New Resource for Online Comic Artists

gmezero writes "Ten on-line comic artists from strips such as Angst Technology, Lethal Doses, and Polymer-City Chronicles have banded together and launched Rocketbox Comics in an effort to help other comic creators improve their art and to promote the idea of keeping on-line comics free."

Comments

Why Black and White?

[Chris_Stankowitz]

Is there a reason that most online comics are in Black and White? Is it a cost issue? A resource issue? I hope that a site like this will bring better quailty to the acutal art of on-line comics.

Re:Why Black and White?

[TI-83]

probably a time issue. do free daily comics come out of nowhere, no cost to anyone? -- nope. most take a couple hours, perhaps? adding shaded color to a sketched comic is almost like redrawing it completely. even just adding solid colors can be a pain, keeping them consistant, making sense with them, not making comics look super-saturated.
(+

Re:Why Black and White?

[Warin]

Wow. Since when has colour or lack thereof been an issue that even remotely relates to quality? And you can have amazing art and have total crap for stories. And in my not so humble opinion, a good story is far more important than perfect anatomy.

Angst Technology is currently one of my favourites. I find that Barry always tells an amusing story, and his characters are well drawn, if perhaps a little funny looking (Who else would have the courage to have a llama as a character?!?)

Re:Why Black and White?

[silvaran]

Have you seen the price of CMYK ink cartridges? They're ridiculous!

Re:Why Black and White?

[TrollBurger]

The black and white is more of an artistic thing in my opinion. Some comics just look more classy in black and white.

Its certainly not a cost or resource issue (just click the little icon of the paint bucket or gradient tool).

It might be a skill issue, as its very easy to take something that looks nice in black and white, and botch it up by adding horrid colors.

Penny arcade is a great example of a colored comic.
sinfest is a great example of a black and white comic.

It's more to do with the artists personal preference than anything else. Some dilbert comics are B&W, some are in color.

Re:Why Black and White?

[Stigmata669]

Why would you care about the price of CMYK ink cartridges? These are all non print comics, and if anything, it should be cheaper to do a colored comic online than one in print. Most sucessful comic strip authors don't even do the color in their strips, they have a lacky do the boring timeconsuming part, and I bet most of these artists can't afford to keep a color lacky(not a slur...lol).

Re:Why Black and White?

[daeley]

I'm going to divide your paragraph into two, because I don't think you meant to say color = quality. At least I hope not. :) If you did, please do an Ansel Adams query on Google immediately.

Is there a reason that most online comics are in Black and White? Is it a cost issue? A resource issue?

More than anything, I would said it's a tradition issue. There is a long-standing Sunday-in-color, rest-of-the-week-B&W tradition in newspaper comics.

While IANACA (...not a comics artist), how complicated color is to add would depend on how they produce the color work initially: manually or digitally. Coloring by hand takes a lot of time. Using a paintbucket in an illustration program doesn't take much at all.

I hope that a site like this will bring better quailty to the acutal art of on-line comics.

Same here, or at least brings more exposure to the quality comics out there. Witness PvP's announcement that their real-world books are going to be relaunched under the banner of Image Comics. Go Scott! :)

Online comics (and I don't mean web versions of print comics) have a long way to go before reaching the same 'credibility' with the non-online world as their traditional counterparts. People like Scott Kurtz are pushing the boundaries for what influence an online comic can have offline. It might take a generation or two of people getting more news online than off for digital comics to reach the same mindshare as, say, a Cathy or Doonesbury.

Slightly offtopic, I miss Bloom County and Calvin & Hobbes more every day I open the newspaper.

Re:Why Black and White?

[showler]

Slightly offtopic, I miss Bloom County and Calvin & Hobbes more every day I open the newspaper. Try this one http://www.ozyandmillie.org/ to ease your Calvin & Hobbes withdrawal pains

Re:Why Black and White?

[PopeAlien]

I can tell you one reason why black and white: file sizes.

In most cases its not that coloring the strips would be a lot more work, but it can definately add to file sizes, and thereby lead to really slow site responses (especially for dial-up users). No body is going to read your strip if it takes 20 minutes to load up each one. The other option (the one I went for) is to use low color gifs, it all depends on what sort of 'look' you're going for.

