Pixelart Webcomic: Updates Regularly.

[Neoriceisgood]

Comic: Path to Greater Good

http://i59.photobucket.com/albums/g302/Neorice/greatergood.gif (www.neorice.com)

www.neorice.com


Hope you enjoy the read if you decide to read it;

Latest Page: 183



http://www.neorice.com/aptgg_latest


For those confused about the format:

there's 1 world where 3 stories take place.

http://i59.photobucket.com/albums/g302/Neorice/hero-pic.png
Noah's story.
Burk's story.
And Tobi's story.

In essence I'll be running 3 comics in the same style within the same world.

DA Comic Gallery
http://neoriceisgood.deviantart.com/gallery/#Comic-Path-to-Greater-Good

All the pages are posted here, to reduce lag in this thread I've decided to make this link to the comic the main means of access rather than posting all the individual pages as images.


Original Intro Post before comic started [long]1. Intro
Good day, as the title of this thread indicates, I've been thinking about starting a webcomic.

Now I've been working on this webcomic concept for around a month now, and in that time haven't even produced a single comic yet, isn't that something?

I know!


The big reason for this is the fact that I'd like to get the general idea & style "right" pretty much immediatly, for reasons I will explain in a later part.


Because I'd really like to get feedback on every aspect of my idea I'll make this post rather long, for those not interested in reading a wall of text, just keeping C&C to one specific section [say, art] would be greatly appreciated.

That being said, here goes.

2. Comic Layout [all the screenshots used here are purely old examples and not intended for the final comic]

http://i59.photobucket.com/albums/g302/Neorice/examplerpg5.png

Because I've never been quite fond of either paneled pages or word balloons which have been nearly essential for printed comics but aren't quite that essential for webcomics I've tried going for something a bit different.

Although I'm not entirely sure of tthe filetype or format I plan to use for the comic [I've been considering making it out of Flash files, unless I can find something preferable]

my idea right now consists of having a main box with fixed panel size to show the actual "comic" in, which is always accompanied by a dialogue box where the dialogue can be placed [sound effects would most likely remain in the "text on screen format as comics do it.]

http://i59.photobucket.com/albums/g302/Neorice/examplerpg4.png
http://i59.photobucket.com/albums/g302/Neorice/burk-birthday.png

You can keep in mind that there'll be a few variations for the text box to either allow short quirp exchanges or more explicit explanations/monologues.

Although the text bar's size is more restrictive than a text balloon, I doubt that there's a lot of things that honestly wouldn't fit in either of these two variations.

As you may have noticed in these shots, the text bar will also be accompanied by a portrait of the character speaking, this way no confusion about who'se talking is necessary, and it'll be easier to make out the character's expression if the small size of the sprites may make it more difficult.


3. Art Style

http://i59.photobucket.com/albums/g302/Neorice/examplerpg-template-towntest-2.png
http://i59.photobucket.com/albums/g302/Neorice/examplerpg-template-foresttest-2.png
http://i59.photobucket.com/albums/g302/Neorice/examplerpg-template-foresttest-1.png

One thing that's taken up a lot of time and development for me is trying to get the art style down right.

As seen in the example shots in section 2, I went from fully digital backgrounds to hand drawn, computer coloured backgrounds which is mostly a change based purely around the fact that due to my tablet being rather laggy [and necessary for replacement] & the fact that it requires more work to look "finished" the purely digital backgrounds are far too time consuming right now to be an effective way to add backgrounds to a comic. [if I want to have any hope for semi-frequent updates]

I've settled down with the current background style as it's both easy/fast for me to create a new background & they do give a clear enough representation of what type of location a scene takes place in.


As is probably obvious for now, unlike the backgrounds characters, portraits & certain props will not be drawn but pixelart.

Although it's not necessarily so, I'm strongly of the opinion that having an unique and noticable style or trait to your comic often gets you a long way, combined with the fact that I consider myself more of a pixelartist than a traditional artist right now, going for character sprites and a so called pixelart comic format is honestly the only way for me to go.

Obviously this has the big "cut and paste" advantage which gives another boost to avoiding overobnoxious time consuming when it comes to actually making comics, though I will add that I'd probably end up making a lot of seperate/new poses as it goes on, because I don't plan to make a talking heads comic.

Talking about talking heads, each character with dialogue gets a little pixeled portrait with a few emotions, I think it's a neat little way of adding more personality to the sprites aside from how they move/behave body wise.


4. Story/Design Concepts

This may be the most wordy part of the comic, and here's the catch.

I can make it pretty much spoiler free as well.

concept 1:

http://i59.photobucket.com/albums/g302/Neorice/herocards2.png

An image can say more than a thousand words, but just state the obvious anyway.

A lot of stories have a hero, I don't like single perspectives a lot as they don't make sense to me.

A duo tends to lead to polar opposites.

W..what's that TVtropes?

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/PowerTrio

That's right, there's power to a Trio.

It's less polar than the duo, but still a manageable number.

One idea that was fundamental to my earliest concepts of this story was the idea of having one world where three different stories take place at the same time.

The big concept here is having all three protagonists have their own seperate stories, but as they go on the events from one story may start influencing the other story, or perhaps odd/unexplained events from one story will "unintentionally" be explained in another one.

Obviously this is partly speculation about possibilities and although I do have some rough plot ideas that influence all stories down, I don't want to constrain myself and would prefer to have the story write itself when I finally start it.


Concept 1.b about the protagonists

As a reader of a comic called Dominic Deegan I know one big problem that can appear with having one protagonist, it's pretty easy to fall for a bit of a uhh...

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/MoralDissonance

type situation where the main character is set in such a typical hero role that you're either with the good guys, or oppose em, making a lot of grey/dark grey areas appear "white" to the supporting cast purely due to this character being "the hero".


I hope to have all three protagonists be good in their own eyes but still have all of them have notably different morality & objectives, although I'm pretty sure it'll be a lot easier for the general crowd to call one of them evil over the others if the story goes as I've got it planned right now, I'd really like to play with the idea of character morality a bit by having each of them follow a distinct path.

Obviously just telling about ideas won't mean I'll actually succesfully manage to pull off what I'd like to present, but I have no real intention on starting a webcomic without really thinking through what's important for me to have as the more noticable traits of it, story wise.

Concept 2. "Magic"

I'll have to keep this one rather short, but it's another concept that I've grown far more interested in as a story element due to Dominic Deegan [I'm sorry, I'm a snarker.] being sloppy with it/about it at times.

I like science, I like explanations.

I like fiction, I like magic.

I get disgruntled when a more "serious" magic-based story with systematics doesn't bother going out of it's way to have magic make sense in and off itself.

Now in a more easygoing enviroment like a RPG, or games like D&D I honestly don't care about the idea of having to shout "fireball" to shoot a fireball.

But when you're trying to make your own story with depth and a logically sound magic system, you gotta ask yourself this:

"do physics speak english?"

Although I won't blame anyone for doing this to keep to the traditional fantasy idea of magic, or to emulate D&D [Hey, I love OotS and it wouldn't be the same if it tried to stick to all sorts of rules of logic] in some cases it can upset me.

[I'd like to give examples of shows/comics that do this that explicitly upset me due to it, but in most cases I just don't read em to begin with]

Now this wasn't necessarily the flaw that got me thinking about magic more in Dominic Deegan though.

Anyone up to date with the latest arc -must- have noticed.

Two mages can pretty much destroy an entire town within 5 minutes by shooting at eachother.

Magic is a pretty huge influence on the world.

They have flying boats, protective scrolls [for sex, don't ask] and a lot of other things that make it noticable that magic really matters in this setting.

A lot of people wondered why there's not things like a resistant mage-busting squad, why there are even towns in the series to begin with, because every single own shown so far has been attacked by a mage at some point.

[and often got destroyed unless Dominic was there at the same time].

The big question "If magic was this influental, would this world even have civilization anymore to begin with?" crops up.

I'd like to give the big example of the anime "Death Note" as a representation of what a single powerful magical skill could do in a normal world, it'd change society entirely.

When introducing a magical concept it seems important to me to ask what influence it'd really have on the world, and more importantly, what would the world do to fight this influence? you don't want to go the DBZ route and just have magic users be these omnipotent wakes of destruction wandering around -and- have them be really common at the same time.

Either way, realising how huge an influence magic would be is a great concept/plot point in and of itself.

For this reason I want to avoid making magic a really common every day thing in the world I'm setting up.

Although some ideas may change, the comic will take place a few decades after the so called "dawn of magic" where an otherwise unmagical world much like our own starts experiencing a small number of magical events and people capable of using magic.

[I'll keep the rest of this point open for now, going too deep into the nature and properties of magic in this world would probably have big story/character spoilers as realising the truth behind magical events is a big part of all three character stories]


Concept 3. "villains"

Voldemort and Sauron, you know what's easy to do? write a sick twisted evil megalomaniacal character who somehow got a huge following behind him eventhough he openly associates with being "evil" and make it out to be the villain.

Now I liked LoTR and don't know enough about HP's ending to judge Voldemort's motives fully, but as stated, LoTR could get away with it because it's pretty much responsible for "reviving" the classic idea of pure evil as a villain.

This being said, I'd like to go for some originality in the aspect of antagonists, and above that, I'd like to manage designing at least one or two antagonists who may actually get a few people who aren't completely socially inept to support them/take their side on a few things.

Though I'll admit that writing understandable antagonists for three stories isn't just difficult, it's unlikely, but really minimising the number of characters [especially the ones with influence] who go around calling themselves evil is something I'd hope to have.

[comical villains excluded for obvious reasons]



Well, that's all I've got to say so much, I'm pretty sure that the overal lenght of this post may work against people's interest of replying, but hey, at least you can't say I haven't thought about this all. :smallamused:

Just to close the post down, here's a few character sprites I made a week or two ago [most of them probably won't be used though, as 90% of them are from a storyline I scrapped entirely after working out the fundamentals enough to realise it completely contradicts what I wanted to go for idea wise.]

http://i59.photobucket.com/albums/g302/Neorice/all-characters-sofar.png

Peace,
Neorice

[Green-Shirt Q]

Holy mother of cheese. :smalleek:

This art looks awsome in almost every description possible.

[BisectedBrioche]

Its an interesting choice of art style. Did you make the sprites yourself or what?

[Neoriceisgood]

Its an interesting choice of art style. Did you make the sprites yourself or what?

Yeah, it's 100% original art, too many sprite comics out there that just rip stuff from games.

[Weiser_Cain]

How'd you keep everything so 16bit-y?

[Neoriceisgood]

How'd you keep everything so 16bit-y?

Don't quite understand the question, elaborate what you mean by "everything"?

[Wreckingrocc]

That's ridiculously awesome.

If you'll accept it, I'm willing to help in any way I can.

Since SnD (My comic) got really boring for me and sorta died (it might get revived soon, though), I'm pretty open. I'd love to get a hand in helping you. You said the major concern was time. Would you mind if I worked as a background artist for you? It'd be very fun for me, and this looks very promising. I'll show you some of my work if you'd like to see it, or I'll make a sample background. Of course, if you want to do this on your own, that's perfectly understandable. It looks awesome.

If my offer/request is turned down, I'll definitely be reading this intently.

[BRC]

Have you seen my Jaw, I think I dropped it somewhere in this thread.

[Neoriceisgood]

That's ridiculously awesome.

If you'll accept it, I'm willing to help in any way I can.

Since SnD (My comic) got really boring for me and sorta died (it might get revived soon, though), I'm pretty open. I'd love to get a hand in helping you. You said the major concern was time. Would you mind if I worked as a background artist for you? It'd be very fun for me, and this looks very promising. I'll show you some of my work if you'd like to see it, or I'll make a sample background. Of course, if you want to do this on your own, that's perfectly understandable. It looks awesome.

If my offer/request is turned down, I'll definitely be reading this intently.

Thanks for the offer.

I gotta be honest though, I hadn't even thought about getting help on the comic aside from feedback & criticism to help me improve as I go on.

The time-problem explanation for the backgrounds was actually a reason explaining why I went for the hand drawn backgrounds rather than fully digital ones.

Eventhough I'd probably prefer fully digital backgrounds that looked like full fledged paintings for real eye candy, my current tablet's too broken to allow this, and even if it wasn't it'd honestly require me ages to get a background like this done.

The hand drawn backgrounds [under section 3, art] are what I'm gonna go for.

I can get a proper background in the hand drawn style + colouring done within an hour or so from an average estimate by those two backgrounds made so far, and this only concerns "big" panel backgrounds that take up more that can be shown at a 1x zoom and take up the full screen.

For certain backgrounds like inside rooms/tents and the like there's no real need to allow 1x shots so they'd take even less time.

As me being an artist is one of the big reasons I'm actually making a webcomic to begin with, help with art actually wasn't the first thing on my mind. :smallsmile:

That being said, I do appreciate the offer & interest, I know from my own experience that wanting to be part of a project is often the direct result of digging it a lot.

So thanks, I'll keep your offer in the back of my head though, who knows. :smallwink:

[Wreckingrocc]

M'kay. Thanks for keeping me in mind.

I'm also willing to help with editing (you PMing me a finished comic and me scanning it over for mistakes/possible improvements to be fixed/made.

...Or anything else you have in mind.

Good luck! I hope to see #1 soon :D

[Weiser_Cain]

Don't quite understand the question, elaborate what you mean by "everything"?

Well how did you keep the character sprites a standard size and limit the resolution?

[KerfuffleMach2]

Awesomeness!

Anywho, I like your choice on showing how magic can change society. That's not something you see often.

Me and a friend are working on a Flash animation series, and about 2/3 of it takes place hundreds of years from now. In that future, people do have magical abilities, and there is still futuristic technologies. So, it'll be fun to show how the two combine.

I like your layout. Very unique. The backgrounds are done well, too.

I look forward to when this finally comes out.

[Wreckingrocc]

! Everything suddenly makes so much more sense!

I know why I love the art style now! It is very reminiscent of Legend of Mana.

And the quality makes it look almost exactly the same.

EDIT: Once these come out, I just know I'm gonna want to pull up Gamemaker and whip one up... The backgrounds and sprites'd make it really easy to whip up templates fast.

[DoomITP]

Wow...Your sprites are amazing. You could get paid for those.:smalleek:

[Hoplite]

With art quality as professional and awesome as this you don't have to care about lay-out, it looks great as it is.

Seriously, it is the best sprite art I ever say.

[Exeson]

I would most definitely read this. The main reason is your story angle. I have been toying with the idea of writing a story where the two main characters are each others enemies, as in they both feel they are morally justified and that the other one is in the wrong. Due to time I have not been able to do this but would really enjoy reading a story that, if not the same, has a similar feel to it.

And the art is just awesome.
....
way more than awesome.

[Neoriceisgood]

Well how did you keep the character sprites a standard size and limit the resolution?

Well they're pixelart to begin with, and I show them at either 1x or 2x.

