Consolers

whoopwhoop shameless promotion for my own comic

Anyway, it's called Consolers and it's about game companies. Personified game companies. It talks about game history (something I don't see a lot in game comics), fun facts, commentary on recent news, and sometimes just fun little stories with the characters. I've been working on this for 3 years and I've just kept improving and improving ever since :D

So, any comments, feedback, general thoughts ect?

Well, going by binging your archive up to now, it's not very good. There's often too many words and unnecessary panels for a comic that's trying to make people laugh. "Brevity is the soul of wit" is not normally a quote I'd pull out since I actually like Subnormality and Full Frontal Nerdity, but there it is. Try using fewer panels and lines in the future.

The jokes themselves also tend to be a bit obvious, or of the "videogame company does something evil while twirling their moustache" variety. When your subject matter is rather well-known videogame trivia, you need to bring some fresh ideas and new angles, especially when it's years after the fact.

Art-wise, well, I'm sure you're already aware that it isn't exactly on the same level as Girl Genius, so I'm not going to give you too much crap for it. The problem is that I don't get the sense that you are actively improving yourselves in this area. I've followed the work of developing artists before, and the ones that go on to be actually pretty good at their craft always experimented with style, colouring, techniques. For example, here's The first comic of F@nboys. Here's one made round and about two years later. See what I'm getting at? If you don't intend to invest that much time and effort into it (hey, totes cool, people got jobs and such), then I suggest at least searching for a style where your shortcomings won't be as noticeable.

Now, I'm not an artist, so I probably shouldn't give you advice on this, but if I were to take a layman's stab at it, I'd say you need to work on your consistency of body types, and your feminine faces. Particularly in Nintendo-chan's case, I often have the impression that she switches gender every other panel, and I don't think that's what you were going for. If it is, stop going for it, because it's not working out nicely.

Also, I'd suggest giving Nintendo-chan a new haircut. I get that you were trying to give her something distinctive, but that sideways pigtail really clashes with the rest of the design.

I hope that I could sorta kinda help you with this, and look forward to seeing you improve. Good luck!

edited 19th Feb '16 4:56:11 AM by Kayeka

Thanks for some feedback, now let's see:

Too many words: ...Yeah, I see what you're getting at, and this is often one of my biggest problems in making a strip - deciding how much to explain (to be neccessary to get the joke, especially for more obscure trivia) and cutting down the text to make it flow better. Though compared to my very early textwalls, I'd say I'm at least getting better at this.

Jokes: I can see this, yeah, and I admit sometimes I'm not completely happy with a joke or not sure how to end it - then I end up posting it anyway to get a comic up for the week and keeping on my irregular sorta-schedule. (As for "new angles" I think my recent "Playstation Move" joke was rather clever) Any jokes in particular that stood out as bad/didn't work?

Art: ...Well, I'll strongly disagree that I "haven't improved much" if you compare my newest strips to what I did just a year ago, and not only compared to my early obviously rushed stuff. not saying my art is perfect, I still have a way to go, but I've certainly IMPROVED quite a bit. If you mean CURRENTLY not actively improving... maybe not as much as I could, but I do try new things from time to time (slowly trying to get the hang of clothing folds recently, variations in line thickness ect) Experimenting with style... yeah, I do think I could try more of that (especially in regards to cartoony exaggeration that's not just facial expressions), though it feels kinda hard to just to a full change right away and I'd have to slighty change things until right. But yeah, gives me something to consider...

Body type consistency... I can see what you mean, sometimes my characters end up slightly "off model". Trying to work more on that. Not sure what's wrong with my "feminine faces" though (and in general I don't think it's that important to aim for making every female character look specifically "feminine", some women have less "feminine" looking features after all), and I'm not sure I see what you mean about Nintendo unless it's just a general comment on off-model looking faces?

As for Nintendo, the side-tail is mostly so I had a place to put the D-pad, I admit x3 Used to be a ponytail in the back but you couldn't really see the d-pad from most angles. I personally like the design though... maybe removing the spikes from the tail-side?

In the end, while I might not personally agree with everything I still appreciate the advice, and see some places I could still improve, thanks

edited 19th Feb '16 11:43:10 AM by Zanreo