Of course I havent even produced a "weekly" comic for months, so maybe a more productive artist has a better reason.

Re:Why Black and White?

[nich37ways]

umm Dilbert is primarily in Black & White and is one of the most succesful comics ever

Obviously it is of poor quality as it is not often coloured in?...

nich

Re:Why Black and White?

[silvaran]

I would tend to agree.

Re:Why Black and White?

[Anonymous Coward]

Since when has amazing art been required for a comic strip? Gary Larson himself admits that his art is weak, and nobody can argue that The Far Side has not been one of the best comic strips of the last few decades.

And as far as online strips go, I think that simple, black & white art really fits some strips out there. The dry humor styles of Red Meat and Random Axe of Kindness actually benefit from art that is similarly simple, IMHO.

Re:Why Black and White?

[TRACK-YOUR-POSITION]

And you can have amazing art and have total crap for stories.

Yes, and if you have that, that might be a good comic. You see, comics are a VISUAL medium. They contain both image and story (ideally, the image IS the story). If all you care about is story, then you should make a book instead of a comic.

And in my not so humble opinion

WTF?

(Who else would have the courage to have a llama as a character?!?)

Hey, Angst Technology is cool, but is there something about a Llama that makes it significantly more courageous to include it in your comic as opposed to the thousands (millions?) of other animals in comics?

Re:Why Black and White?

[shaum]

You see, comics are a VISUAL medium. They contain both image and story (ideally, the image IS the story). If all you care about is story, then you should make a book instead of a comic.

Movies are a visual medium too. Does story not matter there? The Dungeons & Dragons movie had some impressive visuals and sucky writing; does that make it a better movie than Casablanca? (No color, no explosions, they even had Peter Lorre's character die off-screen. What a rip!)

You see, comics are a STORYTELLING medium. They contain both image and story (and characters, and setting, and theme, and all that icky stuff they teach in English Comp). If all you care about is imagery, perhaps you should make stand-alone illustrations instead of a comic.

Re:Why Black and White?

[Brendan Byrd]

Well, when you're doing a free online comic every day, it takes more time to do it in color. Be grateful that you're able to read the comic, instead of bitching about it.

Re:Why Black and White?

[TRACK-YOUR-POSITION]

I didn't say story doesn't matter, I said it's not the only thing. There are some awesome comics without really significant plots (in fact, I can't think of any truly great comic strips with particularly strong plots.)

In fact, unless you count humor as story (quite a stretch), I'd have to say, no, comics are not a storytelling medium--some of them tell a great story, for some of them the story is merely a device for great imagery/humor/whatever.

Re:Why Black and White?

[ChaosDiscord]

Is there a reason that most online comics are in Black and White?

There are lots of possible reasons, the specific reason will vary from comic to comic, but I expect one of the following will account for most:

• The newspaper comic tradition. Newspaper comics are generally black and white most of the week and color on Sunday. Some web comics follow this behavior out of traditional, a desire to become syndicated in newspapers, or simple habit.
• Not enough time. Color takes time to add. Especially for those artists doing their web comic in their spare time, they may not have the time to do up nice colors.
• Artistic decision. A black and white comic has a very different feel from a color comic. Scott McCloud, in his book Understanding Comics points out some key artistic reasons that you might want to stick with black and white.
• Minimizing bandwidth. A black and white image will generally compress better than a color image. Bandwidth is money.

Color is not always "better", it's just different.

Re:Why Black and White?

[mkldev]

Let me counter that by saying that I do a weekly comic strip, Tech Magazine (on a pseudo-vacation this week). With the exception of the occasional super-simple strip (like this week's), they normally range from 80-120k. It seems to make little difference whether they're black and white or color. Even on a 56k modem, that's only about 15-20 seconds or so.

The reason I don't do color most weeks is that it's a pain in the backside. For every area that you can quickly whitewash in a black-and-white strip, you have to go through, figure out what exact color you used on that character's clothing the previous week, repeating for every article of clothing in the entire strip, repeating again to get the flesh tones right, make sure you didn't put too much blush on the women or too many freckles on Tami. Not to mention how many more hours it takes to draw a -bookshelf- in color. Oh, my....

:-)

Re:Why Black and White?

