Hero Oh Hero (path to greater good reboot)

[Lissou]

Oh, I'd love to see some comparison art!

I've been enjoying the comic, although I always have some trouble figuring out what the last page I read was so that I don't miss any. Definitely not a problem on your part, though :)

[random_guy]

Seconded. I'll love to see comparison art as well.

I always start from the latest comic and work backwards to the last one I saw and then work my way forwards again.

I just reread the comics, and I noticed the aristocrat desires one of the most powerful heroes in the world.

http://neorice.com/hoh_33

He really does desire Burk.

[Neoriceisgood]

Oh, I'd love to see some comparison art!

I've been enjoying the comic, although I always have some trouble figuring out what the last page I read was so that I don't miss any. Definitely not a problem on your part, though :)

Heh, I wonder how hard it'd be to add a little "save" button like homestuck, I should ask my web guy about that.


Anyway, here's some images for you guys:

1. Just for fun a full on evolution of all the styles I've ever used and/or considered:

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2. 1 on 1 comparison of various key characters from every story line.

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I know some people will probably prefer the old style cause it was larger & had fancier shading, I just want to make mention I've been keeping a regular update rate this time around for a reason.


Either way, the style I've chosen for Hero oh Hero is pretty simple to work with but I'm also extremely happy with the readability of character faces/expressions compared to essentially every old style.

The chars picked for that comparison sheet are fairly random btw, I mostly picked guys that had a solid quality old sprite & a new one. By request I can provide more specific characters if asked though!

[Gez]

1. Just for fun a full on evolution of all the styles I've ever used and/or considered:

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I'm curious what motivated switching the hair colors around. This change in character design doesn't seem a decision motivated by the change in art style.

[Neoriceisgood]

I'm curious what motivated switching the hair colors around. This change in character design doesn't seem a decision motivated by the change in art style.

A few reasons that differ per character:

1. Colors that fit closer to how I envisioned em. (Tobi's hair is supposed to be black for example, I tried to make this more obvious.)

2. Story/logical reasons. (At the start of my old comic I was preeetty lazy with stuff like skin tones.)

3. Personal preference. (There's some designs in the old comic I just ... didn't like much, so I simply changed details like haircolor around cause I liked it better)

4. Color coordination with future characters. (this might be a weird one but I try to pay attention to how characters look together with future characters/the additional cast. For some stories I want to focus more on a cohorent similar color sceme & for others I want chars to stand out more; So I've adjusted the colors accordingly)


I could probably tell what reasons apply for which character if you really want to know, but most of em fall into one of those 4 camps.


Oh and reason 5:

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I know my design outdates this but ... not comfortable with it.

[Gez]

I could probably tell what reasons apply for which character if you really want to know, but most of em fall into one of those 4 camps.

Well, it's mostly Noah and the wizard diplomat. Tobi's hair color change is just a minor palette tweak rather than a change.

[Lissou]

Yeah, the original style of the diplomat looked middle-eastern to me, now he looks like an aryan guy with a tan. Definitely a weird change.

And I'm disappointed about Noah losing the green hair :( I realise you did that because of pokemon, but it's still a shame, I feel. I would have made his hair shorter instead of making it a boring colour :P Or if I had made it a boring colour, blonde, he already looked almost blonde anyways.

It's really nice seeing the comparison things though. I have a lot of trouble recognising Noah with the new design, the others are easy to recognise though. And I'm sure I'll get used to the new Noah. (I didn't think of Tobi's hair as different from the first one, just adapted into the new style).

[Neoriceisgood]

Yeah, the original style of the diplomat looked middle-eastern to me, now he looks like an aryan guy with a tan. Definitely a weird change.

And I'm disappointed about Noah losing the green hair :( I realise you did that because of pokemon, but it's still a shame, I feel. I would have made his hair shorter instead of making it a boring colour :P Or if I had made it a boring colour, blonde, he already looked almost blonde anyways.

It's really nice seeing the comparison things though. I have a lot of trouble recognising Noah with the new design, the others are easy to recognise though. And I'm sure I'll get used to the new Noah. (I didn't think of Tobi's hair as different from the first one, just adapted into the new style).

Took longer to reply to this than expected cause the forum just ... vanished.

Yeah I know some of the changes may seem odd, personally I consider most of them for the better. Some just visually and others for reasons I'll leave in the wind for now!

My buffer's already ventured very deep into Noah's story though, so that design change is pretty locked in. :) (as far as base start-of-the-story design goes, I'm not the type of author who won't have his characters ever change through story events. )

[Neoriceisgood]

Yo!