You can keep the resolution "16bit" in appearance if you only multiply the numbers by full digits of 100 [and I resize em in MS Paint in most cases, because photoshop likes to AA the moment you resize].


I would most definitely read this. The main reason is your story angle. I have been toying with the idea of writing a story where the two main characters are each others enemies, as in they both feel they are morally justified and that the other one is in the wrong. Due to time I have not been able to do this but would really enjoy reading a story that, if not the same, has a similar feel to it.

I'm not necessarily saying they'd end up as enemies though, the first few chapters of the comic most likely won't have any real interaction between the three heroes yet, and I'm leaving it in the air if they'll ever meet face to face.

Having a defined goal like the three of them becoming enemies/friends that becomes clear really early on would be kind of boring, I want to try keeping the plot open as I go along, but who knows.


With art quality as professional and awesome as this you don't have to care about lay-out, it looks great as it is.

Seriously, it is the best sprite art I ever say.

Ever run into a comic you didn't want to read because the text bubbles were unreadable and annoying?

Thinking about a readable layout is a good way to avoid one of the worst problems a comic can have, unreadability.

[sometimes you're more inclined to read a bad/terrible comic over a rather good one because the good one is unreadable due to font/layout.]


! Everything suddenly makes so much more sense!

I know why I love the art style now! It is very reminiscent of Legend of Mana.

And the quality makes it look almost exactly the same.


Yeah, the Mana games [especially sword of mana and SD3 for GBA and snes respectively] have always been a big inspiration for me to pixel, I doubt the styles would be confused if put side by side though.


I'm also willing to help with editing (you PMing me a finished comic and me scanning it over for mistakes/possible improvements to be fixed/made.

Yeah, that could be helpful.


Anywho, I like your choice on showing how magic can change society. That's not something you see often.


Yeah, obviously I gotta see how well it pans out first, promises are just promises until they're made, but it's still a good idea to keep in mind when making the comics.


As I don't really have any program or knowledge on making the comic work as a panel-by-panel setup with clickable buttons like the ones shown I'm probably gonna have the first comic in a more "page" like fashion, panel per panel.

As I've finished most of the sprites & characters necessary for it, I hope to post it in my next update of this thread.

[Prime32]

Interesting style you have there. I can't say I've ever seen a webcomic quite like it (though it reminds me of screenshots I saw of Freshly-picked Tingle's Rosy Rupeeland :smalleek:).


I have been toying with the idea of writing a story where the two main characters are each others enemies, as in they both feel they are morally justified and that the other one is in the wrong. Due to time I have not been able to do this but would really enjoy reading a story that, if not the same, has a similar feel to it.
Ever watched Death Note? Code Geass? Gundam SEED? They have that kind of mechanic - in the latter two cases, they were childhood friends.

[charl]

The art is awesome. I look forward to reading the finished results.

[Atomsized]

Whoa.

And the sprites are 100% original, that is something i don't see everyday.

When people try to create a sprite comic, i always see the actions of the characters very very limited creating a brick road of repetition, but since you made these sprites yourself, i can see this becoming a very unique webcomic. However, i can't imagine the time it would take to design one of them, so i would suggest making sure you are devoting enough time to start and hold on to the webcomic.

But all in all, good luck, and i'll be watching out for it. :smallwink:

[Lissou]

I really like it. Let me try and organise my thoughts.

1) I have to admit that to me, each "strip" will be more like a "panel", if I'm making sense. And in a way, you have less freedom, since with this format, every pannel will have the exact same size. No way to have one pig page-wide pannel, and next page have lost of short pannels to show a fast action.

That's okay, though, it's achoice you made. it means your comic will be more dialogue-oriented, most probably, unless you have special "cut scenes" or "fight scenes" with different formats, or animations.

2) If you have animations, it means you're saying from the start that you will never sell your webcomic in print. Think about it, and the possibility to instead sell it as DVDs for instance. I can't imagine putting that much work into something and knowing it can't ever evolve.
Also, I've stopped reading comics because they didn't offer the option of buying books and reading those instead. So it's something to consider.

3) Have you worked on something so you can keep the same image on top, but scrool the dialogue without quite changing pages? It would allow a whole scene to appear on the same page, without having to press next every time the dialogue changes. If the characters stay in the same position, and since your art choice doesn't allow for angle variations and such, it might get a bit... boring. Or seemingly useless to have several, different pages with the same image.

4) As for the content itself, it looks pretty interesting. The threefold story is the type of story I really like, so thumbs up on this one.

5) The character pictures you showed us... Are you going to use them for the cast pages? To keep the videogame feel of your comic, that kind of castpage would be amazing.

6) In your sprite list, I'm a fraid a few of the characters looked similar to each other, which could get confusing. Mostly, though, they look individual enough that the story should be relatively easy to follow.

7) On top of showing the face of the character who talks, are you also showing their (known) names? If not, you might consider it. People won't forget who's who that way, so take advantage of the fact that it's possible in your medium.

8) As atranslator, I'm happy that you chose a format that should make translations relatively easy. However, it will be even easier with the "scrolling" option, that only changes the part of the image with dialogue. Just saying. maybe you don't want your comic to ever be translated, but if you don't have anything against it, let's just say it's another advantage to the "scrolling" option.

9) Let's get this straight :P When I say "scrolling", I don't actually mean scrolling, right? Just, the "next" would apply only to the dialogue, not the uper picture.
Imagine a video game. It's like pressing the key that makes the dialogue continue. While changing scenes completely would be a different arrow, for clarification, the way I see it at least.

So... That's pretty much it for now. Please tell me what you make of my comments and what your plans actually are. I can't wait to see your comic, which looks like you put a lot of thought into it.

[T-O-E]

I thought those were professional game sprites when I first saw them.


Whoa.

And the sprites are 100% original, that is something i don't see everyday.

The only other sprite comic I've seen with decent pixel art was "A Modest Destiny".

[Oregano]

It looks really good. That is all.


EDIT: As in, that's all that needs to be said.:smallwink:

[Neoriceisgood]

1) I have to admit that to me, each "strip" will be more like a "panel", if I'm making sense. And in a way, you have less freedom, since with this format, every pannel will have the exact same size. No way to have one pig page-wide pannel, and next page have lost of short pannels to show a fast action.

That's okay, though, it's achoice you made. it means your comic will be more dialogue-oriented, most probably, unless you have special "cut scenes" or "fight scenes" with different formats, or animations.


If I go for a more page-like setup than the panel per panel system I could possibly avoid this.

To be honest, I'm still working on changing this around a bit, I'll post a quick comic I made today to give a good idea of what I'm currently planning to have the layout be like.

I decided to change it up a bit due to the fact that if I'd require flash or another program to even start on it, I'd have to wait a while to get & master the required program, rather than being able to make the comics on the spot.



2) If you have animations, it means you're saying from the start that you will never sell your webcomic in print. Think about it, and the possibility to instead sell it as DVDs for instance. I can't imagine putting that much work into something and knowing it can't ever evolve.
Also, I've stopped reading comics because they didn't offer the option of buying books and reading those instead. So it's something to consider.

I'll be frank in saying that I never really thought about really "selling" a comic based mostly in sprites in printed format.

I'm not actively planning on animating it as it'd put the time/effort rating far beyond the rating that's still do-able in a regular update fashion, so technicaly it should be possible to print it.


3) Have you worked on something so you can keep the same image on top, but scrool the dialogue without quite changing pages? It would allow a whole scene to appear on the same page, without having to press next every time the dialogue changes. If the characters stay in the same position, and since your art choice doesn't allow for angle variations and such, it might get a bit... boring. Or seemingly useless to have several, different pages with the same image.

Again, the example comic I'll post will give a general idea of how I'll work, my comic is partly inspired by reading A Modest Destiny back in the day, and that never bored me eventhough it had fairly stagnant sprites.

As long as new poses, background and story development is part of the comic, it won't necessarily be "boring" that some images appear more often.

An ironically good example would be OotS itself, which has a very template-like art style going on, it's not a comic that relies on dynamic angles and other weird perspective tricks, but I'm sure nobody would ever dare say that makes it boring.


4) As for the content itself, it looks pretty interesting. The threefold story is the type of story I really like, so thumbs up on this one.

Thanks, I do have to see in what order/pattern to present the three stories, I'm guessing per arc/chapter would be best, as switching it up between every single comic would just get distracting.


5) The character pictures you showed us... Are you going to use them for the cast pages? To keep the videogame feel of your comic, that kind of castpage would be amazing.

The moment I'm confident enough this'll be a lasting project to set up a website for it I'll definitely try to make a site with a good 16bit rpg game feel to it.

Although I won't make promises, having cast profiles that resemble stat screens from games does have a huge appeal to me.


6) In your sprite list, I'm a fraid a few of the characters looked similar to each other, which could get confusing. Mostly, though, they look individual enough that the story should be relatively easy to follow

I'll throw in the defence that a large number of characters in that list [especially the ones in school uniforms] are purely meant to be background NPCs of one type or the other.

Although I agree that I should be careful with making any important character distinct from others at such a small format, the reason there's a lot of characters there that look "similar but individual" at the same time is due to the fact that I want to refrain "templating" NPCs.

Due to this they may seem more important than they are because they're not the same generic looking character recoloured twenty times, but, if I can manage, all unique to at least some extend.


7) On top of showing the face of the character who talks, are you also showing their (known) names? If not, you might consider it. People won't forget who's who that way, so take advantage of the fact that it's possible in your medium.

I could, I hadn't considered it yet, but I definitely could.

I want to avoid "revealing names", but as you said, if we know the name already it definitely would work. [I know that it'd help me if comics had that, because in a lot of cases I forgot the name for 90% of the characters real soon]



8) As atranslator, I'm happy that you chose a format that should make translations relatively easy. However, it will be even easier with the "scrolling" option, that only changes the part of the image with dialogue. Just saying. maybe you don't want your comic to ever be translated, but if you don't have anything against it, let's just say it's another advantage to the "scrolling" option.

The dialogue will be part of the image, but due to it's location can very easily be erased and translated.

To be honest, the big reason I chose this format is my complete inabillity to judge how big text balloons should be when setting up a page. :smallfrown:

[and it looks more game-like as well, which is kickass]



So... That's pretty much it for now. Please tell me what you make of my comments and what your plans actually are. I can't wait to see your comic, which looks like you put a lot of thought into it.

Done, and, done.

Expect the first comic soon. :smallcool:

[Wreckingrocc]

For the bubbles, just type Then type whatever you want in the button bubble here, then you type.

Those are in noparse tags, so if you copy them directly, it should work. This is how it will look:

Put what you want in here!

Spoilers are primarily used to prevent large screen-stretching and for organizing the comics into simple-to-read sections, i.e.

Chapter 1Story Arc 1: The title of titlesComic 1-1-1: The first comichttp://i59.photobucket.com/albums/g302/Neorice/examplerpg5.pngComic 1-1-2: This name is even better than the first.http://i59.photobucket.com/albums/g302/Neorice/examplerpg4.pngStory Arc 2: The Birthday PartyComic 1-2-1: They didn't know...
http://i59.photobucket.com/albums/g302/Neorice/burk-birthday.pngComic 1-2-2: In the town
http://i59.photobucket.com/albums/g302/Neorice/examplerpg-template-towntest-2.png

...Etc, etc. You can see that posting all the comics in a row would take up a great deal more room. With spoilers, you can minimize the room they take up.

I suppose if you eventually get your own website and learn flash, it might be possible to have the buttons at the bottom of the screen take you from comic to comic. Right now, though, in Vbelletin, I'd recommend just sticking to spoilers.

[charl]

Making a simple website that allows you to go between pictures in a folder in numerical order is fairly simple. It doesn't require flash either, plain old PHP is enough.
There are many freeware PHP-scripts available to do this. Just google for "webcomic script" or something similar.

[Neoriceisgood]

For the bubbles, just type Then type whatever you want in the button bubble here, then you type.

Those are in noparse tags, so if you copy them directly, it should work. This is how it will look:

Put what you want in here!

Spoilers are primarily used to prevent large screen-stretching and for organizing the comics into simple-to-read sections, i.e.

Chapter 1Story Arc 1: The title of titlesComic 1-1-1: The first comichttp://i59.photobucket.com/albums/g302/Neorice/examplerpg5.pngComic 1-1-2: This name is even better than the first.http://i59.photobucket.com/albums/g302/Neorice/examplerpg4.pngStory Arc 2: The Birthday PartyComic 1-2-1: They didn't know...
http://i59.photobucket.com/albums/g302/Neorice/burk-birthday.pngComic 1-2-2: In the town
http://i59.photobucket.com/albums/g302/Neorice/examplerpg-template-towntest-2.png

...Etc, etc. You can see that posting all the comics in a row would take up a great deal more room. With spoilers, you can minimize the room they take up.

I suppose if you eventually get your own website and learn flash, it might be possible to have the buttons at the bottom of the screen take you from comic to comic. Right now, though, in Vbelletin, I'd recommend just sticking to spoilers.

Yeah, I've seen some other comic threads on here, I was planning to use the spoiler tags when I had several parts done. :smallsmile:

[Lissou]

Going back to what I said earlier:

I know that OOTS is "static" in some cases. However, it's in a page (with multiple pannels) format. What I meant was that if you keep the same upper image too much, it could be a problem. What if people don't realise right away that clicking "next" worked? What if they double click accidentally and don't notice?
Skipping a pannel when reading a page doesn't happen often, but skipping a line of dialogue accidentally seems possible.
However, since your whole update is alwyas one big picture, and not some kind of template in which you load pictures and type the dialogue, I guess you can't really do it differently. That's not really a problem.

Also, My DVD idea wasn't about animating it. More like having the strips as a slideshow, possibly with the viewer deciding when to switch to the next one.

I realise you're not doing it for money, and I'm not saying you should be. I'm just talking from my point of view, the point of view of a reader who often wishes she had something to show for a comic she likes. Not being able to actually own a physical copy sucks, and I've stopped reading many comics for that reason. Do what you want with what I said, after all you won't be able to please everyone.

My name idea was like some video games, in which when you don't know a character's name it either shows "???" or "old woman"/"nobleman" or whatnot.

As you said, it's not rare to forget who's who in a webcomic and that would help.


Finally, something I forgot about last time...
Each one of your pages/images will be one image with not a lot of dialogue. As a result, will you update several at once? Will you update very often?
What I mean is, the plot can't advance too fast that way. It might also be alot faster to make, taking less time for every single page.

But if you update several pages at once, it could get confusing if they're not on the same webpage.
Or are you planning to realease them on the same webpage? In that case, it would go back to being a pannel in a bigger page, wouldn't it?

Anyway, I'm very excited about this and I can't wait to read your story :)

[Neoriceisgood]

Finally, something I forgot about last time...
Each one of your pages/images will be one image with not a lot of dialogue. As a result, will you update several at once? Will you update very often?
What I mean is, the plot can't advance too fast that way. It might also be alot faster to make, taking less time for every single page.

