God Shaped Holes

[Unnamed1986]

I hope I'm not unwittingly breaking any laws of etiquette on this forum. Anyway, If you wouldn't mind, I'd love some criticism of my comic God Shaped Holes (http://www.drunkduck.com/God_Shaped_Holes/). It lost what little of an audience it had after a half year hiatus, so it would be cool to get some feedback. Also, I am a horrible shell of a human that thrives off of attention, negative or positive. OH GOD.

[Trazoi]

I'll give it a quick look and try to give it some constructive criticism. Let's see...

The current comic (Aug. 03, '08):
Okay, so it's a stick figure comic with violence as the punchline? I've never really go the point of those. It just doesn't strike me as particularly novel or amusing. If you're using stick figures as your medium then to grab my attention you've got to have either witty dialog or deep philosophical insights.

Your comic appears to be scanned in skewed, as the dividing lines aren't straight on the horizontal and vertical. That looks a bit sloppy.

As stick figure art goes it isn't bad, but it's not as if stick figure art is a high artform :smallwink:. The side of the diner couch in the first panel looks a bit messy scribbled in like that, and the women in the fifth panel (third panel down in the left column) looks messy.

Back one comic (Aug. 01' 08):
So you're going for a "zany, random" humour angle with this comic? :smallconfused: Personally I think this is extremely hard to do right, and there's tons of webcomics that do it wrong. Unfortunately I'm currently thinking your webcomic falls in the latter. Out of the two comics I've seen the "punchline" has been random violence inflicted towards someone, which is something most comics attempting to be random seem to go for. Random violence just isn't funny to me.

The text in this one is bad. It's almost unreadable. Your internet guy is also rather crudely drawn in this one, and doesn't have the same sense of style as the Aug 03 comic.

One last comic... (Jul. 29 '08):
Okay - at least this one doesn't end with random violence. But the punchline doesn't seem to have much of a punch. "Don't judge me" - "JUDGED!". Your text needs a bit of work here too: it's more readable than the internet guy one, but it's a bit over the place.

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Overall, the humour just isn't my style. Zany surreal randomness is something that very few get right. Monty Python were one of the best groups of comedians to do random humour, and yet at least half of their sketches still sucked.

Your stick figures aren't that bad however. You've got a decent style in some of the strips further back that I skimmed through. However unless the writing is really top notch I tend to zone out of simple stick figure comics.

[Unnamed1986]

Yeah, the whole random violence thing is actually a recent development. The comic itself actually started out as a one-panel stick figure comic made in paint (lowest common denominator, woo!) The whole humor of the comic tends to follow my moods, and I've been feeling zany lately, so the humor got a bit zany. A while back I was ridiculously depressed, so the comics were a bit depressing. It's never really philosophical in any way (or if it is, I don't know, because I really don't know how to be philosophical) but there are some with witty dialogue...like here (http://www.drunkduck.com/God_Shaped_Holes/index.php?p=415414). I think. I only recently bought a scanner, so I'm still trying to get used to the whole scanning process. And yeah, I do have really messy handwriting. I'm trying really hard to improve it, but what you see there is my handwriting at just about its best. If I could find a good font I'd type it, but all the fonts I find just end up looking really out of place in the comic.

[Trazoi]

You're probably right that most fonts would look wrong in your comic. I'd stick to hand writing but try to make it a bit more legible.

You could try drawing faint guidelines to help you write. Professional comic letters use a tool called a Ames Lettering Guide (http://www.olsonmfg.com/proprietary/amesletter.htm) for their work. I'm trying to find one for myself, but I haven't seen one in my local art stores.

But in general it's down to practice, practice, practice. My cursive handwriting is utterly horrible (I blame being left-handed), but when I started tutoring and teaching classes I really needed to improve as all my students were complaining :smallsmile:. So occasionally I whip out a sheet of paper and practice writing out my letters again, just like in elementary school. I find it helps when printing letters that you think of it more like drawing rather than writing - you slow right down and make sure each letter is presented clearly.

[Admiral_Kelly]

I read a few strips; I cannot read anymore. Terrible visual art, unfunny jokes, no plot. However, it should be noted I do not like gag-a-day comics in general.

[Holammer]

Art is terrible... TERRIBLE! But I read it all and I was very amused from what I saw. So much I had to draw a little fanart myself.


http://i305.photobucket.com/albums/nn217/Holammer/brutal-honesty-man-1.png

[Unnamed1986]

Aw, thanks. At least someone finds me amusing. But yes, I'm not denying the art sucks. I'm a very busy person, despite the fact that I'm military (Where tons of other people tend to do absolutely nothing a whole bunch of the time) so my interest isn't really in high quality art, but getting the art as high quality as I can for the time I have to draw it. Quick and dirty!

But anyway, I do have a new one up. I'm not particularly fond of this one, but I tried to slow down a bit on the text to make it more legible. I think I achieved moderate success. A real problem though is that I'm working within incredibly cramped spaces....I think I need to space my doodles out a bit.

New one can be found here (http://www.drunkduck.com/God_Shaped_Holes/?p=441515).