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Son of Thunderbeast
Sep 21, 2002
Concerned: The Half-Life and Death of Gordon Frohman

156

A lot of exposition over the past few comics, but hey, don't blame me. I didn't write this crazy story, I'm just ripping it off.

We're on the brink, or perhaps cusp, of the release of Episode One. I was hoping it would be released at midnight Wednesday night, but according to the countdown clock it'll be midmorning on Thursday here on the US West Coast. So, I'll have to wait until I get home from work to play it, and I'll have to do a comic the same evening. I can already tell I'm going to be completely useless Friday morning.

157

The politeness of the NPCs isn't so strange when you're poking around in a corridor or exploring a building and one of them gets in your way. During combat, however, it can be a little surreal.

The first time I saw it in action was during the lighthouse standoff in the Sand Traps chapter. There was complete chaos. The Combine dropships were unloading soldiers, who were throwing grenades and peppering the outpost with pulse fire. The rebels were taking cover, and running here and there (since it wasn't squad combat at that point, they weren't follwing me around).

One of the dropships took off as I was darting between buildings, and it opened fire on me. I bolted for the door of one of the buildings as the dropship spit pulsefire all around me, shattering windows and splintering wood. I opened the door and lunged inside, my health just about gone, and ran smack dab into a rebel on his way out the door.

He said, quite brightly, "Pardon me!"

It was a very odd moment.

The NPCs in HL2 do tend to be pretty codependent and don't give you much room. You can send them away by pointing your crosshairs at a location and pressing the 'C' key, but it's usually only a few seconds before they come running back and clustering around you again. This isn't a big problem outdoors, but when you're in a narrow hallway or a small room, the crowd does tend to get underfoot.

158

Hey, I finally managed to put Day Of Defeat:Source into my comic! Hooray! And I didn't even have to work a time machine into the story.

There's a G-Mod mod for dressing up the citizens in different colored suits, found here(dead link). I thought brown looked nicest on Frohman. And, there's a complete DoD mod as well(dead link), that gives you all the models and weapons and stuff from DoD:S. People make cool stuff.

I'll probably have a review of Episode 1 up in a few days, if you're still on the fence about buying it. Short answer is, it's worth it. But I'll have more to say in a couple days.

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ultrafilter
Aug 23, 2007

It's okay if you have any questions.



Son of Thunderbeast
Sep 21, 2002
lmao

KennyMan666
May 27, 2010

The Saga

Apocalypse Johto—Battlefield Kanto Part 4: Silver Standard
Chapter 34: Power Surge






she scream

flavor.flv
Apr 18, 2008

I got a letter from the government the other day
opened it, read it
it said they was bitches




drat it, the Canadian term is "washroom"!

W.C. is only used in construction drawings

e-dt posted:


It is so rude to display the foils and spoils

This was very confusing dialogue until I remembered that there was a time when Netflix was a service that sent you dvds of television shows in the mail

Squidster
Oct 7, 2008

✋😢Life's just better with Ominous Gloves🤗🧤

Squidster posted:

Qualia the Purple
Episode 08: 22-32 of 32


Qualia the Purple
Episode 09: 1-13 of 26












ultrafilter
Aug 23, 2007

It's okay if you have any questions.


https://twitter.com/JucikaInOrder/status/1544383292102803456

Laserjet 4P
Mar 28, 2005

What does it mean?
Fun Shoe

Boba Pearl posted:

Steppe Into The Ring E01-U15


When I browse this thread I skip quite a bit, but I don’t skip your stuff - though I have still no idea what the plot is about (but this could also be due to me not reading the backstory or being terminally hamstrung by anything that is not the monomyth). However, that e-mail text made me laugh out loud and it’s really cool to see how you deal w/ critique, and the use of animation is a treat.

So, rock on, Boba.

