TWCL

Justinfh · Joined: 30 Sep 2012 Posts: 60

Do you know any Web comics with bad art but have a great story? Also, what's your opinion on such Web comics?

lexia · Joined: 12 Dec 2010 Posts: 80

I have been told dinosaur comic is funny... but that does not have a story... and i dun like it at all.

What do you mean by story a long story or just anything as long as it is good? And by bad art.. what would you define as bad art everyone has different opinions of bad art what I think is bad others may not and vis-versa

Traegorn · Joined: 16 Feb 2010 Posts: 141

There's a difference between "bad" art and "simple" art too

ewomack · Grand prize winner! Joined: 05 Jun 2007 Posts: 346

If the art works for the story, then "bad" and "good" become kind of fudgy terms. No one would probably think XKCD was "good" art, but most would probably think it works really well with the strip. But maybe "bad" artwork is artwork that doesn't look like any thought went into it? One could argue this until their neurons all popped...
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wendyw · Posted: Wed Oct 03, 2012 6:41 am Post subject:

I don't think Jason will mind me saying this, because he admits as much himself, but in the early days before he got an artist on board Ardra's art was pretty terrible. It did the job but wasn't pretty.

I've read a few comics where the art wasn't all that great, but the writing more than made up for it. I don't have a problem reading them and usually the art gets better as time goes on, though I can understand why some people wouldn't be able to enjoy them. Oddly some of them art that's most put me off comics hasn't on any technical level been particularly bad. I actually find well done art that just doesn't fit the style of the writing to be more off-putting.
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Casual Notice · Posted: Wed Oct 03, 2012 11:37 am Post subject:

Four the four-year run of Casual Notice, I heard nothing but praise for the story and commisseration for my art. That's one of the reasons the reboot of the site is taking so long for me: trying to develop something like consistent quality in my art.
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ttallan · Posted: Wed Oct 03, 2012 12:55 pm Post subject:

FWIW, I am much more likely to put up with a combo like that-- a good story and art that, let's say, doesn't appeal to me-- in a printed volume rather than online.

Art doesn't have to be perfect, but it does have to be clear. You need to know how to tell a story visually.

My favourite example of low art/good story is Longshot comics (you can sort-of see an example in this 2006 review), in which the concept is the camera is set so far back from the action that all you can see is dots moving around. It was brilliant.
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vulpeslibertas · Posted: Wed Oct 03, 2012 4:23 pm Post subject:

For me, there's a minimum bar of art quality before I'll read something, but that depends heavily on the circumstances (subject matter, how well it fits the comic, how bored I am).

The more you limit your reading selection by art quality, the fewer choices you'll have to read.

Also, if you're actually asking for a list of these kinds of comics, you might want to be more specific on genre, etc. There are a lot of poorly drawn comics out there with reasonable stories, and someone could probably list a dozen of them without a single one appealing to you.
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4LS · Joined: 18 Jan 2007 Posts: 666 Location: UK

Do you mean consistently bad art (i.e. someone who just can't draw), or poor art at the start that improves as it goes along - because there's a whoooole lot more of the latter (The Other Grey Meat being an example - a pretty fun read, and just completed). Also, do you mean bad as in 'this is a bit ropey' or bad as in 'argh, my eyeballs are bleeding'? People used to complain about the art in A Miracle of Science for instance (also a complete story), but I wasn't too bothered by it myself.

Loads of people like Dominic Deegan, which is notorious for having the same you-really-should've-improved-on-this art for ten years - but I'm not a fan myself. I dunno, you might like it? Are you actually looking for something to read, or more of an art discussion?

To be honest, nowadays I seem to find more comics with pretty solid art but a dull story, as they're much more likely to get linked. I find them pretty annoying.

ttallan wrote:

My favourite example of low art/good story is Longshot comics (you can sort-of see an example in this 2006 review), in which the concept is the camera is set so far back from the action that all you can see is dots moving around. It was brilliant.

I wouldn't call that bad art ... that's a choice rather than an fail, isn't it?
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Marscaleb · Joined: 28 Aug 2012 Posts: 155

I would rather read a comic with bad art and a story I love than a comic with amazing art and a story that doesn't impress. Also, replace "Story" with "humor" as much as you want and it remains true.

