Whitefeather - OotS fancomic updated regularly

[banjo1985]

Whitefeather

An OotS Fancomic
By Banjo1985

Spiffy Banner:

New Artist - Keris Rain!

This is the main page for my Whitefeather OotS fancomic, which will now be drawn by Keris Rain, while I carry on with the script. We're aiming for one comic a week to begin with, and we'll see how we go from there! Once we've got work up and running again we'll probably update the banners and whatnot.

Anyhow, hope you enjoy my efforts, either way here are all the strips posted to date:

Character Biogs

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Jenna Church
Age - 18
Class - Ranger

Jenna's parents have been killed by Vortigern Darkspur, and he has taken her infant son Cal captive. She has sworn to avenge her parents and rescue Cal, with the help of her friends. Little has been revealed about her past, but Darkspur has suggested that having a child so young wasn't entirely her own choice. Despite the hardships of her recent experiences, Jenna retains a sunny, rather ditsy demeanor, and keeps the party together with her own positive outlook.

Oh, and it has become clear she can't ride a horse!


Ailish Wyvernspyre
Age - 23
Class - Cleric

Ailish is an aspiring cleric of Father Varin, the God of Light, and divine fervour also shines within her. She was sent to Jenna's hometown by her holy order, and quickly built up friendships with the rest of the party. Having said this, she is rather quick to get frustrated, especially when Beech has one of his slow moments. Ailish has a strong and forceful personality, and can sometimes let her duty get in the way of her actions.


Beech Tree
Age - 24
Class - Barbarian

Beech is a slow and simple lad who has lived in town all his life that he can remember, which is only the last 6 years. Surprisingly gentle and kind, he is a sensitive soul who gets upset at the bad things in the world. He does his best to help the rest of the party, but often gets it wrong, much to Ailish's annoyance. Beech has known Jenna all her life, and see's her as a kind of big sister, despite being six years her senior.

Beech likes bacon, teddy bears and butterflies, though not all in the same sandwich.


Drake Clement
Age - 21
Class - Sorceror

Drake is another of Jenna's childhood friends. There is definite attraction between the two, at least on Drake's side, but Jenna either doesn't notice or choses not to acknowledge it. Drake is a novice Sorceror, and sometimes his magic doesn't manifest quite the way he would like. Drake is very touchy about his masculinity, because of his crappy hit points he feels less of a man than the mountain that is Beech.

Drake is often between familiars, most run away after meeting Cal! His current familiar is a koi named Jaws, who he keeps in a bag of water.

Part 1 - Two Deaths, One Funeral and a Play House

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Strip 1 - And so it Begins

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Strip 2 - Dying Words

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Strip 3 - Is dey Gonna be Okay?

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Strip 4 - Way to Break the Mood

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Strip 5 - A Blatant Plot Device (Part 1)

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Strip 5 - A Blatant Plot Device (Part 2)

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Strip 6 - A Far From Silent Night

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Strip 7 - Intelligence Was His Dump Stat!

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Strip 8 - A Good Familiar's Hard to Find

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Strip 9 - Horsing Around

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Strip 10 - Creative Marketing

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Strip 11 - Supplies

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Part 2 - Backstories and Battles

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Strip 12 - Art Upgrade

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Strip 13 - A Bridge Too Far

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Strip 14 - Fight Scene: Take One

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Strip 15 - Time for Plan B

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Strip 16 - A Nightmare for Men Everywhere

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Strip 17 - Opposites Don't Attract

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Strip 18 - A Familiar Shadow?

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Strip 19 - Overkill?

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Strip 20 - Plot Exposition Ahoy!

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Strip 21 - Don't Go Down to the Woods Today...

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Strip 22 - Rated PG

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[Raistlin1040]

Join the club. I was here first.

My advice? Don't do a webcomic. It's insanely hard, and you will feel you have to meet a number of comics per month and it's hell.

[Nightwing]

I would love to help you with your comic. Perhaps I could help with back story. Or maybe make some villains?