Boba Pearl
Dec 27, 2019

by Athanatos

Flipperwaldt posted:

It's good a insight there being value in scenes that are not fighting scenes, but it still sounds a lot like you think fighting scenes are the meat and potatoes. Everything else is like the greens that need to be camouflaged or covered up with something 'interesting', filled with explanations... of the fighting scenes. It doesn't seem that helpful if everything is actually still subservient to setting up action. It seems better to me to move towards seeing all types of scene in their own right, on the same level, in function of the story. To a point where fighting is almost incidental, if it just so happens to be the best way to teach the reader or the character something. Where in non-fighting scenes things happen or are done that are of equal weight to the story from the ground up instead of it being grafted on. Like, if the angle is you're going to pad out some things just to get variations in the tempo, I can't imagine that being very engaging on its own. Which is the absolute least charitable reading of what you're saying, I know. Tell me if I'm misunderstanding entirely though.

No, no I'm saying the exact opposite actually. I've rushed multiple scenes in my comic with dialogue / explanations / character moments that were planned because I was worried people would get bored if I wasn't making <things> specifically fights or huge action pieces, or giant changing vistas, happen almost every comic. Like

between this page: this page: and this page:

There could have been a lot of chances for character moments, pulling up what we know, explaining some stuff about the world, and yeah even with showing and not telling, but there were these missed opportunities because I felt the need to rush things, so instead of doing the character scene I wrote, I scrapped it, and drew a giant rear end robot. There was a scene where Casey and Lydia just talk, ask what the hell the Baron was going on about, how they're week had been going, how they feel. All of that would have been fine, the realization that clicked is "Oh gently caress, I can actually show people the story stuff without trying to cram as much action as possible into it."

When the farmer mentions supper? There were about 4 pages cut that was literally Lydia and Casey talking about how they met, and via flashback, showing you why Lydia has all of her cybernetics, is a fish person, and hinting at what Casey was. All questions that seem... Pretty important to answer 5 or 6 updates into the comic! We needed that scene! It would have made this whole plot point, the crux of the comic, a huge thing, way more emotionally impactful.

Laserjet 4P posted:

When I browse this thread I skip quite a bit, but I don’t skip your stuff - though I have still no idea what the plot is about (but this could also be due to me not reading the backstory or being terminally hamstrung by anything that is not the monomyth). However, that e-mail text made me laugh out loud and it’s really cool to see how you deal w/ critique, and the use of animation is a treat.

So, rock on, Boba.

Thank you so much . This also points at what I'm talking about, I need to like, show what the hell is happening and why we're fighting giant robots and saving cattle farms.

As for the critique thing, I just love learning, and I come from a background of fighting games / competitive gaming in general. If you play Heroes of the Storm or whatever, you're going to get called the worst slurs imaginable, and then like a nugget of improvable gameplay, and more slurs. I've learned pretty quick how to take the good nuggets out of the bad and improve upon them. It's fun to learn new poo poo! Probably why I keep animating as well, I'm learning adobe after effects, CSP animations, and Toon Boom to do these things.

Boba Pearl has a new favorite as of 22:44 on Jul 5, 2022

Flipperwaldt
Nov 11, 2011

Won't somebody think of the starving hamsters in China?



I'm super glad I entirely read that wrong and hope I wasn't too much of a dick. I'm always glad to see you learn fundamental things, which made me upset you might get sidetracked into superficialities. This is exciting then!

Boba Pearl
Dec 27, 2019

by Athanatos
You weren't, I'm always looking for a chance to effort post.

e-dt
Sep 16, 2019


Grill an Unpopular Meat of the Month

john basedow's fitness made simple

I was sad and scared.

Kit Walker
Jul 10, 2010
"The Man Who Cannot Deadlift"

Stand Still. Stay Silent















Y’know, I don’t remember exactly where I stopped keeping up with the comic originally. A lot of this feels new to me but also there’s a major plot beat coming up that I know about, so it’s a mystery. Might’ve caught a glimpse of it over my partner’s shoulder at some point. Anyway, it’s fun for me to essentially be reading along with the thread now, lol

Phthisis
Apr 16, 2007

"Maybe some dolphins have sex for pleasure."
Boba—

Do you know what type of comic you're trying to make? Why are you making it? Do you have a story planned out? Is there a point?
These are serious questions I'm asking, though I'm not looking for the answer. I just want you to reflect on them.

