Alien Knight

[JetpackJimmy]

IN A WORLD WHERE HUMANITY HAS MASTERED OUR SOLAR SYSTEM, A DUBIOUSLY LEGAL TEAM OF ADVENTURING PIRATES MUST CONTEND WITH ENEMY GUNSHIPS, THE LAW, AND WHATEVER IS HIDING IN THE CARGO HOLD!

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[Domochevsky]

I have to ask... what exactly are we looking at here? More context is required for these seemingly unconnected images.

[JetpackJimmy]

And here's the second strip!

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[VAST]

I am not gonna lie.. I am a bit confused about what is happening your comic. I think you may need a few more pages so the reader doesn't feel lost.

I would suggest cleaning up your lines a bit. I don't mind the style you are going for, but your comics look more like sketches than finished work.

[JetpackJimmy]

And here's number three!

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[Nerd-o-rama]

I warned you about the stairs, bro.

That said, that was certainly a prologue.

[JetpackJimmy]

And so the comic begins!

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[JetpackJimmy]

Sorry about the image issues. Imageshack didn't work. I had to move over to photobucket, so two comics weren't up for a bit. They work now. Also, Comic 5!

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[JetpackJimmy]

And we've got another comic...

Gotta love smoke-covered filters.

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[JetpackJimmy]

I'm looking to do a poll, mostly due to insecurity at the quality of the art. For the, like 28, people reading this, should I;

A. Redo the first six comics in a more detailed, less chibi, style, and continue with that,

B. Continue the comic in a more detailed style, but keep the first six chibi ones up,

C. Learn to draw more detailed chibi, a la Bryan Lee O'Malley, and redo the comic in this new style.

D.Keep the chibi style for the original reasons I chose it (Easy to draw and create comics, helps focus on the comic, and creates a sense of characters being small compared to surroundings easily.)

For the record, here's some examples of my more detailed work.

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As always, if you've got any other feedback to say, please post!

[JetpackJimmy]

Looking for responses. Note that this is on hiatus until I have an idea on how to proceed. I am new to this, of course.

[Nerd-o-rama]

Well, for a minor suggestion, have you considered lettering by hand or getting a regular and more natural-looking font for your text? Using a different font every dialog bubble is distracting and doesn't really do your art or writing any favors. I'd also ditch the labels on objects entirely, and I have no idea what you're going for with striking through your typos instead of erasing and correcting them.

I can't really advise you on which art style to pick, although I will say it's very difficult to discern any details about the characters with the style you've shown so far, and your backgrounds are likewise sparse and hard to differentiate. That's a problem in a comic that has an actual story and characters (as opposed to, say, xkcd, which is mostly just stick figures acting out gags for three panels unless Munroe decides to draw art instead of attempting to tell a joke that day). I'd definitely find a more detailed style, whether keeping the SD proportions or not.

I'd also redo the first strips here with a more detailed art style, since it's very hard to tell what the actual action is with the art as it is and having to rely solely on Marlene's monologue for details.

[JetpackJimmy]

Well, for a minor suggestion, have you considered lettering by hand or getting a regular and more natural-looking font for your text? Using a different font every dialog bubble is distracting and doesn't really do your art or writing any favors. I'd also ditch the labels on objects entirely, and I have no idea what you're going for with striking through your typos instead of erasing and correcting them.

I can't really advise you on which art style to pick, although I will say it's very difficult to discern any details about the characters with the style you've shown so far, and your backgrounds are likewise sparse and hard to differentiate. That's a problem in a comic that has an actual story and characters (as opposed to, say, xkcd, which is mostly just stick figures acting out gags for three panels unless Munroe decides to draw art instead of attempting to tell a joke that day). I'd definitely find a more detailed style, whether keeping the SD proportions or not.

I'd also redo the first strips here with a more detailed art style, since it's very hard to tell what the actual action is with the art as it is and having to rely solely on Marlene's monologue for details.

MY GOD. I thought the comic was dying! Oh my god, thanks! I will change this stuff, but here was my reasons for it. I tried to have a sense of different character identities through fonts, hence why Vick has a messier-looking font, Bien uses a typewriter font, and Marlene uses a sparse, generic font. I felt that putting "Air Storage" on something was a lot less of an obtrusive way than having a character say "Better go fix that Air Storage Device 3000". Can you suggest an alternate way to throw out that kind of hard-to-naturally-exposit plot data? I used the strikethroughs on errors to create a sense of Marlene editing her own thoughts, not the author editing the comic. Guess that was a screw-up. I will DEFINITELY take your advice. I'll probably print out your comments, and keep them at home for reference.

Any other criticisms or things I could improve upon?

I suspect a good idea may be to do this in volumes, and release each comic book-sized volume at once, as opposed to doing it episodically.

-JetpackJimmy

[Nerd-o-rama]

Just an FYI, my PM inbox is almost full, so there's no need to copy me on things you post in the thread.

