Middle ground

Discuss the future, present and past of sequential art.

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Joel Fagin
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Middle ground

Post by Joel Fagin »

Something that recently occurred to me...

The main type of comic on the web - as far as I can tell at least - is the gag-a-day (whether or not there is also a story in there somewhere). The infinite canvas seems to be an annoyance for those comics and it makes sense to me. Gag-a-days are jokes, short comics with a punchline. The infinite canvas is more suited to a longer story on a single page.

A lot of gag-a-day comics are newsaper strip style. Fair enough if the artist seeks publication but I, personally, dislike it with a passion. It's far too small, limited and cramped. Along with the infinite canvass, newspaper style strips become one of two extremes. One can't get any smaller and the other can't get any bigger.

College Roomies From Hell is a gag-a-day which uses however many panels are needed (anything from one, oh I dunno, ten at most, but usually 2-4). The panels and the artwork are very large, making full use of the screen (at 800x600 resolution) but not requiring copious amounts of scrolling. The panels are also not displayed in any sort of consistant shape (A4, newspaper strip, etc).

There is a wise* saying that seems to apply... "The future lies in the middle." Thinking about it, what CRFH does seems about right for that. It's using the screen rather than the page, thereby allowing freedom in pacing and comic timing, but it's not infinite either, suiting the gag-a-day comics. It holds the middle ground, using advantages from both ideas.

That's mainly just a point I thought was worth bringing up but I'd also be interested if anyone knows of any other comics that do something similar. As far as I know, CRFH is unique in that regard.

- Joel Fagin

* "Wisdom does not come from within or from without but from putting quotation marks around perfectly innocent sentences."
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Connor Moran
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Post by Connor Moran »

The big limitation in daily webcomics is not space, it's time. It takes a lot of time and effort to put together a comic every day, and more expansive works are beyond most cartoonists. After all, most webcomickers are amateurs with jobs and/or school to deal with, and regular updates are the fastest way to get people interested in what you are doing. It is these popular and time pressures, more than anything else, that govern the way that webcomics are created. The large color works that we see from <a href="http://www.crfh.net/">CRFH</a>, <a href="http://www.sluggy.com">Sluggy</a>, <a href="http://www.wigu.com">Wigu</a>, <a href="http://www.americanelf.com>The Sketchbook Diaries</a>
William G
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Post by William G »

I totally agree with this.

Sometimes I think about it and I know I can at least double my fairly modest amount of traffic if I had something updated daily. But when I started "It's About Girls" I was in Korea working very hard at a time consuming, and very tiring, job teaching kids. When I got home at 9pm every night, the only thing on my mind was dinner and sleep. I put a comic up when time allowed.

So even though I got pimped by Small Stories / Lowbright, KungfoolX/ Crazy Kimchee, and Scott McCloud, the curious didn't keep coming back because there wasnt anything new when they did. And my comics aren't pretty enough to keep people returning despite that irregular updating schedule, ala E-Sheep. So I took Seanbaby's attitude of "If you don't like my updating schedule, go get your FREE entertainment eslewhere."

Of course, they did. C'est la Vie. ;)

While I occasionally feel like I squandered the opportunity to grab a larger audience these guys kindly gave me, I realize that webcomics have to play second fiddle to your real life. I'm not a college kid with the time and energy to put up my daily strip about video games.

Artists who take a break, or stop their comic mid-way through, get nothing but my thanks for trying to entertain me, and my sympathy because of the assholes who fail to accept the situation.
Connor Moran
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Post by Connor Moran »

I'm having some weird problems with my last post and editing doesn't seem to be helping. The last sentence should read: "The large color works that we see from CRFH, American Elf, Sluggy, and Wigu are bound to be the exception rather than the norm." and they should have all been links, but trying that before just lead to trouble. I think most people here can find these without my linkage.

In response to William, I can sort of speak as one person who "gets his free entertainment elsewhere". I've read your site...much of it twice, actually, once long ago and once when Scott's plug reminded me of how much I liked it. I always make a mental note to come back in a few months to see what's new on sites like yours and it seems like I always forget. Which is a shame, because both you and a lot of these people who have similar sites are counted amoung my favorite webcartoonists. I really think that webcomics would be vastly improved if this kind of work could somehow hit the "big time," as much as anything webcomic can be described as the "big time." But then even I don't read regularly. My viewing habits are too tied up in daily/weekly ritual, I suppose. All I can do is try harder.
William G
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Post by William G »

Don't worry man, I fully realize that my not ruling the webcomics universe is solely due to my lack of regular and frequent updates.

But once the stars are all aligned, I will become the undisputed world webcomics champion. Whooooo!
Tim Tylor
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Post by Tim Tylor »

William Beckerson wrote:Don't worry man, I fully realize that my not ruling the webcomics universe is solely due to my lack of regular and frequent updates.
Some of the infrequent updaters have update-alert e-mailing lists. Maybe you could try that.
William G
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Post by William G »

Tim Tylor wrote:
William Beckerson wrote:Don't worry man, I fully realize that my not ruling the webcomics universe is solely due to my lack of regular and frequent updates.
Some of the infrequent updaters have update-alert e-mailing lists. Maybe you could try that.
Dunno man, too close to spam advertising to be comfortable for me :wink:
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Post by Rip Tanion »

William Beckerson wrote:Dunno man, too close to spam advertising to be comfortable for me :wink:
Not if you set up a mailing list that people can join, and give them the option to un-join if they don't want anymore updates. This way, you're only sending e-mails to those who actually want them.
"Park the beers, and grab the smiles. It's flight time." - LtCdr. J. Robert "Bobby" Stone, USN (R.I.P.)
William G
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Post by William G »

I'm glad I was reminded this thread was here.

Say guys, how does one set up one of them mailing lists? PHP script?
Anasazi
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Post by Anasazi »

If you're prepared to deal with the evil that is Yahoo, try going to www.groups.yahoo.com (US version - might be a little different if you're somewhere else.) It's relatively easy to set up a group and set various options. You even get a neat little box that will guide your users to a direct sign-up link. The downside is that people need to have/sign up for a Yahoo ID. Many people already have one. The other downside is that you're using Yahoo. (Sorry. Bad associations. Many people don't have problems with them - and actually, I've never really had issues with their group service.)
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ragtag
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Post by ragtag »

William: Check if whoever hosts your website offers mailing lists. It may allready be part of your hosting planl, you just need to activate it and set it up. If you want to do it the simple way, you could just store a list of people who have requested an update, and send a mail to everyone on the list when there is something new on your site.

To go of on a slightly different tangent. Personally I much prefer reading completed works with a complete story, rather than episodic work or strips (this goes for comics in print and on the web). I can understand that it gets harder to get people coming back to your site if you only update a couple of times a year or less, albeit with a long story each time, but it shouldn't be possible. If you like an author, you're likely to check out his/her latest book, even though they haven't published anything for a year or more, and I think the same holds true for webcomics. An e-mail list and some marketing everythime you publish a new story, would help to make your fans aware that you have put out new material. What do you think?

Ragnar
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