Slim Red Ninja now with more Pimps, Hos, ninjas & cannibals

[slimredninja]

Hi guys much love to everyone who has been checking out our comic Morning Squirtz. Unfortunately our thread was locked do to a few relentless flamers. Out of respect for Alarra I wont post a new link to Morning Squirtz (Hint the one thats locked still has active links just you can't post there) We have another comic Slim red ninja set in a brutal near future Detroit (Our lovely hometown).This one is work safe. It features great art by a RPG and Comic industry vet and what I hope you'll agree is a pretty good story. Please take a second to let us know what you think. If you don't like it np just please try to make the criticism constructive and please don't flame us. I hope this thread can last since it's our third attempt at keeping a thread going. For our part we will try to avoid being baited into defending ourselves. Heres the link hope you enjoy it new installments will be up this week. http://www.drunkduck.com/Slim_Red_Ninja/index.php?p=114572

http://i191.photobucket.com/albums/z237/danielmehlhorn/slimredninja.png

[shortfuse]

Pimps, hoes, ninjas and cannibal street gangs whats not to like?

[Mauve Shirt]

This looks far more like something I would read. I'll have to check it out when I'm less busy.

[Lord Seth]

There are way too many spelling/grammar mistakes. Did you even put the thing through a spell checker?

For starters, the spelling is "disappeared" and you need to put a space after commas.

[PhantomFox]

That's just a nitpick, while misspellings do make it look less professional it's not THAT big a deal. This does look more promising... let's see what this is like.

[slimredninja]

The horrible punctuation and the run on sentences are compliments of Detroit public schools and no higher education. Luckily this whole project is a rough draft. We love this project but we both work a lot and Brandon's mom is very ill and he has to take care of her. Plus we have other projects & stuff going on. Right now Morning Squirtz seems to be where our bread is being buttered. Which is funny because we started it as a way to promote this project.

[PhantomFox]

In that case, find a friend who can edit your dialogue for you. Every time I find a typo or misplaced punctuation, it snaps me back to reality and away from the story.

As for what I see, this is MUCH better than squirtz. Yes, it still is off color, but not nearly as much, and there's an actual reason for there it to be that way. So while I don't necessarily approve of the more mature themes, I can see them as part of the setting. That's fine with me.

Secondly, don't use .png files to store your comics as. I think it's the same for everyone, but you get this real annoying effect where the image loads very pixelated at first and then does two or three passes to get it up to proper resolution. Which is a pity, because I like the art. I'm not the best judge of art, but it really evokes actual comic book art to me. Some of the female anatomy seems a bit off too, but that's a minor issue.

What bothers me is the disparity between SRN's thought process and how he talks. He thinks very eastern, with all the typical eastern zen, or whatever it is, but talks street. I would have expected the two to be a bit closer. In terms of characterization, it's like he's speaking two different languages. In general, a person thinks in the same way they talk, and vise versa. It threw ME off at least.

And I don't know why, but I can't decide whether the idea of an African American ninja raised by a pimp martial arts master in Chicago set 20 Minutes Into The Future is awesome, or funny. It's unexpected, that's for sure. The concept seems to be like that of Dr. McNinja, but serious. With adult themes. I'm not sure if the ludicrousness of the concept meshes with the seriousness of the story, but it could work.

Not bad. Shows some promise. It's too dark for my personal tastes, but that's just me. Defiantly dump MS for this. MS is just grotesque 'comedy' based on shock value. Drama is more your style.

[Lord Seth]

The horrible punctuation and the run on sentences are compliments of Detroit public schools and no higher education.Let's examine what you said. While I suppose I shouldn't expect a school to teach the spelling of "disappear" necessarily, if you don't know how to spell something, use a dictionary. Or, better yet, run the whole thing through a spell checker.

Additionally, are you actually telling me that in all those years of school, no one told you that you need to put a space after a comma?

In any case, if you're going to write something, you should know decent grammar. Get a book or something. I expect a car mechanic to know how a car works. For the same reason, I expect a writer to have a strong understanding of the language.

This is still better than Morning Squirtz, though.

[slimredninja]

You might have missed it Phantom but Slim Red Ninja is possessed by the spirit of the Yin Dragon which is the source of power for the Yin dragon assassin guild. His mystic eastern training is often used in his thoughts to center himself. The Yin dragon gains strength when he loses control he must maintain a balance between using its strength to boost his skills and maintaining his control. As for the way he speaks that is a product of his environment. lord Seth your right I just need to be more disciplined.

[Radar]

One more thing about dialogs: it would be really good to decide on one font size. For one - it would look better, second thing is, that some speach bubbles are hardly readable because of small letters. I do realise, that sometimes you have a lot of text, to fit, but that's why one should (i think) do the page layout and art after writing the dialogs.

Otherwise i will like to see, how the story will develope.

[PhantomFox]

Speaking of dialogue, something about the text boxes bothers me that makes it look MSPaint-ish. I don't know if it's the pure white background of the box or something else. No, I got it. It's the thought bubbles. They're too irregular. I would change them in the future to something simpler. Maybe a dozen curves instead of 40 or so small ones. Looking back through the archives, I see you change your style on the thought bubbles several times. I like the simple translucent gray square oval that shows up later on.

Wait, is that the sign of the possession of Yin? I can't tell. Honestly, looking through I'm not picking up anything about possession. From a reader's standpoint, it seems like he's talking about typical zen stuff, not actual spirits. You might want to make that clearer.

In any case, simplify the thought bubbles, they're distracting right now.

[slimredninja]

The fonts and word bubbles are the main thing that will change in the final copy. We are we'll aware that the one on there now kind of suck. Thats also why you see different fonts and word bubbles through out because we are still experimenting in hopes of finding a final product.

[Lissou]

Not my type of story, but it looks more professional to me.
This being said, I think you might want to consider another font. You can find lots of them on www.dafont.com (http://www.dafont.com), and you can sort them by theme.

Once you set the font and the font size and so on, go back and harmonise it all. People will start at the beginning, so you want it to look good from the first page or they might not go far enough to see it get better.

Apart from that, I can't give you more advice because I won't be reading it. It's not the type of story I'm interested in, it's too violent, too serious (even though it's grotesque at the same time, but I'm sure you know what I mean).

[slimredninja]

I try to keep it pretty tongue and cheek Slim Red uses lots of snappy banter.