Timewaster's Guide Archive
General => Suggestions Box => Topic started by: Spriggan on January 02, 2007, 07:29:03 PM
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Yesterday Skar brought up TWG having it's own webcomic(s) again, now for those of you familiar this isn't the first time we've discussed this or even had a comic. EUOL did a comic for us back when TWG first started up and there's been off and on discussion about this.
Skar came up with something intresting though this time which is a comic that's written via the forum or forum posts by the members so people who want to participate can. Also there was discussions about trading off via various artists so the same person isn't always making it (so as to no overwhelm/load the person doing it).
So lets get this ball rolling and see where it lands.
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Well, I like the idea of having various artists trading off.
What I see is that there are a lot more people who would be wanting to contribute to the writing side than the visual side.
I don't see anything wrong with people contributing ideas for the story line or writing jokes, they just would have to understand that they may not be drawn into the comic.
I was thinking that it might be best for those of us who can draw (I'm thinking me, Skar, and CtrZ at the moment) just to get together and get started on a web-comic. Then have a part of the forum where people could contribute ideas and hopefully keep us motivated.
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I'm not one of those that can draw but I'm happy to help out on layout and paneling if you need like if you want someone to do sketches of possible view angles in each panel before actually drawing things.
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what would help would be for the people who can draw to make vector images of the characters, so that others could use them and make the comics from start to finish.
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That would really depend on the art style of comic we were doing, if it was something as simple as OOTS then that would work fine but I think if people are going for anything more complicated it wouldn't look good at least to me. There are a lot of comics out there that feel like they use this method even if they don't (like Questionable Conetent).
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Mousewax turns out just fine and he uses stock vector images he's created. Let's not kid ourselves, we're not going to churn out a MegaTokyo or an Inverloch. We need to do something that's simple to put together. and if you're going to be realistic about multiple people doing it you *cannot* rely on a group of even 3 artists that arent' getting money from it to draw all of them.
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No I understand your point SE, and I think that might be a good way to go, but I think we're jumping the gun here, lets wait to see what the people drawing the comic are willing to do and want to do before we start getting too involved. If we start dictating what they should be doing before they even sit down themselves to see what they want to do then we might turn them off from this project.
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I like the idea of using vector images, but it takes little while to build up a good stockpile. A lot depends on comic's basic concept.
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We really need to get Skar and CTRLZed on on this discussion since they were the one's talking about it with 42 and I at the Magic Party.
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I think vector is the way to go. However I don't think it's possible to come up with a unified style. At least not in any timely fashion. So we'll have to plan on working with three, maybe more, distinct styles. Work it into the concept from the beginning.
Maybe having certain characters assigned to a specific artist each time. Artist 1 always draws Joe the Cat while artist 2 always draws Maggie the Blender, even when they're talking to each other. We could probably unify this after just a couple of iterations using photoshop filters and adapting to a middle ground.
Or cycling the comic from one artist to the next by week. One does the whole thing one week, another does the whole thing the next.
Just brainstorming here.
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I wonder if we should be stepping back even further. Before deciding the artistic style, perhaps we should talk concept.
1) Would we want to make a gaming comic? If so, how are we going to offer anything new? That's a flooded market.
2) Would we want a continuing story or a gag-a-day?
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Isaac, if you say yes to this project know that I will mock you mercilessly for your inability to say no.
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There is the option of doing both of option B EUOL. Just doing both once a week.
Say the gag comic on a monday and the story-lined comic on a friday or something.
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I think that the format should be free form. There should be no pigeonholes.
FPM concept was going to start as a gag a day. But more jokes came out of situations I created. I still occassionally launch off a one-shot, but most of them turn into concepts that stretch out.
However, I think funny comics are more interesting. Esp. if they're going to be written by different people. Locking ourselves into an evolving cohesive story would be awkward. Even consistent characterization would be difficult. We go for the funny.
If someone wants to build off a funny someone else has made, let 'em.
Because it's a collaborative comic, though, it's going to be a lot easier with stock characters. So... i say we do that.
