Category Archives: Webcomic Discussion

Webcomics are Totally Something

By mrmyth on | 2 Comments

Everytime I check out Josh L.’s webcomics blog, the title has gotten a little less jubilant. I predict that within a month, the title alone will be a manifesto on the darkness inherent in the webcomic world.

Anyway, Josh has used the blog to, by and large, shake things up a bit, as it were, and give some criticism (some much-needed, some seemingly a bit more for its own sake) on various fictures in the webcomic world.

His latest post is advice for webcartoonists. Some of it is mainly there for shock value – but a lot of it is genuinely stuff people need to hear.

One of the things he stresses is learning to draw better. And… he’s right. I mean, there is almost always room for improvement in any given comic, both artisticly and otherwise. But the web, as a self-published medium, is a place especially filled with work that has room to grow.

This is something that was especially true when the webcomic scene was just beginning. I mean… there are tons of comics that have come far that started with truly deplorable art. College Roomies from Hell is a good example of this – a strip that started with some really rough art, but has become a top dog amongst webcomics. It has has become genuinely well drawn. It was carried along by the story at first, but the artist put in the time and effort, and the strip evolved, and grew, and succeeded.

And there are a lot of cases like that out there, of comics that started poor and then actually became nice looking comics.

Which is why I want to emphasize Lesnick’s advice – learn to draw better. If you think your art is crap, and it will forever limit your webcomic? Don’t give up. Keep at it. Work at making it better. It will get there. You’ll learn from doing your comic all the time, and you’ll learn in other ways that you can apply to the comic. And if, after months of working at improving it, you take an honest look and realize that you’ve only gone from being violently atrocious to being merely craptastic?

Keep at it some more.

The webcomic world is one made for evolution, and as long as an artist has the persistence to endure their own growth – and the drive to make that growth happen – they can join the ranks of all the others who went ahead, regardless of the work… and learned to draw better.

Posted in: Webcomic Discussion

How to Succeed at Failed Resolutions

By mrmyth on | 2 Comments

Well, it’s been a month and half since the new year, and I can’t help but wonder how resolutions are going for most folks.

I know that I made a good number – from ones carried over from the year before (Resolution One: Cook more genuine meals, Or How I Learned to Stop Boiling Ramen and Love the Oven), to the generic ones with my own little twists (Resolution Two: Exercise every day, DDR if nothing else!), to ones tackling my own specific problems (Resolution Three: Get up on time every day, since it’s all too easy to be lazy when working a job where the only repercussions are the ones self-enforced.)

Like many folks, I failed at pretty much most of them. Utterly. Within days.

And I’m ok with that.

I’m ok with it because I didn’t give up. I kept trying to adhere to them. And on some days I’d fail, and on others I’d succeed. And I’m getting to the point where I succeed more often than not. I’m proud of that fact that I’m failing, and not letting it stop me. The fact that I keep working at it is the important part.

Which isn’t to say that I don’t want to succeed – but there are different of levels of failure, in the end.

When I originally was thinking this over, I hadn’t expected it to end up connected to webcomics – but the recent return of Avalon convinced me otherwise.

There are a lot of webcomics out there – many of them with a small enough audience that when the fall by the wayside, no one really notices. But then there are also big hitters. Some of them bow out in a graceful fashion – a lot of them are designed as complete stories. They are meant to end – and when it comes their time to go, they do so.

But there are also the ones that, well… burn out. Or have others things come up. Sometime life takes priority. And those webcomics go for weeks… and then months… and then years without updates.

And sometimes they come back.

That’s what impresses me. That the drive behind people to finish them properly can be so strong, that they want to make sure to go through with it, even years after the comic’s height has passed. The fact that I can think of multiple webcomics that have returned from the brink – some to wrap things up, others to go on as normal – is inspiring. It’s the reason I keep checking back, every so often, with many of the other former greats that have meandered into silence. Some of them might not make it back, sure, and some people might have given up from the start. But the story is still there waiting in the mind of the artist, and one day it might make it back out into the open.

Because it isn’t over until they decide it is.

Posted in: Meta Posts, Webcomic Discussion