But if you update several pages at once, it could get confusing if they're not on the same webpage.
Or are you planning to realease them on the same webpage? In that case, it would go back to being a pannel in a bigger page, wouldn't it?


To be honest, I have two conflicting ideas on how to deal with this.

At one hand I'm thinking a more "page" like layout could work as I'll show in a bit with my example comic, but at the other hand a few of the more critical people I showed pretty strongly insist that the "panel per panel" format I had in mind at first would hold more appeal to them.

The fact that both have advantages and disadvantages makes it hard to say which one I'll go with in the end, as said, I'm still experimenting a bit right now. :smallsmile:

Thanks for the feedback though, I appreciate it!

[Weiser_Cain]

Or you could animate it. There are so few web comics even limited animation would make it standout. Especially if it's in that two frame video game style.

[Neoriceisgood]

New page seems like a good place to start with my first comic:

http://img179.imageshack.us/img179/2223/comicburk11bs0.png


Because of some of the comments & me wanting to start this project up soon [and I guess this would make it "now"] I've given an attempt at making it in a big of a "page" like layout.

comments are still appreciated, and if this layout is liked I'll probably continue in it for a while.

[For those wondering, I plan to have the horizontal lenght set in stone, but the vertical lenght pretty much expandable in any way, size or shape; so it's not necessarily 3 panels or panels of the same height.]

[Lissou]

Is the old guy supposed to be incredibly rude, or is it just how it ended up?

If he's not supposed to be rude, I'd replace "silly cow of a woman" by something more idiomatic and less offensive. Might be just me, of course.

Otherwise, it looks good to me. I like how you have the same character speaking twice in the last image, I didn't realise it was possible.

[Neoriceisgood]

Is the old guy supposed to be incredibly rude, or is it just how it ended up?

If he's not supposed to be rude, I'd replace "silly cow of a woman" by something more idiomatic and less offensive. Might be just me, of course.

Otherwise, it looks good to me. I like how you have the same character speaking twice in the last image, I didn't realise it was possible.

She guessed wrong, it's not being rude when it's accurate. :smallwink:

[Lissou]

She guessed wrong, it's not being rude when it's accurate. :smallwink:

Really? When someone makes a wrong guess in real life, you call them "sillow cow of a woman" (for females I guess. The male equivalent would probably be "stupid assh*le of a guy")?

Even if we don't take the "cow" part into account, I still find the "of a woman" very weird. I guess it could be the way that character speaks, though.

EDIT: while we're at it, he looks quite older than she is and calls her "dear" earlier. Wouldn't he use "girl" rather than "woman"?

My point is that I'd find "You silly girl, bandits aren't green" more natural. I realise it's your comic, though, and your characters speaking. You know them better than I do :P

[Weiser_Cain]

I like 'yarbols for brains'.

[Neoriceisgood]

He was supposed to be incredibly rude, I thought the combination of the rather harsh and insulting reply & him doing a facepalm at the same time would make this fairly clear. :smalleek:


[edit]

In other news, I decided to do another one, because I like how his format works.

Right now the only real time consuming part for new comics is the lack of portraits for a lot of the characters that appear early on, but it appears I can manage so far.

[edit: reuploaded with two minor grammar/spelling mistakes fixed]

http://img140.imageshack.us/img140/6673/comicburk12wc4.png

[DoomITP]

I like the comic so far sir.

[Neoriceisgood]

Man, I just realised I've got two pages done and haven't even given the comic a title yet.

I gotta work on a nice title that fits it.

[DoomITP]

Where did you learn to do pixel art so well? What program do you use for that?

[Lissou]

Sorry, man, sometimes it's hard to tell on the Internet. You know how that can be.

Anyways, I like it. hope you find a good name.

[Neoriceisgood]

Where did you learn to do pixel art so well? What program do you use for that?

The actual sprites and portraits in Ms Paint, but I put the comic together in photoshop as it'd be annoying without layers.


Sorry, man, sometimes it's hard to tell on the Internet. You know how that can be.

Anyways, I like it. hope you find a good name.

I hope so as well, gotta make it catchy.:smallbiggrin:

[insecure]

That's simply amazing. Consider this thread subscribed to.

Keep up the good work!:smallsmile:

[Neoriceisgood]

Gotta keep it going, so I made another one.

Here's page 3.

[and no, the old guy isn't holy, he's just senile. :smallcool:]

http://img440.imageshack.us/img440/5575/comicburk13ql2.png

[Szilard]

This is indeed good, and you now have another reader.

[Wreckingrocc]

Really liking the looks of this so far, but I'm kind of confused as to how she'll soon become a hero if she got captured by petty 'good' bandits.

Great job so far. It looks like, once you get rolling, it won't be very time-consuming, either (compared to most comics).

I'm very amazed by the current update schedule. Three in less than ten hours!

As for grammar, it all looks good, except for two mistakes in comic #3.

In the first panel, "Untie" should be capitalized, and there's a space between 'once' and the exclamation mark.

If you want to go super-grammar, in the last panel, I think a semicolon would be more appropriate than a comma after 'We're the good guys'.

Other than that, it looks good. The humor is quick and light-hearted, yet it still retains that fresh, three-dimensional feel.

The art looks fantastic, too.

[Neoriceisgood]

Really liking the looks of this so far, but I'm kind of confused as to how she'll soon become a hero if she got captured by petty 'good' bandits.


http://img526.imageshack.us/img526/4579/shesnottobism8.png
[this image is not canon]
I guess you confused the two? :smallsmile:


Great job so far. It looks like, once you get rolling, it won't be very time-consuming, either (compared to most comics).

Yeah, the only real time consuming parts would be if a single comic required me to draw several backgrounds or something, but I doubt it'd happen -very- often.

[to be honoust, these first few are this easy due to them taking place in one single location]


I'm very amazed by the current update schedule. Three in less than ten hours!


As said I tried to make this comic's design to be very "optimal"

It had to have both quality and an extreme efficiency when it comes to how much time one comic takes.


As for grammar, it all looks good, except for two mistakes in comic #3.

In the first panel, "Untie" should be capitalized, and there's a space between 'once' and the exclamation mark.

If you want to go super-grammar, in the last panel, I think a semicolon would be more appropriate than a comma after 'We're the good guys'.


Thanks, I may fix those mistakes as they're mostly just sloppy errors rather than real mistakes, though none are really comic killing yet.


Other than that, it looks good. The humor is quick and light-hearted, yet it still retains that fresh, three-dimensional feel.


I learned from any comic I enjoy reading that starting with a good line of humour-based comics is the perfect way to get people to enjoy a comic without them being forced to "drag" through the story, I chose the specific storyline [out of all 3] mostly because it started with the best situation for humour.

I'll admit that I was kind of scared about the humor aspect though, I've never been really good at "punchlines", gags and don't want pop culture references & 4th wall breaking at all. [pop culture may have the exception if it's a reference that can be put in that'd still be plausible albeit obviously recognisable, like the bandits taking the robin hood slogan]

But from the reaction I've had from the people I've showed it appears they're at least funny enough not to get mocked and burned, so I hope I can keep that part up. :smallsmile:


The art looks fantastic, too.

Thanks, I hope the quality can compensate for the fact that it's still very strongly based on cut & paste principles, but I try to add at least one new piece of pixelart or a new pose in each comic.

I think even something simple like a new expression or getting a new character portrait can be seen as a form of artistic compensation for the cut & paste aspect, but that's just how I see it. :smallamused:

[Wreckingrocc]

http://img526.imageshack.us/img526/4579/shesnottobism8.png
[this image is not canon]
I guess you confused the two? :smallsmile:
:smallbiggrin:I laughed.

[Elrond]

This is nice just brilliant an enthusiastic thumbs up to you good sir:smallbiggrin:

[Neoriceisgood]

http://img266.imageshack.us/img266/1469/comicburk14mp8.png

Part 4.

[Hoplite]

I like it and the amount of copy/paste doesn't bother me at all. Wouldn't you like a bit of lay-out on the pages though? I mean something like "Page number 4" and "Created by Somebody" "Copyright 2008"?

[Neoriceisgood]

I like it and the amount of copy/paste doesn't bother me at all. Wouldn't you like a bit of lay-out on the pages though? I mean something like "Page number 4" and "Created by Somebody" "Copyright 2008"?

Yeah, I guess that'd be nice.

I'll probably make something like that today, it's better to have it done sooner than later, or else it'd require me to modify far too many comics. :smallannoyed:

[DoomITP]

hey dude...Where did you go to learn pixel art stuff?

[Neoriceisgood]

hey dude...Where did you go to learn pixel art stuff?

Mostly studied how they did it in games with really good pixelart & actively searched for communities and people who were adept at it.

I've been doing pixelart for over 8 years now, so it'd be a disgrace if I wasn't at least a little bit good at it by now. :smallredface:

[DoomITP]

little bit good...? That stuffs better than in most games i've seen:smalleek:

[Neoriceisgood]

Took me five comics to get to the first out of 3 heroes, Burk. :smallredface:

http://fc43.deviantart.com/fs38/f/2008/329/8/f/Burk_5_by_Neoriceisgood.png

[Wreckingrocc]

Based on the intro, he looked like he was gonna be some kind of overly happy guy still a child at heart.

Now he's looking more like a Deus Ex Machina for the entire world.

I just hope he still has awesome lines, such as the birthday line in the desert :D

[Neoriceisgood]

Based on the intro, he looked like he was gonna be some kind of overly happy guy still a child at heart.

Now he's looking more like a Deus Ex Machina for the entire world.

I just hope he still has awesome lines, such as the birthday line in the desert :D

Don't worry, your idea is fairly accurate, active dialogue will reveal his true nature soon enough. :smallsmile:


[edit]
Page 6

http://fc55.deviantart.com/fs39/f/2008/329/e/c/Burk_6_by_Neoriceisgood.png

[Prime32]

I likey.

That old guy is starting to remind me of Grandpa Moto from Yu-Gi-Oh The Abridged Series. :biggrin:

[Wreckingrocc]

Nice. This is freakin' sweet.

The old guy has the nice 'senile, grouchy old guy' feel without being too overblown.

[AmberVael]

That last comic made me laugh harder than I have for a while. The old guy is just so completely amusing in that "I'm an old man not quite caught up with reality and I can do what I want, damn it, now get off my lawn!" way. :smallbiggrin:

[St. Salieri]

I don't really need another webcomic to keep track of, but this one looks more than good enough to add to the list.

"I will be the future" is one of the most awesome crazy things I've heard all month. :smallbiggrin:

[Neoriceisgood]

Page 7.

[just for those curious, I won't keep up this update speed in the future, but I'd like to have a good ground base with a chapter for each of the three characters as fast as possible, mostly to get the feel down.]

http://fc35.deviantart.com/fs38/f/2008/329/6/5/Burk_7_by_Neoriceisgood.png

[Ascension]

What's up with the little "ignore" on the sword still stuck in the ground after the bandit pulls the sword out of the ground? I mean, I get that it isn't supposed to be there anymore, but it still is, so you should ignore it, but is it supposed to be a joke?

Anyway, I do like the comic, despite not having commented to this effect earlier, that little thing just kind of bugged me.

[Ghastly Epigram]

This is great! It is clear you have put a lot of thought into this and it definitely shows. :smallcool: I agree the sprites are of professional quality. And heck, the backgrounds are really nice as well! (Especially the forest and the towers in the desert ones). I have to admit I had doubts about the layout you chose at first, but it actually seems to work pretty well. And of course the comic itself is very entertaining. Am I gushing? I think I am gushing. >.>

But yeah, good stuff, will definitely be watching it eagerly!

[Enlong]

I thought those were professional game sprites when I first saw them.



The only other sprite comic I've seen with decent pixel art was "A Modest Destiny".

*cough*Kid Radd*cough*

[Neoriceisgood]

What's up with the little "ignore" on the sword still stuck in the ground after the bandit pulls the sword out of the ground? I mean, I get that it isn't supposed to be there anymore, but it still is, so you should ignore it, but is it supposed to be a joke?

Anyway, I do like the comic, despite not having commented to this effect earlier, that little thing just kind of bugged me.

Actually, I finished the comic and removed the photoshop file with layers as I was satisfied with it, because I figured I'd only have to edit the text afterwards, which can easily be done without saving layered files.

After that I suddenly realised I forgot to remove the sword's layer!

The [ignore] is just a .. light hearted way of making it obvious I realise I made a mistake? :smallredface: I wouldn't have done it if I removed the sword as I should've when it was still a seperate layer.

[Wreckingrocc]

This is sweet. You've already surpassed half of the comics on this forum with quantity.

You've surpassed at least 90% with quality.

I can't figure out if he loves or hates nature, though.

He seems to love nature, but he takes no care that he made a cow cry by kicking it really hard.

[Neoriceisgood]

This is sweet. You've already surpassed half of the comics on this forum with quantity.

You've surpassed at least 90% with quality.

I can't figure out if he loves or hates nature, though.

He seems to love nature, but he takes no care that he made a cow cry by kicking it really hard.

He finds nature useful. :smallsmile:

And I hope I can keep it up, I may slow down a bit as I've got more school work for the rest of the week, but I hope to keep my updates at least semi-regular.

[charl]

Onward my noble steed!

Epic. :smallbiggrin:

[Vulion]

What program do you use to create this?

[Neoriceisgood]

pixeled parts - ms paints
BG outlines - hand drawn [with fineliner]
Bg colouring - photoshop
putting it together - photoshop.

:smallredface:

[Hoplite]

I think it looks great, I really do, the story seems to develop good, personally I would have let the characters be a bit different in personality, but that differs from author to author, nothing bad about that. It really is great and you can consider me hooked.

You wouldn't by chance want to make a tutorial for people who want to learn make stuff as awesome as this, would you?

[Neoriceisgood]

I think it looks great, I really do, the story seems to develop good, personally I would have let the characters be a bit different in personality, but that differs from author to author, nothing bad about that. It really is great and you can consider me hooked.

Elaborate? A bit different doesn't tell me a whole lot.



You wouldn't by chance want to make a tutorial for people who want to learn make stuff as awesome as this, would you?

I may post some stuff on how I make certain things sooner or later, but this isn't a template-based comic.

If you've paid attention you've probably noticed that the characters so far all have pretty distinct portraits and appearances, although I may copy the body template on "nameless npcs" and the quality of "hero" portraits will probably always be a bit above the NPC portrait quality, there's not really any type of trick to it.

But I'm sure I can awnser more specific questions about certain aspects of the comic's art if you were interested in a single point [like just the sprites or just the portraits.] :smallsmile:

Page 8, go go go. :smallamused:
http://fc38.deviantart.com/fs39/f/2008/330/8/0/Burk_8_by_Neoriceisgood.png

[insecure]

--Awesome comic--

This is simply amazing.

[Neoriceisgood]

This is simply amazing.