Basically, I'm going to suggest to you that you're writing a comic, which despite the excellent gigantic walls of text that The Giant frequently writes is a medium that's meant to be split evenly between text and images. If you want to write a comic/sequential art piece/bande desinée/whatever you want to call it, you should be able to use the images to convey meaning as well as the text. In short, I recommend you draw an air storage tank, rather than a rectangle with "Air Storage Tank" written on it.

I think the same applies to the dialog - while doing different fonts for different characters is interesting, it's very distracting when you change it for every single character. In general, just differentiating characters by appearance and speech patterns should be enough. Both of these tie in to "make the art more detailed or at least differentiable" as a suggestion.

And the strikethroughs, I just didn't get the joke. Take or leave that, I say.

[JetpackJimmy]

Just an FYI, my PM inbox is almost full, so there's no need to copy me on things you post in the thread.

Basically, I'm going to suggest to you that you're writing a comic, which despite the excellent gigantic walls of text that The Giant frequently writes is a medium that's meant to be split evenly between text and images. If you want to write a comic/sequential art piece/bande desinée/whatever you want to call it, you should be able to use the images to convey meaning as well as the text. In short, I recommend you draw an air storage tank, rather than a rectangle with "Air Storage Tank" written on it.

I think the same applies to the dialog - while doing different fonts for different characters is interesting, it's very distracting when you change it for every single character. In general, just differentiating characters by appearance and speech patterns should be enough. Both of these tie in to "make the art more detailed or at least differentiable" as a suggestion.

And the strikethroughs, I just didn't get the joke. Take or leave that, I say.

...I'm starting to get the feeling I'm coming off as a bit pretentious...

But seriously, I'm sorry that I annoyed you with my copypasta.
Thanks for helping me decide how to go about re-making this. Thank you for helping me with figuring out where to use text and when not to. I appreciate it. Scott McCloud would be VERY disappointed in me. I may have to get rid of the strikethroughs. They're not exactly intuitive.

You seem quite knowledgable about how comics should be done. Is there any chance you could mentor me a bit? I'm pretty much flying by the OOTS print commentaries, Making Comics by Scott McCloud, and what I've learned from Atop the Fourth Wall. Also, TVTROPES.

If you want an example of my older, absurdly wordy, As-You-Know-Bob-laden, works, check out the many (six) strips of Nate Jackson vs. Texas, on these very forums, done by my older account. It's kinda funny, in a Plan 9-sort of way.

[Nerd-o-rama]

I don't really have the time or attention span to be what you'd call helpful on a long-term basis, and I don't even particularly like comics as a medium; they're just the only free internet fiction that's posted in readably short chunks. Plus, all my writing know-how comes from similar sources to yours, but replace Scott McCloud with David Eddings and TVTropes with "please never use TVTropes as a guide to actually writing something". TVTropes describes the Lego blocks of storytelling but has no useful advice on putting them together.

I can give basic ideas that I already did, but other than that I don't have much to say other than "keep practicing your art until it's easier to tell what you're drawing".

[JetpackJimmy]

I don't really have the time or attention span to be what you'd call helpful on a long-term basis, and I don't even particularly like comics as a medium; they're just the only free internet fiction that's posted in readably short chunks. Plus, all my writing know-how comes from similar sources to yours, but replace Scott McCloud with David Eddings and TVTropes with "please never use TVTropes as a guide to actually writing something". TVTropes describes the Lego blocks of storytelling but has no useful advice on putting them together.

I can give basic ideas that I already did, but other than that I don't have much to say other than "keep practicing your art until it's easier to tell what you're drawing".

Thank you for the feedback, though, I have found that I've learned a bit from the how-to bits of TVTropes. I'd also recommend McCloud highly! Would you happen to know anyone who might help me get some more detailed advice? I really appreciate your feedback and will definitely work with a more detailed style next time. Sorry to bother you, but what did you think of the color concept piece of Bien I posted? Any good?

[Nerd-o-rama]

Thank you for the feedback, though, I have found that I've learned a bit from the how-to bits of TVTropes. I'd also recommend McCloud highly! Would you happen to know anyone who might help me get some more detailed advice? I really appreciate your feedback and will definitely work with a more detailed style next time. Sorry to bother you, but what did you think of the color concept piece of Bien I posted? Any good?

I think that concept is a step in the right direction. All I can do is repeat advice I've heard of practicing constantly until you get consistent and comfortable with drawing what you want to draw. Some "how to" books on drawing and illustration might have helpful advice; I don't actually know anything about creating visual art, other than knowing what I like to look at.

[JetpackJimmy]

Sorry to be stupid, but what concept? Derp...

[Nerd-o-rama]

Sorry to ge stupid, but what concept? Derp...

The color concept piece, Jimmy.

[JetpackJimmy]

Oh.

Wow.

How did I not get that?