TWCL

[prettyrisque]

Hey I'm looking for some opinions on my webcomic Pretty Risque(Finally released more than 10 strips now). As long as they are constructive I don't mind what those opinions are .


Pretty Risque website

[lonelyfetus]

It lacks pretty and risque.

I say study up on comic storytelling and give it another 20 comics.

[prettyrisque]

Thanks, can you please elaborate? I know the story is too early to tell. Cheers

[choanata]

I didn't like the art at all. But really, that wasn't even the biggest problem. The text at some points is squished so small that you can barely see it. And that's not the biggest problem. The biggest problem is that it doesn't make sense or seem to have a point. It's confusing. Things are happening and the reader has no idea why. And after several pages of updates, it doesn't get any clearer. If you want to do a comic, you have to think of it as trying to hook the reader quickly and then give them a reason to keep coming back. Your art sure as heck aint gonna do that. Right now the story isn't gonna do that either.

[prettyrisque]

Thanks, the text is small in areas and if the art is not to your taste that's ok too. What is several? the first 6 or 7? Look if you don't like the story I'm not going to force you to read it. Thanks anyway.

[dpat57]

Heh, you can't really go wrong with girls with guns. But art-wise, methinks there's room for improvement, unless this is exactly the style you're aiming for. On those pages where the text is just too squished to read, I found it expanded clearly when I zoomed in to 150% or more. But this suggests you're trying to cram too much into the balloons, and that the dialogue should either be trimmed, broken up into several balloons, or split over extra panels.
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[prettyrisque]

Thanks for the input, no the art style is not exactly what I want, but I decided to go against an adult looking and cel-shading style at least for the first season. I wanted to experiment with other things such as the perspective and consistency from different angles, so those aspects .

The picture is squished in the webpage on screen to avoid horizontal scrolling so the page its only 80% by 80% of its real size. So yes, the text is most likely too squished especially on the early ones. Thanks for the suggestion about the extra text and just being constructive.

[choanata]

prettyrisque wrote:

Thanks, the text is small in areas and if the art is not to your taste that's ok too. What is several? the first 6 or 7? Look if you don't like the story I'm not going to force you to read it. Thanks anyway.

Yeah, it was up to strip #7, including number zero, that's 8 comics. And just to be fair I went back and read #8, to see if it all turned around there. And while it seemed like this page actually was somewhat coherent, you have the word bubbles placed wrong in panel 2 of strip 8 so that you read the one girl's response before you hear the other girls statement.

But seriously, if you were going around the internet and found a comic that you had to read 8 pages of before you got a coherent story, would you stick with it? If I were you, and I strongly recommend this because I don't like seeing people fail, you should stop updating the comic for a couple of weeks, and redo it so people have a clue what's going on in the beginning, and give them a chance to get hooked. No random action scenes where the reader has to try and hold on. And seriously work on the art. If you can restart this and make it clearer and prettier, you will get a LOT more hits.

[prettyrisque]

Thanks for following up, although I don't agree with the bubble ordering. I know they overlap but the thinking is the bigger bubble above is meant to indicate the more dominant personality and a clash of views. If it got you confused, l I guess it didn't work as I hoped.

Honestly I wouldn't either but the early ones are meant for amusement and a slow buildup so you know a little what the characters are like. I guess that didn't get communicated across either.

Thanks for the suggestion on the art, the early ones aren't that clean or pretty and I don't expect them to be I've done one comic strip digitally ever prior to the first strip. Fyi I left out any sophisticated shading on purpose. The idea is to practice drawing different poses and perspectives and improve on that first. The extra shading will just take too long as I only have a mouse to work with.

As a historical record so I can see how its developed and the promise of one every week up to 26 at the end of the season for a friend; I'm going to decline the suggestion to change it and take the consequences of a reduced popularity.

[thestripedone]

Page 8 is pretty confusing, especially panel 2. The bubble at the top gets read before the bubble at the bottom that it's in answer to, so your readers will have no idea what's going on. (same problem on page 11)

However, bubble order is not nearly your biggest problem.

Those are:

Spelling and Grammar.

Do you even proofread these? They look like they were written in half a minute and then the text was just slapped in there without even looking at it.

If I was a potential reader, I would have quit after (squinting and) reading "it be nice to have a job..." Proofread your dialogue or it will be inferred that you do not give a shit about your comic. And readers will say "This guy does not care, so why should I?"

Page 8 is also a good example of fitting WAY too much into a speech bubble. It's really damn tiny and it BLURS.

