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Lord_blackfang · Post by **Lord_blackfang** » Sun Dec 14, 2003 9:56 am

Hiya all, I've been running a weekly comic for roughly 2.5 months now, but haven't told anyone up till now because I wanted to have at least a handful of strips in the archives before anyone sees it. Now the time is ripe to show you my creation and hear your criticisms.

http://isthislife.keenspace.com/index.html

Be brutal.

PS: The one thing you don't have to complain about is the crappy colouring. I know about that already

Mecharm · Post by **Mecharm** » Sun Dec 14, 2003 10:52 am

Then why do you color it? It's so bad I can't look at it much further.

Anvil · Post by **Anvil** » Sun Dec 14, 2003 10:54 am

Uh, its not working...?

Lord_blackfang · Post by **Lord_blackfang** » Sun Dec 14, 2003 11:03 am

Anvil wrote:Uh, its not working...?

Buh? What's not working? Are the links pointing to my hard drive again?

Anvil · Post by **Anvil** » Sun Dec 14, 2003 11:07 am

I think so. I get the red X everywhere.

Lord_blackfang · Post by **Lord_blackfang** » Sun Dec 14, 2003 12:13 pm

It looks fine from my end, and mecharm apparently didn't have a problem viewing it... I'm confused now.

PsykotiK · Post by **PsykotiK** » Sun Dec 14, 2003 12:46 pm

Right, criticism... its shizzle. Sorry, but it is. If you can't actually draw, with a pencil or a light pen, then for my sake, don't bother. Sorry, but it slicks, I've seen it all before, and all of those slicked too. Its gay, shoozie and pants. I can't make it any clearer, give up ho boy. Sorry, but honesty hurts sometimes.

PsykotiK · Post by **PsykotiK** » Sun Dec 14, 2003 12:56 pm

after consulting with a friend of mine, despite the tenth being kind of amusing, you soolie flamin' shizzloads and deserve nothing but a long drawn out and painfull death, well, there you are then.

Keffria · Post by **Keffria** » Sun Dec 14, 2003 12:58 pm

Okay -- I can see your comics.

First off: Your comics are enormous. 1+ MB per comic is unacceptable; if I were using my old computer, I'd still be waiting for it to load. GIF, PNG, or JPG files are the way to go - there are may (free) programs that allow you to compress your pictures. If you don't make your file sizes smaller, Kisai will nail you for using too much bandwidth.

Second: If you know that your colouring is sub-par, stop, or make it better. On that note, don't warn people about it beforehand; they come to your site expecting crap, and will judge your comic based on that expectation. And *please* don't break the fourth wall to tell your readers that the art sucks.

Third: The sex-related jokes cease to be funny when that's the sum total of your humor content. But then, that's not really my kind of entertainment to begin with.

I hate to be overly critical, but you told me the colouring sucked ahead of time, and you asked for harsh critiques.

Jaster! · Post by **Jaster!** » Sun Dec 14, 2003 12:58 pm

1) It's not very funny. Sorry. Not that that's ever stopped a webcomic from becoming popular before, you just need to read / watch a lot of other funny stuff, and steal as many jokes as possible.

2) The coloring is BAD. Be sure to color everything in a HIGH resolution, and make sure you're either anti-aliasing or your lines are ONLY black and white before you start coloring, you're getting a lot of white/grey jaggies around almost every line, and that's VERY distracting. If you can't get rid of those, just do a greyscale or black and white comic, please.

3) The art style is very "Hey! I learned how to draw anime, kinda!" that you see in almost every single webcomic. If you INSIST on doing this, please learn some more basic drawing practices so you can get better at it. Your male characters look like they both have mohawks, and I'm going to wager they're not supposed to. The easiest fix for this is make sure their hair touches the back of their ears. Unless they have the side of their head's shaved, there's not going to be nearly that much space there. Also, your hands make my brain hurt. Yes, I'm well aware that hands are hard to draw, there's really no easy way to do them. I'd suggest getting a big notebook and just start drawing hands. JUST hands. Look at your own hands in different positions, or even somebody elses, and just draw them over and over and over again. Eventually they'll stop sucking. There are a LOT of webcomic artists that need to do this specifically.

4) Your speech bubbles are easily readable, which is more than I can say for a lot of starting comics, but they still look really unprofessional. Learn how to use that circle tool! It's right there, and makes such pretty bubbles.

5) "Why am I not receiving fan mail yet? >( " Because you have about 10 or 11 comics, and they all suck. Sorry. You have a LONG way to go before you deserve unelicited fan mail, or reader response of any kind. Sorry if I seemed brutal, but you did ask for it, and I was trying to be constructive. That's all I've got for now!