It would probably be best if we came up with some ideas for strips though so character concepts can be written.
I have been pushing around the possibility of a comic about an office of rabbits. I even have some character designs. I'll try to draw them in Illustrator and pass them around. Naturally they are occasionally assaulted by ninja monkeys... without realizing it.
Also, as a young adolescent, I did a few pages of a comic about Biff, and his Quest for the Golden Surfboard. I had a wide variety of characters for that too. This is where the Masked Platypus and the Samurai Armadillo originated.
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I think E is right on the free form gag-a-day format, though I think we should start with gag-a-day. Getting content from the forums will be far less complicated if each piece is self-contained. And, if the flow goes that way, a longer story can always be implemented.
I do think we should have a stable of characters everyone draws from. Again this simplifies things. People contributing the dialogue know what they have to work with and the artists know where they're coming from.
To start, (after we decide on the context the strips will happen in, world-building, general subject matter etc...) I think we should collaborate on a list of 30 characters, flesh them out with a character profile of a couple of paragraphs and a pencil/vector sketch, then start brainstorming the first couple of strips.
And, continuing my stream of consciousness, perhaps we should make an article with the character sketches (text and graphic) with a form at the end through which contributors can submit their dialogue and concept description for each panel.
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Ooh, and an excellent example of a strip where the artist uses the same profiles over and over (with minor changes occasionally) to good effect is http://www.redmeat.com/redmeat/current/index.html
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I think 30 characters is to many, few webcomics use that amount because it's hard to manage and those that do didn't start with that amount. I think stickying to 5-6 is better for now so we don't overwhelm ourselves and more importantly our artists.
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Sure. I just picked 30 out of the air. I WAS thinking that most of them would very rarely appear. That there would only be 5 or 6 regulars at the most.
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We only need to develop a couple of characters to start with, then add more as the project develops.
We do need to decide on what sort of themes we would want to work with. EUOL mentioned that there are a lot of gaming-themed web-comics out there already. Course, TWG is a gaming themed web-site. I guess it depends on how competitive we would want this web-comic to be in the non-lucrative world of web comics.
Now that I think about it, a "writing themed" web-comic that satirizes the world of writing and literature could be fun. Not completely unique, but also appropriate to the site.
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to be honest, the best comics are buddy themed comics, imo
PvP is great because of the character situations, not the game references.
Even PA which is *the* definitive gaming comic is best when it's not talking strictly about game references.
There are exceptions, but I think that the best plan is a group of characters that are friends. They may play games, they may write, but they're geeks and friends.
The advantage of that approach is if there's a game joke to be made, we can make it. If there's a writing/literature joke to be made, we can make it. If there's something just goofy to be done, we can do it.
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say the running of a bookstore, or maybe a video depot, or something akin to Clerks. You know, have a bookstore and video depot next to each other, and the main characters interact with one another in hilarious situations.
Eh?
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And a coffee shop! and an arcade! and a theater!
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don't forget the gym/spa/beauty salon/tanning salon.
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and the travel agency, and the toy store.
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I think the publishing angel is a good idea, we could do it inside a fictional comic or book publisher, or just have it be TWG with all of us as the characters.
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Gaming store in the mall next to a comic shop? With the people from the clothing and gadget stores making appearances, as well as all the funky mall people. Mall walkers, teen mall rats, homeless people who sit on the benches all day during the winter, endless possibilities.
I think an initial investment in more than a couple of character sketches will pay big dividends in how easy it will be for people to contribute strip ideas.
Giving them characters is like giving them tools. The more the better.
But I may be underestimating the effort needed to profile these characters.
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I like the mall idea. That's a good angle to go at this from.
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Well, I'm think several hours of drawing to create the multiple views needed for each character.
I like the fictional publisher idea.
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While I do like the publisher the mall would be an intresting idea since it would allow for people to write for whatever intrests them and not just games, comics or books.
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Well, I'm think several hours of drawing to create the multiple views needed for each character.
True. Once we've got 5 or 6 we could start throwing them together for actual strips. The stable of characters could definitely be ever-growing though, with characters being added as the whim takes us or whoever cares to dream up and submit new characters.
