I can't say I agree with anything this person said

[SaintRidley]

Art in Webcomics

Apologies in advance if this has been posted before. I gave a cursory check and didn't notice anything.

[Raging Gene Ray]

A professional artist comes to the conclusion that you should hire a professional artist to draw your webcomic or you'll look lazy.

Biased much?

[Nimrod's Son]

Aspiring (hack) webcomic artist in "I am better than the competition" shocker!

The art style of OotS was one of the main reasons I started reading it in the first place. This guy's own artwork is technically fairly impressive but also hopelessly generic. I read a couple of pages and that's more than enough for me, thank you very much.

Maybe he should hire a professional writer to come up with something a bit more gripping, instead of taking the lazy way out and writing it himself.

[Hardcore]

well, I can only agree with Rich on this one; it would detract from the comics appeal to draw the OotS realistically. I can add the same applies to the other stick figure comics he used as example.
What the fool fail to realise is that which often start as inability or laziness (using paper and pen is far easier than to learn use a complex program:P. I wouldn't dream of doing the later) is improved over time by their creators. The comics evolve. And in a direction that is suited to their creators individual style of telling his story.
The author clearly is quite inept him/herself to failing to understand this.
Good art, bad art? How can you tell? The answer is that you can't. There is only that which is interesting to you and that which makes you yawn.
Perhaps one could replace his/her nonsensical idea with succesful vs unsuccesful attempts?

Note; it is possible to use a style not really suited for your comic because of your preferences. (Not every story is best told in the Manga style).
That would then perhaps be called an unsuccesful attempt.

[Ellye]

XKCD made me cry once. No other comic ever achieved something like that. Stick figures can be great, when the artist knows what he's doing.

[RobotPerfomance]

My response to this person’s clearly wrong opinion is that art in a web comic is like special affects in a movie or graphics in a video game: It is only useful if it serves the product as a whole.

In the end it can't make something bad good. Things are generally better served by a sense of style and use of things like story and creativity.

This is why stick figure comics like The Order of the Stick and XKCD are on my short list of great stuff on the web and a load of comics with more complex styles have been deleted from my favorites.

[Freshmeat]

I disagree with that assessment as well. Some styles just work better for certain genres. Sprite and 'simplistic' stick figure comics have an inherently comic appeal that goes well with their purposes. Sure, OOTS may prioritize the storyline more than it does its jokes now, but I've grown rather fond of the art and am often amazed at how much expression and beautiful landscapes Rich can get out of a few circles and lines. Some of the art on the Arts & Crafts forum also qualifies as 'highly impressive' - to put it lightly.

So I'd argue that the 'simplistic' style actually complements the humorous aspect. It's the same reason why cartoons are rarely drawn in a highly-detailed fashion. It's more reserved for serious works. Or, failing that, works which at least take themselves very seriously.

Then there's, how shall I put it, a certain "flow". OOTS is pleasing to look at. It's clear, it's structured. There are many comics that get so engrossed in the little details that the overall picture just becomes messy. This is also why it's often a good idea not to add too much details to, say, an avatar unless you know what you're doing. It detracts from the whole image.

There's more, but I've forgotten most of what I was going to say.
Good art does not a good comic make. The video game industry is coming to realize this, so why not webcomics?

I agree that Riviera's artwork is pretty good. Generic? Perhaps a bit. At the risk of going off-topic, I personally find that El Goonish Shive has the kind of artwork you pretty much see all over the internet. But though a good artist Riviera may be, his conclusions just seem way off-base.

Also, XKCD is one of the greatest webcomics around. And it's drawn even "lazier" than OOTS.

[TreesOfDeath]

Uh oh, someone better tell Scott Adams!
Theirs no way this "Dilbert" thing can catch on!

[Yiuel]

Ellye : OotS has provided us with many tear jerkers. Mine is Roy's little brother's introduction. :)

Otherwise, more generally, if an artist needs to show all the details to pass on a single emotion, I think he failed to understand how emotions pass. You can show that two people like each other just by having them hand in hand; you don't need more than an eyebrow to show snarkiness. And other stuff like that. The fluffiness of detail is all fun, put passing on the emotions is ten times better.

[CapedLuigiYoshi]

He manages to insult Order of the Stick, xkcd, and Irregular Webcomic. That... this guy does not know enough about art works, does he?

[Thorcrest]

I also disagree with this man's conclusions, however he does mention that he is "greedy and self-interested", therefore making his opinions biased and not really worth looking into anyways. He's just trying to get people to look at his art and hire him.

[Silverraptor]

The only problem I can see here is that we all disagree with the guy. How are we going to tell him he's wrong?

[Green&Submarine]

I like the line: "Hire An Artist: This is my favorite method because it produces the most genuine results, and it gets me work." (emphasis added)

Biased much?