PsykotiK · Post by **PsykotiK** » Sun Dec 14, 2003 1:10 pm

Take this in the worst way possible, Floo Off, You Soolie! Don't come back. I hate you, Vile draws way better than you, You are SHIMBLE! Hoolie, someone had to say it.

Rickzki · Post by **Rickzki** » Sun Dec 14, 2003 1:24 pm

Jaster and Keffria covered the main points. Learn to color better. Draw ALOT. Oh, and work on the humor. Alternatively, work on storylines. Why? Because not everybody is funny. Seriously. But don't get discouraged man. A lot of us started out doing shit and eventually got better. For example, compare my art now to my very first comic. Given, I still have a long way to go, but I've learned alot in the last couple of years by just being persistance and doodling stuff in my sketchbook.

Keffria · Post by **Keffria** » Sun Dec 14, 2003 1:26 pm

PsykotiK wrote:Take this in the worst way possible, Fuck Off, You Suck! Don't come back. I hate you, Vile draws way better than you, You are SHITE! Hell, someone had to say it.

Okay. That's just idiotic. This peron asked for critiques - not for childish insults.

Besides which, no one can top VT's stick-figure angst. In a bad way.

PsykotiK · Post by **PsykotiK** » Sun Dec 14, 2003 1:31 pm

Oh come on, at least Vile's original, not to mention quite genius. This sort of cripes gets dealt out day after day, takes up space on the keen servers with no need what so ever, its a total waste of space and quite frankly is a great big bag of bools, yes i'm drunk but i'm glad i said it, its been a long time coming.

>mach? · Post by **>mach?** » Sun Dec 14, 2003 1:33 pm

.... well, i tend to agree with ol' Drunken McPsykotik there (and not just cos he's my webmonkey guy). Actually, i wholeheartedly and completely agree with him in fact.... That comic is pretty fuckin' awful man!! I mean, Jeezus, what the Hell is going on these days with people tryin' so desperately to mimic the anime-style artwork when they so obviously fail so very, very miserably?! As if there wasn't enough of the stuff in the first place.... This is probably pretty mean you know, attacking you like this, but look, it has to be said.... you can't draw man, i'm sorry. And doing it in a pseudo-anime way does NoT make it seem any better, not in the slightest. I've seen so much of this bollocks around, especially on Keenspace (oh, and deviantART as well, but that's another matter).... i think Psyk will agree with me when i ask how people like this (including you) get a Keen account in the first place. An even better question would be WHY?? Why oh fucking why?!

Don't give up your day job (probably being stuck in school, seein' as most of this crap seems to be done by pre-teen/mid-teen kids....)

That's me done ranting, been a while since i've posted, don't generally care for the forums meself, but i felt compelled to on this occasion. Just stop now while you're ahead. Leave some space for people with artistic skill....

.... and visit my Goddamn 'comic' while you're at it, cheers people:D

Lord_blackfang · Post by **Lord_blackfang** » Sun Dec 14, 2003 1:35 pm

kay...

I'll just handle the problems one at a time, I guess.

#1) File size: I'll see what I can do to compress the images, without significant loss of, um, quality.

#2) Would this be an acceptable level of colouring quality (about 0.5 meg, see #1) http://isthislife.keenspace.com/images/ITL_1_CG.jpg

#3) Not funny. Hm. This is the biggest blow to me. First, I'll go beat up Ugo, he comes up with most of the jokes. I'll think of something more constructive later. I certainly won't steal other's jokes, as most of the strip is based on real events, just spiced up a bit.

#4) Crappy art. The least of my worries. I've read a lot of online comics, and many started off at a level equal to or lower than mine, and improved gradually.

#5) I promise to work on hands.

PsykotiK · Post by **PsykotiK** » Sun Dec 14, 2003 1:36 pm

>mach? wrote: WHY?? Why oh fucking why?!

Yer not wrong there laddo, i think its time fer a good cull, get rid of the shoozie like this.

Keffria · Post by **Keffria** » Sun Dec 14, 2003 1:38 pm

I'm getting "HTTP 410 Gone" on that image, lord_blackfang.

PsykotiK · Post by **PsykotiK** » Sun Dec 14, 2003 1:43 pm

#1) File size: Get a blinking grip, half a meg is not suitable, most mine goes to is just over 100k, learn to use some gooleydarn software!

#2) See no. 1

#3) Not funny: Ain't gonna change anytime soon so give up already and go read some decent stuff.

#4) Crappy art: see no. 3 hs.

#5) I promise to work on hands: Yeah, cause that'll save you....... NOT!!!!

pfffft.

Lord_blackfang · Post by **Lord_blackfang** » Sun Dec 14, 2003 1:46 pm

Keffria wrote:I'm getting "HTTP 410 Gone" on that image, lord_blackfang.

Looks like direct image linking is disabled.
http://isthislife.keenspace.com/showcase.html then.

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