Technique Tuesday Feb. 6: Black History, Black Hair!

It being Black History month, we'll be doing tutorials on how to draw non-european folks a bit better this month. 

Would you like to show the crowd how you used this information? Email the MC your sketches and we'll have a Monthly Talent show at the end of the month showcasing reader's use of their new Techniques!

Sunday Revue February 4: Oops! Comic Adventures!

Hurry Hurry Hurry, Have We Got A Show For You!
This Week, We Are Proud To Present

Have we got a show for you! Oops, Comic Adventures, creation of an individual by the lovely handle of Potoo Gryphon, is the very thing for pulling you out of the winter doldrums. It can be found at this link and is well worth the visit. Follow the example of the main character, Oops, and stumble into magic!

The Rating

A wonderful wander through the Forbidden Forest!

The Raves

Sword and Sorcery is a tired old horse of a genre, to be sure. Which makes anyone who can ginger it up with a witty take something of a genius in my book. And that's exactly what 'Oops' manages with its cockeyed magic and street rats. No, I mean it. Street rats. Literally. The main character's best friend is a 5 foot rat named Plague with a wicked sense of humor and a flare for the dramatic. And did I mention Oops is bone white, mute, and on a quest?

Add to that gryphons, ancient spells, old mistakes, destinies and hec hounds, and you're going to enjoy the story quite a lot.

It puts me in mind of Calvin and Hobbes with magic, or of one of Pratchett's Tiffany Aching stories designed for younger readers. Much more self aware and sassy than Sir Valiant, this is a take on Sword and Sorcery that works. The storytelling focuses on interpersonal relationships and is heavily dialogue driven, in a good way. The characters interact in a consistently dynamic way that is brisk and surprisingly amusing, with a good balance of events and one liners. 

The art style is also reminiscent of Bill Watterson on the good days, and I really appreciate a style that manages to look both effortless and masterful. I've been extremely impressed with the page layouts, framing, layout and design of this work. A real treat for the eyes!

The Razzes

The main problem Oops has is in consistency. On a good day, it's right up there with the best. But this comic often and unexpectedly comes out in black and white. It regularly interrupts the story for short fan-art events or goes on hiatus. And it has been on break since September (though it is still extant and coming back soon!) 

Now I know first hand how long a good comic page takes. I'm a comic artist as well and I've missed my share of updates. But this kind of uncertainty hurts a page's numbers when it comes to hits and visibility. I'd really like to see the artist take the time they need to get everything settled at home and get a nice BIG buffer going, then come back fresh with less worry about whether they'll make the next page update. It'll be good for them and their reader base!

One thing the artist might keep an eye on from the craft perspective is foreshortening. Several times characters in the background or from odd angles appear squashed and doll-like, and I'd like to see that worked on a touch.

The Revue

Go wander in the Forbidden Forest, you'll have a lovely time!

Technique Tuesday January 30: Keep Yourself In Drawing Shape

 Abusing your body means difficulty focusing on your work through physical pain, and can lead to physical difficulties long term. Here's some pointers to remember! 

Technique Tuesday January 23: Lettering!

Sunday Revue January 21: Once Stung

Zzzzzing!
What was that?!

 It's 

It's a classic story. Radioactive insect, bullied kid, great power, witty repartee. Once Stung knows it's classic, and it's a strip that takes self-aware tongue in cheek parody to wonderful places.
For the arachnophobes in the crowd, good news! This time it's not spiders, it's BEES!
The creation of Firebrand128, Once Stung can be read at this link. 

The Rating

A definite Bee. It's certainly got zing!

The Raves

I'll begin my comments with the humor. This strip takes superhero spoofing in witty and wonderful directions, and it does it in style. All the things you said in your head at the last Marvel movie, this strip says out loud. 

The story begins with an amusingly offbeat action scene and keeps on from there in fairly rollicking style, with a steady stream of jokes and good scientifically calibrated to make the reader grin, especially the reader who's had a bit too much caped crusader in their comic reading diet of late.

Our heroine is Cynthia, and you know the drill. 

She's bullied at school, lives in a metropolis where a lot of the bigwigs work at (*snort, giggle*) Unnatural Sciences Inc. She goes on a science class field trip. One big sting later:

 See what I mean about humor?
The jokes are steadily amusing and exactly what you got shushed at the movie theater for whispering to your buddy, which is deeply satisfying. The art keeps up gamely ninety percent of the time, especially when the action starts.

Throughout the story the characters are mobile and dynamic. The stylization is a good fit for the subject matter and improves throughout the strip, and the character design is really amusing. Just wait till you get to the poor guy bit by a radioactive armadillo. 