[Kimi]

I haven't seen anybody mention this yet, but online comics also don't just cover newspaper-style strips. Some of them are more like comic books, and there you have color, black and white, and gray scale. I think most of the time it comes down to what best fits the artist's style and taste.

Personally, I prefer black and white or gray scale comics to color ones, because it seems to me that it takes more skill to produce good looking art without color. An artist working without color has nothing to distract you from the line work. If it's crappy, it stands out as crappy. Pretty colors can help hide poor lines and mistakes in the art, while in black and white you can see every little mistake. I really like to see the personality of the artist in their lines, and color sometimes makes it hard to see that, for me.

Not to say there are no good color comics, either. Sarah Huntrods' Ceph has some of the nicest coloring I've seen online, and I'll be glad when it comes back from hiatus! It's one of the few color comics I like.

One of the best-drawn b&w comics online is Elf Life, by Carson Fire. Very nice emotional line work and a unique style.

For gray scale, nothing beats ShadowFall and Wings of Cranes and Eagles, both by Kaichi Satake. I haven't seen pencil work of that quality anywhere else online.

None of those comics are newspaper-style strips, either. You can look at those four comics and easily see what would happen if they were changed to color or to black and white. It all depends on what the artist wants to do with it.

Kimi

Re:Why Black and White?

[Rikiji]

Cost isn't really a factor in coloring an online comic. Time can be an important factor, but in many cases the artist simply prefers to work in black and white. I chose to do my comic in black and white largely because I felt the compositional challenges would be more interesting. I don't really think there's any way to equate color with quality.

This doesn't affect me

[Istealmymusic]

Just wanted to get this link in here: Pokey the Penguin. Thanks for reading this.

What online comics really need...

[Jack William Bell]

This is cool, but what online comics really need is hosting that doesn't whack them into oblivion with bandwith charges when they get popular. Preferably hosting that doesn't also put restrictions on them or make them charge for access to the archives.

My favorite online comics are User Friendly, Megatokyo and Circle Weave. At least two of these have a huge audience and equally huge bandwidth usage. For all I know the third one will also now that I gave its URL here on /. Oh well...

Jack William Bell

Re:What online comics really need...

[arvindn]

what online comics really need is hosting that doesn't whack them into oblivion with bandwith charges when they get popular

Yes, this seems to be one of the major problems for online comics. Here is a tutorial describing how you could reduce bandwidth consumption pngs for comics and several tips for effective use of pngs.
From the article: Used correctly, PNG can drastically reduce the file size and download time of one's comics.

There's also a list of comics using png.

Re:What online comics really need...

[rstevens]

PNG cuts my comics down to about 1/3 their GIF size. LOVE IT.

Re:What online comics really need...

[Jack William Bell]

Yes I did, in the part that says "Preferably hosting that doesn't also put restrictions on them or make them charge for access to the archives."

Jack William Bell

top 10?

[garcia]

When this is the #1 spot on a Top 10 list (the rest are empty), a site needs some help :)

Re:top 10?

[showler]

Rocketbox has only been open for a couple of days. They've probably gotten more visits in the last hour or so then they've had since the opening. I expect the top 10 will start looking better when more people actually submit some comics to consider.

Re:top 10?

[Airsick Moth]

Yeah, we've been open only one day. Expect more to come.

Re:top 10?

[The Doodlest]

What are you talking about that my Cover Page is bad? I work really hard on it, and tested it on several systems. The only major requirement for the site is that you need a browser that supports frames. ~ C. Poirier DudeComics.com

Keenspace?

[Metallic Matty]

I've read several good online comics which were hosted by keenspace, which hosts them for free, along with a few ads (nothing truly annoying, its nice.)

Re:Keenspace?

[showler]

Last I heard Keenspace wasn't taking new submissions pending a server move. Hopefully they'll be up to strength again soon.

Black and white comics

[Anonymous Coward]

"Is there a reason that most online comics are in Black and White? Is it a cost issue? A resource issue? "

In some cases it is a resource issue, the resource being time. Let's say you are the author of a web comic. You need to think up of story/plot/joke, draw out the comic (usually involves sketching and inking), scanning it, prepearing it for the web, and fiddling around with a website. Doesn't leave a whole lot of time for coloring, does it?

That's my opinion, anyway.

Noooooo.....

[sporty]

Noooooo... i used to read those 3 (of the 10) and they have MAJOR flaws.