Part of this is the way you're saving your files. Why in the hell are they 1200 pixels by 1000 pixels when the on-site display size is smaller? Figure out what size you're going to display your comic at and then make it look good at THAT SIZE. This will also make your comic load faster (500k for that big a comic is silly. Ours are bigger and smaller filesize. Play around with the filesave options in Photoshop, which I hope you are using)

I see that you actually said something in the new about it reducing load time by making the image 80%, but that's not true. It's still loading all 555+k of that image. The only way to reduce load time is to make the actual *file* smaller.

Story Concerns:

I have to agree with choanata in terms of story. Most of the first 8 pages I read, I was thinking "Okay, so what the heck's the point here, exactly?" It's not necessarily that your story is bad, it's that I haven't yet seen ANY story. It was random "WE ARE ALL FEMALE AND HAVE GUNSRARARARRA!!!!"

That might be okay if it was brilliantly written, or funny, but like I already said, the dialogue made me cringe. I won't lie about that. Rewrite it like 86000 times and it (the dialogue) might not suck, but right now it does. Sorry. (I can provide *extensive* examples of why, if you really want me to. Just say the word!)

There is a ginormous jump between their briefing and when they get to the subway. It's especially silly because you just wasted 8 pages doing absolutely nothing. Once you get there, the pacing's not too bad. But I'm not sure most of your readers starting from the beginning will stick around that long.

Web site design:

This needs work too. It's actually not too bad at the moment, but it still has ample room for improvement.

1) Your banner is huge. Make it smaller so people don't have to scroll down every time they click "next page" to see the comic

2) Lose the gradient in the background, or make it repeat. My resolution is high, so it just randomly stops over to the right.

3) Add "first" and "last" buttons to your navigation menu.

4) Shrink comic file size, like I already mentioned.



I'm not going to comment on art, since you seem to understand you have a lot of room for improvement. Also, I cannot draw at all.

[prettyrisque]

In all due respect, I have checked the spelling and grammar and thought about it a lot before writing and I don't find much wrong with it. The sounds are in the text boxes and the writing is colloquial. I'm not sure if you are picky about full stops or commas or the construction of long sentences. Early on the text in the box is a bit awkward. I emphasised more on the text box to overlap and not overlap certain areas of the picture. There might be differences in spelling since I don't use American English.

I did consider reducing the file size but I disliked the file degradation when reduced to a jpg, my inclination is that the speed of connections are fast enough to handle it.

Looking at the comments I think there are a few in jokes here, the forum chat (3) the bullet lines (4-5) and (6) are, so its good to get feedback to suggest this. I don't think the story is random but the early ones are meant to have like a hybrid casual one gag with a story. It does suggest things are too subtle from your feedback. From 3 and 6, there is mention of a mission. For the characters, one is into computing and mathematics as shown on her equations on the pieces of paper and the code on her screen (2), one is slacking off with a forum chat (3)and has psychic powers (4-5), the other is into cooking (3-4) while in 6 was a bit of sub-text into their relationships. This comes back in 7 as a more light hearted look about their personal work issues. 8 is more a digression into their moral considerations and views of assassination and the risk of death by certain causes as the briefing is discussed. 9 is a big jump but the darker tone of the colour of sky and the subject matter in 8 is meant to indicate a change into 9.


If you want to provide examples of the dialog where its inadequate in your opinion, can you please send it privately to my email listed on the links of my page.

I admit it takes awhile and not easy to make sense and and many will leave but my general attitude was well that's your problem that's how I want to execute it but I'll take note of the criticisms. Thank you for letting me know.

Thanks for the points on website design, I'll change the banner sign size. However I do want to keep the gradient on the background. The lack of a first and last buttons is an issue and I know about that one, I'll have to rework some PHP scripts there.

Cheers.

[thestripedone]

Quote:

I did consider reducing the file size but I disliked the file degradation when reduced to a jpg, my inclination is that the speed of connections are fast enough to handle it.

If you want to make your users wait 5-7 seconds a page, okay.

What program are you using to compress your files? If you're using Photoshop, use the "Save for Web and Devices" button, because doing that I got page 11 to be 120kb (compared to your 420) and it looked identical: http://sbaker.infomancy.net/etc/PreRisPageSmallerSize.png

Quote:

In all due respect, I have checked the spelling and grammar and thought about it a lot before writing and I don't find much wrong with it. The sounds are in the text boxes and the writing is colloquial. I'm not sure if you are picky about full stops or commas or the construction of long sentences. Early on the text in the box is a bit awkward. I emphasised more on the text box to overlap and not overlap certain areas of the picture. There might be differences in spelling since I don't use American English.