Updating this thread as I've (finally) finished chapter 1 with 221 pages and have officially started chapter 2 starting this week.
Switching from Burk's story to Noah's (as readers of the old comic might've figured out)

The start of chapter 2 is found here: http://neorice.com/hoh_222

I'm always curious about feedback/advice based on previous chapters, as I try to keep it in mind & apply as much of it
to a new chapter as I go along.


And cause I enjoy throwing some character art whenever I post here:

Size comparison of (most) important characters from chapter 1.

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[Neoriceisgood]

Decided to update this thread as I just finished Chapter 2, running from page 222 to ... 333... that actually wasn't intentional.

Thinking about it they're almost more like volumes/arcs than chapters in a way, hahah.

Just for the fun of it I'm gonna be updating Hero Oh Hero daily for the next 2 weeks, as my buffer can easily handle that.

Chapter 3 starts here: http://neorice.com/hoh_334


As I like adding comic-related images/art to my posts here, here's 3 pixelcards based on the protagonists:

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[Lissou]

I enjoyed Noah's ark but I'm looking forward to Tobi's :)

[Neoriceisgood]

I enjoyed Noah's ark but I'm looking forward to Tobi's :)

Heheheh, Noah's ark..


It always cracks me up how the structure of my comic + his name make for that phrase popping up quite often.


Hope everyone who reads is enjoying Tobi's story arc so far!

[Lissou]

I am! I wanted to say something a while ago but I didn't want to double post since it's against the rules, and now I forgot what it was. I'll tell you if it comes back to me, though!

[Neoriceisgood]

Well ... now I'm super curious what it was, I hope you remember.


Also huge image warning:

"Pixelcards" based off of a ton of characters seen in the comic so far, just for fun.

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Link for full size image: http://fc09.deviantart.net/fs71/f/20...od-d8k6wgy.png

[Lissou]

I remembered! Although it wasn't actually that interesting, and I might even have mentioned it already.

In most webcomics, the first arrow links to the first comic, and the last arrow links to the latest comic. In yours, they link the the previous and next respectively, with the inner arrows linking to first and last. As a result, and despite the fact that they have text legends, I regularly click the wrong link. It just seems counter-intuitive (to me). I don't know if you researched it and it ended up being the best layout or what, but I was curious about your reasoning.

I mean, now the comic has been running for a while, so changing it would probably throw people off too. But since you're doing it a different way from pretty much everyone else, I was wondering if there was any specific reason.

[Gez]

Heh, I bugged him about that on the first page of that thread.

[Neoriceisgood]

I remembered! Although it wasn't actually that interesting, and I might even have mentioned it already.

In most webcomics, the first arrow links to the first comic, and the last arrow links to the latest comic. In yours, they link the the previous and next respectively, with the inner arrows linking to first and last. As a result, and despite the fact that they have text legends, I regularly click the wrong link. It just seems counter-intuitive (to me). I don't know if you researched it and it ended up being the best layout or what, but I was curious about your reasoning.

I mean, now the comic has been running for a while, so changing it would probably throw people off too. But since you're doing it a different way from pretty much everyone else, I was wondering if there was any specific reason.

I'll be honest and say that I've done this entirely out of a personal preference, fully knowing every single other webcomic in the world does it differently.

I can probably substantiate why it feels better to me, if you really want me to explain, but bluntly said "It's my site and I like this better"

[Lissou]

I'll be honest and say that I've done this entirely out of a personal preference, fully knowing every single other webcomic in the world does it differently.

I can probably substantiate why it feels better to me, if you really want me to explain, but bluntly said "It's my site and I like this better"

Sure, I'm curious. I figured there wasn't a high chance of you changing it at this point but yeah, I would like to know why. At first I thought it was an accident since it seems so counter-intuitive to me, but since it stayed that way and was never "fixed" I figured there might be a reason behind it.

[Neoriceisgood]

Sure, I'm curious. I figured there wasn't a high chance of you changing it at this point but yeah, I would like to know why. At first I thought it was an accident since it seems so counter-intuitive to me, but since it stayed that way and was never "fixed" I figured there might be a reason behind it.

I'm not very prone to do something just because others do it, but I've always found the placement on other sites sorta.. jarring?

I find the outter arrows much easier to click, as my eyes focus on the end of a line faster than the middle. And logically speaking: you'll click next/previous page more often (in rapid succession) than "final/first" page, which you'll only click once.