I ask this because there's obviously a ton of different types of comics out there. You've got single panel/page jokes, you have single stories, long multi-chapter mangas, etc. They all exist for largely their own purposes (e.g. "a quick laugh", "artsy bullshit", "light entertainment" could be the purposes, respectively). I'll admit I do not pay much attention to your comic, so please don't take my judgement of it too harshly, as it's not a well-founded opinion, but I don't get the impression your comics are moving towards accomplishing anything in particular.

I bring this up, though, because I think Flipperwaldt was getting at the crux of something that I get the impression you still haven't really settled on. When he said:
>> "It seems better to me to move towards seeing all types of scene in their own right, on the same level, in function of the story."
I think the point is less that "all types of scene are equally valuable/valid" and more about that they all have their way of contributing to the story. And I want to clarify that it's not just that they have value within the story, but rather that they all are tools to push towards accomplishing the point of the story. A lot of the way you talk about writing seems to suggest you're not thinking of the things you create as means to an end.

Here's a list of things you just said that make me think this:
as a side note, i know a lot of these comments were from your "old" way of thinking, so i get that these might not genuinely reflect your current line of thinking

quote:

I've rushed multiple scenes in my comic with dialogue / explanations / character moments that were planned because I was worried people would get bored if I wasn't making <things> specifically fights or huge action pieces, or giant changing vistas, happen almost every comic.
You comment about people being "bored" if things don't happen. Are fights less boring than dialogue? What is the purpose of your comic? What is it trying to do? You seem to suggest each page/post is supposed to stand on its own and entertain people, rather than contribute to a story. Is that what you want?

quote:

There could have been a lot of chances for character moments, pulling up what we know, explaining some stuff about the world
What does it mean for there to be a chance for a character moment? Is an aspect of a character important to the story? If it is, then it is part of the story and should be in there, period. If it isn't important, then it shouldn't be there. What does a "chance" even mean in the context of writing? Your language suggests that the writing process is more about filling space than telling the story you set out to write in the best possible way.

quote:

there were these missed opportunities because I felt the need to rush things, so instead of doing the character scene I wrote, I scrapped it, and drew a giant rear end robot.
Similar to above, why are you cutting character scenes if they are critical to the story? Why are you adding in a robot if it wasn't necessary in the first place? If you feel that the story doesn't have the desired pacing and needs to be "rushed", why are you adding in new things (a big robot) rather than finding ways to condense what you want to convey into a smaller space than initially planned?

quote:

All questions that seem... Pretty important to answer 5 or 6 updates into the comic! We needed that scene! It would have made this whole plot point, the crux of the comic, a huge thing, way more emotionally impactful.
See now this part is really greasy, and shows signs of what I'm talking about, but ultimately I think still shows signs of the wrong mindset. There's something "off" about talking about different things altering the emotional impact of the crux of the comic, when coming from the author. These events aren't real, you're not simply depicting something that is what it is—you wrote this. If that backstory was needed for the crux of the comic, why was it not included? What is your writing process if necessary things are not being included? And what does it mean for something to be important to be included 5 or 6 updates into the comic specifically? That further suggests to me that the things you include in the comic are not being included based on the development of a story, but out of some notion of convention or something.


In short, I don't get the impression that you have any particular goal for your comic (besides improving your comic-creating skills). I don't know if you do have all of these things planned out and are simply struggling to manifest it in the comic, or if you need to put more forethought into the work, but I think you would benefit greatly from thinking through things like "what the purpose of your comic is", "what type of reader are you writing for", "what is the entertainment value of the comic", and putting thought into how the best way to achieve those things is.

CzarChasm
Mar 14, 2009

I don't like it when you're watching me eat.






Captain Hygiene
Sep 17, 2007

You mess with the crabbo...




I never thought I'd say this, but sometimes neckbeards are the better option

Scaramouche
Mar 26, 2001

SPACE FACE! SPACE FACE!

As soon as Emeril and Spongebath show up Achewood starts getting weird in a very different way, and I'm there for it.