Nothing personal, but if that's the best you can do, proofreading wise, you need to get someone else to check it over. "Colloquialisms" have nothing to do with it, and you can't use British/American English, because I use both.

Quote:

If you want to provide examples of the dialog where its inadequate in your opinion, can you please send it privately to my email listed on the links of my page.

I will do so.

You may wish to consider using a larger font, or a different font, or doing something differently with it, for purposes if text-in-box-ness.

Quote:

I admit it takes awhile and not easy to make sense and and many will leave but my general attitude was well that's your problem that's how I want to execute it ...

This is entirely the wrong attitude to take. It is, in fact, YOUR problem. If people don't like it, they will leave and you will have no readers. Your job (aside from making comics) is to make the comic reading experience pleasurable. Nobody is going to slog through it if it's bad.

Quote:

The lack of a first and last buttons is an issue and I know about that one, I'll have to rework some PHP scripts there.

It's fairly easy to do, so shouldn't give you too much of a problem. You may also wish to know, though, that clicking "next" on the last page takes you to page 1.

I also did not get anywhere that anybody was psychic. The lack of bullet holes also bothered me, but that's just because I'm a stickler for detail.

[prettyrisque]

No I'm not using Photoshop, I'm using Paint Shop Pro, its probably in 8bit png compression rather than 24bit to reduce to the size you got.

Honestly I don't think there's anything wrong with the grammar and spelling. That's how I talk and for me it makes sense. I might have left some full stops in a one sentence though. I'm not too fussed on that point, but I guess your misgivings are elsewhere and I'd be happy to see it on the email.

No I have to agree to disagree, I don't expect to make it pleasurable for everybody and make it accessible although I agree navigation has to be pleasant. I made this more for myself and a few friends who are reading it, although popularity is a nice bonus. If my intention was to make it more accessible, popular and to generate revenue; believe me I would have done a one-gag strip with simpler graphics. Its interesting to have differing views on this and thank you for your input. The psychic bit is only on strip 5 btw.

[choanata]

prettyrisque wrote:

Thanks for following up, although I don't agree with the bubble ordering. I know they overlap but the thinking is the bigger bubble above is meant to indicate the more dominant personality and a clash of views. If it got you confused, l I guess it didn't work as I hoped.

Um, what I was telling you about the bubble order wasn't really opinion. It's just the way to tell a story. You don't put the end before the middle, you don't put the response before the statement. If you are trying to convey a more dominant personality, you just make the font bigger and bolder. Maybe have it slightly overlap the bottom of the first word balloon. You disagreeing with that concept is like saying that when you see a multiplication symbol, you'd rather subtract to get your answer.

I think it's ironic you are so concerned with file size and quality when the art is not really in need of amazing file compression, which you yourself have even admitted.

And not for nothing, why on Earth would you come to a webcomic forum and ask for comments when you have no intention of changing anything about your comic? People tell you the grammar is not good, you disagree and say it is good. People tell you the art isn't that great and the story doesn't make sense, and you disagree and say it's the way you want. People tell you how to make it better so more people will want to read it, and you say if we don't like it, it's our own problem and you don't care to change it.

Good luck. I'm done.

[prettyrisque]

Ok its most likely a convention most people and I'm not aware of it. I'll look into it and consider it for future use if that's what you mean if that stops confusion. Webcomics isn't exactly analogous to mathematics though but I see your point.

Even though the art is not amazing, I do like it and like it at that resolution even if it annoys people.

Just because my view don't change that much doesn't mean it isn't constructive. I wanted other people's opinions even if I personally don't agree with them and I value that you have given the time and energy to say it. Honestly it really helps. Firstly it helps my own understanding on where people are coming from and I've asked a friend on some of the points. Discussing her view to the perspectives here I learned maybe this comic is catered to and better understood by a fandom I'm part of. This will be taken into account if I make a different webcomic. It might not be one tomrrow but maybe say five years time.

Second, I may not be changing any comic that's already created BUT I'm going to take the comments into account on the ones I'm going to work on like larger fonts for example. Also I want to change things like adding a first button and a smaller banner like thestripdone has said and I'll be looking forward to his comments on grammar via email.

Thirdly I guess I didn't say it the right way. The webcomic is far from perfect and we all know that. What I'm trying to say is I don't want to cater too much to what other people think is better. I want to listen to other views so I can explore what I believe should be better and work from there. That alone makes me grateful of all the comments so far even if its negative and at times I'm rather defensive about it.

So chonata its not all in vain and take it easy mate