So based on that I personally just preferred having next/previous in the easier to reach spot on the bar.


I know a lot of people find it counter intuitive cause everyone does it differently, but I literally find it counter intuitive to use any other comic site ever.

[-D-]

I find the outter arrows much easier to click

They are. If one accepts Fitt's Law that distance is proportional to time required to get to a point, one realizes that (assuming edges act as blockers), edges are actually closer than point halfway across the screen. Because you can quickly ram the mouse into an edge, where it stops and then move it slightly back to hit the buttons.

And logically speaking: you'll click next/previous page more often (in rapid succession) than "final/first" page, which you'll only click once.

Actually, for me this use case is different. I'm used to clicking comics and then clicking last. Only few moments ago I noticed there is latest button . I am shame.

[Lissou]

Interesting. I understand your point, the outer arrows may be easier to click (I haven't experimented. Since I keep clicking the inside ones accidentally I would say that's not the case for me, but it's probably a habit thing, so...) I find the linear approach (the arrows in the order of what they link to) more straightforward that the practical approach (the arrows in the order of which will be clicked most) but at least I understand your reasoning now.

I wonder if in that case it wouldn't work better to only have arrows for previous and next, and have the first and last simply be links in the navigation bar or something. But I guess you probably already gave the whole thing a lot of thought and concluded this was the most practical way.

[Neoriceisgood]

Interesting. I understand your point, the outer arrows may be easier to click (I haven't experimented. Since I keep clicking the inside ones accidentally I would say that's not the case for me, but it's probably a habit thing, so...) I find the linear approach (the arrows in the order of what they link to) more straightforward that the practical approach (the arrows in the order of which will be clicked most) but at least I understand your reasoning now.

I wonder if in that case it wouldn't work better to only have arrows for previous and next, and have the first and last simply be links in the navigation bar or something. But I guess you probably already gave the whole thing a lot of thought and concluded this was the most practical way.

Well for me the most practical has always been just clicking the page to go to the next one.

[Lissou]

Well for me the most practical has always been just clicking the page to go to the next one.

You know, I tried setting that up for my own webcomic but for some reason it doesn't work. But it's hit or miss for me. Sometimes I enjoy that feature, sometimes it frustrates me, because if I accidentally click my first instinct is to click on the left side of the new image to go back, and usually it just goes to the next one again.

I've been enjoying the frequent updates when you reach some rank, by the way. That's really nice. You have so much buffer though, you could probably update every day for a year or two! I'm pretty amazed by how fast you work. I only update once a week and I still miss my deadline often (which isn't noticeable yet because I still have some buffer, but if I can't catch up soon I'll be in trouble).

And quite honestly, your comic looks like more works goes into it than mine :P I'm guessing you've been doing this for so long that you're becoming pretty efficient. Also, you've played around with style, which I assume helped you pick one that was pretty fast while still being pleasing to the eye.

Anyway. I really enjoy Hero Oh Hero. Oh, another thing I admire with you: you manage to skip all the unnecessary dialogue. I don't think I have had a single page that wasn't dialogue-heavy :P Probably a matter of style, but I'm sure a lot of people get discouraged by the walls of text.

[Neoriceisgood]

Replying to your post in chunks, as you hit on a few different subjects.

You know, I tried setting that up for my own webcomic but for some reason it doesn't work. But it's hit or miss for me. Sometimes I enjoy that feature, sometimes it frustrates me, because if I accidentally click my first instinct is to click on the left side of the new image to go back, and usually it just goes to the next one again.

I've always been more frustrated with comics that don't have it myself, unless their page/site format is so unconventional that you can't really read it properly without clicking the page. (some websites have click to enlarge AND click for next at the same time ... why..?)

I've been enjoying the frequent updates when you reach some rank, by the way. That's really nice. You have so much buffer though, you could probably update every day for a year or two! I'm pretty amazed by how fast you work. I only update once a week and I still miss my deadline often (which isn't noticeable yet because I still have some buffer, but if I can't catch up soon I'll be in trouble).

Well HoH's predecessor was plagued by constant hiatuses that honestly killed the readership, so I wanted to make sure never to let that happen again & prioritized having a brick solid buffer.

Let's see 592 - 394 = 198 buffer pages ...

At around 150 pages I can update 3x per week for a year.

at around 240 pages I can update 5x per week for a year.

And with 7 pages per week I'd obviously need 365 pages buffer for a year.

Those are obviously rough estimates, but I've got well over a year worth of content if I update at the regular rate.