Angst technology is a comic that re-uses a few finished comics with new scripts. If you read this comic, you'll notice the only difference between a lot of them are th scripts and not the art. It's as if the artist was too lazy to draw a new comic every other day and instead just erased the words from last time and replaced them.

Polymercity tried to do the plot thing, like sluggy and its walky!, but is failing since it is drawing it out too much. It's almost a year since that plot began. Its strenght was in the witty one-liners it had goign. It was a Userfriendy style comic strip with a sci-fi twist.

Lethal doses just was too far and inbetween new drawings.

It's like the strips which I'd least like to read banded together to become one target for me to avoid. ug

Re:Noooooo.....

[TheScream]

I read Angst Technology every day, in fact, when I started reading it I spent the good part of 3 hours reading all the strips from when it started.

No matter which way you look at this cartoon it is damn funny. Most people in the IT industry will get the jokes. As far as reusing whole cells is concerned I don't think it happens. He may reuse drawings of individual characters but I have not noticed and has not detracted from how good the strip is.

I find it just as funny as User Friendly but with better cartooning.

Re:Noooooo.....

[sporty]

I recognize a lot of the cells he reuses.. but i was able to find these 3 in a matter of 10 minutes. He uses at least 6.

All he changes is the mouth in this one.

http://www.inktank.com/AT/index.cfm?toon=09-05-0 1
http://www.inktank.com/AT/index.cfm?toon=10-14- 01
http://www.inktank.com/AT/index.cfm?toon=10-20 -01

I mean c'mmon.. half of the enjoyment of reading a comic is seeing the unique expressions and reactions to various situations. Imagine if bugs and daffy were like this. Half of the fun was watching the eyes popping, the running into walls and various things. Otheriwse, I rather read a script or book and imagine it out than escaping the artistry part.

At least greg dean of Real Life Comics (reallifecomics.com), who reuses body parts usually, which forces some sort of.. continuity and consistancy, makes each one unique in their situations and facial expressions. I'm sure that parts are manipulated to fit the bill.

Re:Noooooo.....

[sstamps]

Actually, I liked the way Polymer City was going before the recent change. Yeah, the story is long and drawn-out. So? I enjoyed every episode. What is really cool is going back to the beginning of the current story arc and reading it forward. It's like a graphic novel.

Oh well. To each his own, I guess.

Re:Noooooo.....

[Osty]

I find it just as funny as User Friendly (link deleted to save the innocent) but with better cartooning.

Nice subtle troll. You really don't think User Friendly is funny, do you? Then again, I don't read Angst Technology, so I can't say whether or not your comparison is correct. If it is, then double kudos for your troll, by pimping another terrible comic.

To quote Tycho of Penny Arcade, "People will pass up steak once a week for crap every day." I think that sums up User Friendly quite adequately.

Holiday Specials?

[Quaoar]

When can I expect to see flash cartoons of "It's the Great Pumpkin, Tycho Brahe" and "A Slicky Christmas Special"?

OOPS SORRY DONT CLICK THE SINFEST LINK

[TrollBurger]

Sorry, I mean to link to sinfest.NET not COM. Thats what i get for not checking my links.

Just found that site earlier today, very cool

[Protege108th]

Yea we www.unmentionables.org just signed up for the top ten list=) but seems only one comic is up so far. i think this site will really help alot of peeps

Story and Style

[Christianfreak]

It depends on the artist. A friend of mine and I do a webcomic he draws in black and white because he has a rough unfinished like kind of style and the comic is supposed to resemble an low budget movie. (thus things don't look 'real').

On the weekends I draw the directors of 'the movie' and they are in color as they are in the 'real world'.

Plus black and white does usually produce a smaller image size for those of us who pay for our bandwidth and hosting services but I digress.

TopWebComics.com

[Kolgoth]

Although this might turn into an excellent resource - a currently existing one - which all of the founding members of this new resource are members of, is:

TopWebComics.com

There is a thriving community on the message boards, free message boards for webcomics, contests, a top 150 comics listing, a hall of fame for the comic strips who garner a #1 position for 3+ months continuously, and more...