[banjo1985]

Hehe I think you might be right with the difficulty part, but I'm really not thinking of doing it at that kind of level, where I feel obliged to do an update at a certain time, like poor Giant has been recently. I suppose I just want to do it as a kind of hobby & see how it goes and what it looks like further on. All I'm really thinking about at the moment is my character concepts and how people think they look etc, as everythings way to early to consider doing anything serious.

Nightwing, I may take you up on that offer at a later point, but at the moment I need to flesh my ideas out a lot more before I really start thinking about other stuff, cheers for the offer though!

[Ichneumon]

I have started a webcomic 2 days ago. Here on Giantitp.com, I like it. You should do it too. We need more comics!

[Brickwall]

[mutter]A ranger with a harpoon? Madness...[/mutter]

I'm sure you could develop a more appropriate style if you tried. It's not like OotS art is easy to learn, and judging by your level, you're already well on your way to mastering it.

[Yeril]

Good luck :)

[Ava]

Join the club. I was here first.

My advice? Don't do a webcomic. It's insanely hard, and you will feel you have to meet a number of comics per month and it's hell.

Agreed.

I've been wanting to do a webcomic for a couple of months now and so far I haven't even come up with one panel, just a few crappy sketches, lol.

[onasuma]

Join the club. I was here first.

My advice? Don't do a webcomic. It's insanely hard, and you will feel you have to meet a number of comics per month and it's hell.

Very large objection! Starting my webcomic was the best thing i ever did. So much so i have three now, even if one still has no comics. I only have about 5 readers but i still love to give those few people that pleasure.

[Raistlin1040]

Well than good on you. Remember my comic? Yeah, my artist quit on me.

[banjo1985]

A few contrasting opinions there, I understand that its really difficult to come up with a premise for a webcomic in the first place, and even more difficult to keep the thing going. But I am going to try, just to see if I can do it more than anything else I think!

And I think your right about the harpoon, I think I'm going to change it to a quarterstaff, it fits the character better as well as the class!

Right I've put together another concept, this time for my cleric, and I've also enlarged my lead character:

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Jenna


Ailish

[Gefangnis]

Heh, you could take my route and do a fancomic instead of a webcomic. No deadlines, and you can go back and change your strips after you finish them!

[banjo1985]

Right, before I did any more character concepts I decided to have a go at my first comic, hopefully it will help generate my ideas and get me started etc.

Strip 1 is below:

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Tell me what you all think, in terms of story layout and my drawing, any criticism or nice things are greatly appreciated! Based on the feedback I'll decide whether to make a proper go at this or leave it by the wayside...

Note: Yes I'm already aware that the backgrounds are a bit bright, I'm working on modulating the colours a bit!

[AmberVael]

Hmm... you know, the thing that stands out most to me is how the comic isn't quite as... crisp as your avatar. It has been blurred a bit.
If you could figure out how to get rid of that, it'd be a good thing to do.

[banjo1985]

Yeah I kind of notices that, especially on the samller character images, I'm not really sure what to do about it to be honest, it might just be a size issue.

If anyone can help with the fuzziness I'm using Inkscape and hosting on Photobucket

[Yeril]

Hmm, Intresting, only criticism I can see is you jumped into the story too quickly, dead parents in the 4th Panel seems alittle too soon.

other than that good, Im looking forward to see more about this
Cale-the-cat-strangler

[AmberVael]

Ah. Photobucket.
Well, I don't know what it is, but I've noticed that once I reach a certain image size on photobucket, it becomes blurry for me too, no matter how nice I have it before it is uploaded.
*shrug*

Probably if you got a site for your comic that would host your images for you there wouldn't be a problem.

[Kurien]

It looks like a good start.

However:

Some of the backgrounds have really thick lines, which makes them look really blocky compared to the characters. Perhaps if the lines were the same thickness of the character's lines? The thick lines are worst on the house in the fourth panel.

Also, it's just my opinion, but the lead character, Jenna, looks very... girly. I think it is the hair, and the boots. Well, you probably intended for her to look like that...

[Ava]

I have to agree that the line width is a bit of a problem. I would suggest using thicker lines for outlines and things in the foreground, then use thinner lines for things in the background.

Other than that I think it's visually pretty good.

So far the story reminds me of the beginning of Star Wars... but who is Cal?