I worked pretty hard to get this buffer where it is though, I actually started Hero Oh Hero with a buffer of over 150 pages which shrank down below 40 between the suffer summer vacation up until winter or so. I struggled quite hard to get back to the 150 buffer I started out with due to
how much work the initial phase took.

I've progressively gotten more efficient at creating art as well. The current Tobi arc I'm posting is actually where I started getting so quick at comic creation that my capability to create pages skyrocketed. (you'll see how I took advantage of the extra time this gave me at the end of the arc btw, faster pages = more time for impressive/fanservice-y artwork.)

And quite honestly, your comic looks like more works goes into it than mine :P I'm guessing you've been doing this for so long that you're becoming pretty efficient. Also, you've played around with style, which I assume helped you pick one that was pretty fast while still being pleasing to the eye.

Yeah my old comic gave me a LOT of experience learning what styles don't work. As much as I know certain readers just prefered the fanciest most detailed aptGG styles I've used, those simply couldn't provide any form of stable update rate next to my study.

I could probably go into the individual choices & what I learned from the old styles in depth if I really wanted to, but I'll save that for if anyone really wants to hear me ramble on about stylistic choices.

I'm actually still experimenting, albeit in more subtle ways than aptGG. I haven't seen anyone in the comments ever take notice but a few things have changed massively from Burk's first chapter. (the backgrounds becoming a platform-game type of 2D rather than having a vague hint of perspective, several changes to special effects. etc etc.)

More subtle improvements are more fun though, they're less jarring but still end up making the product gradually better over time. Something pixelart/sprite comics aren't particularly known for.

Anyway. I really enjoy Hero Oh Hero. Oh, another thing I admire with you: you manage to skip all the unnecessary dialogue. I don't think I have had a single page that wasn't dialogue-heavy :P Probably a matter of style, but I'm sure a lot of people get discouraged by the walls of text.

I kinda set a few rules for myself when it comes to exposition dump-type dialogue & scene length.

I'll happily do stuff like leaving out basic information like a character's name if I don't think it particularly helps the flow of a scene/interaction. (this actually is a bit of a difference in noah's story v.s. burk. subtle difference really.)

[Domochevsky]

...
I could probably go into the individual choices & what I learned from the old styles in depth if I really wanted to, but I'll save that for if anyone really wants to hear me ramble on about stylistic choices.
...

Yo. Lay it on me, bro.

[Neoriceisgood]

Yo. Lay it on me, bro.

Alright, but don't say I didn't warn you..



You asked for it so here I GO!


THE GREAT PATH TO GREATER GOOD & HERO OH HERO STYLE CHANGE STORY

Part 1: A Path To Greater Good

A bit of history

So before I go through all the styles I've actually used, it might be good to go a bit into my desire to do a sprite/pixelart comic in the first place. While it may seem obvious
given my skillset I'm not a stranger to traditional art or doing traditional comics.
I have however, always I loved the aesthetics of pixelart & especially the almost iconographic nature of "game sprites".

I actually didn't start doing pixelart for game purposes explicitly, my pixelart "career" more or less began in the megaman sprite comic community. Through various megaman related sites I ran into pixelart for various megaman bosses (all in MM7 style) and back then I was really trying hard to find the source game for them & wondering why megaman sprite comics didn't make use of more of these cool sprites if they were available.
I found out soon enough that over half of them weren't official, but pixelart made by people online ... Although I've made pixelart before (e.g. sloppy rpg maker sprites); it never occured to me that a random person on the internet with ms paint could actually create sprites of a quality indistinguishable from a professional game like megaman.

Now I've always liked the aesthetics of sprites & as a young kid could find myself being entertained/interested in big name sprite comics like Bob and George ... but seeing the high quality sprites some people could make made me wonder why so few sprite comics actually tried to go for entirely or almost entirely self made art.

Sure lots of megaman (and sonic..) fans used recolored/modified megaman sprites, but essentially none of them went the entire way to make a full fledged pixelart comic.

Now there's a lot of stuff that happened, me getting better in pixelart made more and more game dev friends interested in working with me & I also did a ton of traditional paper/art still, especially once I got myself a tablet which allowed myself to do digital art properly.

But through the years the idea of a sprite-based or game-visual type comic never left me.

Just for some historical pieces:

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Probably one of my oldest perserved mockups for aptGG's initial format, with the portraits.


My big reason for not enjoying drawn comics, I had no idea how to use a scanner & it showed.