Boba Pearl
Dec 27, 2019

by Athanatos

Phthisis posted:


I’m not expecting anyone to answer these questions really, but man if you know the answer I’m all ears.

A lot of that I have reflected on, so I won't write a long thing about everything, but it leads to questions that I can't find an answer to. In writing something and releasing serially, you absolutely have opportunities and times when something could happen, but at the last moment, you decide not to commit. Take the scene we're doing right now, this scene has to finish for the narrative to have cohesion, if I suddenly jump back to the dinner 3 days ago, there'll be a whiplash. Once you start a part of the story, you're committed. You've missed your shot, you'll have to fit that scene in later. In my mind, anything can be changed right up to the moment it's put on the internet, once it's out there it's pretty much set in stone. There's a lot of snap judgments I'll make where something doesn't sit right in my gut. Sometimes that means a scene takes an extra day, sometimes that means a scene is cut drastically short, or all the word bubbles are re-written. Sometimes I'll be positive something's a good idea for days, or weeks, and then it's time to commit, and... I have to decide, then and there:

Does this actually work? Is this a good idea? What does this truly mean for the story if it's a part of it?

And I guess that's my question, how do you know that you're doing the right thing, that you've crafted that idea as far as it can go and it can be released? When are you done writing?" I haven’t found a single good answer in the comic writing, plot writing, character writing books and workshops, and I realize now that’s because there just might not be one. It’s finished when it’s released, no more, no less.

The next question I have is about the process itself.

During my day or week, I'm jotting down ideas for "Episodes" self-contained stories that can go into Steppe Into The Ring and would stand on their own, almost like syndicated Television. When I'm not drawing, I write a mind map with all of my ideas for a particular "episode," I write a semi-detailed summary of the theme, and what I want to accomplish, then I align the mind map moments into scenes, and the scenes into a timeline, and then I write the updates. Normally a scene at a time. When I talk about self containment in Steppe, I'm talking about Episodes, I want to write my comic in such a way, that after a month or two, you can pick it up at the beginning of the next Episode Title Drop, and largely within a couple of pages know what's going on and follow along. It's not just about being an interesting story, but being an interesting story that makes you want to go back to the beginning. Something you can pick up and see if it's for you without feeling like you're committing to One Piece or Naruto. You’re seeing this day to day, but when it’s done I want it to be thought of episode to episode.

How do you straddle the line between those two? Making a story that is self-contained in its moments, and approachable, while still rewarding for someone who follows for a long time? How do you know what’s worth keeping, and how a story will read when read on a daily basis vs a binge reading session? How do you pace something, so that when people read it they understand what’s happening and aren’t bored or confused?

My final question really is about learning from other pieces of fiction.

The best way to learn to write fiction, is to read fiction, and I’ve read a LOT of fiction.

The dissonance you're seeing is that until very very recently, my goals were emulation, rather than originality. Both in what I did, and what I didn't want to be.

I wanted to be the next Homestuck, the next Zoophobia, the next Looking For Group, Bob and George. Then I joined SA, and I learned about the CYOA forum and there were these archives of stories that were awesome, multimedia weird internet things. Break Down That Gate, Paradise Lost, Forgotten Gods, all of these cool forum games / stories that were like nothing I had ever seen. These relics that had this manic energy of excitement, not only fully realized pieces in themselves, but something that sparked creativity and wonder in others. Part of the problem is that I experienced these things loooong after they were done, or close to it. I had this idealized idea of what they were, and how good they were that when I first started to draw about 2 maybe 3 years ago and started thinking about Marie, all I could think about,and fantasize about was capturing that, but it’s a lot easier to talk about how good something is, or was in the future after you’ve read it.

The other half is that I absolutely know what I don't want to be. I don't want to be Mookie so I obsess about pacing, making sure things happen and the story doesn’t grind to the halt with long walls of exposition, I don't want to be Moon over June, hideous caricatures both in personality and the way they look loving their way through the world, honestly, now a days, I don’t want to be Questionable Content or Looking For Group anymore either. I don’t want to be writing this forever, I want to get through the ideas I have, and when those run out, let it be done. I also don’t want to get lazy.

