ballp.it
Snakes In The Ball Pit => Yay, I get to talk about me! => Topic started by: Chaz on March 03, 2013, 09:09:07 pm
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This is a thread where webcomic authors can share their works and users in general can discuss their favourites! I'll start us out.
I do a webcomic called Intergalactic Truckstop. I do my best to update it every Tuesday and Thursday, and on the odd occasion that I can't draw a comic for a given update day, I at least throw something in, whether it be a silly doodle or a fanart feature or what have you. You can access it by clicking that little globe icon under my avatar, or by clicking here (http://its.the-comic.org)! There's fuzzy aliens and inept space captains and occasionally weird stuff in there too, and there's an occasional little F Plus joke in among it all.
To sum it up, it's about the adventures of a failed super-soldier GELF (Genetically Engineered Life Form) who has escaped the facility that created him, and is attempting to adjust to normal everyday life by working as a bartender in a refueling station at the edge of civilized space. He encounters all kinds of weirdos, from people who want to kill him (Protip: He can't die) to persistent space 'heroes' who can't fly worth a damn.
Also, if you're curious, Portaxx did draw the avatar I'm using right now, that was a commission I got from her a while back! It's the protagonist of the webcomic having a little problem with 80s neon digital clingfilm:
(http://i942.photobucket.com/albums/ad262/PGChaz/commis-018-chaz-chazGELF-02-s.png) (http://i942.photobucket.com/albums/ad262/PGChaz/commis-018-chaz-chazGELF-02-1.png)
(Click the picture to see the fullsize version!)
I also got commissions of the three major alien species in the webcomic, but I'll save those for later posts, so as not to cram too much content into one post!
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Can this be a thread where everyone with a goofy webcomic chimes in? Because I have a goofy webcomic too.
I've been meaning to read your webcomic, and also the other ones that people here make.
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Can this be a thread where everyone with a goofy webcomic chimes in? Because I have a goofy webcomic too.fluffy, March 03, 2013, 11:21:11 pm
I see no reason not to! Go on ahead and share your webcomic :D Everyone is free to share their webcomics here, I'll update the OP to reflect that.
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I just read your entire comic in one sitting. The art is pretty crude but it grew on me, and the plot seems like it's coming together. Fun stuff! I also like the occasional F Plus references in it. The art reminds me of the early years of Our Home Planet (http://www.ourhomeplanet.net/).
Anyway my comic is also findable on the link from my globe icon thing but I could just link to it directly too (http://beesbuzz.biz/d/). Someday I'll probably go back to having the main page on my site be the comic since that's pretty much all I post there anymore (the site structure is kind of Historical Reasons-y). Mine's also a long-form multi-arc science fiction thing. Most arcs are set in an interstellar generation ship that is populated by the evolved, sapient descendants of the animals in a zoo that was left behind by the humans when they left. Most arcs are set in completely different time periods from each other.
Just to make things even more confusing, I also have a few other series that I post in the same place, although I hardly ever touch most of them (except the occasional journal comic, which I mostly do when I'm thinking of ideas for the next fiction arc).
Also Portaxx's drawings are hella cute, yo (http://beesbuzz.biz/d/20101211.php).
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Yeah, my art style is pretty simplistic, and for the first few arcs it's really clearly rough around the edges, but I've started to get a bit more consistent with my style as I keep drawing the comic. It's a slow progression but looking at the differences between the first page I ever drew and the redux of said page gives a better comparison. :D
And I just caught up on your comic, I like it so far!
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The whole thing, or just the latest arc? If you read the whole thing in one night that's pretty impressive!
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Just the latest arc (Assuming Invasion is the latest arc, of course!)
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hook dat comic shit up son
fluffy why have i never seen your comic before? how does this happen
i draw this one (http://www.inhuman-comic.com) but it's long and nonlinear and really just what happens when an amatuer wants to finish a story dangit
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Just the latest arc (Assuming Invasion is the latest arc, of course!)
Chaz GELF, March 04, 2013, 01:27:16 pm
That is correct.
I usually suggest people start with "Planetfall" (the second arc) before reading the original "Unity," since my ideas were much better-fleshed-out for Planetfall. Invasion's probably a pretty good place to start too, though, although it might rely a bit too much on understanding the Kayohash-Oracle dynamic. There's also a quick primer (http://beesbuzz.biz/d/about-a-quick-unity-primer.php) that you can read to get up to speed with the setting.
hook dat comic shit up son
fluffy why have i never seen your comic before? how does this happen
i draw this one (http://www.inhuman-comic.com) but it's long and nonlinear and really just what happens when an amatuer wants to finish a story dangit
icarus, March 04, 2013, 03:06:32 pm
I attend a couple of local cartooning meetups, and people there are really impressed that I managed to self-publish an actual book full of comics. They ask me how I did it. So I reply with my two-step process to completing a creative work:
1. Get an idea
2. FUCKING DO IT
You haven't seen my comic before because it's not good enough to blow people away but not bad enough for people to point and laugh (at least not beyond "ha ha inept furry bullshit"). It just kind of exists, and I suck at marketing.