Thanks. :smallsmile:

[edit]

Comic 9 finished.

http://fc95.deviantart.com/fs38/f/2008/331/9/6/Burk_9_by_Neoriceisgood.png

[Ascension]

I can't quite read why the Cool Guy's swords are purple, but that is awesome.

Burk is going to make it quite hard for the other two protagonists to match up to his greatness.

[Neoriceisgood]

I can't quite read why the Cool Guy's swords are purple, but that is awesome.

Burk is going to make it quite hard for the other two protagonists to match up to his greatness.

His grey ran out. :smallamused:

[Atomsized]

This is good :smallbiggrin:.

I may have missed it in earlier posts, but does this comic have a title by any chance?

[Neoriceisgood]

This is good :smallbiggrin:.

I may have missed it in earlier posts, but does this comic have a title by any chance?

Nope, I'm bad at titles. :smallannoyed:

[Green-Shirt Q]

HAPPY WORLD!!!! :smallbiggrin:


Nope, I'm bad at titles. :smallannoyed:

I (or somebody else) could help you with it. I happen to be good (I think) at making titles.

Of course, I'd want to know more about the future story to give a good title for you, and I don't want to have the surprises spoiled.

Just saying is all.

Anyway, great comic. For some reason, Burk reminds me of the super hero "The Tick". :smallbiggrin:

[Wreckingrocc]

For the title, as a temportary title (or if you really like one, a permenant), try some cheesy, vague, conceptual noun in the broad form.

I.e. Resonance, Resurgence, etc.

Or try just naming it after the name for the world.

If you don't have a name for a world, I can just type and see what I come up with.

Fernesia
Narleph
Ingenuia
Laerdaenia
Elphines
Aurnaela

...Etc.

Or, you could name it after the title of the BBEG(uy/roup)'s gang/group/organization/self.

Just brainstorming.

As for the comics, I laughed really hard at the drawing. It was freaking excellently done... Especially her draining face on the side.

If at all possible, make the 'because the gray ran out' just a little more legible, as you don't want others to miss out on the joke. It was great.

...And of course, a robot has to be in his team.

The drama and mysterious nature of Burk has just been shot down, seeing as his deep, 'foreshadowing' lines were just blown away.

Keep up the excellent work.

EDIT: You should probably also add 'extra' comics to the first page, such as Tobi's encounter with Melany. Maybe add the context of my line to add to the effect.

[Neoriceisgood]

Well the main reason I don't have a title yet is because I'd like to have a memorable title with a recognisable and good acronym. :smallamused:

I don't really think adding the world's name in the title would be a good idea, as I want to avoid adding words/names I made up myself within the actual title.

It has to be sharp, google friendly and memorable. :smallamused:


I'm still thinking about it, but I'm sure I'll get to it in due time, at least, before I make a website.


If at all possible, make the 'because the gray ran out' just a little more legible, as you don't want others to miss out on the joke. It was great.

Perhaps I'll fix it up tomorrow. :smallsmile:


...And of course, a robot has to be in his team.


I'll refrain from commenting on the accuracy of his team portrayal. :smallwink:


The drama and mysterious nature of Burk has just been shot down, seeing as his deep, 'foreshadowing' lines were just blown away.

As I said, your first impression wasn't wrong, but Burk's good at heroic entrances. :smallcool:


EDIT: You should probably also add 'extra' comics to the first page, such as Tobi's encounter with Melany. Maybe add the context of my line to add to the effect.

Possibly, right now I mostly want to get chapter 1 for each character done, I'm almost done with Burk so gotta decide on who to do 2nd in line. :smallsmile:


Anyway, great comic. For some reason, Burk reminds me of the super hero "The Tick".

Now that you mention it, they are similar in some ways, yeah. :smallredface:

[Ascension]

I'll refrain from commenting on the accuracy of his team portrayal. :smallwink:

Well, since I think you've said that the three protagonists will join up at some point, that takes care of (unless I miss my guess) the cool guy and the girl (though not the sort of girl Burk's envisioning). That only leaves Mage and Robot to acquire. :smallbiggrin:


Now that you mention it, they are similar in some ways, yeah. :smallredface:

This is not a bad thing.

[Neoriceisgood]

Well, since I think you've said that the three protagonists will join up at some point, that takes care of (unless I miss my guess) the cool guy and the girl (though not the sort of girl Burk's envisioning). That only leaves Mage and Robot to acquire.

Actually, I I think I said that I'd like to keep all options open regarding how the stories will eventually correlate.

Although I have some ideas regarding what direction I'd like to take it in much later on, the three main characters won't necessarily end up being on good terms/the same side.

But I honestly can't state in advance how it'll end up as I may change my mind about things while making the comic. :smallsmile:

[Prime32]

This is awesome. If I had to call it something right now, I would say "The Legend of Burk".

Why do I get the feeling that Burk is going to run into some random guy with purple swords and go nuts? :smallbiggrin:


If you were having trouble with incorporating magic into the setting, this (http://brilliantgameologists.com/boards/index.php?topic=2159.0) might give you some ideas. I had some other ideas on magic which I would be willing to share through PMs.

[Neoriceisgood]

The legend of Burk would be more fitting if it wasn't one out of 3 different storylines within the same story. :smallsmile:


If you were having trouble with incorporating magic into the setting, this might give you some ideas. I had some other ideas on magic which I would be willing to share through PMs.

Feel free to PM ideas and suggestions, I do have a lot of ideas about magic worked out to a greater or lesser extend though, it was necessary as it'll play a big role later on. :smallsmile:

[Lissou]

A comic name that just came to mee and is probably stupid, but that I thought I'd share: Sprited Away.
Get it. Because you use sprites... <.< >.>...

[Neoriceisgood]

I'd like it more if it wasn't based on a horse movie. :smallbiggrin:


That being said, I don't think I'd want a medium-referring title either, as the medium is just a means for telling the story, but not of influence on the story itself.

I always found the title of "A Modest Destiny" to be strangely awesome due to it being a funny yet lighthearted phrase that completely contradicts how "modest" the hero's actual destiny is.

Something similar to that would probably be what I'm looking for, though I'm not entirely sure :)


I'm sure I'll get a title soon though, the most tricky part is getting one that really fits all three different stories to some extend.

[I actually do know of a big factor that binds them that I may use in the title.]

[edit]

Finished page 10. :smallsmile:
http://fc32.deviantart.com/fs39/f/2008/331/d/2/Burk_10_by_Neoriceisgood.png

[Wreckingrocc]

I like how the cow has a bandage :P

Burk truly is oblivious...

[Beholder1995]

This is an absolutely incredible comic. The sheer amount of work you've put into it, the quality, the entertainment value... fantastic, really.

In short, I will follow this. :smallbiggrin:

[Dispozition]

a) Your art style is amazing. I could never quite grasp pixel art and it's one of the harder styles to pull off well, you do it brilliantly.

b) The story, so far, seems like it could be good. Has decent humour (love the last panel of 10) and hopefully turns out well.

c) Humour, humour, humour, humour. So many comics go without it these days, you have it, and a good sense of it at that! Please, keep it this way :P

Now for some critique, although there isn't much...

Sometimes the eyes in the portrait frames look very odd, not sure if it's intentional or not but you may want to look at how you do them. I think it's probably the colour of the whites, seems to red to me. All the colours seems a little desaturated. The hay for example seems washed out and redder than it should be.
Don't think there's much else, more may come to me while I decide to be an evil bastard.

Anyway, I'll be following this with intent 'I kinda like where this is going'ness. Keep it up!

[Neoriceisgood]

Okay, starting Noah's introductional chapter! :smallredface:


Warning ahead of time, same world, same style, different story

for those who want gag comics the next few pages will probably be less interesting, as Noah's chapter is more about..

Well, like with Burk's chapter I'll just let the comics speak for itself. :smallamused:

http://fc90.deviantart.com/fs38/f/2008/331/1/7/Noah_1_by_Neoriceisgood.png

[Neoriceisgood]

I make comics faster than I get replies, hoo boy. :smallwink:

Page 12, spread the joy. :smallredface:

http://fc25.deviantart.com/fs38/f/2008/331/0/4/Noah_12_by_Neoriceisgood.png

[Green-Shirt Q]

For your last two comics: :eek:

[Neoriceisgood]

For your last two comics: :eek:

I think I mentioned that the 3 stories would be...different. :smallredface:

[Wreckingrocc]

That's just freaky...

Both those characters need to die.

EDIT: It would totally be the best thing ever if Burk jumped down with a robot, a mage, and a guy with misfit clothing and weaponry because the store ran out of regular clothing and weaponry... Despite the fact that this is a different story arc based around a different character.

It would totally kill the mood.

EDIT-EDIT: Nice fog, too.

That happy guy is really, really freaky.

[ThePhantom]

That's just freaky...

Both those characters need to die.
I think one of them is already dead.

[Neoriceisgood]

That's just freaky...

That happy guy is really, really freaky.


Good, that was my intention. :smallamused:


I wanted Joy to have a very very big nightmare fuel (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/NightmareFuel) caliber, so if one of them comes across as the creepy one in a scene that includes a misformed necrophilic rapist I did it right. :smallamused:

[T-O-E]

Eek! Creepy. ::smalleek:

[Shadowcaller]

This... Is an interesting comic, keep going good sir.

[Neoriceisgood]

This... Is an interesting comic, keep going good sir.

Planning to. :smallwink:


Today's update will just be a bit later, Noah's arc requires a lot of new backgrounds unlike Burk's story, so it's not as easy to just cram out 3 pages a day. :smallredface:

[I guess having a lot of new backgrounds as it goes on may compensate a bit for the fact that it has less humour though ... unless you find necrophillia funny. :smallsmile:]

[Beholder1995]

I concur with the majority of the above statements.

Those guys are freaky... >_>...

[Neoriceisgood]

Page 13!

Sorry for it being text heavy, but some exposure was necessary. :smallsmile:

http://fc37.deviantart.com/fs39/f/2008/332/9/7/Noah_13_by_Neoriceisgood.png

[T-O-E]

This Joy club sounds interesting. Can't wait to find out more.

[Wreckingrocc]

Jeez... They're promoting essential suicide :smalleek:

Over-the-top grammar suggestion: I think the speaker's last line should be "the police have not," instead of "the police has not".

[charl]

Jeez... They're promoting essential suicide :smalleek:

Over-the-top grammar suggestion: I think the speaker's last line should be "the police have not," instead of "the police has not".

Depends on whether you are talking about the police as a group of people (plural) or as an organization (singular).

[Beholder1995]

This is moving along quite nicely.

The doors and windows in the background, though, seem kinda mushy.

[Neoriceisgood]

Jeez... They're promoting essential suicide :smalleek:

Who knows what they're promoting, the joy group's my personal attempt to actively mess up any of the ideas commonly associated with good and evil.

If I manage to do it right, Noah's ar....story will end up pretty darn twisted when it comes to morality and "right & wrong".

Of course I'll try to be careful when claiming that I'll try to add any kind of depth to it, because in the end it mostly depends on what the readers will think of it, but judging by the reactions I've managed to creep all my readers out severely with the following:


A group that promotes "joy and pacifism" and the only known fact so far is that they somehow managed to get 6 very cruel and dangerous serial killers to surrender themselves to the police, possibly facing the harshest crime there is in the Empire this story takes place in. [and the two pages on Sharkface Sam should give an indication on if they deserve it or not.]

If you consider the fact that anyone who would've killed Sharkface Sam on the spot when catching him trying to kill and rape a girl would have undoubtfully been considered a hero, you can try thinking about what specific implications or attributes of the "joy group" seperate them from ..well.

I won't give any spoilers as I don't want to ruin my own comic, but as I said before, I'm far from interested in black & white; and Noah's story is currently the most prominent one where I want to try and make this obvious. :smallsmile:




The doors and windows in the background, though, seem kinda mushy.



Yeah, I drew em too small on paper, so they couldn't really be made sharp enough by adjusting levels.

I'll try to change the outlines up with the computer for the next shot so that they look better.

[Neoriceisgood]

Page 14, sorry for talking heads. :smalleek:

http://fc37.deviantart.com/fs38/f/2008/332/e/a/Noah_14_by_Neoriceisgood.png

[T-O-E]

I don't mean to nit-pick but you used 'would' twice in the last panel.

EDIT: Mistake. See below.

[Neoriceisgood]

..do you mean "would" ? and thanks. :smallsmile: Me with my silly mistakes.

[T-O-E]

Sorry, I have a habit of mis-placing words.

[Prime32]

This arc is becoming more and more like Death Note/Code Geass... even the uniforms (http://th01.deviantart.com/fs16/300W/f/2007/203/9/8/CG__Lelouch_Lamperouge_by_CodeGeass.png). Noah dresses like L (his character sprite at least), and Hevel seems similar to Rivel too. This is not a bad thing, though.

I'm scratching my head trying to figure out how Burk's storyline could possibly tie into this. :smallconfused:

[BRC]

OOh, so weve got an action story and a mystery! Time Travel is probably involved as well.

[Neoriceisgood]

This arc is becoming more and more like Death Note/Code Geass... even the uniforms (http://th01.deviantart.com/fs16/300W/f/2007/203/9/8/CG__Lelouch_Lamperouge_by_CodeGeass.png). Noah dresses like L (his character sprite at least), and Hevel seems similar to Rivel too. This is not a bad thing, though.


I'll be honest in stating that the inspiration from those stories is definitely there, I'll be honest in saying that the points you gave me actually weren't the parts inspired for most part though!

- Noah dressing like L is actually by accident, I wanted to have his coat on the coathanger because..well, I wanted to; so had to sprite him without the coat on and just figured his shirt'd be white; I hadn't made the association to L at all.

- Uniforms were actually semi-inspired by Code Geass, I wanted to have school uniforms for the first arc and browsed around a bit for something I liked, I'm guessing that the dark+gold colour sceme that I share is the big reason this looks similar.

-I actually made up Hevel long before I ever saw Rivalz, so that's also a coincidence.


It's a bit of a shame that the clothes are the biggest offending factor in appearing similar, because especially when it comes to Noah's current outfit I had no clue how similar it looked, but it happens.

Truth is, I wanted his personality type to range in the direction of Light/L/Lelouche as a character who relies mostly if not entirely on careful planning and insane plots, but by that time his outfit and setting will be very detached from death note/code geass [at least, I hope] in a lot of ways anyway, so it shouldn't really matter.


I do apologise for being uncareful in my choice of outfits and character appearances though! I'll try to keep it in my mind if it won't end up looking too similar to another series in the future. :smallsmile:


I'm scratching my head trying to figure out how Burk's storyline could possibly tie into this. :smallconfused:[/

Just you wait till the third hero is introduced, fitting three completely seperate stories together is probably even worse than doing it for two.

To give you a hint though, not all characters and plot points are important to every story, Burk and Noah are in a completely different country right now and due to most of their troubles being national rather than international they're not problems that'll affect the other story.

