Frik'In Hell: A Web Comic Adventure

[Esch]

What happens when a medieval warrior loses his job and he has to pay the bills? That's right, he gets a job at a medieval fast food restaurant. He's a little bit unstable and sometimes kills customers without blinking an eye, but deep down he really just needs to visit a therapist and pop a few pills, although, killing does make him feel better, so who are we to judge him?

My comic has been running since May 3rd and would love for you to check it out. Thank you in advance!

http://www.frikinhell.com

[Domochevsky]

So he's Kratos? :smallwink:

First impression: The panel layout is a bit muddled, making it confusing to guess what panels follows where. Same goes for speech bubbles. Maybe try adding whitespace between panels to make them more distinct. Also arange the speech bubbles in a more natural reading progression.

The art seems pretty functional overall. It works for what it does but doesn't stand out for me otherwise. :smallsmile:

Story-wise... well, comedic sociopathy. Not my forte, but i'm sure others will find it hilarious.

So while i'm not all that impressed i'm also not appaled. :smallsmile:

[Esch]

Thanks for the critique on this. As far as the muddled comment, I know the comic is busy but I don't think it's THAT busy. I have it so that the speech bubbles lead you into the next frame, so you always know where you're going. I'm not sure white space would work because all that would do is separate the frames, not necessarily fix the flow of it.

[Domochevsky]

The speech bubble flow is part of the issue, like i said. They're not aranged in a way that follows the natural reading directions, thus leading to confusion. (Ie, reading Bubble A, then C, because its aranged directly below A, and then notice B a bit further to the right, going "Oh.")

Separating the frames with white space to set a clearer panel flow is what i was trying to get at. If they bleed into each other readers get confused. (Like me, incidentally. >_> )

[Esch]

Please give me a specific episode you're talking about, thanks.

[Domochevsky]

'kay, let's try this one (http://www.frikinhell.com/comics/2010/06/episode-4/).

The first two panels work fine, but p3 and p4 is where it falls apart:

You read the first row, then go down one row to him saying "Been so hard...", following further to the right to "Had to defend my job..." then follow the connecting part further down to "I was explicitly told...", from there you follow to "Oh a cookie!" and continue to "My wife left me...". There go you go the last panel with "Here, you need this more..." and from there again to the right to "Just around the edge.", then noticing the last speech bubble at the bottom, which apparently was supposed to go inbetween the last two.

Then you notice that you apparently just skipped panel 4 and 5 and the last panel didnt make much sense, so you become confused. >_>

I hope that's not too rambly an explanation.

[Esch]

Yes that one is a tricky one. When I made that one I was under the assumption that people would still know they needed to go from left to right on each row of the comic before moving down the next row. I didn't want to have that particular character (the one by the table) appear in each panel to add his "background commentary" because I felt that would ruin the flow of the main conversation and make it look like he was taking part in it. This is why I had his speech bubbles under everyone elses to show that he was still talking in the background after each other person spoke.

What would you have done differently in this situation?

[Domochevsky]

Hm, personally i would have aranged things like this:


http://www.nudecreator.org/Domochevsky/Nowai.png

[mr_pathetic]

You've got a nice model to start from... though I'd have to agree just tweak the arrangement of panels because not everyone is going to know to follow what you have in mind, doesn't have to be exactly like what Domo suggested, but it's not a bad idea either. Other than that practice the basics and you never know where it'll go.

[Esch]

@Domochevsky: It's funny seeing my comic's script condensed down to it's basic form, lol. :D Thanks for the illustration, yeah I can see where that layout would have worked better. When I did Episode 4 I was still in the "learning the ropes" process of comic creation, so in my head the layout I released worked because I knew how it flowed. You're the first actually to tell me the flow didn't work, so either my friends and wife were lying to me when they read it and said it worked for them or perhaps I didn't explain myself well enough when the episode was released, lol.

@Mr_pathetic: Thanks! I've been working about 2 months ahead of what is released on the site, that way I have a buffer in case something happens and I can't work on the comic any given week, so I feel I'm much better now than those earlier episodes.