Literally my first "attempt" at a comic style, see these as aptGG's 0.0001 version.


My short venture into drawn comics, mostly related to challenge sites like void city/war for arcadia.


... the less is said about this, the better. (this is essentially aptGG's first run, I had no idea what I was doing.)


And nonsensical practice comics I did for a forum competition that never happened.
(only adding this here cause it was a step in the evolution of aptGG)

Please note: almost all of this ranges from mid to end of highschool, I perserve art for historical value more so than pride for old work. (it honestly makes me cringe to read/see this.)


As you can see I had tried both traditional comics & pixelart comics at least a few times and came to two conclusions:

1. if I had to do traditional comics, I would just not do comics. Didn't enjoy them at all.

2. If I were to use pixelart/sprites for comics I HAD to solve the issue with the faces being way too small for any decent expressions.


APTGG: stage 1

The expression problem was easily solved: http://neorice.com/aptgg_1

Rather than doing anything with the sprites I decided a fun game-y route, give each character a portrait + dialogue box, just like in RPGs!
It was a great idea and really caught on with people ... and it was an absolute nightmare.

I quickly realised a few things:

1. You were restricted to two lines per dialogue tops per panel.

2. The page format was all over the floor as panel size was restrictive, so it could never be printed.

3. every single character
with dialogue needed a portrait. And guess what? One portrait took more time to create than several pages.

The Gang Rule Town story arc made me realise I was finding ways to avoid giving new characters dialogue, so the first style change came: http://neorice.com/aptgg_82
I decided to make the characters larger & more expressive to remove the necessity of the character portraits.
While this change was only intended to remove the necessity of portraits for side characters, it only took me a total of 9 pages ( http://neorice.com/aptgg_90 )
to realise that these new sprites could release me of the burden of my obnoxious page format, as they completely removed the need for portraits.
With the fanbase removing the portraits might've not been the most popular decision, but in the end it allowed for more than 2 lines of dialogue per box,
something I immediately took advantage of. ( http://neorice.com/aptgg_91 )

Now this style I was actually quite satisfied with for a long time, it lasted me all the way up to ( http://neorice.com/aptgg_181 ) (funny now that I think of it, +- 90 pages of the old format,
then 90 of the new one..)

At this point I also had a big hiatus lasting from June 2009 to September 2009. During this time I decided that after 180 pages I still wasn't satisfied with drawn backdrops and that it was honestly worth giving pixel backgrounds a shot cause perhaps my issue finding an enjoyable drawn BG style was ... that it was drawn.
http://neorice.com/aptgg_183 The associated style change was for a simple reason: the old sprites didn't look particularly great on detailed pixel backgrounds, They felt more like 2D images pasted on than something that suited the BGs. For this reason I decided to reuse the same sprites, but in a different style/shading.

This is also where I made a big mistake ... the backgrounds I made were complicated as all hell & something I made during my hiatus, but during Burk's castle story arc I soon discovered
that they were essentially impossible to create as quickly as I needed.

If any of you ever wondered why I stopped switching between stories during burk's castle arc ... it wasn't cause I loved the castle, it was because it became physically impossible to handle
more than one story at once.

Big shocker for some: this is one of several reasons I actually look back to the second style more fondly than several styles that came after.


Realising I needed to solve my style issue + not wanting to risk another hiatus so soon after the last one lead to some .. interesting situations:
( http://neorice.com/aptgg_202 )
( http://neorice.com/aptgg_203 )
( http://neorice.com/aptgg_204 )
( http://neorice.com/aptgg_211 )
( http://neorice.com/aptgg_219 )
( http://neorice.com/aptgg_221 )

Between 220 and 250 I thought I finally settled on a style, but it had some ( http://neorice.com/aptgg_249 ) problems, particularly that fancy as it was it was still hard to quickly make action poses for such detailed sprites & I simply delayed the background problem by keeping the castle backgrounds almost entirely the same,
rather than solving it.
(I actually hope to make the castle rooms a lot more diverse and interesting once I reach it in the reboot, I never intended for the limited quantity of wall types/assets.)

One possible solution I had for the background/sprite situation was to focus on different styles per story so that one or two of em could function as lower effort buffers.

( http://neorice.com/aptgg_251 ) for noah I went with higher resolution sprites but sorta simpler filtered backgrounds.

( http://neorice.com/aptgg_259 ) with Tobi I wanted to experiment with extremely reductive "chibi" style sprites and simple backgrounds to help me figure out simpler styles
that still looked fine.