I'm not gonna spoil how or why, but Burk, Noah and Tobi will all be connected to one aspect of the world for entirely different reasons, and the more this starts playing a part in the story, the more the 3 stories will become noticably intergrated.


OOh, so weve got an action story and a mystery! Time Travel is probably involved as well.

Nope, no time travel, possibly things closely related though.


[just curious, I've got Humour/Action & Suspense/Mystery now, although I have ideas for the 3rd story in terms of progression and what happens, the "genre" it'd fit in is still fairly open, so any suggestions or ideas on what'd be a good 3rd fit to add to the two already there would be appreciated!]

[Wreckingrocc]

Soap Opera/Western.

This looks like it's gonna be crazy. The joyful people are either going to be completely insane, or they're going to be repressing despair and misery with 'joy'.

[Neoriceisgood]

Soap Opera/Western.

Not sure, the western part could work due to the cosmetics of the setting it'll take place.

I'm actually thinking it'll end up like a semi-crossbreed of the current two arcs in some way, I'm thinking that just going ahead and seeing how it'll end is the best way to deal with it. :smallsmile:


This looks like it's gonna be crazy. The joyful people are either going to be completely insane, or they're going to be repressing despair and misery with 'joy'.

:smallwink:

[Lissou]

The only genre I could think of that would make it completely different was romance.
Not saying you should make it one. I don't even like romances. That's the first thing that came to mind though.

[Neoriceisgood]

The only genre I could think of that would make it completely different was romance.
Not saying you should make it one. I don't even like romances. That's the first thing that came to mind though.

Yeah, I thought about it as well.

Then I was like, no bloody way. :smallannoyed:

It'll probably be a mix between the genres, as it's both adventure and mystery as I have it planned now.

[Wreckingrocc]

I'd go more towards the action-adventure-mystery and less towards the comedy, though. Burk is enough laughs for all three of them, and having little comedy and lots of action will differentiate it from Burk.

[Neoriceisgood]

I'd go more towards the action-adventure-mystery and less towards the comedy, though. Burk is enough laughs for all three of them, and having little comedy and lots of action will differentiate it from Burk.

Yeah, it was supposed to be far more action oriented due to the nature of Tobi's "skills" anyway; it allows for more interesting action.

[It'll become apparent roughly the moment the arc starts..or when you've seen any of Tobi's sprites really.]

Either way, the focus is on Noah right now anyway, Tobi'll become more important when I get to her story arc. :smallredface:

[Lissou]

Now that we've seen more, I'm going to comment on what we've had so far:

1) I'm very interested in the story(ies). I found the second one riveting right away, while the first one I'm curious about, but a bit more meh. I realise it's a matter of tastes, though, and the good thing/bad thing with having 3 stories is that people will like different things.
So, I guess everybody will have a different favourite one, but less people might love all three.

2) I really like it graphically, but if I may say, I have some problems with your dialogues. It's not terrible, but there is something about the pacing of it that sems off to me, especially in monologues. I have no idea if others share this impression or how to work on it though, but I hope teling you helps anyway.

Finally, about the title... I'm thinking working on the "3" aspect might be the way to go. Like "threee-sided coin" or something like that.

[Neoriceisgood]

I have some problems with your dialogues. It's not terrible, but there is something about the pacing of it that sems off to me, especially in monologues. I have no idea if others share this impression or how to work on it though, but I hope teling you helps anyway.

Doesn't really help unless I know what about it's troubling you.

I may add that English isn't my first language, this may work a bit against my abillity to write realistic dialouge if the problem lies in that specific aspect of it.

If you can find anything specific I could improve/pay attention to for the dialogue I'd appreciate hearing it though. :smallsmile:


1) I'm very interested in the story(ies). I found the second one riveting right away, while the first one I'm curious about, but a bit more meh.

Actually, I'm happy to hear this; Burk's story will be a lot simpler as it fits Burk's nature [which is the main reason behind him having a story to begin with] but also has the big advantage over the others of having a very strong humour based drive, which can greatly compensate for it lacking a bit in the story area.

If you found Burk's story more interesting/compelling than Noah's I'd probably have a problem due to the fact that story is the big thing driving Noah's story.

As I explained before [at least, I think I did] starting with Burk's story was greatly to take advantage of the lighthearted humour and having a rather "easy" introduction into the whole comic, although I gotta try keeping the initial expectations intact as I continue, Noah's story relies far more on people wanting to know what on earth is going on [especially when it comes to things like "joy"] rather than an individual comic being funny enough to make it interesting.


I realise it's a matter of tastes, though, and the good thing/bad thing with having 3 stories is that people will like different things.
So, I guess everybody will have a different favourite one, but less people might love all three.

Excluding the people who don't like any of the stories, obviously.

I realise that there's a disadvantage to the fact that by having 3 very different comic styles essentialy be part of the same story [in the larger picture at least] in that I'm decreasing the number of people who'll love all of it while appealing to more people on categories.

But I found the 3 very distinct stories concept really essential to the comic as a way of doing something I haven't seen done in this same way before, although I'm sure I'll make occasional slipups in terms of originality I do think that an unique concept remains something interesting and fun to have.


I mean, not to try and take away from the severity of any mistakes I made or will make, but I'm a guy who'se never gotten past roughly 7 pages on any comics I've attempted in the past [and they were often terrible :smallredface:].

Next to that, I've made all pages for this comic [14 so far] within 4 days, although I'm not sure what the regular update speed is for comics on this forum; you'd probably expect me to have 3-5 comics done at this point [no comments on quality.]

There's one big reason I suddenly decided to just go through with this and make the comic already, I've been planning and plotting to get the story just right for over a month, and had the idea for this comic more than two years now [though the initial one was different in roughly every way imaginable]

The big thing I realised is that no matter how deep, profound or interesting a story I could think of, at the end of the day just thinking about it and doodling sprites won't help me improve.

I've got a very big advantage in "knowing what I want" and having thought long and deep about things like presentation, story and art style; but I'm honestly losing my "webcomic virginity" in a public sense here, so the comic is far far from the quality I hope to achieve when I'm more of a uhh... webcomic veteran I guess? :smallsmile:


I mean, I'll be honest, with most new pages I've made so far I was really scratching my head wondering if what I was making was ... enjoyable would be the word, I think.

Is the pacing right on this page? Is it okay to have em just tied up like that in the next comic already? How long should I wait till Burk exposes himself as completely oblivious, someone already called him a deus ex machina.

Noah's story made this twice as bad, because without the humour of Burk's storyline it's far easier to mess up big time. :smallsmile:

I wanted the first two pages in Noah's story to be both creepy/frightening & at the same time a way to raise interest in a supposed enemy almost immediatly, with some more exposure on the aftermath [and how it relates to Noah] in the comics immediatly after that.

But it'd be easy to mess up here as well [...Have I jumped the shark after 10 pages already..implied necrophilia and rape go pretty far, is the joyous guy creepy looking enough? it'd ruin the setting if he looked goofy to the point where people'd laugh at a scene that's pretty much as horrible as it gets.]

The last page also had it's problem of having a very big "talking heads" ratio to it, which could be seen as a lazy cop out in telling the story rather than enjoyable; above that, would people think this page actually adds anything? it hardly exposes any real new information, it just shows a random dude sucking up to Noah being captain obvious.


[this post must be mega huge, here's noah to compensate: http://i59.photobucket.com/albums/g302/Neorice/noah2.gif]

Either way, I kind of forgot why I decided to make the last half of my post again, but I do intend to raise the quality of my comic as time goes on; the only question is if I can manage. :smallamused:


Oh well, C&C is appreciated but try to be constructive, I'm quite familiar with my flaws so I'm actually far far more interested in ideas on how to fix them. :smallwink:


Finally, about the title... I'm thinking working on the "3" aspect might be the way to go. Like "threee-sided coin" or something like that.

Something like that could work.

I'm not sure why I'm bad at titles, I guess it's cause I'm undecisive. :smallsmile:

I'd like to have a cool title like "Watership Down", that book/movie had the coolest title ever.

It was about rabbits though, not ... well, whatever my comic is about. :smallbiggrin:

[Wreckingrocc]

Wow. Big post.

I think it's excellent. First-time comics tend to receive pity and never receive this much attention. Based purely on the fact that you have 5 pages in 4 days as well as only good things to say about your comics, I'd say you're doing it right.

As for the English not being your first language, you've got good grammar skills, and I've only spotted a couple of errors so far. As I said before, I'm willing to be an editor. Feel free to PM/email me scripts or finished comics, and I'll be happy to look over them and make sure your grammar is correct. I'm not the best, but I'm willing to help.

As for plot and pacing, I think it's about good. There hasn't exactly been a ton revealed so far, and Burk's story left off at a fair point. It gave a good glimpse of his character, as well as setting him off at a good starting point.

As for Noah, it seems dark, but it seems also all the better to draw in interest and get the point across.

Whatever it is you're doing now, keep it up. It's working fine.

[Green-Shirt Q]

Here's a title for you: The Pixels of the World.

I just thought of that because there are pixels and a world. Pretty simple and a little stupid.

What do you think?

[BisectedBrioche]

The latest comic made me think of Death Note, Noah's kind of a cross, from a cosmetic point of view, between L and Light now that I think of it.

[Lissou]

Ok, a few more specific remarks about the writing. It's hard because with drawings you can point out things ("I think his nose is off") but with writings, you mostly end up saying how YOU would have written it, if I'm making sense.

1) Why did the killer get his latest victim to the hospital? In the strip before that, he said she was dead. Why would you bring a corpse to a hospital? That one just didn't make sense to me.

2) "Incidentally this is not [...] joy group" this page's "dialogue" was... weird to say the least. Too long, too complicated, without any comas... I had to re-read it a few times to make sense of it. I kept losing track in the middle.
Studying it, I /think/ it comes from the fact that your sentence is basically "3 because 2 because 1". And 3 in itself is complicated ("facing capital punishment at the level of public execution") and I'm not even sure what it means. Wouldn't "facing a public execution" work just as well, or am I missing something?

3) In the following pannel, you start with "it is the 6th...", while the pannel before says "incidentally, this is not the first...". So the guy is saying on the radio "It's not the first case of (blah blah). It is the 6th case of (blah blah). It's a weird repetition. I would suggest removing the first one.
As aresult, it would become something like "The mass-murderer will face the capital punishment as a result of..." and so on (although I'd still work on the rest of the sentence, not sure exactly how) and then "This is the sixth documented case..." like it originally was.

After all, if this is the 6th case, and all murderers were famous and known, I'm sure everybody has heard about the first 5 cases. Startin with "incidentally, it has happened before" when the very same channel probably talked about the previous cases already is weird. The radio isn't talking to the reader, but to their audience. The audience knows it's not the first case, but they might need a reminded that it's the sixth one (plus, journalists like giving numbers like that).

4) "It remains interesting" doesn't quite sit for me. "More and more interesting" is more common and not using it just feels weird.
As for his "joy" comment, if he means the club, I think it should be capitalised.

Next comic:

5) "perhaps I was the only person looking?" > "looking" seems an odd choice of wrods to me. I would have said "the only one paying attention"

6) Noah's monologue seems weird. I realise he's supposed to be wordy, but it seems too much for me. If he always speaks like that he's going to be pretty hard to follow.

7) Changing the text's size seems weird. I realise you're adjusting it to fit the space you have, but smaller text will seem to be wispered and bigger text to be yelled. You should probably stick to a single size unless the characters ARE yelling or whispering.

... I think that's it. Now comments on the story itself:

I really want to know more about the Joy group. I don't see them as a "villain" right now, because they're just convincing killers to surrender, so they're freeing the world of said killers. It's basically like arresting them or calling the police on them, only more mysterious.
However, it does seem they're doing something to convince them. Like some torture or mental control. So yeah, it's very intriguing. And the joy guy is even creepier than the mass-murderer, so yeah...

(Btw, he didn't make me laugh at all. It's the right amount of creepiness to be really, really scary and not at all comical).

Oh, and another text-related comment: the rapist uses "make love", which isn't really used outside of, well, love relationship. As you said you're not a native speaker, I'm just checking he's doing it on purpose for some reason. otherwise, it's really not a word I'd expect a rapist to use.

[Neoriceisgood]

Oi,


Ok, a few more specific remarks about the writing. It's hard because with drawings you can point out things ("I think his nose is off") but with writings, you mostly end up saying how YOU would have written it, if I'm making sense.

Yeah, I understand, but as I said, even when it feels off you can try to point out why it feels off for you personally; :smallsmile:


1) Why did the killer get his latest victim to the hospital? In the strip before that, he said she was dead. Why would you bring a corpse to a hospital? That one just didn't make sense to me.

He said she died right after she fell over and stopped screaming;
When you combine the fact that it was in a dark alleyway and he didn't bother checking her pulse or anything there's no guarantee he was right when he figured she died already.

It may be a bit counter intuitive if you read "she's dead"-type of dialogue in the "aye, I am slain" sense where it always means someone is dead though, I'll agree there.


2) "Incidentally this is not [...] joy group" this page's "dialogue" was... weird to say the least. Too long, too complicated, without any comas... I had to re-read it a few times to make sense of it. I kept losing track in the middle.
Studying it, I /think/ it comes from the fact that your sentence is basically "3 because 2 because 1". And 3 in itself is complicated ("facing capital punishment at the level of public execution") and I'm not even sure what it means. Wouldn't "facing a public execution" work just as well, or am I missing something?

Yeah, I'll fully agree here; I don't really write any script in advance so odd things like this may end up happening.

I'll try to avoid the because because type of storytelling in the future.


3) In the following pannel, you start with "it is the 6th...", while the pannel before says "incidentally, this is not the first...". So the guy is saying on the radio "It's not the first case of (blah blah). It is the 6th case of (blah blah). It's a weird repetition. I would suggest removing the first one.
As aresult, it would become something like "The mass-murderer will face the capital punishment as a result of..." and so on (although I'd still work on the rest of the sentence, not sure exactly how) and then "This is the sixth documented case..." like it originally was.

After all, if this is the 6th case, and all murderers were famous and known, I'm sure everybody has heard about the first 5 cases. Startin with "incidentally, it has happened before" when the very same channel probably talked about the previous cases already is weird. The radio isn't talking to the reader, but to their audience. The audience knows it's not the first case, but they might need a reminded that it's the sixth one (plus, journalists like giving numbers like that).

I'll be honest in stating that in my experience the news [at least in my country] actually does repeat old related news in this way to some extend, even if it's "commonly known".

The fact that I adressed it twice is kind of sloppy though, I'll agree there.



4) "It remains interesting" doesn't quite sit for me. "More and more interesting" is more common and not using it just feels weird.
As for his "joy" comment, if he means the club, I think it should be capitalised.

Yeah, I guess that does sound better; I'm not sure if I want to fix up my old comics too much rather than keep on going and try making the newer ones "better" though, so a single line fix like that rather than a stylistic suggestion in terms of how to present dialogue probably won't matter that much.