Re:TopWebComics.com

[Christianfreak]

The problem with TWC is that its too easy to cheat. People offer insentives if you vote for them (vote for us and get a T-shirt, that sort of thing). I have a TWC link on my site (see the sig) but I will switch it out this gets popular and eleminates that practice once and for all.

Re:TopWebComics.com

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm one of the Rocketbox guys, and I support TWC. It's a great site for webcomics. The idea behind Rocketbox was not to be a slap in the face to Modern Tales, or show everyone how our comics and some magic business model was better than everyone else's, but to be like more of a community for aspiring webcartoonists, who need publicity, or creative help, stuff like that. We want to discuss business models, we want to have dialogues on all that crap. But it's not intended to be a big screw you to anybody, or show how much better our collective is. I see it as a decent slice of semi-popular amateur webcartoonists sharing what they've learned, that kind of thing.

Kristofer Straub
http://www.nightlightpress.com

more

[Jukashi]

im surprised no one's mentioned exploding dog or dieselsweeties. great comics with quality shit for sale.

Re:more

[rstevens]

http://www.explodingdog.com

http://www.clango.org

thanks for the props, man!

Comedy is for Stand Up people...

[Quirk]

who can laugh at a pie in their face. :)

You can knock any comedy or story line but the idea is to entertain and if you don't want to reliquish a bit of your incredulousness to benefit from the tonic that is humour than stay away. Support these people Big Time they're helping to create the online culture that fosters all that is good about the net.

OK... I have to get down off my soapbox now coz I get vertigo real bad and nose bleeds.

Contest on another site --

[Christianfreak]

On a somewhat related note this really cool site (okay so I'm a bit biased) is trying to promote other good web-comics and its own new community with a web comic contest

You're welcome to sign up yourself if you like. We get a decent amount of traffic so you could get some exposure (as well as some other things, check it out :) )

Another good comic....

[CMRichar]

i somehow remember there being 10 on there originally..guess that means that the warp 9 from hell guys have finally gotten out of it.... crap....

Oh, and since everyone else is doing it, here's a link to one of my favorite comics... word of warning, the strip that's up now doesnt do justice to it....

"Ya know, it's not that God ass-fucks me every chance he gets that pisses me off so much as that annoying laughter of his I constantly hear in the back of my mind." - Davan, Something Positive

Re:Another good comic....

[FueledByRamen]

For Something Positive, I think that this strip sums it up nicely... There was another one that I wanted to post, but it's too far back and I'm too lazy to look for it.

Re:Another good comic....

[Airsick Moth]

Warp 9 didn't drop out, they just weren't answering their e-mail, so we moved ahead. That's okay, we didn't intend for the Rocketbox creators to be some super-exclusive community of geniuses that Warp 9 is getting snubbed by. That strip is king of awesome.

Your kind of humor

[ez76]

New insights on polymorphism

Re:Keenspace? Keenspot!

[Sepper]

Actually Keenspace has always been in second while Keenspot gets all the server and bandwith... can't really blame them since Keenspot is a collection a carefully chosen comics has opposed to Keenspace where anyone can get an account. Web comics are nice... but they are becoming an addiction

Black and white

[mao che minh]

Two problems:

1. Knowledge of how to make colored comics, scan them, and still make them look clean.

2. The ability to efficiently use or lack the of quality graphics arts tools.

Alot of people out there can make quality sketches. Alot of people out there are very witty and know how to pander to an audience. However, not many people have the resources or the knowledge to make color graphics look good on the web.

Re:Black and white

[decipher_saint]

I tried my hand at havin' a bi-weekly comic on my site (here's one of the first ones' I did: about what "Black & White" did to the average gamer).

I have no training in Photo-Paint/Shop et al, but after messing about with it I found the easiest thing to do was ink in what I drew, scan in the various bits and piece it together in Photo-Paint.

I think some of the other posters have already mentioned that the reason many comics aren't painted is because it takes time to get everything right, if you looked at the example comic I link above the colour and formatting took just over an hour (if memory serves) and there aren't any fancy colours or backgrounds.

Of course, life comes along and sucks all your free time away and dooms fun little projectes like making your own comics...

Scott McCloud

[Murdock037]

If you're really interested in learning more, a writer/artist by the name of Scott McCloud has probably done more for the medium and getting the message out than anybody else.