Creating stuff is mostly mixing ideas over and over in new and unique ways, and it’s better to be well executed, but derivative, then original but dog poo poo. So when you’re mushing ideas together, and you’re learning the process, how when you’re looking at what other things did right or wrong, do you know what’s worth taking? What lessons are actually there? How do you know when you’re avoiding someone else’s mistakes, rather then just making new ones?

You had a well thought out post, and it sparked a lot, and like I said, I don’t know if these questions really even have answers. You just do your best, and execute your idea as well as you can I guess.

Boba Pearl has a new favorite as of 03:12 on Jul 6, 2022

Tree Bucket
Apr 1, 2016

R.I.P.idura leucophrys
Something about Achewood reminds me of being 12 during a particularly nasty heatwave and listening to my brother practicing the bass parts for Primus songs for hours at a time.

Lurk Ethic
Jul 25, 2007

Lurk More
The Property of Hate








Lurk Ethic
Jul 25, 2007

Lurk More

I just realized that this tree resembles a brain, whereas the other tree we saw resurrected (literally lifted into the sky) resembled a heart.



RGB said that at the beginning of time, the sun cracked and split into 5 different parts that crashed into the earth. Maybe each tree is a component of consciousness? Above, we have cognition and affect. What comes next? Inclination? Sensory input (sight, sound, etc)? Embodiment?

Lurk Ethic has a new favorite as of 03:52 on Jul 6, 2022

Phthisis
Apr 16, 2007

"Maybe some dolphins have sex for pleasure."

Yeah I definitely don't have the answers, but I also like Effortposting About Comics, so I'll share my thoughts on your big bolded parts.

quote:

how do you know that you're doing the right thing, that you've crafted that idea as far as it can go and it can be released? When are you done writing?"

I think this is the easy one. You just let it go and work on something else. I mean, I don't know if there is a true answer to this, but I think one of the single most common pieces of advice I've heard from professional artists is that any amount of time spent agonizing over perfecting something you've created is just so much less valuable than spending that time on something new. If you're trying to draw a face, the person who agonizes over perfecting a single drawing is going to end up a worse artist overall compared to the one who lets it go and uses the time saved to draw 9 more faces. It's not to say that the former isn't useful at improving, just that the most pragmatic approach to getting good at Making Art is to do as much of it as possible. This does seem to imply a very pragmatic and anti-philosophical view of art, however, as it kind of implicitly rejects the idea of a sort of "platonic ideal" worth striving to for a given artistic endeavor, but meh. I don't think any of us are going to produce the great masterpiece of humankind anyway.

quote:

How do you straddle the line between those two? Making a story that is self-contained in its moments, and approachable, while still rewarding for someone who follows for a long time? How do you know what’s worth keeping, and how a story will read when read on a daily basis vs a binge reading session? How do you pace something, so that when people read it they understand what’s happening and aren’t bored or confused?

I do find it interesting that you are interested in the episodic, monster-of-the-week type storytelling that used to be the gold standard of TV. I did kind of get the impression that's what you were going for. But to answer your question, I personally think there's some level of inherent tension between different types of storytelling, and you can't always please everyone. That's a fairly significant part of what I was getting at with my previous post. You need to pick the audience you're trying to please and commit to it. I think blending long-term stories with short-term stories, that can both be interesting to read day-to-day but also compel you to stick around for the big picture, is possible but incredibly difficult. Even among big budget, popular, highly-regarded tv shows, this is something that gets executed poorly. I'd say try to find examples of this among existing media and try to study it pretty explicitly on the mechanism it uses to do it.