5) "perhaps I was the only person looking?" > "looking" seems an odd choice of wrods to me. I would have said "the only one paying attention"


Agreed.


6) Noah's monologue seems weird. I realise he's supposed to be wordy, but it seems too much for me. If he always speaks like that he's going to be pretty hard to follow.

I'll try to shorten his sentences a bit in the future, I'm guessing the long sentences are the main problem in the monologue?


7) Changing the text's size seems weird. I realise you're adjusting it to fit the space you have, but smaller text will seem to be wispered and bigger text to be yelled. You should probably stick to a single size unless the characters ARE yelling or whispering.

Understand why it'd seem weird and I think I'll have to dismiss it, being able to change the font size slightly allows me to make the relation of text compared to the box size bearable, it means I'm not stuck mangling sentences just to get them to fit the size properly.

I do have an idea how to represent whispering that may require a slight change in my text though, as greying it out often leads to the idea of whispering.


I really want to know more about the Joy group. I don't see them as a "villain" right now, because they're just convincing killers to surrender, so they're freeing the world of said killers. It's basically like arresting them or calling the police on them, only more mysterious.
However, it does seem they're doing something to convince them. Like some torture or mental control. So yeah, it's very intriguing. And the joy guy is even creepier than the mass-murderer, so yeah...


I definitely plan to make them interesting, mostly in terms of moral implications.

Just hope it works out.


(Btw, he didn't make me laugh at all. It's the right amount of creepiness to be really, really scary and not at all comical).

:smallamused:


Oh, and another text-related comment: the rapist uses "make love", which isn't really used outside of, well, love relationship. As you said you're not a native speaker, I'm just checking he's doing it on purpose for some reason. otherwise, it's really not a word I'd expect a rapist to use.

I kind of thought that'd there be a scary irony in a rapist necrophile expressing it as "making love", I'm not really sure what the language rules on this forum are again, but I saw no reason to make it more profane than was necessary.

[And yes, I know, I just said I didn't want to make a scene with implied necrophilic rape non-profane, sue me. :smallredface:]



The latest comic made me think of Death Note, Noah's kind of a cross, from a cosmetic point of view, between L and Light now that I think of it.

I'll admit that he'll definitely have some of the common traits of either, the reason is because http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/MagnificentBastard is the trope I "based" him on, which is pretty much the single word defining Light/L/Lelouche and all types related to the two.

The cosmetics thing is kind of funny though, because like Burk [as my sig may reveal] he'll change outfits at least somewhere in the story, this is just his "neutral" starting outfit.

I'm sure he'll end up "different" in appearance from Light/L relatively soon in his story.

[at least I hope so, the last thing I want is ending up with a comic that feels like a total ripoff. :smallsmile:]


Wow. Big post.

I think it's excellent. First-time comics tend to receive pity and never receive this much attention. Based purely on the fact that you have 5 pages in 4 days as well as only good things to say about your comics, I'd say you're doing it right.


14 pages, the 5 pages was an estimated average for how many comics someone'd publish/produce within such a short range of time when just starting, I could be wrong though, most comics that are just starting tend to be kind of slow in my experience.

And the attention, not to sound arrogant, was kind of expected; I've waited a long time to finally start a webcomic shown on a public forum like this because I really wanted to get it "right" [enough] before starting one, although I've still got trouble with things like dialogue I've had a lot of preparation. [and hey, the graphics have good appeal in my experience, the best way to get readers to actually read is for them to notice your comic, graphics can be essential here [I'll admit, it's not necessary.]]


As for plot and pacing, I think it's about good. There hasn't exactly been a ton revealed so far, and Burk's story left off at a fair point. It gave a good glimpse of his character, as well as setting him off at a good starting point.

The best way to explain the lack of revealing would be..

[B]chapter 1. introduction of story's hero, foreshadowing of "initial plot"

The first chapters are meant to give readers a quick and short but thorough idea of how the story's main character works, it obviously won't work as a 100% portrayal of any of the characters [this'd only indicate a lack of depth] but does show their primary personality points.

Next to this the first chapter is meant to introduce a relatively clear plot point for the characters to work towards and in a way, to show the initial trigger to the rest of their story.

For Burk this one was relatively simple; it was his own will to become a hero, his part in the story is entirely because he wants to be part of it.

Noah and Tobi will end up with entirely different "reasons" for becoming part of the underlying storyline that attaches all of their plots together, but I hope I can make these clear as it goes on.


As for Noah, it seems dark, but it seems also all the better to draw in interest and get the point across.

I hope I can make it even darker as it goes on. :smallamused:

[Neoriceisgood]

Double post for update, hope I didn't make any spelling errors this time :smallbiggrin:

Sudden change of direction in Noah's story, let's see where this'll go.

http://fc92.deviantart.com/fs39/f/2008/333/0/9/Noah_15_by_Neoriceisgood.png

[for those who are wondering, because I've already gotten one weird comment about it, Hevel's reflection is how it -should- look, Noah's reflection from his own perspective is really faint compared to an ordinary reflection.

May be unnecessary to point this out, but just to avoid questions about it. :smallredface:]

[Wreckingrocc]

That explains a lot. Noah is a vampire hunter :smallsmile:

Hevel has something strange on his face. Is that a bandage, a toothpick, or what? It's just bugging me for some reason.

[Keris]

It looks like a cigarette to me, although it disappears in Comic 14, panel 4 and the last panel of Comic 15. This might be an error on the character portrait though.


Double post for update, hope I didn't make any spelling errors this time :smallbiggrin:

First panel, lowercase letter at the start of a sentence.:smalltongue:

[Neoriceisgood]

That explains a lot. Noah is a vampire hunter :smallsmile:

Hevel has something strange on his face. Is that a bandage, a toothpick, or what? It's just bugging me for some reason.

He has a chunk of bone that he uses as a toothpick, he's cool like that. :smallamused:

And although I won't fully claim that the comics won't have "vampires" Noah's definitely not a vampire hunter, and the [near]-lack of reflection is in no way related to the vampire mythos.

[regarding not claiming the comic won't have "vampires", there's a lot of things I won't have in the traditional sense, like elves as a race or vampires as these mystical creatures; but a lot of fantasy races or creatures may end up as some form of inspiration for events later on in the comic. :smallwink:]


It looks like a cigarette to me, although it disappears in Comic 14, panel 4 and the last panel of Comic 15. This might be an error on the character portrait though.

Error. :smallredface:


First panel, lowercase letter at the start of a sentence.

Bloody hell, it seems like a mistake manages to slip through every single time! :smallfurious:

[Lissou]

Just thought I'd say that:
1) You don't need to go back and change the previous webcomics, the specific comments were more because it's a lot easier to name examples. If you're not writing scripts in advance, I suggest maybe trying to write down the whole update dialogue/monologue in a word processor or something and reading it all together? You might notice some things when reading it all at once as opposed to it being separate.

2) The problem with the monologues is indeed the length and complexity of the sentences. They usually have several propositions, which individually are also complex.
(A proposition being part of a sentence. For instance "I think that you're right" has two propositions "I think" and "you're right", linked by "that". Now if you turn it ino "I think that you're right to believe that this person was..." and so on, you can end up with a very long sentence that gets harder to follow with each proposition, because the subject changes from one to the next.)
I'm not good at making short sentences either, but I think that if you add more punctuation (comas, colons, periods) it will be easier to read even with the vocabulary he uses.

[Prime32]

Your first fanart :smallbiggrin:
http://i222.photobucket.com/albums/dd54/Prime32_temp/OotS/oots_burk.png

[Neoriceisgood]

Your first fanart :smallbiggrin:
http://i222.photobucket.com/albums/dd54/Prime32_temp/OotS/oots_burk.png

Ahahahahah, Burk!

That's awesome! Thanks! :smallbiggrin:


edit: avatar'd

[Wreckingrocc]

I like it =D

Might wanna change the background to a playground color to make it fit in.

I can trace it if you wish.

[Prime32]

I like it =D

Might wanna change the background to a playground color to make it fit in.

I can trace it if you wish.

Don't bother.
http://i222.photobucket.com/albums/dd54/Prime32_temp/OotS/oots_burk_trans.png

EDIT: Name suggestions

Third Dawn
...I was sure I had more than that. I guess I'll have to wait for Tobi.

[Neoriceisgood]

Thanks! *uses that one* :smallamused:

[Emperor Ing]

I've been following this comic a bit, and all I have to say is
Awesome. :smallbiggrin:

[Neoriceisgood]

http://fc37.deviantart.com/fs39/f/2008/333/0/6/Noah_16_by_Neoriceisgood.png

Self reflection about ... his own reflection.

:smallsmile:

Should be the last comic in this room, not sure how soon I can get to the next comic as it'll require ..uhh..

Well, more. :smallredface:

[fun fact: this comic single handedly gives Noah the largest set of expressions so far]

*edit* forgot to have him scratch his head in the last two portraits, may change that in the future. :smallcool:]

[Beholder1995]

These are great.

But their hands seem too big. Unless you mean for them to be exaggerated like that.

[Neoriceisgood]

These are great.

But their hands seem too big. Unless you mean for them to be exaggerated like that.

I mean to exaggerate em, they're a pretty good way of showing poses but it'd look lame/uninteresting if I showed em at normal size in the sprites.

Although it's quite noticable that they're way too big, the large hands are a good way to really make their poses seem more lively and interesting. :smallamused:

[Keris]

I suspect you'd have trouble getting any detail into 16 pixels anyway.:smalltongue:

[Neoriceisgood]

Page 17!

http://fc74.deviantart.com/fs38/f/2008/334/7/3/Noah_17_by_Neoriceisgood.png


Noah judges by appearance, he's cool like that. :smallamused:

[T-O-E]

I've found something creepier than the Joy group.

[BisectedBrioche]

Ooo, mysterious ¬_¬

[Beholder1995]

I've found something creepier than the Joy group.

:smalltongue::smallbiggrin:

Great comic. Like the city.

[Neoriceisgood]

I've found something creepier than the Joy group.

Imagine if the two joined forces. :smallredface:


Ooo, mysterious ¬_¬

:smallredface:




Great comic. Like the city.

Thanks, glad you like it.

[Fawkes]

Noah's face in the first two panels is the best ever.

[Neoriceisgood]

Page 18 !

http://fc07.deviantart.com/fs39/f/2008/334/8/1/Noah_18_by_Neoriceisgood.png

Noah's story is definitely the prime example of morality. :smallamused:

"I can break the law because I'm part of the goverment" for the win.

sorry for this page being uneventful. [but hey, at least you got two today..?]

[Elder Tsofu]

I found this comic 3 days ago and wondered how I could have missed it for the last possibly 2 months (judged from the usual update-schedule around here and the high quality of the strips).
Now I've come to terms with that it is just a insane update-schedule (which outclasses what abr's gathered forces are able to accomplish atm). :smallcool:

I very much hope this will last - but don't burn yourself!

[Shadowcaller]

I found this comic 3 days ago and wondered how I could have missed it for the last possibly 2 months (judged from the usual update-schedule around here and the high quality of the strips).
Now I've come to terms with that it is just a insane update-schedule (which outclasses what abr's gathered forces are able to accomplish atm). :smallcool:

I very much hope this will last - but don't burn yourself!

I agree, watch out so you don't burn yourself out, I want more of this comic.

[T-O-E]

To answer your question, the thread was made less than a week ago.

[Neoriceisgood]

I found this comic 3 days ago and wondered how I could have missed it for the last possibly 2 months (judged from the usual update-schedule around here and the high quality of the strips).
Now I've come to terms with that it is just a insane update-schedule (which outclasses what abr's gathered forces are able to accomplish atm). :smallcool:

I very much hope this will last - but don't burn yourself!

I think I'll try to keep this up till page 30, after which I've at least got the intro chapter for each of the 3 main characters done, after that I'll possibly slow it down a bit.

To be honest, it's really hard to predict how well I can keep it up really, the only comics that take out a significant chunk of my time are probably the ones that require an entirely new background [like the last comic, which required a complete town setting.]

Otherwise, although I've got some general story ideas, I'm really just making a lot of things up as I go.

[I'm kind of reverse engineering the story in some ways, an example would be that I have a good idea what a lot of the later implications of things will be and how they'll get there, but I've left their introduction or path relatively open, meaning that a lot of things [prime example: joy] were preplanned in implications, but the two intro pages introducing joy were just my idea of having a good and creepy introduction for a major player in the comic's future.]

Either way, 18 pages done, this means two more pages of Noah's story and I'll finally be able to introduce the final hero..ine, Tobi! :smallredface:


I agree, watch out so you don't burn yourself out, I want more of this comic.


Don't worry, the entire format of the comic is intended to be extremely easy for me to make new pages in.

The most difficult parts making new portraits/backgrounds are still rather easy as I'm getting fairly adept at just rapidly making new ones.

The only thing that can get in my way is if school gets busier, or if I get at a point in one of the three stories where I lack the inspiration to know how to continue from that point on. :smallfrown:



[edit]


I've been thinking about titles some more.

Something I came up with today is "paths of our world"

It's fitting due to the plural of paths implying the several storylines in a non gimmicky way that could apply to the seperate storylines as well, above that it'd have the acronym: "Poow"

which is pretty awesome as an acronym.

I may be keeping that one, unless it's severely hated by a lot of this thread's readers. :smallredface:

[charl]

Noah's hair is green? O_o Looks white to me.

[Neoriceisgood]

Noah's hair is green? O_o Looks white to me.

It's more visible in his portrait rather than his sprite, I wanted to go for a slight green hue to the point where it's only really noticable when you point it out.

I'm pretty sure it's fairly clear that his hair has a rather green tint in his portrait. :smallsmile:

[T-O-E]

This is a really good plot comic. I think a lot of people could learn from you.

[Neoriceisgood]

This is a really good plot comic. I think a lot of people could learn from you.

Really? Thanks!

I'll be honest in saying that I'm not entirely sure what I'm doing yet,
anything specific that makes you say Noah's story arc has a good plot people could learn from?

If I've got a good idea what I'm doing right I can try keeping it in mind, because it may have been something that was unintentional to begin with. :smallcool:

[T-O-E]

Not just Noah's, the comic as a whole.
It's interesting and from what I can tell, original.

[Neoriceisgood]

Not just Noah's, the comic as a whole.
It's interesting and from what I can tell, original.

Thanks, Although it's hard to be entirely original with the number of fictional works out there, I do hope/try to go for an as original plot/story as possible.

If I can keep up the two pages a day pattern I'll finish chapter 2 today, which means I can finally get to Tobi's story. :smallbiggrin:

I should try getting to page 19 soon.

[Szilard]

For the title of the thread, just pick a title for the comic and put it in. You shouldn't bother changing the title for every comic, because after 30 days or so, you can no longer change the title of a thread. So I would suggest thinking of a good title in the time you have left.

[Neoriceisgood]

For the title of the thread, just pick a title for the comic and put it in. You shouldn't bother changing the title for every comic, because after 30 days or so, you can no longer change the title of a thread. So I would suggest thinking of a good title in the time you have left.

