TWCL

[xcentrikz]

The Xcentrikz is an interactive cartoon of comedic parodies and bizarre adventures. Viewers also interact in exciting mysteries and contests.

Currently we are seeking viewer contributions for the soon upcoming Chapter 3. Vote your opinions and email in your ideas!

Check out our profile and forum to comment there if you like.
http://www.thewebcomiclist.com/users/56183/
http://xcentrikz.proboards.com/

The storyline is based in a modern entertainment industry setting, where mass-media conglomerates are vying for positions of power, to control society as their puppet. Meanwhile, our heroes engage in crazy-madcap adventures as they investigate these moguls, hoping to thwart their sinister plans and preserve individuality and freedom in our world.

Thanks and have fun everybody!
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-NJ
We welcome you to network with us!
xcentrikznewz (a!t) yahoo (d*ot) com
The Xcentrikz™ - by Camellia Designs
http://www.camelliasoftware.com/xcentrikz/

[Robukka]

eccentric?
Admirable the way this aims to please, to have the reader participate. Not sure how, what one could contribute to your distinct style?
Lots too many text stops it from flowing; I had to click "Next" before reading much. Fun the wacky alterations of names.

[Lord Pandar]

Robukka wrote:

Lots too many text stops it from flowing

Lord Pandar seconds this. Generally you know you have a problem when speech bubbles take up more than 50% of the page.
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[Chilari]

Why has that spambot not been taken care of yet? *sigh*

Anyway, on topic, I've had a look at your comic but I really couldn't get into it. Right from the first page it's far too wordy. You want to break stuff up more, and cut some stuff right out altogether. If you've got a talkative character, that's fine, but you can show that in other ways, like start the sentence but as he or she says more and more the text gets smaller and smaller.

Looking solely at your first real page, you've basically got one panel, divided in two, in which your characters have quite a long conversation, by comic standards. So let's see how you can cut out words, give it more flow, and make the whole thing more interesting.

Firstly, I'd divide the whole conversation over several panels. I'd say scrap the whole voicemail thing, because that doesn't add much except to establish Jizelle as Octavia's daughter. First panel, have a shot of Octavia's phone in her hand, ringing, with "MAX" on the screen. She says something like "urgh, fine" and answers. Then she goes on her little "I don't have time for this" rant. Of that rant, I'd suggest scrapping "I hope you're experiencing a fatal emergency" bit, because (a) that's really mean and (b) you can lose words there - I'd put "This had better be important" instead. Next panel, Max on his initial ranty bit, with a spikey speech bubble coming from his phone with Octavia's words in. Next panel is a shot of Octavia, rolling her eyes and hanging up. Then we cut back to Max, who is still talking, perhaps starting the speech bubble with "..." (what's that called again?), then final panel, he saying "Octavia? Octavia?" then a second speech bubble, linked to, with just "dang" in it.

In the mean time, cut about about a third of the words from each of Max's big speeches. Any more than that will probably detract from the implication that he's talkative, any less and you've got too many words.

Also, Arial lower case? For a comic font? Oh dear... Go on something like Blambot or 1001freefonts.com and find a nice font that works in a comic format and is easy to read. There's a thread around somewhere in which someone recommends a bunch of great fonts, so you might wanna look at that too.

Another thing you need to work on is your art. It's flat. All the characters look the same age. All the women have breasts bigger than their own head, which is just ridiculous and really not attractive. Also Max's shirt looks all wrong. Even a tight shirt wouldn't accentuate his chest that much. You need to be more subtle.

So, key points:
1. Edit your script and cut out anything that's not necessary - namely, about half of what you've got, if not more, it's far too wordy.
2. Split stuff up into more panels, with a greater variety of shots, angles and distances. This will also help your comic feel less wordy.
3. Find a better font, and use fonts made for sound effects when you're using sound effects, not just Arial all the time.
4. Work on your art - more realistic body shapes, a greater variety of facial expressions, that sort of thing. The best way to improve your drawing of people is to take life drawing classes, or, if you can't afford that, you can do sketches of friends and family, your own hands and feet, or photos in magazines, newspapers of the internet. It's good practice, I promise, and it'll definitely be worthwhile.
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[dpat57]

I can see why anezka would say what she said... and ditto for Gabriboy.

I like it... almost... the art's colorful (one might say a blaze of color) but on most pages there's a *lot* of reading, and sometimes trying to keep track of who's saying what in which order felt like an IQ test. And I had a few "What's going ON?!" moments that required me to pause, backtrack and re-read.

Methinks that's yer main problem, it's too busy and too dang hard to follow.

Those thoughts aside, it's an interesting concept. I'm none too sure whether it'll work, but it's interesting.
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[Chilari]

So I was a bit harsh back there. To be honest, I only looked at your comic because I wanted to avoid doing a particularly troublesome essay, which, if I'm honest, is also what I'm avoiding right now (Damned thing's in for Monday, along with another assignment for the same module which I haven't even chosen my question for. Why do I leave stuff so late?)