A comic with bad art and a good story? (Apart from my own? ba-dun-dun kish!)
Hero in Training.
Okay, the artwork NOW is pretty good, but it started off tremendously bad. He even remade the first chapter or so later, (and that remake has terrible art,) and when I look at the stuff that wasn't remade I am flabbergastered at the thought of what the original first chapter must have looked like.
But the story was interesting to me, so I kept reading it. There are a number of comics with much better artwork that I cannot say that about.

If you just want good art without a good story, then just spend your time looking at pictures on DeviantArt. If you want to read a comic, you want story. (And/Or humor.)

I believe someone mentioned this earlier, but there's also a matter of being able to tell what is going on. I would say this is a third category, separate from both artwork and story, and this is critical. A comic could look fantastic, a story can be great, but if you're not sure what just happened, it is all for nothing. This quality is independent from the skill in artwork; it's about knowing how to portray a scene. People don't talk about it much because it is thought of as being second nature, and it is really hard to define and give examples for. But this is in fact more important than actual drawing skill.
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ttallan · Posted: Wed Oct 03, 2012 11:21 pm Post subject:

4LS wrote:

I wouldn't call that bad art ... that's a choice rather than an fail, isn't it?

Actually, as I recall, Shane Simmons made regularly-drawn comics as well, but his art was kind of meh. (At least, it was at the time, he may have improved since then.) I believe the Longshot concept was his way of dealing with the fact that he didn't think he could draw.
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4LS · Joined: 18 Jan 2007 Posts: 666 Location: UK

But does that makes any difference? I mean, the art suits the concept perfectly - you physically couldn't do it any other way. And surely it can't be right to to say that if the same concept was used by someone who could draw, it would automatically be better?
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Uncle Greedy · Joined: 02 Jun 2011 Posts: 271

Traegorn wrote:

There's a difference between "bad" art and "simple" art too

That's the most important point in it that's often completely missed today.
(Ok, the best "simple art" are the paintings in Altamira and Lascoux that can easily competete with the best of modern art.)
As example for good "simple" art in comics/ cartoons, look up Gahan Wilson and his fellows in the early New Yorker, or Loriot, Don Martin, etc., even the art of Haegar the Horrible, that can't competete with those in any way, but works fine for it's jokes. (Some are pretty lame, but there are also some really funny ones.)
For animations, some of Max Fleischers art looks "simple" (I don't speak of his groundbreaking rotascope effects), but are brilliant, and the best example of good but extremely reduced art ever is La Linea, that almost looks like something made with an oscilloscope. This is "simple", but good (because reduced to the essential), while many of the new cartoons I sometimes see (but not watch) on TV are not "simple" (as they sometimes mix up 3d animations with completely flat characters), but simply so bad that it is almost painful to look at. Even the worst of the Warner Brothers (the later TV-productions) looked better. The annoying thing is that they are not even "underground", but commercial (and mostly digital made) productions that fake the look of drawings made by childs with behavioural disorder in a very obvious way.

simple but good = reduced drawing
just bad = stereotype reproduction of real or faked dilettantism

P.S. I would agree that there are surely some examples of "authentic" bad art that have their right of there own.

vulpeslibertas · Posted: Fri Oct 05, 2012 8:32 pm Post subject:

Uncle Greedy wrote:

productions that fake the look of drawings made by childs

I hate these things. This sort of false humility is obnoxious. I don't care if the art is simple, but at least try to make it good within the best of your ability.

You don't have to make beautiful art, you don't even have to make decent art. But please don't make art which is intentionally ugly.
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Justinfh · Joined: 30 Sep 2012 Posts: 60

vulpeslibertas wrote:

Uncle Greedy wrote:

productions that fake the look of drawings made by childs

I hate these things. This sort of false humility is obnoxious. I don't care if the art is simple, but at least try to make it good within the best of your ability.

You don't have to make beautiful art, you don't even have to make decent art. But please don't make art which is intentionally ugly.

Well, I've done a very comic strips that I'm gonna upload that are intentionally ugly. Sometimes good, bad, or a change in art can be apart of the story.