( http://neorice.com/aptgg_263 / http://neorice.com/aptgg_280 ) *what the observant reader might've noticed is that this Tobi chapter had much more diverse & often fancy backgrounds/set pieces, if you contrast it
to the castle arc discounting the first 4-5 backgrounds made explicitly during my hiatus; you can tell how simplicity does fuel more creative backgrounds.) Despite being deliciously simple to work
with though, the tobi chibi style came back to my original problem: You can't see a characters's expressions without portraits! Agh.

Then after exactly 288 pages ( http://neorice.com/aptgg_288 ) A Path to Greater Good died with one more meaningless Noah page. Being plagued with hiatuses, me having a lot of bad stuff going on irl & the comic's archive now being a total mess of styles all over the map ... none which I actually liked ... I was done.

At this point in time I actually quit my comic & decided I was done with it, I felt incapable of producing the comic I wanted next to school work ... and I hated the archive & the mess it had become.
When I stopped producing pages it wasn't actually to reboot my comic initially, it was to quit for good.
http://neorice.com/aptgg_291 It would've ended on a strangely sad note too, two characters complaining about another hiatus. I actually made this as a last resort buffer page over summer, I actually never planned to outright quit making pages after this but ... I just had it. I was done.

http://neorice.com/aptgg_292

But that was not the end..

----

Okay so this became a aptGG retrospective LOL And I haven't even gotten to Hero Oh Hero yet, but it's midnight so I can't keep writing.

In Summary:

1. Portraits are cool: more effort than a page

2. RPG Dialogue boxes were the worst idea ever & I'm glad I switched to a normal page format around page 182.

3. Large sprites and detailed backgrounds are AWESUM when you've got a hiatus to prepare them all, horrible in practice.

4. Large sprites -> action scenes either kill update rate or are largely unreadable.
Small sprites -> Can't actually tell a character's expression ... that's pointless.

These were some of the biggest things I learned working on aptGG & tried to fix through various styles. But almost any style change came with an unforseen problem.


In case you wonder what my favourite style out of the old comic was, ignoring the time issues ... I think the answer goes without saying.



Anyway, feel free to let me know how you feel about my aptGG style retrospective! And ... major apologises for the extreme quantity of links, but my old comic's got to be good for something.

Any replies/opinions would be appreciated, especially so I can avoid making the sequel (HoH's beginnings/retrospective) not a double post.
(Or specific questions about things I didn't explain, I did brush over a few things more rapidly than others.)

[Lissou]

Thanks for this detailed first post! I did enjoy the portraits but I can totally see how time intensive they would be, and it DID make it difficult to have a lot of dialogue. I didn't really like most of the balloons you used over the years as I found many of them pretty difficult to read, but I find the newest ones legible, which is good.

I would love to hear more about what you did to solve the issue of facial expressions, since the current style is pretty small. I haven't noticed a lack of expressiveness and you don't seem to have a higher resolution when you zoom in the faces (they get more pixelated due to the zoom) so I wouldn't think the zooms help in any way...

Info about the backgrounds is useful too. I find I have spent weeks working on backgrounds for a new location and then ended up with something so simple it could have been done in an hour, had I know what I wanted from the start.

I'll probably comment more on your next post, but I wanted to allow you not to double post.

[Domochevsky]

...go on. :)

I find this fascinating, as it strangely parallels my own musings and problems with comic making, except with pixel art.
Comparing notes, so to speak, is incredibly interesting to me.

[Neoriceisgood]

Thanks for this detailed first post! I did enjoy the portraits but I can totally see how time intensive they would be, and it DID make it difficult to have a lot of dialogue. I didn't really like most of the balloons you used over the years as I found many of them pretty difficult to read, but I find the newest ones legible, which is good.

I would love to hear more about what you did to solve the issue of facial expressions, since the current style is pretty small. I haven't noticed a lack of expressiveness and you don't seem to have a higher resolution when you zoom in the faces (they get more pixelated due to the zoom) so I wouldn't think the zooms help in any way...

Info about the backgrounds is useful too. I find I have spent weeks working on backgrounds for a new location and then ended up with something so simple it could have been done in an hour, had I know what I wanted from the start.

I'll probably comment more on your next post, but I wanted to allow you not to double post.

I really really wanted to try and find a way to make pixel balloons/text work in an attempt at making my comic 100% pixelart, even dialogue-wise. But after various attempts
I realised it just wasn't possible without relying on enormous fonts. The pixel bubbles were time consuming & too hard to read, but I did at least want to experiment to see if I could make it work.

