TWCL

[rocketpig]

Some of you might know me and how I've always disliked how longform comics are presented online. I've been thinking about it A LOT lately and after following Mark Waid's progress with Thrillbent, I started thinking more about how digital comics are presented and why they're presented that way. I totally dig what Mark is doing over there and thought about applying some of the same things to my own comic.

Here is the way my comic is viewed now. It's pretty straightforward webcomic stuff with a slight twist. Still, it's a static page, like you'd read in print.

http://variables.selfcentent.com/comic/variables-2002-1/

Here is a revised version with more comic "motion" (though not motion comics, ugh). Don't mind the site design, it's a test site. This covers the first 1 1/2 pages of that same issue. It's rough around the edges because this is more of a working prototype than an actual comic I'd release on my site. It definitely needs some polish.

http://ftgotp.selfcentent.com/?page_id=2

Which would you rather read and why? What do you like or dislike about each format? I could release a 6-8 slide page every week, which translates to about 2 pages of comic.
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[Traegorn]

Honestly? It can be a little irritating to have to keep clicking next instead of being able to just read the next panel sometimes

[rocketpig]

You can also use keyboard arrow shortcuts.
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[Traegorn]

Not on an iPad, which is how I consume most of my webcomics.

But I also would have never thought to use keyboard shortcuts - most comic readers wouldn't - as we've been trained for years to think point and click on the web

[rocketpig]

Traegorn wrote:

Not on an iPad, which is how I consume most of my webcomics. But I also would have never thought to use keyboard shortcuts - most comic readers wouldn't - as we've been trained for years to think point and click on the web

I think more content is going to be delivered dynamically over time and users are going to acclimate to the different environment. I don't see people always thinking that one page=one comic. Given the things we can do digitally versus print, that kind of static layout isn't really taking advantage of the medium.

As for me, I didn't even know the software I was using for that supported right arrow browsing... I just did it naturally and it worked. Almost every javascript system uses the same keyboard shortcuts.

This system might involve more clicking but it also involves no scrolling and very little loading time. Those are my two biggest pet peeves with the current webcomic layouts found around the internet. As for tablet use, my thumb just hovers over the scroll area and I find myself tapping it as needed.
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[Kail]

I'm not really digging the new "one panel at a time" layout, either. It feels gimmicky, like a solution for a problem that doesn't exist. Change is fine, but change for the sake of change alone is generally not worth it when you weigh it against the inconvenience of readers having to learn a new interface just to read your comic. I also didn't think to use the arrow keys to navitate it; I generally don't touch the keyboard much when I'm browsing.

I'm not sure what advantages the new layout has that the old one doesn't. No scrolling is a function of the page size/resolution, no load times is a function of the file size and buffering process, you can do both of these things without this panel-by-panel reveal thing. I don't have a problem with the smaller pages or anything, though, that works fine.

[Sylvia]

I find the first format irritating because I have to scroll back up to click next on my computer. But I kind of like the second one. It looks interesting. I don't know, I might get tired of it after a while.
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[rocketpig]

Kail wrote:

I'm not sure what advantages the new layout has that the old one doesn't. No scrolling is a function of the page size/resolution, no load times is a function of the file size and buffering process, you can do both of these things without this panel-by-panel reveal thing. I don't have a problem with the smaller pages or anything, though, that works fine.

That's what I'm experimenting with... I'm working with an already-designed comic. It doesn't always fit nicely into half-pages. From pages I design from here on out, I'll be drawing half-pages that better utilize this format (should I decide to use this format at all).

So I'm trying to find a middle ground of making it work with what I have and being able to utilize it in the future.
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[vaslittlecrow]

I personally like it. Useful bounces (people who just tune in for a quick front page update) might be inconvenienced, but otherwise, it's a really sleek interface.
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Visit Catnose Comics and Velvet Rasputin to see my comic art and graphic novels.

[smbhax.com]

Not a fan of the slideshow style because it's making me do extra work just to get a good look at stuff I can already kind of see.

I'm also not a fan of keyboard navigation. I never notice it's there (I didn't even remember it in this case at first, even though I read about it being there before I visited the page! =|) unless it's doing something obnoxious, like causing the pages to jump around when I'm trying to do something else with the keyboard on the page, like adjust the selection on some text I've highlighted.
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[rocketpig]

smbhax.com wrote:

Not a fan of the slideshow style because it's making me do extra work just to get a good look at stuff I can already kind of see.

I'm going to create another example with blacked out panels. Making the panels partially visible was a mistake. It gives away future panels.
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[vulpeslibertas]

The arrow key navigation is reasonable, as long as you maintain dual-inputs. The big thing I see here is that only 1% of your readers will know it's there, and most of those only by accident. You'll need to explain it if you want people to use it.

I agree with you on the transparent pages issue. It gives away too much. More accurately, it just looks like half your comic is faded so rather than "giving away" the readers actually fully read it, click next, and then get confused when instead of seeing the next comic, the saturation of the old comic changes.

I'm not too picky about the one-page at a time format. I've tried something similar myself, although I have an option to choose how many pages you want to see at once.

Epiphany!!! Oh, awesome idea for an iPad!!
Someone needs to make a webcomic for an ipad that uses eye-tracking technology. Panels become visible or animate when the eye pans to a predetermined point on the screen.
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[dpat57]

That first link suited me just fine, once I read above that the arrow keys control navigation. You should consider adding a line, Use arrow keys to navigate. so readers realize they can do this!

Moving onto the next page should reset the viewer to the top of that next page so I don't have to scroll back up every time.

The second link, those panels lighting up, I dunno what it's meant to do for me.
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[Old Herb]

I gotta agree, I'm a fan of the old static comics where you can read up all the dialogue and whatnot off the bat. It looks nifty, but it doesn't really serve a good purpose, stalling the reader like that. Also, seems some of the more technologically advanced of us are having trouble with it. I'm still wallowing in the stone age of phone technology, myself, but it's some food for thought.

This sort of thing worked pretty good with Max Payne where none of the graphics were visible to start with, and new ones flowed up on the screen with a distinct voice over narrative that carried a cutscene forward. Here, however...doesn't work all that well.

[wendyw]

I don't mind the way it works in the first link, but I only knew about the keyboard navigation because of reading through the thread first and I only knew about the ability to click on either side of the image to move through the archive because I've seen it implemented before. Generally, I move the cursor over to the side, away from the comic page, which means the text is never revealed to me. The first couple of times I ever saw webcomics using that method I didn't realise that you could navigate that way and thought I had to just close each page and then open up a new one from the thumbnails. I'm sure I can't be the only person to have ever thought that as well.

So there's your first issue you need to sort out; make sure potential new readers know how to navigate the comic, because it's all too easy for people to think that navigating is more of a hassle than it is and just give up on the comic because of it.

Like dpat57 said you're going to need to find a way of having each new page load up scrolled to the top because as it is we're seeing the bottom of the page before the top and that's going to completely spoil any reveals you might have at the end of a page.

The other issue is bookmarking and linking. If I was reading through the comic, had to stop for whatever reason and wanted to go back to where I was later how would I keep track of what page I was on? Likewise if I was chatting to someone online about comics or maybe posting on these forums or something like that and I wanted to show someone a particular page I can't link directly to it, which is a bit of a bugger really.

So, although I don't have any issue with the idea of doing it the way it's done in the first like, the implementation needs some work. It's not an inherently bad system. It just needs some work.

The second idea though, that I'm not a fan of at all I'm afraid.
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