Your comic has potential, I'll give you that. The concept is an unusual once, certainly, but managed properly, as I think you have been doing, it can work well. All it needs is for the scripts to be refined (don't just write the script then put it right into the comic; write the script, leave it alone for a few days, then go back and see how you can make it better and cut it down to the most important components) and for a few aesthetic problems to be addressed, and then you're home and dry.
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[wendyw]

anezka wrote:

Why has that spambot not been taken care of yet? *sigh*

Because none of us staff have been following this thread and nobody told us it had a bot in it.
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Blog

[Chilari]

I suppose that makes sense.
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[xcentrikz]

Hey thanks, I am so glad to know I'm.... ALMOST...

AS CLEVER...

...AS A spam bot!!




**** BUYDRUGZ4CHEAP!!! *****

/end of silliness in message

Yep there's a lot of text. We decided to go for more the in depth graphic novel style than quick one liner comic style. Most folks check out the about page for a little background info.

The new chapter has just begun on the site. Thanks to everyone who emailed their input! HAVE FUN!
_________________
-NJ
We welcome you to network with us!
xcentrikznewz (a!t) yahoo (d*ot) com
The Xcentrikz™ - by Camellia Designs
http://www.camelliasoftware.com/xcentrikz/

[Chilari]

Graphic novels are not necessarily wordier than gag-a-day strips, and certainly not as wordy as your comic, in my experience. The thing about the comic format is that you've got limited space on each page, and you've got to make a decision - do you want the main component to be words or artwork? If you were working in a novel format, obviously it'd be words (though some novels also have illustrations). But you're not. You're working in an artistic format.

Now, to look at the most recently updated long-form comic in my favourites list, Kaspall by Lucy Lyall, the most recent page has 9 panels, containing a grand total of 148 words, and that's one of the wordier pages. That works out at an average of 16.4 words per panel. Compare this to your page 5 (or page 3 if you ignore the genie thing and the establishing shot), which has 198 words on 2 panels - 99 words per panel. Not good, man, and not like a graphic novel, which you say you're emulating.

Now you might think "Well, it's my comic, I'll put as many words per panel as I want", and you'd be perfectly justified in thinking that, don't get me wrong. But allow me to point out two very good reasons you should try very hard to cut it down (either by drawing more panels or by cutting words, or both).

1. Wordiness has been mentioned first by Lord Pandar and then by me and dpat. If 50% of the people who have posted in this thread have pointed out a concern, you should probably address it.

2. We're webcomic people. We've been reading webcomics of many different kinds for I would imagine quite a long time. I personally have been working on a couple of scripts, one of which I sketched a couple of pages for, and speech bubble management was one of my problems - in prose, I'm far too wordy in dialogue - but it really came to the fore when I was sketching out those few pages, because a few of the speech bubbles came out so large they overlapped some of the art in the panel. As a result, I had to cut about half of what was being said in that bubble, and rearrange the panel. But anyway, point being, we're experienced in this field and we know what we're talking about.
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[wendyw]

I agree that you have too many words per panel going on. The problem in my mind isn't how many words per page you have, but as anezka brought up in her last posts how many words per panel.

If I was doing this page for example I would probably have gone with the speech broken over eleven panels, which, following anezka's lead of working out the word averages, would average out at twenty two and half words per panel. Still a little wordy but much more manageable I think, than the current 248 in what is basically a split screen single panel. In addition I would probably add a silent panel of Max looking at his phone after the call has ended.

Doing this would give you another advantage other than making the text less intimidating. In that page the characters go through a few different moods, but that's not shown visually. You have one shot of each character, one visual mood and that's it. The words and the images need to match each other in mood, which really isn't happening there.

You seem to have got better since, using more panels recently, but I do feel that it wouldn't hurt to go back and fix the early pages to include more panels and just generally a larger page size so it doesn't feel so cramped.

There is no limit to how tall a page is online. People usually don't mind vertical scrolling to read a page and giving yourself more space to fit everything you want in will make the comic a lot more appealing. You'll be able to better pace your script and make the speech bubbles less overwhelming by spreading them out.

Another issue you've currently got is that you don't seem to be proof reading well enough. In page 35 there were two things that really jumped out at me. The first was "the boys don't care see to see me" in the second panel and "3th" in the last panel.

The following page contains a character talking in text speak, which can sometimes work in a humour strip, but it just seems to come off as a little annoying to me in this case. The big problem I have with it is that there are words there that are misspelled but would still sound exactly the same, things like UR, U, gurl, etc. They all sound exactly the same as the correct versions of the words.

There's nothing wrong with adding weird variations of words as long as they sound different went spoken aloud. 'Dat' as a replacement for 'that' can be fine, because you can hear the difference between the two words. You can't hear the difference between your and UR though, so unless he is spelling the whole conversation out a letter at a time it doesn't really fit in my opinion.

Anyway.
This post is getting long and I have things I'm supposed to be doing. I hope it's in some way helpful to you.
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Blog

[xcentrikz]

Hi everybody!
Just a quick update post, we really appreciate the input we've been getting from fans, and ideas shared by other webcomic artists like yourselves. Those emails always help form a lot of crucial points for the next chapter. Thanks for your feedback, negative and positive alike.

Also, we recently added some updates & clarifications to dialogue in the previous episodes from several months ago. Then updated people’s suggestions for characters on About Page, too. Thanks again folks…have a fun weekend!
_________________
-NJ
We welcome you to network with us!
xcentrikznewz (a!t) yahoo (d*ot) com
The Xcentrikz™ - by Camellia Designs
http://www.camelliasoftware.com/xcentrikz/