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Why not having Time-Waster's be a store in the mall
They sell games/books/etc and publish a magazine
voila. Everyone is accomodated.
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Why not just make the strip about the people on the forum? Make it a gag-a-day strip that's based around people talking to each other over computers. Make the characters either regulars on the forum or pseudo regulars on some fictional forum. Then whenever somebody thinks of a good joke in any setting, they can tell the joke under the idea that they're typing it online--either start or end the panel with the character typing at the computer, staring or ending the narration in computer text above the characters head. The nice thing about this style is most of the jokes, I would assume, told would be about the online environment that everybody here is familiar with.
As for artists, we could just have anybody who wants to submit their artistic rendition of people on the forum, and we'll take all the EUOLs and vote on them, all the Gorgons and vote on them, all the SEs and vote on them and use those images in the comics cut and paste style. After the vote is cast, the winning rendition will have to be done from the side talking and not talking, maybe walking from the side--just four or five basic poses. If you want more than the artist gave, then you'll have to request a new one and either he or she will have time to make a new one or not.
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I think there should be a character named Chimera who is a sexy geek girl. ;)
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Why not just make the strip about the people on the forum? Make it a gag-a-day strip that's based around people talking to each other over computers. Make the characters either regulars on the forum or pseudo regulars on some fictional forum. Then whenever somebody thinks of a good joke in any setting, they can tell the joke under the idea that they're typing it online--either start or end the panel with the character typing at the computer, staring or ending the narration in computer text above the characters head. The nice thing about this style is most of the jokes, I would assume, told would be about the online environment that everybody here is familiar with.
Because a comic set on a web forum is... erm... uninteresting. The jokes can also be told by employees just as easily. The employees of this store can be Gorgon and Spriggan and SE and Fell and whathaveyou too, you know.
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So I was thinking about how much time the artists would be spending on this.
I'm thinking none of the artists want to spend more that 2-3 hours a week working on the comic. None of us want this to become a second job. So 2-3 hours is about enough time to put together a strip with 3-4 cells. And maybe an hour to draw one or two new objects.
To get started we would probably each need to blow a saturday or some other day drawing one character in illustrator with nine angles.
SO that would give us three characters.
I thinking it might be best to not use TWG members since everyone would want to have a character. So to avoid hurt feelings it might be best to use original characters.
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I definitely agree with using original characters instead of forum members.
As for the 2-3 hours a week drawing thing. I think it's a bit much. We could drop that down to reasonable if we went with a cut and paste format as follows:
My proposal is that we start producing character drawings with the nine angle you were talking about. We make 5 or 6 and fiddle with them so we all get an idea of the "style" so we can make new ones look like they fit. We then make a page or a photobucket account or whatever where they are freely downloadable to our contributors. The contributors then make the comics, using the stock drawings and their own text, and submit them. If they're funny, we post them.
This would allow us to try and insist that they all fit the context we choose (shop in mall, publishing house, whatever) or we could just see what random comics/story arcs come out of it.
If Sprigg got really ambitious maybe he could code up something that allowed contributors to craft the panels, place the text and picture where they wanted them, on the web.
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if this is really something people are going to presue then I'll do whatever is needed on the tech end be it FTP access (I can create a log-in for just a comic's folder, to doing a full CMS style thing for the comic that lets people create the comics via flash and then uses PHP to display an actual finished image.
Right now though I'm doing EUOL's site redesign so I'd start small and move up as intrest grows.
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Ideas:
One of the stores in the mall sells costumes/supplies to superheros and employees there regularly have to deal with lame attempts by various villians from getting jobs there so they can discover identities, sabotage products and deny heroes credit.
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Hysterical. It would have to come after the store's purpose and clientele were well established, but that would be awesome.
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I don't think it would take long to illustrate that basic concept
JUst having one of the characters want to be a superhero, and go shopping at the store.
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exactly, there's a lot of good humor in this concept.
Since it was my idea I'll work up some store clerks and such for it, I have a few ideas already.