Inhuman's art looks like you put a lot of work into it. I'll definitely have to check it out. I love the crazy panel designs in the last few updates. That's something I'd like to do more of, although for Unity I like to stick to a pretty strict three-panel setup (since I find that rhythm works well for me). My experimental "Womble" series had a bunch more panel layout stuff going on. Also I'm supposed to be working on a multi-page story for a zine and in that I'm trying to be more experimental with panel layouts, but I also feel like I'm overthinking it and need to refer to my own step 2 because, jeeze, the deadline's coming up soon.
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yeah i gotta say the one thing that bugs me most about doing a comic
is that you just wind up with a few artists who want to sit on your coat tails and talk talk talk talk talk talk about a comic that they never. do. i guess it's the comic version of the "author" who does nothing but talk about the novel they're going to write.
it ranks up there with the people who get stuck in the infinate loop of redoing their first chapter over and over and never advancing the story beyond that because ITS NEVER JUST THE WAY I WANT. dude it's art and you learn as you go, that in and of itself means that none of it will ever be up to your standards for perfection. just GO. PROCEED. PRODUCE. when you have a finished product the sum of the parts will be greater than the individual pieces
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Totally. I can't stand looking at my older art. But I also can't stand looking at my current art. So I just keep arting and trying to get better, even if I never feel like I'm doing good enough.
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Pretty much how I do it too. I wince when I look at the very very first page of Intergalactic Truckstop, but it motivates me to keep drawing and keep improving!
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I already shared my silly webcomic, I ain't doing it twice!
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i draw this one (http://www.inhuman-comic.com) but it's long and nonlinear and really just what happens when an amatuer wants to finish a story dangit
icarus, March 04, 2013, 03:06:32 pm
Icarus you goober your comic is awesome I dunno how often I have to noogie that fact into you
I used to draw really dumb MS Paint stick figure comics, but not only are they stupid enough to be embarrassing as an adult, but computers not having 600x800 as a standard resolution anymore has made them more or less unreadable anyway.
(http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_mdqpsl198G1ql1x1no1_1280.png)
Fuck it, though, I still think this one is funny.
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I know you made that a while ago and you don't anymore, but it's a good opportunity for me to bring up a comic pet peeve, and that is comic writers using verbs as sound effects for things they can't figure out how to onomatopoeia.
I mean, Gonterman does that. Do you really want to be like Gonterman, comic makers?
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a good splork or sploosh or schlup or rettchkkkk or snik or fsht beats a verb any day
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Careful where you go with that lest you settle on "wank!" as your onomatopoeia for punching a metal robot in the face.
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The weird thing is I had the same pet peeve at the time BECAUSE of Gonterman and yet did it constantly. Maybe I thought I was being ironic? I don't even know. Like I said, shit that's better left behind.
My friend Toastuh has been doing a fucking gorgeous hand-drawn comic (http://attendance.comicgenesis.com/d/20110207.html) about monsters and crazy people and steampunk and such for two years now. I would say the fonts are wonky in the beginning, but they're not anymore because she went back after about two months and painstakingly re-lettered everything. She's also something like six months ahead of the queue at any given time. I don't think she knows how webcomics WORK.
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I just looked back through Intergalactic Truckstop to see if I've been guilty of Gontermanatopoeia (I love coming up with portmanteau words on the spot) without realising it at the time. I think I've managed to mostly avoid it, although occasionally I have a written down "*twitch*" when attempting to denote a character twitching their foot or antenna. Not so much onomatopoeia as signaling the motions being acted out, I guess.
Other than that, I've gone out of my way to avoid doing that with noises. When it comes to guns I tend to use "KRAK" or "PAF" or "POW", typical gunfire sounds like that. Also I was guilty of intentionally using "DAKKA DAKKA DAKKA" to simulate machine gun fire (or sub-machine fire, if you prefer). Also I used "KRAKOW" as an explosion sound effect once.
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I don't draw a comic but one of my friends does. Unfortunately it's in Finnish though, so probably pointless to share. I wish I could though, she's a pretty good artist.
As for Gonterman, my favorite onomatopoeia of his would have to be either "HOLSTER!" or "RAPID MACHINEGUN FIRE!".
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Why not link it? If she's good, we could at least appreciate the artwork.
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Yeah, I say go ahead and link it, Montrith! :D I always appreciate a good comic, even if I don't know the language the characters are speaking in I can at least appreciate the art.
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If you're feeling zesty, type out the text, we'll machine translate it and have Stog read it in his Hans von Hozel voice.