I'm just spitballing here, but in your stories, which lean towards having a rich lore/worldbuilding aspect, I could see how you could use bits and pieces of the lore to resolve the short-term story, but by each revealed piece of lore starts to weave together a big picture of the overall plot. I think a lot of stories like Star Wars work really well by building worlds where you can easily tell a convincing story (Luke leaving home, fighting the bad guys, etc.), while still having a lot of questions (what the gently caress is a "jedi") that don't inherently detract from the story. And then you can unravel those mysteries into other plots. The prequel trilogy was a big wet fart, but you can see how they did this with the concept of the "clone wars". There's this throwaway line in A New Hope where Ben mentions fighting with Luke's father in the clone wars. The scene accomplishes what it does, establishing the mystique of Obi-Wan's past, that he isn't some weird old sand hermit, and that he personally knew Luke's father, while also giving the intrigue of making you wonder "wow, I wonder what the clone wars were". And then it opens the door to having an entire movie(s) depicting the "clone wars". Now, if the prequel trilogy had made something interesting of the clone wars, it would have done a great job of tying together small- and large-scale plot.

quote:

So when you’re mushing ideas together, and you’re learning the process, how when you’re looking at what other things did right or wrong, do you know what’s worth taking? What lessons are actually there? How do you know when you’re avoiding someone else’s mistakes, rather then just making new ones?

This is verging into my personal opinions/theories as well, but my viewpoint is that there's not really such a thing as "right" or "wrong" in art. Rather, there's something more akin to "cause" and "effect". I think at its root, art is mostly about conveying ideas. They don't even have to be deep, insightful ideas about the nature of humanity but can even be things like "wow cool". I think each and every way you can create comes along with connotations and messaging. If you think something someone else did is wrong, the lesson is to figure out what they did gave an effect that was perceived as bad. I think most often the issue is that the different aspects of design are incoherent, but I don't think incoherency is inherently bad.

I think with "good" art, it's productive to understand the message that art conveys and to think about what aspects of it convey that message. And with "bad" art, it's important to understand what the bad part is and why it's so disjointed with the piece itself. In both cases it's a learning experience and helps you develop tools in your arsenal for your own creations.

Kind of along this topic, I was talking with a friend recently about the book Something Happened by Joseph Heller, which I read when I was in high school and consider to be one of my favorite books. One of the common criticisms of the book is that it's this excruciatingly long, stream-of-conscious narrative that is this rambling internal monologue of a guy going through his relatively uninteresting everyday life, and it's just miserable to try to read. And, that's completely correct. But, it's what makes the book so incredible, because the book itself is essentially about the existential hell of the boredom of the "dream lives" experienced by Americans post-WWII, where they have the beautiful wife, kids, the high-paying job, the house with white picket fence, but where nothing ever happens. And this agonizingly long stream-of-conscious style of narration puts you, the reader, into this hellish experience of reading hour after hour of nothing happening. That type of meta-writing is cool as hell and had a pretty profound effect on me when I read it as a kid. But the point is, if the book were about literally anything else, it would be a terrible, terrible book, because the writing is a horrible slog. But the writing is not inherently bad, it just has a very powerful effect on the reader, and when used in the right way can itself contribute to a masterpiece.

coolusername
Aug 23, 2011

cooltitletext
A Bride’s story: Chapter 11!





















The Saddest Rhino
Apr 29, 2009

Put it all together.
Solve the world.
One conversation at a time.



https://twitter.com/BuckLePard/status/1544339791696629760

Boba Pearl
Dec 27, 2019

by Athanatos
Ok but have you considered

https://twitter.com/GaryJorgan/status/1544460664160370688?s=20&t=rP6AeqTl-YWTBoUAMh-ggg

Captain Hygiene
Sep 17, 2007

You mess with the crabbo...




It's weird having Bill Watterson go from some old guy who did great stuff to suddenly picturing him as a peer who makes me feel inadequate

thetoughestbean
Apr 27, 2013

Keep On Shroomin

I don’t think he really got rich… He famously lost the right to merchandise of his own character. I don’t think he gave people the finger either, he just became something of a recluse

Boba Pearl
Dec 27, 2019

by Athanatos
It's also actually very admirable to take your success and then go live your life unbeholden to fans.

Digamma-F-Wau
Mar 22, 2016

It is curious and wants to accept all kinds of challenges

Fister Roboto
Feb 21, 2008

Also just being satisfied with what you've accomplished. American culture has an obsession with pushing people to always produce more, more, more, it just cheapens everything.

