, where do I begin?

I feel like with the exception of two or three of my main characters, the rest of the characters are hardly memorable. Even though I have them act differently and they have their quirks and personalities, I don't feel like people will read my comic and then later say, "Hey, that's something X would do from Roxxor University."

Writing? I rarely come up with anything funny or gripping if I sit and brainstorm. It only comes randomly while I'm driving in the car or something. Hence, my quality is touch-and-go.

Drawing? I feel like I have no control over size and spacing. I start with the face, but even though I sketch out an outline first, sometimes proportions will come out much larger and I'll have to resize or redraw. I hate that. I feel like I can't draw things on command sometimes.

I also hate the stereotypes people create when they see the name of my comic before reading it. The comic has no leetspeak or video games, but they see "Roxxor" and run away.

[Tentoumushi]

I can't draw straight lines, AT ALL, and I'm too lazy to do too much digital edits to my work. In fact I designed the comic so that I'd have to do the least amount of work as possible otherwise I know it'd fall by the waste side.

[Redtech]

I'm slow, damned slow, mainly because as an 'artist' (term used losely) I still haven't got full confidence in my skill or even drawing my characters. Yes, I can draw my characters in less than a minute, but it's only been the last few weeks where I feel I have managed to draw them "well" and complex poses are an annoyance that I gladly undertake.

I can't help thinking I'm bashing into a wall but I don't quite know what the wall is or where to take it.

Blargh, I need a crit methinks.

[Linkara]

I hate that my art, while improving, still hasn't improved to a level where I can say, "Well, at least it's not a sprite comic!" Not to mention that as much as I enjoy drawing, I really wish I could just be the one writing it and leave the artwork in more capable hands. My art's always going to be more of a hobby than a professional career, so I fear I'l never take it seriously enough to become just that friggin' awesome, made worse when I see people with no formal training doing remarkably well.

And I hate that I started out by writing long prose and then going down to a level of having to condense a lot of information into a tiny little bubble. And I hate that I can't just put so much out there. A vision of a city in my head I could go on about for several pages, but if I try to draw it it will look amateurish at best.

[Levi-chan]

Took too many shortcuts. I guess that's a side effect of setting a tall precedent for how the detailing should be - you forget to track how much time each page will take, and end up becoming lazy.

My comic also has shades of the Teen Writer Syndrome - I was more preoccupied back then with verbal acrobatics rather than with actually being concise and to the point. I'm sure I'm not alone.

[Terotrous]

My comics were fairly well written (at least, I think so), but I can't draw very well.

It's pretty obvious, really.

[McDuffies]

I'll do the unpopular thing and say that I realized that I'm mostly satisfied with my work. Not that I don't intend to improve, but I'm capable to execute theirgs that I'm confident about and in retrospect wouldn't do much fixing about. I have a clear vision of what my comics should be and in which direction I want to go.
My big problem is that I am too fast (yes, all you slow people, ha ha). When I manage to fix a script or a page for long enough to clear all the mistakes, results are satisfying. Often, I'm too impatient for that, so results end up being much less than what they could have been.

[Agouti-rex]

I hate plenty of things about my own comics, but more than anything is the simple fact that I can't draw. I can doodle things decently if I plug away at something long enough, but I just can't do that whole build-figures-out-of-circles thing that real artists use to do fancy stuff like, oh, make sure the eyes are lined up and whatnot. I come from the compulsively-scribble-figure-over-and-over-until-your-hand-seems-to-absorb-some-sort-of-phantom-knowledge-of-what-to-do school of art. Besides that, I also tend to make word balloons way too big, just because I'm so bad at eyeballing how much room I'll need to fit in the dialogue.

On a postive note, I think my paneling is improving!

[Eve Z.]

I know that my drawing style and my storytelling should improve, but I'm also aware that my comic should be much more popular than it actually is (yeah, that's the thing I hate most about my webcomic!)

[Bustertheclown]

Does anybody else feel like this thread comes off like an AA meeting?

"Hi, my name is Buster, and I draw crappy comics."

Actually, I don't have a webcomic to self-consciously loath at the moment, but that's about to change! Even lacking comics on the web, I do make comics for print often enough, but I don't really find use in hating what I'm doing. Either it works, or it doesn't, and if it doesn't work, it'll go away, just like all the rest of my life's failures.

Here's a thought to mull over, though:

The beauty in John Solomon's blog is in the fact that it's an objective third party that's being so critical. We all have things that we like/dislike about our work, but usually the things we believe need work are not the same weaknesses that others perceive in our work. Our focus as creators is not the same as the focus of the audience. It can't be, by the very nature of our relationship to our work. That's the value of critique, ugly or not. You may go into a crit, steeling yourself for the oncoming blows, thinking, "oh, my art is weak!" and then nobody points out any weaknesses in artwork, yet tell you how horrible your dialog and pacing is. As a survivor of many very brutal crit sessions in my life, I know this to be true, just by virtue of how artists react when told what's REALLY wrong with their work. They look blind-sided; they don't see the actual evaluation coming. It's like the five stages of grief; denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and then acceptance that your work sucks in ways you hadn't realized. (followed, hopefully, with the decision to actually work on the weak points)

So, I guess I don't understand the point of this thread. It doesn't matter what you think about your own work, ultimately, because you're probably wrong about how it comes across to others, anyway. Once you're done with the labor, and you show it off to the world, the work isn't really yours anymore. It's now the job of the audience to interface with it. Unless you and your viewers are on the same page about what works and what doesn't in your efforts (and the two usually don't converge, because then you'd be the world's most successful artist) then stating the distaste for your own habits really doesn't matter. In fact, it comes off as sort of self-serving.

My advice? If you really want to grow as a storyteller, go find someone smart and objective enough to rip your work to shreds in front of you. That's how your work will become stronger.