[Conuly]

Ah, of course, the "art is hard, guys" view of the world. These people are the ones who riff on Mo Willems for not drawing backgrounds in his picture books and who visit modern art museums just to stand around criticizing Pollock.

They think there's nothing more to art - or even art like comics where you need not just pictures but words and stories! - than technical skill. And then, it has to be technical skill in the style THEY prefer. (And I'm sure it's better to make a boring, unknown webcomic that is stylistically excellent according to his high standards than to make one that many readers enjoy, eagerly anticipate, and will happily talk for hours about.)

[potatocubed]

Ha. Ha ha ha.

If he thinks OotS style is 'lazy' I recommend he hops on over to the Arts and Crafts forums and starts filling some avatar requests. There's no quicker way to learn just how complex and subtle you can make stick figure art.

[T-O-E]

xkcd, however, is unabashed laziness, never even having established a regular cast

This is one of the stupidest things I've ever read.

And this is coming from a guy who hates xkcd.

[Zanaril]

That article made me laugh.

It's just so wonderfully and obviously biased. I could almost believe that it's a troll.

[Optimystik]

The only problem I can see here is that we all disagree with the guy. How are we going to tell him he's wrong?

We'll have to focus our rage across the interwebz.

Through our peepees.

RAEG

[AceOfFools]

My response to this person’s clearly wrong opinion is that art in a web comic is like special affects in a movie or graphics in a video game: It is only useful if it serves the product as a whole.

In the end it can't make something bad good. Things are generally better served by a sense of style and use of things like story and creativity.

...

Now I'm not sure I'd go that far.

I think Drow Tales is terribly written, planed and paced, but still enjoy reading it every so often precisely because it's art is so very well done. Meanwhile about half the time I have no clue what's going on, and the other half I'm cringing at how badly handled the whole thing is.

Another example is Punch & Pie vs. Queen of Wands. Same writer, same humor, different artists. I don't really enjoy the former, but enjoyed the latter a great deal.

So I do think art quality makes a huge difference in overall comic quality. I also really like OotS (own a copy of all 6 books) and xkcd, so I'd probably disagree with the article if I actually read it.

[Raging Gene Ray]

If he thinks OotS style is 'lazy' I recommend he hops on over to the Arts and Crafts forums and starts filling some avatar requests. There's no quicker way to learn just how complex and subtle you can make stick figure art.

He'd probably say: "They fulfill requests for strangers? For FREE?!?!?!?!? How unprofessional. You get what you pay for. I guess I could stoop to your level, but you would have to compensate me for forcing me to commit crimes against TRUE CREATIVITY."

We'll have to focus our rage across the interwebz.

Through our peepees.

RAEG

LOL! You said "peepees!"

[Darakonis]

Well, I'll be the first to say it, but the author of that article does have a point.

Now before you start throwing flaming poo at me, hear me out.

Buried within that narcissistic, needlessly insulting article is a more important issue. If he had written the article with more tact, I don't think people would be so quick to send hate-waves his way.


We live in a world that is focused on eye candy. The ratio of "beautiful people" to "average-looking people" on TV is far out of proportion to reality. Big video game companies pump millions into better graphics engines to render their horrible plots in glorious, anti-aliased detail. The Michael Bays of the world pack their movies with so many explosive special effects that you don't have time to pick apart the plot. It's the sad truth.

I used to run a webcomic. Only last a couple years, and I only got about ~350,000 views. It still gets ~300 views a day, even though I stopped updating over a year ago. What did I notice? The eye candy is what made people give the comic a chance. I'm an average artist at best, but I tried to make my style unique, and added in small animations and Flash interactivity.

The art is the "hook." It is a potential reader's first impression of a comic. If they are immediately turned off by the art, they won't even bother reading your speech bubbles. You can have a New York Time's best-selling plot -- but if you don't have the right visual package, no one will read it.

As a webcomic artist, you need to make your comic visually stand apart from the thousands upon thousands of comics out there. Order of the Stick did that -- Rich knew exactly what he was doing. OotS stick-figure style was groundbreaking. At the time, there was no other comic that looked like OotS; and apart from that, the art style is very pleasant on the eyes.

But in today's day and age, you'll be hard pressed to find a new stick-figure comic, or sprite comic, or Poser-rendered comic become famous, because it's been done before, and it's been done better.

Sure, it's possible for an otherwise great webcomic with "poor" art quality to become famous. But this is the exception, not the rule. They are the Susan Boyles of the webcomic business.


I believe if the author of the article had made his thesis: "Webcomic creators need visually distinct and appealing artwork to make it big" rather than "Webcomic artists without Marvel-quality artwork are lazy hacks," more people would be agreeing with him.


Peace
-Darakonis

[spectralphoenix]

I'm given to understand that the third-to-last panel in this comic was specifically aimed at the "The Giant does stick figures because he can't draw" crowd.