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The comic is kind of wordy so it really doesn't work if you don't know what's going on. Here's her sketch section however. It has little or no text so you can just look at the pics. She does a lot of experimenting on different styles aside from drawing the comic.
http://grimbird.sarjakuvablogit.com/category/yksinaisia-kuvia/
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I just looked back through Intergalactic Truckstop to see if I've been guilty of Gontermanatopoeia (I love coming up with portmanteau words on the spot) without realising it at the time. I think I've managed to mostly avoid it, although occasionally I have a written down "*twitch*" when attempting to denote a character twitching their foot or antenna. Not so much onomatopoeia as signaling the motions being acted out, I guess.Chaz GELF, March 06, 2013, 02:20:20 pm
Motion lines are pretty good for conveying things like twitching/shuddering/vibrating and motions in general. I used to use them a lot more than I do now, partly because they seemed a bit "cartoony" but also partly because my comics just don't have a lot of dynamic action going on anyway. [EDIT] never mind I guess I use them a lot more than I realized.
The comic is kind of wordy so it really doesn't work if you don't know what's going on. Here's her sketch section however. It has little or no text so you can just look at the pics. She does a lot of experimenting on different styles aside from drawing the comic.
http://grimbird.sarjakuvablogit.com/category/yksinaisia-kuvia/
montrith, March 06, 2013, 04:24:08 pm
Good stuff!
She's also something like six months ahead of the queue at any given time. I don't think she knows how webcomics WORK.
Delcat, March 06, 2013, 08:58:24 am
Seriously? Even Howard Tayler (probably the only well-known webcartoonist who is notorious for ANY amount of buffer) only has something like a 2-month buffer for Schlock Mercenary, and that's his full-time job (and isn't exactly a triumph of finely-detailed artwork).
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She's also something like six months ahead of the queue at any given time. I don't think she knows how webcomics WORK.
Delcat, March 06, 2013, 08:58:24 am
Seriously? Even Howard Tayler (probably the only well-known webcartoonist who is notorious for ANY amount of buffer) only has something like a 2-month buffer for Schlock Mercenary, and that's his full-time job (and isn't exactly a triumph of finely-detailed artwork).
fluffy, March 06, 2013, 07:26:33 pm
She also has two jobs, is studying to be a neuroscientist at one of the top five hardest schools in the US (Reed), and has recently taken up learning the cello specifically to relax.
Worrying that she's going to disintegrate into her composite atoms (which will then go shooting off in a million directions at the speed of light) is kind of a full-time hobby.
Also, her regular art (http://toastuh.deviantart.com/) is jaw-dropping, but she never believes it when people tell her that.
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She's also something like six months ahead of the queue at any given time. I don't think she knows how webcomics WORK.
Delcat, March 06, 2013, 08:58:24 am
Seriously? Even Howard Tayler (probably the only well-known webcartoonist who is notorious for ANY amount of buffer) only has something like a 2-month buffer for Schlock Mercenary, and that's his full-time job (and isn't exactly a triumph of finely-detailed artwork).
fluffy, March 06, 2013, 07:26:33 pm
She also has two jobs, is studying to be a neuroscientist at one of the top five hardest schools in the US (Reed), and has recently taken up learning the cello specifically to relax.
Worrying that she's going to disintegrate into her composite atoms (which will then go shooting off in a million directions at the speed of light) is kind of a full-time hobby.
Also, her regular art (http://toastuh.deviantart.com/) is jaw-dropping, but she never believes it when people tell her that.
Delcat, March 07, 2013, 09:29:04 am
WHAT THE SHIT
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Did I mention she's three years younger than I am?
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speaking of goofy comics mine made it out of the qualifying round and into round 1 of the tournament.
it's up against shortpacked so in the unlikely event you
1) don't read shortpacked
2) have a facebook account
and 3) want to do me a solid
click on the bar that reads inhuman and toss me a vote? it'd be appreciated
http://www.opinionstage.com/debates/mix_march_madness_2013_round_1_2/embed
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Hahaha up against Shortpacked? Good luck, man.
Wow, you're actually holding your own surprisingly well. Maybe Willis' fanbase isn't as rabid as I thought. I mean, you're only getting trounced 2 to 1!
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Unfortunately I don't have a goofy webcomic (yet) but I will share a couple!:
Hot Stuff (http://hotstuffcomic.blogspot.co.uk/) (done by an online friend as part of her degree at SCAD)
Alpha Flag (http://www.alpha-flag.com/) (unfortunately temporarily on hiatus)
Next Town Over (http://www.nexttownover.net/)
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Webcomics are not exactly my thing, but I did used to read one quite a bit while it was still active.
Nobody Scores (http://nobodyscores.loosenutstudio.com/), wherein basically bad shit happens to people, who are generally but not always deserving.
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Sometimes I think I just do my comic for fun.
Sometimes I stay up until 5 AM many nights on end consumed with fleshing out the minutiae (http://beesbuzz.biz/temp/lang-primer-preview.pdf).
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And sometimes my print collections become available for preorder (http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0985150912?ie=UTF8&camp=213733&creative=393177&creativeASIN=0985150912&linkCode=shr&tag=plaidfluff-20).
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Sometimes I think I just do my comic for fun.
Sometimes I stay up until 5 AM many nights on end consumed with fleshing out the minutiae (http://beesbuzz.biz/temp/lang-primer-preview.pdf).
fluffy, August 26, 2013, 10:41:23 pm
You are nothing if not dedicated, friendo.