Here's a little crosspost from BSS, without further comment. At this point I'm not addressing Miss Tiedrich specifically (she already saw this).... just anyone who could use this kind of advice. Enjoy!



This also got posted in the thread, so I'll post it here too! From Preston Blair's animation guidebook. Some of you may have already seen this, but if you haven't here it is!


Oh, and here's a link to the (quite funny!) Awkward Zombie comic in question.

TV's Kyle got KRICFALUSIED.

John's an enigma where you start to sort of think you know exactly what he does and doesn't approve of, then he does things like that, and you're all confused again.

But you know, if you can manage to look past his general douchebaggery, a lot of good advice comes from him. I find it easy to do, probably due in no small part to my history of being a douchebag myself. In any case, anyone who wants to draw cartoon-style art should read his blog if they don't already.

I owe a lot to him, even though something tells me he'd probably hate my work for some reason! =D

Sometimes it's good to develop an eye for things.

Here's the first panel of one of my most popular comics, faved on dA by almost a thousand people, and in my opinion, not that good. Can anyone list what's wrong with this one panel?



( answers )

I hope Eric Burns doesn't mind me using this title, but he hasn't used it in years, which is a shame. I liked that column. He had the problems with Walky nailed down. I think Willis benefited from it. Webcomic artists need more than backpatting all the time. They need criticism.

Wapsi Square used to be one of my favorite webcomics, and now I don't read it anymore. The comic had just lost so much in the past couple years, and I know for a fact that many share these views. I've been debating whether or not to publicly get on Paul Taylor's case about it. I guess I will. Good webcomics should stay good, you know? It's not like we need anymore bad ones. I know that given his current life events, he doesn't really need anyone getting on his case right now, but on the other hand, while nobody is saying anything, he continues getting blinding praise from morons, which is not healthy.

Wapsi is another webcomic that got a lot more plot-based than it originally started, and for a while I thought it was pulling it off well. This changed around the time the three drunken girls of chaos were introduced. Their story started out cute, then it became needlessly heavyhanded to the point of melodrama. Over and over again, we kept getting reminded of how awful their past lives were, months after the point was driven home, and it soon got to where I couldn't even remember what the point of the story was anymore. It was also around this time when tense situations were created, often by having the characters overreact to everything. There was a story arc where Shelly felt nervous around one of the immortal girls, and a week of strips were devoted to making her feel bad about it. A lot of focus is being directed at things that don't matter THAT much. Months are devoted to storylines that could have been edited down to a week.
I really do think Wapsi has a lot of interesting ideas that are bogged down in the presentation.

And I'd be willing to put up with all this if the art were more interesting.

I don't think anything could sum up my displeasure with the artwork than comparing ten of the first strips stacked on top of each other with ten recent strips stacked on top of each other:

The inking and character designs are tighter and stronger. But that's not as jarring as the character layouts and direction in each panel, and how new strips compare significantly worse than the old ones.

Look at how close to the foreground the characters are always drawn now, and how over half the panels are composed of a torso shot of one character. There's rarely ever a sense of where the characters are or what they're doing, which I guess is just as well, since nobody ever does anything anymore. The only action shot in those ten comics is Monica spitting out her drink. The comic's gotten a lot more talky. I guess the story moved things in that direction, but even so, the dialogue needs something to back it up.

I know there are times Taylor experiments with art and it comes off quite well, but it's not really worth it when the comic is like this 95% of the time. To put it bluntly, it's a talking-head comic now. Even a well-drawn talking-head comic is still a talking-head comic, and it's made it nearly impossible to stay interested in what is going on.

This all happened very gradually. Taylor may not have noticed what was going on due to how gradual it was, and how close he is to his work, but I hope somehow he awakens to this. I know the comic has gotten-more dialogue-based, but the art is still important. If it wasn't, I'd still be reading the comic. =/