[AmberVael]

Then again, line thickness can help denote how thick/thin an object is as well, so that is another way you have to think of stroke width.

[banjo1985]

Thanks for the comments about the lines, I agree the backgrounds look over-chunky, I'm going to edit the first strip and repost it in a few days I think, see if I can get it to look better!

Yeah the lead character does look girly, maybe a little more so than I envisioned, but having drawn her like that I can't really imagine her any other way, so she probably won't change. Except for changing that Harpoon for a quarterstaff...

Yeril - It might be a little quick, but I was going for a start that would set up the coming story for the comic, it's not something that will continue but I thought it was a good way to start, though common opinion may differ!

As for the star wars reference I really can't comment I've only ever seen the original 3 films, and that was about 10 years ago! As for who Cal is, well that will be aparent in the coming strips if I get this off the ground.

Edit - Here is the first strip again with thinner background lines, and with Jenna rid of that damn harpoon!

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[banjo1985]

Right I've been working on strip #2, here's what I've got:

Strip #2 - Dying Words... Editted with Kurnours advice below

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As previously, I'd really like to know people opinions. I've tried to sort the line thickness issue out, and I also had a go at putting slightly more humour into this strip. Any opinions on whether this looks like a goer would be good!

Cheers all

[Kurien]

That's great! .

The line thickness in the first strip is much better, especially on the house.

However, in the second panel of the second strip, Jenna almost looks crazed I think it's a combination of her hair and lines around the eyes. Also, the wrinkles under Jenna's mother's eyes in the the last panel look a little strange.

[banjo1985]

Hehe thanks

I've changed Jenna's Mom's wrinkles on the last panel, and I think she looks a bit less weird now! I also noticed I hadn't dashed her speech bubbles in the last few panels, so I've changed that as well. As for Jenna looking a bit loony in the second panel, I was trying to make her look surprised at the voice of her mom but also relieved to hear it, but it didn't really turn out looking that way! Thing is, I'm struggling with working out how to change it...

[ChimericPhase]

I think something that would help your background line-thickness issue would be to use non-black lines. Instead, use lines that are a shade darker than whatever they're outlineing.

Example:

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old comic I did sometime back

See the 4th panel? Dark brown, dark green outlines the tree, but keeps it in the background. I save black outlines for details and characters.

[XiaoTie]

Damn that last panel on the second page made me laugh hard!
Keep it up!

[onasuma]

Nooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo ooo!
The harpoon was a great idea. Why? Why have you forsaken us so?

[Hurkyl]

In the second panel of the second strip, you need to rearrange the text balloons. The natural way to read them is in the wrong order! (At least... I assume "Mom!" was supposed to come first)

[Shadic]

Nightwing, I may take you up on that offer at a later point..

Don't.

Anyways, for the comic...

Definitely make the text size bigger, I can hardly read it on my screen. The humor could use some work, and the art seems a bit cluttered - Everything seems to be one giant messy object, if you know what I mean?

And the Mom looks funny because you used black for the facial wrinkles, which is too strong of a color for a minor facial feature.

Also, the lines for the panels are far too tilted for my liking... If you clean up the general appearance a bit, I think that you could make this comic a lot better than it is.

Last, the whole "breaking a word mid-line with a dash" thing bugs me, it looks a lot better if you can avoid it. (For example, when you said "To be continued." at the end of the second comic.)

[banjo1985]

Thanks for this batch of comments on the second strip. From what I can tell the general consensus is that my art and line drawing need to be cleaned up a bit, which I hope will happen as Ii do more strips, but time will tell!

Thanks for the note about my speech bubbles and the idea about darker shade lines rather than black, I think I may try this for the next comicand see what you all think compared to the first two.

Osamuna - sorry but the harpoon has been banished to the 7th plane of hell for the time being, but may return at a later point...

As for the humour, I'm not really sure I can do anything about it, it's the way I write and I put down what I thinks funny, however if no-one else thinks it is then maybe I should stop this before I get too into it!

For the next strip I'll be introducing the other three party characters, hopefully I should get it up in the next few days (damn my overcomplicated art style!)

Thanks again all