I'll go into backgrounds & expressions a bit in the rest of my post, as the rise of Hero Oh Hero is really where I started figuring out how to deal with both.

...go on. :)

Yes!

THE GREAT PATH TO GREATER GOOD & HERO OH HERO STYLE CHANGE STORY

Part 2: Tom RPG

Before the comic..

So I essentially quit aptGG, I realised I was done with it. Except ... I wasn't ... really.

I was done with that comic, aptGG. I was done with what it had become, with how it looked & how I was telling it.

But I wasn't done with creating a pixelart comic about this world, Tobi, Noah or Burk. I liked all of them, their narrative, and I still liked pixelart webcomics.
For me A Modest Destiny (a now dead pixelart webcomic) had always been proof of concept. It was popular, it was fun, it was made with pixelart. Very simple
sameface-y pixelart, but it was a fun fantasy webcomic narrated with pixelart.

And it made me realise that aptGG had essentially run it's course at what it was: a nosedive to see if I could actually do a longform fantasy webcomic & enjoy it.
All the past comics I've made never made it past 14 pages before I got bored ... aptGG while flawed in many ways lasted over 280 pages during very stressful times for me irl. I had shown myself I could keep up a comic & given myself plenty of styles to work with (both within the narrative & art) to actually know what I liked/disliked.

Much more than that though ... eventhough some needed some massive changes, I loved almost all the characters I designed for my comic & future characters I never got to introduce to the readers. Despite being absolutely and completely through with aptGG itself ... I realised that after nearly 30 pages I still wanted to tell the story, I just wanted to do it properly.

Cue the teaser page 2 months after the "death" of aptGG: http://neorice.com/aptgg_292

TOM RPG

What I realised after ending aptGG & deciding I wanted to do a reboot, and do the comic properly ... is that there was a significant risk of the same problem happening again. I invent a style, jump in ... and start hating it. What I experienced through aptGG is that a lot of styles seem great on paper, but start falling apart during a longer running story..

With some styles I found out that large numbers of NPCs made portraits hard to work with, other styles were fantastic ... until I actually had to use them for action scenes..
The solution for this was surprisingly simple: I needed to actually do a style test in a comic that had enough characters, action & pages to actually experience a newly developed style before jumping into a new version of aptGG.

Most style changes in aptGG came from desperation, because the previous style had a fundamental flaw. But if I just made a shorter comic (say +-50-100 pages) I could easily use a style, do the entire comic ... and assess after the comic is done how much I enjoyed the style and if I ran into any glaring issues.

http://imgur.com/a/81Aas#0

This is when Tom RPG, the practice comic was born. The idea was pretty simple:

1. I developed a style that, in my eyes fit the criteria that were base conditions for me to enjoy my comic:

- quick/comfortable to create.

-faces that can be expressive.

-Looking at some of my source inspiration (A Modest Destiny, Lunar Legend GBA, several old SNES rpgs) I realised I wanted a style that was "iconographic" in nature.
I wanted my characters to not just look like fancy pixelart, but like little "iconic" almost game-y sprites. (something the fancier aptGG styles failed at.)

-Bodies that were large enough to make for near action poses, but small enough to have a low barrier of time/creation & small enough to make reuse of body types on
NPCs seem fine. (higher detail level = re-use of assets becomes far more obnoxious looking)

2. Create a one shot comic with a narrative that really puts all these elements to the test in a setting similar enough to aptGG to actually test it properly.

Because I wanted this comic to function as a test for aptGG's reboot I realised it'd work well to just reuse the universe, so despite not being part of the main HoH archive I do consider TOM RPG part of the story's canon. Beyond that it's also meant to just be a short little story to test the art style in non-action & action-scenes.

TOM RPG CHARACTERS

TOM RPG actually only has two characters, Tom & The Temptress. Everyone else is basically on-the-spot improvisation. Both characters have one real purpose:

Tom: silly protagonist that's very different from burk/noah/tobi. He's meant to test what a fairly minor "regular"-body character animates/feels like & fights like.

The Temptress: Not particularly deep antagonist who's entire purpose is to fight & lose. Her entire purpose is to have a "boss"-body character animated/in action scenes to get a feel for how that'd work.


The scenery/backgrounds

Unlike aptGG's early painted backgrounds or later ridiculously detailed pixelart backgrounds ... the new backgrounds are completely different in nature. I realised once switching to full pixelart in aptGG that I definitely preferred it over drawn backgrounds, I didn't want to go back ... but I also realised that at the detail level I've been working it wasn't feasible.