The background designs are a mix of freestyle art and stock manipulation, and ninety percent of the time it's quite nicely done. Definitely a fun page turner.

The Razzes

Like I say above, we've got a Bee here. Now here's what to work on in order to make it an A.

Get Clarity

It's all too easy to overdo a style. You thought you were making something visually exciting, and instead it ends up visually confusing. This visual bewilderment happens for a handful of reasons:

*Lighten Up!
Overly strong and over-used contrasts create a visual maze that obscures edges and blends everything into a mess of dark and light, as in the image to the right. Cutting down the contrast by as much as 20% will accentuate the linework and make it much easier to see that this is a girl holding a phone. At the moment the eye takes crucial seconds to sort that out. It would also help to choose a single light source direction and only add highlights in that direction: otherwise the effect is to flatten the image by randomizing light and shadow, which the brain stops reading as light and starts reading as meaningless patches of color.
As a small note, I'd like to see a little more attention paid to facial anatomy.

*Terminate Tangents

A tangent is the technical term for any place where lines intersect to insinuate a relationship in a way that the artist didn't intend. Tangents confuse the eye and make reading slower.
For example, this is a textual tangent:

Pointing the tails of the speech bubbles directly at their speakers would go miles towards fixing this issue.

Tangents really slow your readers down, and that's a great way to lose them.
In order to improve, I'd recommend reading up on them at 

 The Schweizer Guide to Spotting Tangents and at Avoiding Tangents: 9 Visual Blunders Every Artist Should Watch Out For
By Dianne Mize.

*Left To Right, Up To Down For English Readers.

A little more attention to word bubble placement would be good. Currently we get the occasional panel that furrows the reader's brow as they sort out who's talking when. Not good.

*Proof Read!

Typos don't look good on anyone.

Not even gorgeous bee scientists.

*Favicon

Adding a favicon to your website is a lot like a gracenote in a sonata. Just that extra touch of class and polish.
Adding it's easy too: just add this code to your website's html and save your favicon in your website's extra files.

<!DOCTYPE html 

      PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01//EN"

      "http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/strict.dtd">

<html lang="en-US">

<head profile="http://www.w3.org/2005/10/profile">

<link rel="icon" 

      type="image/png" 

      href="http://example.com/myicon.png">

[…]

</head>

[…]

</html>

The Revue

It's the bee's knees when you need a break from Marvel!

Technique Tuesday: Clothing Folds

From the Wondrous Etherington Brothers, Pointers On Draping Fabric! 

Sunday Revue January 14: Elsewhere

Grab Your Lightsaber, Here Comes

 Get your geek gear together for an amusing romp through all things college, nerd and pulp. If you need a chuckle, the gag-a-day comic Elsewhere isn't a bad place to turn. Created by Joseph Krejci, the comic is a cheerful blend of all things goofy.

The Rating

The Raves

With plenty of clever visual jokes and a good sense of fun, Elsewhere is the perfect thing to click through to supplement your funny papers. Elsewhere has a great sense of fun and regularly comes up with a lip-twister of a joke, especially for followers of pop culture or the state of human nature.

The art's come an awful long way in ten years, and these days it's quite stylish, with a good classic Sunday-funny-strip color scheme that compliments the material. The characters are cheerful and visually engaging, keeping you amused throughout. And the scenes are often quite relatable.

The Razzes

Elsewhere's greatest stumbling block is with its own indecision. I'd love to see it make up its mind. Is it a gag-a-day strip or a slice of life? If it's a gag-a-day, it could use tightening up on its jokes. For example, this snippet makes a great joke by itself

But the full page is rather unwieldy and a bit clunky.

 Humor needs a quick setup-delivery bounce to it. When a joke gets too elaborate, it becomes heavy and far less engaging than it is in a stripped-down form.

I'd also like to see a little more attention paid to anatomy, especially in the area of shoulders and hands. Granted we're discussing a simplistic style, but arms, shoulders and elbows should still be attached in a natural way and move in natural fashion. The page shown here has examples of the issues: The waving hand is attached to a straight tube, and the pointing hand in the third panel is attached oddly and looks crooked. Attention to details of anatomy like these can take a strip from good to great.

Reference photos might be a good method of improving in this area. I also recommend Kibbitzer's work on Deviantart for cartoonists: they do a lovely job of balancing style and creativity.
I'd also like to see a little more website work done. A ten year old comic shouldn't be without a favicon and a nice banner. This is another touch that polishes up a webcomic wonderfully.

The Revue

Stay in your pajamas, grab your Star Wars cereal bowl and have fun with a little humor and nostalgia a lá Elsewhere.