I do totally love it when people have massive archives of work going back to their teenage years like this, I have to admit.
Thanks. Actually, I wished that more webcomics do this. When I see webcomics with just a few months or a couple of years in the archive, I usually don't bother looking much. I want to see a large amount of work to show someone is serious about their craft. It took me one full year to upload all of those, just to prepare the stage for my new comic.
But I can't really get into the comics--something about your art style turns me off. I think it's the uncomfortable space it occupies between cartooniness and realism--
Hmm... you're not much of a Todd McFarlane fan then? He was probably the biggest influence on my art style, and countless people have told me that his influence on my Chrusher comic is obvious. His work in Amazing Spider-Man forever changed my drawing and inking style. In general, I aim for an American-comic-book look with Chrusher, though when I am going for obvious goofy stuff, I go cartoony. Quite frankly, Chrusher has been a half-way between real and cartoony on purpose, though when I make the new storyline, it will go away from cartoony and go for ultra-realistic. Towner is purposefully cartoony, ala C&H.
Towner is better in my book because it goes much more in the cartoony direction, making the art look more consistent from panel to panel.
Thanks. I drew most of them between 1997-1999. Only the greenhouse ads are newer. I haven't drawn it much since a handful of syndicates passed on it several years back. I plan to make a Towner book or two, because quite frankly I hate the limited space for a newspaper comic strip. I started one, and I'll get doing it nmore when I have more time. Unfortunately, I've been doing comics for years, and it was passable when I was single, but since getting married, I need to make money from my work for a change. Haha.
In either style, though, the line work is kind of off.
Line work? You mean the inking or the borders? I consider my inkwork a strength of mine, but admittedly, borders are my least-favorite part of drawing comics. Plotting, penciling, inking, coloring... thats what I like best. Perhaps I don't send enough time on them.
If you plan to do more with Chrusher--or with Towner, for that matter--take some life drawing classes or study an anatomy book or two--it'll help your art get a lot cleaner and make it look better whether you go in a more realistic or a more cartoony direction.
Hmm... that's the 1st time I ever heard that in 15+ years. What comics were you looking at? My pre-1992 Chrusher comics? I was just a teenager then. I see no anatomy problems in most of my 1994-up comics, except for small periods where I got purposefully sloppy just to draw quick, humorous storylines for my friend's amusement and not for the art itself, but then in the 1998-and-up areas, I go back to detailed work. Not sure what you mean about the anatomy stuff. maybe you just didn't read my newer, cleaner stuff. I have tha problem because my archive is 1,000+ and most of the early stuff isn't all that great artistically.
I do dig Towner a lot though--very C&H-like, very enjoyable. Are you doing more of this?
I have many newer, cleaner Towners that I didn't upload yet, and I plan to do more when I have the time. Most of those are older and not as good, in my book... I just put them up first because they were older and I like to keep a chronological order to it if I can. Right now, I'm working on a paying flash animation project. But every May I do ads for my family business, and for the past six or seven years, new Towners have all been flower ads.
But thanks for your advice. I'd love to read even more people's opinions.