Oh thanks for the heads up, I didn't realise there was a time limit for changing the title.

I was thinking about the title "paths of our world", I mentioned a few posts earlier, nobody commented on it though. :smalleek:

The paths part nicely works in terms of there being several stories/paths, and it's got a cool acronym: POOW.

So I'm thinking of sticking with that. :smallsmile:


[edit]

Edit in favor of page 19;

http://fc63.deviantart.com/fs38/f/2008/335/c/0/Noah_19_by_Neoriceisgood.png

drinking is the primary cause for self imposed cliffhangers.

[Szilard]

Paths of our World sounds good, with a tint of epicness.

[Keris]

How the heck is Noah meant to demonstrate that he can't see his own reflection?

[Neoriceisgood]

How the heck is Noah meant to demonstrate that he can't see his own reflection?

Not that difficult actually.


If he can't see himself it means he should be able to see anything directly behind his reflection, so if you held a playing card or a card with a number behind him while he was looking in a mirror, he should be able to tell what the card was 100% of the time, eventhough his reflection -should- be in the way of the card.

[just one example of a way to demonstrate it really.]

[Lissou]

In one of the strips, you use <>, I imagine because Noah is thinking. Then in the next panels it's not used anymore... Did he say all these insults out loud?

Also, his hair appears as blonde to me. I've looked carefully, and the darker part just look like a dark blonde. It's possible that it's just me, though, my screen doesn't seem to display colours exactly the same as others

[Neoriceisgood]

In one of the strips, you use <>, I imagine because Noah is thinking. Then in the next panels it's not used anymore... Did he say all these insults out loud?

Also, his hair appears as blonde to me. I've looked carefully, and the darker part just look like a dark blonde. It's possible that it's just me, though, my screen doesn't seem to display colours exactly the same as others

He likes talking to himself, he said it "out loud" at the point he wasn't clearly within her immediate hearing range; doesn't really affect the story I guess. :smallamused:

http://img219.imageshack.us/img219/4/noahhairog4.png

Regarding his haircolour, it's not necessarily that his hair is bright green or anything fancy like that; but on the colour spectrum it's clearly edging too far into the green area to really be considered a proper naturally blonde colour.

I'd call it a haircolour on the verge of realism, or something. :smallredface:

[Prime32]

It would be easy to make a game out of this - I could put together something crude in a day or two if I had some spritesheets.

Also, would you mind crediting me for the av in your sig? :smallredface:

[Neoriceisgood]

It would be easy to make a game out of this - I could put together something crude in a day or two if I had some spritesheets.

Also, would you mind crediting me for the av in your sig? :smallredface:

I don't really have any spritesheets that animate well for the comic, and the only reason it's in comic format is because I don't really plan to make a game out of it. :smallamused:

I make the sprites/poses as the story demands, the poses in the comic are pretty much the only ones I have so far.

[Neoriceisgood]

Page 20

http://fc32.deviantart.com/fs38/f/2008/335/d/b/Noah_20_by_Neoriceisgood.png



I'm gonna double post cause I can, sorry. :smallsmile:

Either way, 10 pages for Burk's chapter, 10 pages for Noah's chapter.


After this it's time to introduce the final of the three heroes! Tobi~ :smallamused:


Hope both story arcs were fun so far, they were definitely very different, and I hope I can make the 3rd arc just as different [I doubt it though, it'd probably land inbetween.]

We'll see when I make it. :smallredface:

[T-O-E]

Will Toby be able to compete with Burk and Noah? Only time will tell.

[Lissou]

I have great hopes for her (I like her sprite).

[Neoriceisgood]

No updates today, my brother's over and it's been impossible to get enough free time for myself to do any comic work at all due to his persistance that it's "fun to hang out with me, so you should do it.'. :smallfrown:

Chances are I won't be able to properly start on Tobi's story till wednesday, because I gotta be able to take photos of my backgrounds to digitalise em when it's light out; and I won't get home from school till it's dark for as far as I know tomorrow. :smallfrown:

[Wreckingrocc]

That's fine. It's not actually that long a wait, when you think about it. It's probably about 4 days, which is much faster than most A&C comics.

Looking forward to seeing the new angle.

[Ascension]

But wait! If Noah turns into the Mage, who will be Burk's Cool Guy?!? :smallbiggrin:

Yes, I know you've already said that Burk may very well not be right in his predictions. But I can still dream, can't I?

[Neoriceisgood]

But wait! If Noah turns into the Mage, who will be Burk's Cool Guy?!? :smallbiggrin:

Yes, I know you've already said that Burk may very well not be right in his predictions. But I can still dream, can't I?

Noah's not part of Burk's "dream team"

Burk is a hero who may or may not get his own team.

Noah is a hero who leads in an entirely different story that may end up influencing or be influenced by Burk's story.

:smallsmile:

*edit*

Oh well, I don't think I can get to a new comic today, but here's some stuff to at least give this thread some new material;

http://i59.photobucket.com/albums/g302/Neorice/dale-full.png

Full pic of Dale student section [zoomed out, but okay]

http://i59.photobucket.com/albums/g302/Neorice/rauel.png

Picture of Tobi's home location, Rauel.


That's fine. It's not actually that long a wait, when you think about it. It's probably about 4 days, which is much faster than most A&C comics.

Looking forward to seeing the new angle.

Yeah, but still, it's been a week and I've already missed a day, bad neo. :smalltongue:

[Neoriceisgood]

*update*


Comic 21, finally starting on Tobi's story. :smallsmile:

http://fc73.deviantart.com/fs39/f/2008/337/9/c/Tobi_21_by_Neoriceisgood.png

[Lissou]

Already interesting... Very different setting for sure.

[Prime32]

Whoa. Nice monsters.

[Wreckingrocc]

I personally like the desert scenery and towns/cities. They look so fresh and they stick out well.

[Neoriceisgood]

Comic 22

http://fc64.deviantart.com/fs38/f/2008/337/b/7/Tobi_22_by_Neoriceisgood.png

UR HED IS PLODE

:smallamused:


as for comments so far;


Already interesting... Very different setting for sure.

Aren't all three of em? :smallamused:


Whoa. Nice monsters.

Thanks, wish I could say there'll be plenty more, but I'd be lying for a long while.


I personally like the desert scenery and towns/cities. They look so fresh and they stick out well.

I'm glad, I'd like each location in the world to be distinctive and nice, having interesting settings to look at is one big part that makes fantasy fun in my mind. :smallsmile:

[Ascension]

Prediction: She will underestimate the importance of guard duty, get her whole town killed, and thus be forced into the wandering adventuring life. We haven't had a good hometown destruction yet, and with three heroes you know somebody's village is going to bite the dust.

[Neoriceisgood]

Prediction: She will underestimate the importance of guard duty, get her whole town killed, and thus be forced into the wandering adventuring life. We haven't had a good hometown destruction yet, and with three heroes you know somebody's village is going to bite the dust.

There's some possible correct predictions in there, the prediction as a whole isn't what's going to happen though. :smallredface:

[is it wrong to say if predictions are wrong or right? hm, well, I'll just be ambiguous enough to make it unclear what about the prediction was right I guess. :smallamused:]

[charl]

What is the other invention?

And the father seems to be a nice fella.

[Lissou]

What is the other invention?

And the father seems to be a nice fella.

I'm thinking maybe the inventions are the watchposts and hot air ships,but I found it confusing too when it says "Two inventions: watchposts".

EDIT: if it so happens that it's the watchposts and hot air stuff, you could bolden both, making it clear that they are the two inventions. If not, what's the second one?

[Neoriceisgood]

It was the airship actually; I knew it was kinda odd, but yeah, whoops. :smalltongue:


What is the other invention?

And the father seems to be a nice fella.

And grandfather. :smalleek: Said so on page 21.


*edit*

Also Lissou, the face of your avatar gives me the creeps. :smallfrown:

[charl]

And grandfather. :smalleek: Said so on page 21.


Oops my bad. Grandfather then.

[Neoriceisgood]

Page 23

http://fc88.deviantart.com/fs39/f/2008/338/6/0/Tobi_23_by_Neoriceisgood.png

*blush*

[Zenos]

Hundred years old, eh? Maybe it is because of some funny inventions?

[Prime32]

Clearly it's the hat.

[Threeshades]

Tobi, huh? I so have a favorite character in this comic now. Also I dig the goggles. :smallbiggrin:

[Neoriceisgood]

Page 24.

http://fc62.deviantart.com/fs39/f/2008/339/0/a/Tobi_24_by_Neoriceisgood.png

Kinda slow, building up for a certain event. :smallcool:


Hundred years old, eh? Maybe it is because of some funny inventions?

Who knows. :smallamused:


Clearly it's the hat.

The hat does help a lot, it's charismatic. :smallbiggrin:


Tobi, huh? I so have a favorite character in this comic now. Also I dig the goggles.

Glad you like her! :smallredface:

[Neoriceisgood]

Comic 25

http://fc36.deviantart.com/fs39/f/2008/340/1/b/Tobi_25_by_Neoriceisgood.png

Tobi has the best grandfather ever. :smallsmile:

[is double posting allowed when it comes with updates? :smallfrown:]

[Green-Shirt Q]

[is double posting allowed when it comes with updates? :smallfrown:]

Probably. I do it all the time.

[Elder Tsofu]

Hehe, just the thing elder familymembers love to blurp out. :P

[Neoriceisgood]

It's the best way to make those youngsters understand that you care for them. :smallsmile:

[Ascension]

Woah! Somehow I hadn't really noticed how beefy the mechanoarm is in the last few comics.

I'm guessing her specialty will be punching people/things?

EDIT: Between an artificial arm and a knack for invention, I'm being oddly reminded of Bao-Dur from KotOR II. Intentional?

[Neoriceisgood]

Never played KotOR II or 1 for that matter.



And yeah it's beefy, not for the reason you think though; you'll see soon enough what's it for. :smallredface:

[Wreckingrocc]

Wow, fast updates... Keep up the great work! I love the art in the desert so far. It's excellent. My only problem with the 24 comics so far is the grandfather in the window. He looks like he's looking one way, and they're on the other side of the building. It just seems a little strange.

Anyway, I'm sure something's going to happen at the guard tower.

Waiting for the next one intently! =D

[Prime32]

Love the expressions in the last strip :smallbiggrin:

[Neoriceisgood]

Comic 26

http://fc35.deviantart.com/fs39/f/2008/341/5/0/Tobi_26_by_Neoriceisgood.png

Jake likes his airships.


Wow, fast updates... Keep up the great work! I love the art in the desert so far. It's excellent. My only problem with the 24 comics so far is the grandfather in the window. He looks like he's looking one way, and they're on the other side of the building. It just seems a little strange.

Yeah, I'll try to do that better in future situations.


Anyway, I'm sure something's going to happen at the guard tower.

Waiting for the next one intently! =D

Should come soon, just be patient. :smallsmile:


Love the expressions in the last strip

Thanks! :smallredface:

[T-O-E]

That man is weirder than the Joy group and the ugly woman combined!
If you have a dirty mind.

[Neoriceisgood]

Weirder, understandable.

But is he creepier? :smallamused:

[Wreckingrocc]

Something tells me that she's going to need that...

I'm getting a huge feeling that her tower is going to get knocked down... And she's gonna have to traverse the desert and get to someone else's :smallwink:

[Neoriceisgood]

Comic 27, because I'm in a good mood today.

http://fc59.deviantart.com/fs39/f/2008/341/6/a/Tobi_27_by_Neoriceisgood.png

Introducing a new character, because it's fun. :smallannoyed:


Something tells me that she's going to need that...

There's a difference between need and use, but we'll see. :smallsmile:


I'm getting a huge feeling that her tower is going to get knocked down... And she's gonna have to traverse the desert and get to someone else's

Who knows, we'll see what'll happen. :smallredface:

[BisectedBrioche]

I wonder if the towers have some sort of "Hey, there's a shady guy poking around in the desert, maybe you should send some soldiers to find out what he's doing?" device.

[Wreckingrocc]

That's a freakin' sweet looking temple =D

Am I right to assume that's Rauel in the background?

[T-O-E]

You have to sit on a tower and watch intently for several hours... in a desert?

That has to be the worst job ever.

[Neoriceisgood]

Comic 28!

I'm feeling generous today.

http://fc51.deviantart.com/fs39/f/2008/341/b/5/Tobi_28_by_Neoriceisgood.png


I wonder if the towers have some sort of "Hey, there's a shady guy poking around in the desert, maybe you should send some soldiers to find out what he's doing?" device.

Explanation will be given in 29. :smallredface:


That's a freakin' sweet looking temple =D

Am I right to assume that's Rauel in the background?

Yeah, part of it.


You have to sit on a tower and watch intently for several hours... in a desert?

That has to be the worst job ever.



In case you wondered if Tobi's dislike for it was justified or not, I guess? :smallsmile:

[insecure]

That's a lot of comics in one day. A lot of wonderful comics.

[Neoriceisgood]

Thank you insecure.

Also, because I'm in a comic mood today; here's today's 4th comic;

Page 29

http://fc23.deviantart.com/fs38/f/2008/341/e/9/Tobi_29_by_Neoriceisgood.png

:smallsmile: purple is fabulous, isn't it?

[Wreckingrocc]

Wow, you're churning these out quickly... And yet they're still high-quality.

I'm guessing she's gonna get stuck inside, and she's gonna get caught by them. While she's not guarding the tower, something will happen due to her negligence =D

I sent you an email regarding checking them, if you still want me to do that, but these past few look very good grammatically/content-wise.

[Dispozition]

Great comics still. Just make sure you don't burn out. Sneak was churning out about 3 comics a day back when he was making them, but he burned out after a month. Not saying you will, but just be careful, jah?

[Ascension]

:smallsmile: purple is fabulous, isn't it?

Aye, that it is.

I like where this is going. Nothing like the old temples whose doors never ever open except during whatever story they're being featured in, when they're guaranteed to yawn wide as soon as a proper plot hook is available. :smallbiggrin:

[Neoriceisgood]

Comic 30

http://fc15.deviantart.com/fs39/f/2008/342/d/9/Tobi_30_by_Neoriceisgood.png

I dub it, "temple goes boom"

Sorry for the excessive use of light effects. :smallredface:

Well with this the intro chapter for all 3 characters is done, I'm thinking of just randomizing the pages for now rather than doing 10-10-10, I'll see how I'll do it.

I hope this has been enough to spark some interest for all 3 of the stories. :smallredface:


Great comics still. Just make sure you don't burn out. Sneak was churning out about 3 comics a day back when he was making them, but he burned out after a month. Not saying you will, but just be careful, jah?

Who'se Sneak?

I don't get burned out, getting bored is the worst that could happen. :smallamused:


I like where this is going. Nothing like the old temples whose doors never ever open except during whatever story they're being featured in, when they're guaranteed to yawn wide as soon as a proper plot hook is available.