[spectralphoenix]

I believe if the author of the article had made his thesis: "Webcomic creators need visually distinct and appealing artwork to make it big" rather than "Webcomic artists without Marvel-quality artwork are lazy hacks," more people would be agreeing with him.


Peace
-Darakonis

The important difference is his conclusion - the idea that failing to provide quality artwork makes you lazy/a hack/whatever. He never frames his argument in terms of "you'll get noticed more" or "your writing will be enchanced by better artwork." The author just claims that not being or paying a professional artist to draw your comic makes you a bad person.

[Neopolis]

This is one of the stupidest things I've ever read.

And this is coming from a guy who hates xkcd.

Yeah, I was thinking that. Why would xkcd even need a regular cast?

[Raging Gene Ray]

I believe if the author of the article had made his thesis: "Webcomic creators need visually distinct and appealing artwork to make it big" rather than "Webcomic artists without Marvel-quality artwork are lazy hacks," more people would be agreeing with him.

Yes...but he didn't make that his thesis. He almost admits that stick figure comics and photo comics CAN have a distinct style, but it comes off as more of a backhanded compliment, like "You're not QUITE as bad as the rest of them."

More disgustingly, his suggestion is HIRE a professional artist. Not try to come up with your own flourishes to turn a generic stick-figure/manga/photoshop style into your own. Distinct and professional are two different things. Even professional artists may fall into a trap of churning out art "according to standards," exhibiting technical skill but still coming off as very non-distinct. He implies that if someone's not getting paid, they're not skilled, uncreative, and must be lazy.

By the way, could you post a link to your webcomic...or at least mention the title?

[Bavarian itP]

You know, drawing a stick figure webcomic doesn't make you cool like a real artist. Guys? Didn't you hear me? Stop having fun!

[BRC]

His perspective seems to be based on the assumption that a comic is, first and foremost, an image (like a painting or photograph). That's it's primary purpose is to be aesthetically pleasing. If you take that to be true, then yes, he is correct, you should get a professional artist, or be a skilled artist yourself, and using things like stick figures or pixelart is a copout.

This is not so.

A comic is first and foremost a storytelling device, even if the story is just 3 lines of dialouge with a punchline. The artwork is merely a method with which to tell that story. Now, Artwork should be aesthetically pleasing, but provided it is not actually ugly, it doesn't detract from the comic, and it should fit the comic's focus.

Let's start with XKCD. In XKCD the focus is on the dialouge, the humor. As such, a simplistic style works very well, it is a very efficient method with which to present the jokes. You can tell what actions are being taken and the simplistic style lets the focus be on the, sometimes rather complex, humor.

Next, we'll move to Order of the Stick, where the focus is on the Story. In that regard, Burlew's style works very well to combine both drama and comedy. If OOTS was a more serious comic, with less fourth wall breaking and rules jokes and lampshade hangings, a more realistic style would fit better. As it is however, a more realistic style wouldn't work. When you see abunch of stick-figures talking about how they can't remember the AoO Rules while fighting stick figure goblins, you laugh, it's funny. However, if rich was drawing it in a more serious style, the discrepancy would detract from the humor, you'd be picturing the scene in a more realistic manner, and so the jokes about Rules or stories simply wouldn't synch up.


The point is, many webcomic creators are writers first, artists second. And comics are stories first, pictures second. The purpose of the picture is simply to help tell the story, to judge it independently would be like judging a sandwich just by only eating the bread.

[Inkling]

Wow. Jules Rivera? I read her webcomic.

She definitely seems to be very biased, if the only way to draw a webcomic is to hire an artist. Some of us don't have that kind of money. I have a webcomic, and I draw it in stick figures, but that's the whole point of the comic. Stick figures are versatile things, you can do whatever you want with them. It's also a fresh change from overly-complicatedly drawn comics.

Yes, there are writers out there who do the artwork the old fashioned way and simply pay someone else more qualified to do it.

What about the ones who draw them comic themselves, and write it? /sarcasm Oooh, that must forbidden! It must be taboo! /end sarcasm

[Rad]

Hey, he used the Giant's art!
and used it to call him lazy
Just saying...

you know, leaving alone the fact that he took a very early strip instead of any of the other more mature and rich ones

[Silverraptor]

I drew comics when I was in elementary school and they were very simple forms of Sentrets and Ghastlys. (Setrets are the heros and they usually beat up the pathetic bad guy ghastlys) As I look back at them, the artwork sucks. Does that mean I was lazy back then? No, I was a kid experimenting with art. It didn't matter if the artwork sucked, I had alot of people reading what I drew. Some of which were high school students how would come to our school periodically to hang out after school. They saw me one time showing my art to my friends, and they wanted to read it. They started laughing and wanting to read more. I remember for months they would always come and ask if I completed the next part for them to read.

Also, having a webcomic on here, sophicticated stick figure webcomics aren't that easy.