However the backgrounds in aptGG had one big difference from the sprites, they've always had this difference: The sprites were made to be reuseable .. the backgrounds honestly weren't.

Realising this significant difference made me entirely rethink how to do background art. Rather than drawing huge set pieces that took several hours ... What if I made procedural backgrounds that I could rapidly put together ... building blocks rather than a mural.

http://imgur.com/a/lEJEY#0

This is the point in time where I started producing a few things, as seen above I started creating skylines + house blocks.

http://neoriceisgood.deviantart.com/...100-x-Pixelart

The second thing I did is starting production on several "100 asset" sheets with bushes, flowers, mushrooms, foreground elements etc.
(there's a few not publicly uploaded, like a set of over 60 wall textures & a few skylines/citylines used in-comic)

By essentially making an enormous catalogue of background assets that are built to be mixed and matched & increasing the catalogue any time I need a new location I've essentially solved the BG issue by making unique backgrounds nearly as easy to produce as new poses/outfits for characters. I can still create prettier/fancier set pieces for important scenes. (e.g. burk v.s. logan's background) But I'm no longer required to spend that ridiculous amount of effort any time a character enters a vaguely different area or scene.

The Result

TOM RPG's style wasn't flawless ... however that's perfectly okay ... "flawless" was never my goal with the test comic. I like art evolving, I like seeing improvement in a creative work. The question wasn't so much if Tom RPG needed more work ... the question was if it had any flaw so fundamental that I'd have to literally replace the style with a new one at any point. And ... Tom RPG honestly managed to pass every single test I put before it.

It was easier to create than literally every aptGG style, even the chibi tobi one. (especially if you include the new bg method); the page format was easy to work with, the dialogue was easy to read & create. none of my test readers were at any point confused by the action scenes. The charactes were quite expressive, though might've needed 2-3 more pixels head space.

All in all I realised that with some small tweaks over time, this style gave me everything I wanted.

The Bad..

Tom RPG's style was essentially suited for the reboot, but I decided to change a handful of things immediately.

http://imgur.com/a/81Aas#8

1. The interior scenes were kinda weird, I realised that showing the floor/depth inside buildings just felt off. This needed work.

http://imgur.com/a/81Aas#9

2. as stated above, the character's heads (and thus bodies) were just a bit too small to get unique facial features in well. And unique/recognisable faces is essential for me.

http://imgur.com/a/81Aas#33

http://imgur.com/a/81Aas#16

3. Some BG assets like the trees were a bit too small and needed to be replaced by more interesting/cool looking trees, particularly cause every aptGG arc felt more serious in tone than TOM RPG.

http://imgur.com/a/81Aas#45

4. I cleaned up some of the zoomed in expressions during TOM RPG, which looked fine but, like portraits, became one of the most time consuming elements of page production.. while simultaneously not increasing the art quality enough to be as impressive as actual portraits.

While I do enjoy using facial zooms as a way to emphasise expressions/pull more focus towards a character talking ... you can't make a handful of them better looking & leave the rest unedited. So I decided after some experimentation not to do this for my real comic.

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So to summarise how I fixed my problems with the styles/methods chosen:


- "chibi" character sprites with small/easy to animate bodies + relatively large heads that allow for all the necessary expressions.

http://neoriceisgood.deviantart.com/...sion-409633447 (if you'll take notice, while the latest style is the smallest by far the head barely shrunk at all compared to the others.. allowing me to keep the same level of expressiveness.)

- Backgrounds almost entirely composed of individual reusable assets, walls, windows, doors, floor types, skylines, plants, containers.. I have a ton of simple variations of each type to ease creation of new assets.

(fun fact: Tobi's dungeon background is essentially an edit of the background seen in Logan v.s. Burk, reusing basic geometry like the pillars is hardly noticable due to how big the differences are; but it can literally cut the necessary time for a new background by up to two thirds.)


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Anyway, I'll go more into the changes & things I discovered in the next part. Lemme know what you guys thought so far & if there's any other questions.



p.s. I've been considering doing some video stuff on this & how I do pixelart + comic assets, especially cause it's easier to explain/show some of the stuff I do/have done when I can show it at the same time. Let me know if this is something you guys would be interested in.

[Lord Raziere]

hm, nice to see this going again.

I think I'll start reading this, read path to greater good, liked the characters, maybe its time for me to start reading the reboot.