Boom.

[Wreckingrocc]

That's a nice way to break the cliche :smallbiggrin:

Personally, I'm thinking continuing the same order would be cool. Now we could go back to Burk for a little while longer, until something important/plot hooky happens, when we can jump back to Noah... Etc.

[Prime32]

Tobi is... nimble.

[Neoriceisgood]

Comic 31, Burk again~ wooh.

http://fc12.deviantart.com/fs38/f/2008/342/a/3/Burk_31_by_Neoriceisgood.png

Burk has an acorn.

That town guard isn't shady at all.

:smallsmile:


That's a nice way to break the cliche

I didn't really know there was one. :smallbiggrin:


Personally, I'm thinking continuing the same order would be cool. Now we could go back to Burk for a little while longer, until something important/plot hooky happens, when we can jump back to Noah... Etc.

I'll see how I'll do it, I may just do 2-3 Burk comics, 2-3 Noah comics 2-3 Tobi comics or any other order, doesn't really matter.


Tobi is... nimble.

I'll be honest, I just did that because it was more fun to sprite than her just walking in. :smalltongue:

[Fawkes]

I love your sprites so much. I want to marry them.

[Neoriceisgood]

I love your sprites so much. I want to marry them.

If that's the case, have another one!

Comic 32

http://fc66.deviantart.com/fs38/f/2008/342/e/2/Burk_32_by_Neoriceisgood.png

Evil laugh counter: 1

[BisectedBrioche]

You know, I'd have thought those guys at the temple would have indulged in an evil laugh...

Also, is it me or are Tobi's eyes kind of...yellow?

[Wreckingrocc]

I like his sideways head talking.

They also seem generically motiveless =D

[Neoriceisgood]

You know, I'd have thought those guys at the temple would have indulged in an evil laugh...


Perhaps they did while inside the temple? :smallbiggrin:


Also, is it me or are Tobi's eyes kind of...yellow?

Seem fine on my screen, it may show differently on yours I guess?


I like his sideways head talking.

Burk can break portrait laws by applying the rule of cool. :smallamused:


They also seem generically motiveless =D

Well, they're honest about being town guards, so their motive is simply that they're being paid for their job. :smallsmile:

[Dispozition]

Who'se Sneak?

I don't get burned out, getting bored is the worst that could happen. :smallamused:

He's generally regarded as one of the best avatarists on this forum, also as one of the funniest. He made a comic a while back that was almost getting the point of being more popular than OotS, but he burnt out.

And we shall see. I hope you don't, but you never know.

[Fawkes]

Burk can break portrait laws by applying the rule of cool. :smallamused:

He seems more of the "rule of funny" type.

[Neoriceisgood]

He's generally regarded as one of the best avatarists on this forum, also as one of the funniest. He made a comic a while back that was almost getting the point of being more popular than OotS, but he burnt out.

And we shall see. I hope you don't, but you never know.

Any links to the comic? :smallconfused:

[Sneak]

He's generally regarded as one of the best avatarists on this forum, also as one of the funniest. He made a comic a while back that was almost getting the point of being more popular than OotS, but he burnt out.

And we shall see. I hope you don't, but you never know.

Aw, shucks. You're making me blush. :smallredface: :smalltongue:

I don't think it was really as popular or as great as you make it sound. It was one of the first Gitp-member made comics, though, and it started The Great Smackjeeves Craze™. Ahhh, those were the days. :smallsigh: :smalltongue:


Any links to the comic? :smallconfused:

Oh...please, no. :smalleek:

I've looked back on the comic, and I've come to realize that while I did have some pretty good ideas (if I do say so myself), and it had the potential for being good, the execution of it was, well, lacking. It was pretty much just something that happened when I thought "I'm bored, I think I'm funny, I can kind of draw, I'm tired of listing reasons, I should just go start a webcomic! Lawlz!" There wasn't much thought put into it. And that's why I burned out—it wasn't very well planned out. Ah, who am I kidding, it wasn't planned out at all. :smalltongue: I also think some of the humor could have been better, and some of the art was pretty terrible, but hey, I was just a kid (I'm 15 now, in case you were wondering)! But really, I think all of that's okay, because it was my first go. The practice round, if you will. I think I learned a lot from my little venture into webcomickry.

And here's a link, (http://halfwit.smackjeeves.com/) if you want. Keep everything I said in mind, though...

(I've actually been thinking of starting a new webcomic recently—unfortunately, just the opposite of what happened last time is happening...I find I don't want to announce anything until I've got everything planned out perfectly and have a buffer of a zillion comics, which is kind of unrealistic. Especially since I'm a busy overworked sleepless high school student. But at some point, you just have to go "Aw, **** it!" and start it up, ready or not.

But, I digress. I think I've actually gone way past digressing. I'm getting dangerously close to "call security" territory. :smalltongue:

Anyway, I really like your comic so far. I'll be honest, there are a few spelling/grammar mistakes, and seeing as I'm a stickler for that kind of stuff it just gets on my nerves a bit—but that's really a minimal issue, and since you're a non-native speaker, I have to cut you some slack. Really not a big deal. As pretty much everyone else has already pointed out, your art is fantastic. I mean, fantastic. Like, fantastic. Have I mentioned that your art is fantastic?

You know, I feel like I'm not being very coherent right now. I'm really just trying to get across the point that I think your art is fantastic. :smalltongue:

Your humor is good—not the best I've ever seen, but it's hard to make me laugh, and because your comic isn't all about the humor I can cut you some slack in that department too. I'm just overly critical, I think, and maybe a bit contrary—whenever everyone praises something, I kind of feel the need to lambast it. Anyway, your plot is certainly intriguing, and it's definitely a good start, much better than many other comics I've seen. Plus, the amount of thought and effort you've put into this project is pretty impressive. Good ideas don't automatically translate into good execution, but they definitely count for something.

So yeah, I'll keep following this comic. You should be honored that the Almighty Sneak, Destroyer of Worlds graces you with his presence and approval. :smalltongue:

I applaud you, sir. Please, continue.

P.S. I hope any of this makes sense. I can't be held accountable for the garbled ravings that my hazy procrastination state induces.

Anyway, it's back to lurk mode for me—adieu!

[Neoriceisgood]

Page 33



http://fc62.deviantart.com/fs38/f/2008/342/3/0/Noah_33_by_Neoriceisgood.png

Not much happening in this one, which is pretty much the main reason I could add it today.

This reminds me, is this the day with most comic posts? I think I did

1 Tobi page

2 Burk pages

1 Noah page

That's 4 total, I don't really live in chronologic order, so I'm not sure if I've done more in a single day.

Doesn't matter, wooh Hevel returns!

Man, if I'm gonna make him a reoccuring character I should update his portrait to have more quality, it's kinda ugly right now. :smalleek:


But, I digress. I think I've actually gone way past digressing. I'm getting dangerously close to "call security" territory.

I would've called em if I had them. :smallmad:



Anyway, I really like your comic so far. I'll be honest, there are a few spelling/grammar mistakes, and seeing as I'm a stickler for that kind of stuff it just gets on my nerves a bit—but that's really a minimal issue, and since you're a non-native speaker, I have to cut you some slack. Really not a big deal.

I should fix it up in the pages that still have mistakes, I think I've gotten better at avoiding them in later pages though; I have a few people on AIM/DA who shout "ERROR" or "TYPO!" at my head every time I make a mistake, but I don't really like editing stuff; so I've been trying to be more careful when typing stuff down.


As pretty much everyone else has already pointed out, your art is fantastic. I mean, fantastic. Like, fantastic. Have I mentioned that your art is fantastic?

Thanks, to be honest, I'm not really happy with the art quality in some aspects; and if I can keep this project going for a long enough time I do hope to improve some things a lot

I will admit that I'm pretty proud of how a lot of the pixeled aspects are coming out so far.


Your humor is good—not the best I've ever seen, but it's hard to make me laugh, and because your comic isn't all about the humor I can cut you some slack in that department too.

Well, as you may have noticed; the comic's actually leaning far more to the story side than the humour side, with only one out of three characters having a rather strong emphasis on humour.

I've never been the type of person to come up with witty punchlines or produce "sunday funnies" in terms of comics, mostly because it's not very ... "real", so hard for me to imagine using properly.

When you look at Burk's intro arc, although there's a pseudo-punchline aspect to it, I mostly rely on characters pointing out the absurdity in a situation/statement or heck; [B]senile old men are a personal favourite :smallamused:.


I'm just overly critical, I think, and maybe a bit contrary—whenever everyone praises something, I kind of feel the need to lambast it.

Hey, as long as you're constructive I don't mind; I'll be honest, I love huge posts like yours, gives me something to read/react to, I've missed posts like these the last week or two. :smalltongue:


Anyway, your plot is certainly intriguing, and it's definitely a good start, much better than many other comics I've seen. Plus, the amount of thought and effort you've put into this project is pretty impressive. Good ideas don't automatically translate into good execution, but they definitely count for something.

In my mind there's a few things important in a story/plot to make it worthwhile/good;

1. People are curious about the world, characters and events; especially if there's an air of mystery around certain parts, if people -want- to know what certain things are about, it helps your plot.

[right now I'm sure the prime example is "Joy", which may make a return shortly.]

2. People want to know what happens next; explaining groups/events is one thing, how the hero deals with them, how they'll end up affecting the world; interest in the journey is obviously very important as well.

[I had the idea that a few people got this feeling from Tobi's arc, not sure.]

3. People like the protagonists and enjoy seeing them and watching their story unfold.

To give a good example of what I mean, a lot of people know the concept of a "godmoding hero" or overpowered hero who'se just boring.

Although we all know that in most cases the hero will win or only suffer a defeat that can be rectified later [otherwise the story'd be over pretty fast], there's still differences in "how" a hero wins or succeeds.

In my mind in some shows I couldn't care at all if the main character died purely because his/her invincibility/godmoding has been overplayed to the point where the survival of that character is so incredibly obvious that you can't really have an emotional attachment to the character anymore.

Although it may be too early to really worry about this aspect in depth yet, in my mind it can kill or make a story if you can feel attachment to the characters.

[doesn't just depend on their godmoding either, character development and the like are important as well.]


So yeah, I'll keep following this comic. You should be honored that the Almighty Sneak, Destroyer of Worlds graces you with his presence and approval.

I applaud you, sir. Please, continue.


I am honoured. :smallredface:


Anyway, it's back to lurk mode for me—adieu!

Bye~bye.

[Prime32]

Oh wow, the genius guy is going to see an Emperor. So original. What next, a group of terrorists wearing black? :smallamused:

I kid, but you need to get yourself a website. :smallsmile:

By the way, if he always enters like that Hevel must go through three pairs of pants a week. :smallbiggrin:

[Neoriceisgood]

Hah! no!

The terrorists are wearing bright pink! :smallyuk:


...

Well actually, I don't think I had anything in that particular direction planned, but very well.

[Neoriceisgood]

Comic 34

http://fc29.deviantart.com/fs39/f/2008/343/1/0/Tobi_34_by_Neoriceisgood.png


Screw predictable patterns! here's another page for Tobi.

Bye bye Rauel, it was nice having you around.:smallredface:

[Ichneumon]

The last page game me a kind of "Zelda" feeling.

[Zenos]

Temple activated doomsday weapon? Must be sure to get one of those for birthday present. :smalltongue:

[Wreckingrocc]

Jeez... That's crazy...

[Neoriceisgood]

Tobi's gonna be the woobie~ :smallamused:

[Ascension]

I knew Rauel was going to bite the dust! I just didn't realize how literal the dust-biting would be!

Unless... unless she's actually been transported back in time to before the founding of Rauel... partially explaining why she has better tech than the other protagonists. And since the temple has been there since before the town's establishment, it's possible.

And while I'm speculating... Who else thinks that Noah is certain about the Emperor's actions because he's kin to the Emperor? I would say he's the Emperor himself in disguise, but he couldn't attend the speech and give it at the same time. Regardless, there's no way he's just a normal student.

[Elder Tsofu]

And while I'm speculating... Who else thinks that Noah is certain about the Emperor's actions because he's kin to the Emperor? I would say he's the Emperor himself in disguise, but he couldn't attend the speech and give it at the same time. Regardless, there's no way he's just a normal student.

Can't he just be sure of it from the earlier meeting with the bottle-man in the alley (where he gets to know about them planning using magic as a weapon)?

[Neoriceisgood]

Yey, speculation. :smallsmile: It's fun knowing who'se right, who'se wrong, and who'se close.

Comic 35 is up!

http://fc76.deviantart.com/fs38/f/2008/343/2/1/Burk_35_by_Neoriceisgood.png

[BisectedBrioche]

The guy with the knife looks friendly.

[T-O-E]

35 comics already? You're on a roll!

[Neoriceisgood]

35 comics already? You're on a roll!

Said the troll.


*edit*

Also, adding a little link to this page in post 1:

http://neoriceisgood.deviantart.com/gallery/#Comic-series


It's a gallery on my DA specifically for the comic, with all pages in order.

May be more browsable than the first post in this thread, not sure. :smallredface:

[St. Salieri]

I see Mr. Acorn is the strong, silent type. :smallwink:

I also see that you've mastered the art of the Cliffhanger Cutaway. :smallfrown:

In short, the comic continues to impress. Very nice work!

EDIT: I also also see that I'm going to lose an hour or so going through your DeviantArt. :smallsmile:

[Neoriceisgood]

Hey, 3 stories means 3 times as many moments to throw in a cliffhanger. :smallbiggrin:

[Neoriceisgood]

Page 36:

We continue's Tobi's downwards spiral into clinical insanity with this little monologue.

http://fc21.deviantart.com/fs38/f/2008/344/3/a/Tobi_36_by_Neoriceisgood.png

I wonder how badly she'll get bruised, beaten and exhausted before she'll find a civil area. :smallredface:

[Neoriceisgood]

Page 37

http://fc78.deviantart.com/fs38/f/2008/345/7/3/Tobi_37_by_Neoriceisgood.png

This page is mute. :smallamused:

I guess this is the first "real" fightscene in the comic, I'm not a very big fan of 20 episode fight scenes or anything like that, so most of em should remain fairly short.

[Fawkes]

How many gadgets does that arm thing have?

[T-O-E]

Nice monster templates.

[Neoriceisgood]

How many gadgets does that arm thing have?

The arm has one; the extending wire/hook.

The bracelets both had a few expandable tools, they were unrelated to the arm. [although on the arm which has the mechanical arm the bracelet looks like it's part of the mechanical arm, but okay.]


Nice monster templates.

Thanks, they're mostly just fatty desert lizards though. :smallredface:

[Neoriceisgood]

Page 38, because it was an easy one.

http://fc50.deviantart.com/fs39/f/2008/345/4/d/Tobi_38_by_Neoriceisgood.png

Words cannot express Tobi's feelings, so she remains silent. :smallamused:

[Fawkes]

:smallfrown: