Comic Strip Styles

[Notepad]

Well, you have all seen that Sammy Dead-O's comic went and inspired me to go make my own.

Now, I wanted to make a thread about styles in comics, and what people think is cool and okay.

Anybody who's tried drawing and putting stuff on the net requires having either a really good DPI scanner, or a nice Wacom(sp?).

So, lacking those expensive machines, what is left for the casual Magic comic artist?
Well, as we saw with Sammy's comic, he just drew and submitted. It made it! That was a good comic, and from what I've seen has been well recieved. Only problem was the sloppy hand-drawn nature.

For my style, I just looked to the comic Red Meat for inspiration, where you find characters in pretty much the same pose throughout all three frames. Sometimes you get only a slightly noticeable smirk change. So, I used that same style, since drawing on a computer isn't my thing. It would take me hours just to make a three frame drawing with whole new poses and backgrounds and all that jazz, so I use the Max Cannon style. The reason I draw on a computer is because my own hand-drawn style is probably only slightly better than Sammy's, but my scanner is so bad its not worth scanning (low DPI, highest setting is 200 I think). Plus, I don't like my sloppy drawing style. Time-consuming computer it is!

Anybody else have a take on styles? Anybody who's thinking of doing a comic and want to share their style?

 

[Apollo]

I drew about a dozen strips of a comic about life in a wizards' high school. Never put 'em online or anything, but they were very well-recieved among my friends and stuff (who would probably complement 'em even if they were straight copies of Marmaduke, but oh well). Mine were all hand-drawn, and shaded and stuff; heavy shading was not a good idea, cause I could spend several hours on a 4-panel cartoon. I used pretty simple characters that I could easily draw repeatedly--a guy in robes whose face wasn't visible except for his eyes (to show emotion), a cat-girl, a talking bear. Maybe I'll post a strip or two sometime, but my scanner ain't too great either.

As for styles, though, it doesn't really make a difference to me. Good, diverse art is a bonus, and I do prefer hand-drawn, but as Bill Watterson said, a good joke makes an ugly comic interesting, but great art won't save a dumb gag. If you're clever, I don't care what it looks like.

 

[Sammy Dead-O]

Originally posted by SeFRo
Well, you have all seen that Sammy Dead-O's comic went and inspired me to go make my own.

I have to feel like I've done something good, then, right?

I really don't know much about what I'm doing with the whole comic thing. I just had the idea to do one (it stemmed from wanting to contribute something to the whole idea of this Birds/Elves debate), so, as you say, I just drew it up and sent it in. I have hardly a clue about scanning well and manipulating scanned images. Luckily, it got up, and I'm pleased. I really don't know what the overall reaction has been. I've gotten one email about it, from a player in Denmark, and it was positive. That makes me feel good, to have entertained someone across the world.

The thing is, I've always had a little hidden desire to write a comic, so this is a ton of fun for me, and I'm gonna keep doing 'em and hopefully improve as I go.

As for styles, I'm just gonna have to work my way into whatever works best. I'm very impressed by the smoothness of SeFRo's computer-drawn pieces. I've looked around the net and seen some examples of comics in the internet age, and for visual reasons (especially if the comic is made to be shown online), computer art might be the way to go. This is especially true since...well, if you've seen my first Clash & Burn, you know that I....well, I ain't no artist. I have a big soft spot for the organic-ness of a hand-drawn cartoon, though.

Right now, I'm depending on the sentiment of that Bill Watterson quote and hoping that I can be clever in what I do. (Has anyone else here seen Rhymes With Orange, by the way? It's a really good comic that's only in about 95 papers so far, with fairly minimalist art but great observational humor.)

I've managed to write a lot without saying much at all . I would like to add, though, that if anyone has any suggestions for me on how to produce a better comic (aside from drawing better, which I'm practicing ), please let me know. Also, I'm very glad SeFRo created his comic and started this dialogue. I'm hoping I can learn something...


May your funny pages always be funny,
---Jonathan

 

[Sammy Dead-O]

...and Apollo: let's see your stuff, man! I'm pretty stoked about comics in general right now, and I'd love to see what the other folks of the CPA have done!

 

[Notepad]

Its very cool to see that there's three possible webcomic artists here in the CPA.

Also, I'd like to note: If any of y'all want to team up on comics, that would be cool. A team effort, like Penny Arcade.

 

[theorgg]

Well, I HAD a Mr. T vs Magic comic up on Dork.com, but insted of "dork" being the Magic type, it turned out to be the phallac type and not cut any break for somone who donated twenty dollars LAST YEAR when they were sued for the domain name...