I'm not comfortable knowing that I'm a year older than Watterson was when he retired though :corsair:

some plague rats
Jun 5, 2012

by Fluffdaddy
Meet me in a warehouse in chicago and we can check out Hell was Full





Oh thank god!!!!

CPColin
Sep 9, 2003

Big ol' smile.

thetoughestbean posted:

I don’t think he really got rich… He famously lost the right to merchandise of his own character. I don’t think he gave people the finger either, he just became something of a recluse

Close. He famously gained merchandise rights and then refused to use them.

Tree Bucket
Apr 1, 2016

R.I.P.idura leucophrys

CPColin posted:

Close. He famously gained merchandise rights and then refused to use them.

What's that old koan? "If you meet Calvin upon the road, kill him."

thetoughestbean
Apr 27, 2013

Keep On Shroomin

The Enigma of Amigara Fault Pt 3









problem solved

Philippe
Aug 9, 2013

(she/her)
Even knowing the punchline, the storytelling on display here is masterful. Tension builds incredibly.

Hempuli
Nov 16, 2011



Leslies, Sisters and Wives
Page 34

Page 35


FINAL TALLY:
Lies: 42
Sisters: 0
Sisters (off-panel): 2 (+1)
Wives: 2
Deaths: 0

I realize now that I should have counted even off-panel sisters! Oh well.
That was that! Ultimately the page count didn't fall too far behind the lie count, but that's still an impressive number of lies. And of course we need to consider quality, not just quantity - Jim really cultivated a magnificent set of nonsense in a short timeframe. I'm not entirely comfortable with the comic kind of giving Jim a happy ending, considering that nearly all the bad things in the story were quite directly his fault, but then again, it's an absurd farce.

Should I start posting Trixie Slaughteraxe next, or does someone else want to do that?

Boba Pearl
Dec 27, 2019

by Athanatos

Boba Pearl posted:

Steppe Into The Ring E01-U15




Has Audio, just music.


Steppe Into The Ring E01-U16

https://bobapearlessence.com/Steppe/u020anim.mp4

Tenebrais
Sep 2, 2011

Boba, you talked before about trying to get to the action in fear for the comic getting boring, but I'll tell you now - action is the most boring part of almost any comic. Good action is hard to do in almost any medium, but webcomics in particular hit a sour spot where you can't let the reader's imagination fill in the gaps like prose can but you also can't show the flow of action directly the way you can in animation or film. It takes a lot of skill and specific lessons to learn how to make action really pop on a page. Hell, that sequence I posted from Sleepless Domain got revised multiple times after publishing, the author still isn't perfectly happy with it, and this is from someone that got a degree in comics making. It's hugely challenging to make action both easy to follow and exciting to read. You've given yourself the extra challenge of one of your characters being amorphous to boot.

Webcomics wouldn't be as big a medium as it is if you needed all that for a comic to have appeal. What comics are good at is emotion. You can show exactly how all the characters feel all the time without disrupting the flow of the narrative. These last two updates with the Casey resetting sequence? They're really good! The best part of Steppe yet. You can really feel Lydia's pain watching the woman she loves acting like a robot. That stuff is great, and that's the stuff you want to focus on if you want to keep the audience's attention. Action is just a driver to get your characters feeling emotions.

Tenebrais has a new favorite as of 12:24 on Jul 6, 2022

Mx.
Dec 16, 2006

I'm a great fan! When I watch TV I'm always saying "That's political correctness gone mad!"
Why thankyew!


Boba Pearl posted:

Has Audio, just music.


Steppe Into The Ring E01-U16

https://bobapearlessence.com/Steppe/u020anim.mp4

absolutely love it, this is your best work so far

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CzarChasm
Mar 14, 2009

I don't like it when you're watching me eat.

Hempuli posted:

Leslies, Sisters and Wives


Thanks for posting. Someone upthread mentioned that this would work as a one room farce of a play, and I'd really love to see that.

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