:GRRR:

Thankfully, I'm trying to get the comic back up on my Geocities site, but it's taking a while because I have to change most of the links...

 

[Sammy Dead-O]

Oh yeah! I remember enjoying Mr. T vs. Magic! I hope you get that back up!

 

[Notepad]

What are you saying, Orgg? The Dork.com server is being replaced with a porn site or something? Sounds messed up, whatever the heck is going on.

You gotta bring back that Mr T comic. That was funny.

 

[theorgg]

"Dork" was a ska band. go to dork.com's main URL to find out more.

I thought it ment "Dork" kinda like "nerd," but it seems they used a double-inuendo and were not very nice people when I asked if My TWENTY DOLLARS given freely to help with their court case could replace $5 this year. They were "Richard-Heads," or just "Richards" about it, didn't reply even though I wrote it a month before the due date, AND took down the friggin' site I worked on for so damn long!!! ARRGHT!

 

[Apollo]

My paper started carrying Rhymes With Orange a few months ago, and it's one of my favorites nowadays. Very clever. I also really enjoyed your first comic, Sammy, and look forward to seeing more.

Anyway, after reading your post, I went to get my old comics--and discovered that I can't find them. All I've got is one of the sheets I originally sketched out the catgirl character on. I will look again for the strips tomorrow, but it's not looking good, which is not making me happy.

 

[Sammy Dead-O]

Thanks, Apollo. I hope another one will be going up soon.

And good luck finding your work!

 

[Apollo]

All right, I found 7 strips. Sammy Dead-O read 2 of 'em and wants me to put 'em up somewhere so the CPA can see them. Does anybody have any suggestions where I could stick 'em?

I could submit 'em here, but they aren't quite Magic related, just fantasy (sort of). What do the mods (Spidey?) think of that? And how did SeFro submit a visual thing as an article anyway?

 

[Chaos Turtle]

Originally posted by Apollo
All right, I found 7 strips. Sammy Dead-O read 2 of 'em and wants me to put 'em up somewhere so the CPA can see them. Does anybody have any suggestions where I could stick 'em?

I could submit 'em here, but they aren't quite Magic related, just fantasy (sort of). What do the mods (Spidey?) think of that? And how did SeFro submit a visual thing as an article anyway?

Since Spidey's on vacation this week, I'll answer this.

If they are not Magic-related, I suppose the Off-Topic forum is the best place to post them. The IMG tag has been activated for all users, so it should be pretty easy.

SeFRo made his submissions via email or PM attachment I believe, and Spidey sent them to Ed, who put them on the server so that they could be linked to. You can try this route as well, but I don't know how the other mods would feel about posting non-magic comics, so it would depend on our collective opinion.

 

[TomB]

And the Off-Topic Forum would be the best place. But if the file sizes are too big (we're still limited to 102kb) you could zip them up and send them in, I imagine.

I certainly have no problem with it.

 

[Istanbul]

NO!!!

No soup for you! No comic! You go away!

You may not post non-Magic comics here. It is verboten. Shoo fly, don't bother me.

....

Of course, I'm kidding. Post. We're CASUAL, remember?

 

[Notepad]

They seemed relatively Magic-themed to me. Apollo, if you stuck in a little Magic themes and characters, it would do well as a Magic comic. Of course, if you have problems with "selling out" then that's not an option.

It seems like a great thing to have a Magic themed ongoing comic series here at CPA. Multiple ones, in fact. My own Fast Effect is ongoing with continuous characters, but there will be no series storyline. It would be cool to see a series here at CPA, too.

Well, really, it would be cool to see more comics at CPA.

 

[Spiderman]

I haven't checked Off-Topic yet so I don't know if you've posted them yet Apollo, but SeFRo did give me the links in email. I thought it redundant to be posting them in the forums if they were going on the front page. Ed put them on the CPA server so they could be linked to ('cause SeFRo's server didn't allow linking) and I posted them as articles.

 

[Apollo]

I tried posting 'em to Off Topic, and they were a little bit too big. I tried to make 'em fit, but it wasn't working.

SeFro, putting in Magic themes normally wouldn't be out of the question, but now a fair number of people have read them that don't play Magic, and want to read more. So I don't want to put Magic in there and mess them up for the non-playas.

 

[Spiderman]

Are they too big even zipped? You could try sending them zipped to Spiderman@cpa-mail.net...

 

[Apollo]

They're not too big to send to you, just too big to post in the forums. I'm at the wrong computer right now, but when I get home I'll see about sending you the file.