McCloud wrote an incredibly popular, well-written, and informative book a few years back called Understanding Comics, about the underlying principles that make comics as a whole work. He followed it up with Reinventing Comics, which was more about methods of distribution and why he thinks online comics are the future. But interesting reading nonetheless.

The first was great. I go to an art school, and the kids in the comic art program actually have to read it as a text book for several courses. In my opinion, though, the second book was less successful, and more opinion-based. I probably just don't agree with him on a few points.

Regardless, his site is worth checking out for those interested in the topic. He's probably online comics' biggest and best-known advocate.

Re:Scott McCloud

[HawkingMattress]

Understanding comics is really a must read for everybody. Even if you don't like comics at all, there are some astonishing ideas disseminated in the book. To me, this guy is the RMS (or ESR ?) of comics. This is a sort of meta book on comics, what they are, why they talk to us, and (the really exiting part) where they could go from now, using modern medias. (ie : unlike a textbook, a web page has no borders and should probably be used in a different way.) And not only he talks about it, but he proves it !

Futhermore, one thing really shocked me in the book : how the use of comics to explain ideas is a real plus if it is well used. I do think that using this technique, McLoud could probably explain ASM to your grandma and she'd just say : "yeah easy". Just read it !

Keeping on-line comics free

[marcsiry]

Sounds like a good mission statement- I hope they have a plan to back up that goal.

How do they intend to keep on-line comics free? By subsidizing the cartoonists? By supplying them with enough free stuff that it's worth putting up their comics with them? By posting to Slashdot so they get a zillion banner views? It's unclear to me.

Comics artists gotta eat, too (and if you've been to a comics convention, you'd see that they gotta eat more than most- I'm talking about me here, too). In the end, there needs to be some correlation between putting content online and money appearing. Just aggregating content and hoping for the coolness to start generating dough sounds a lot like some dot-com business plans.

In the comics project I'm peripherally involved with, the idea is that the online component serves as a marketing tool for the printed magazine (yes, those are still around- for a while, at least). Additionally, the hope is to sell related products via the web site and recoup some money there- I think that's the main business model for The Joy of Tech.

If either of those fail, the online (free) stuff will go away. Thus, it's in the interest of people who like the stuff to buy a t-shirt once in a while, or even just donate some cash. Otherwise, the online comic will remain the province of the subsidized hobbyist who quits once they have a family to support.

I'm not slamming these guys for banding together to promote the art form as a whole- anything anyone does to bolster the sagging comic industry is OK by me. I'm just hoping this is not another "Great idea, we'll put on a show!" concept that will run out of steam once people start wondering where the reward is.

Re:Keeping on-line comics free

[InkTank]

There is no reward. Except for perhaps some knowledge or guidance. Rocketbox is not a money making scheme or a hosting service. The news post is a bit eroneous in that is souns like we are against making money with webcomics. Quite the contrary, we're all abour making money. Sell comic books, merchandise, get a syndicated TV show on the WB, hell .. it's all good. It's just that we personally don't use the "pay-per-view" model on our current strips or archives. Just a bit of a mix up in the posting.

Why are we so excited about free-as-in-beer?

[tootingbec]

One syndrome I dislike seeing in Slashdot is the tendency to sound the trumpets any time we see the word "free," without inquiring into the context.

The nice folks at Rocketbox say that they are committed to providing Web comics that you don't have to pay to access the archives of. That appears to be a slap at Modern Tales, which is using exactly that model so that its cartoonists can see a dime or two of compensation.

Well, okay. Never mind that sites like Modern Tales have only a minimal cost (a coupla greenbacks per month). Never mind that if you visit Modern Tales each time your favorite comic comes out new, you never have to surrender a nickel. Never mind that you can set up a damn cron job and grab each comic when it comes out, thus making sure you don't miss any.

This is worthy of the front page of Slashdot?

I'd be impressed and interested if the comics were free-as-in-speech. Okay, maybe I'd be more impressed if Rocketbox's Top 10 list wasn't empty.

How exactly does Rocketbox plan to pay for its bandwidth bills? Let alone help its cartoonists afford their next ramen noodles? They don't say, as far as I can see.

This is frivolous. And it should be noted that most of the best Web comics (on or off Modern Tales, or with any revenue model) have not even been mentioned so far. I will mention some in a separate post.

Re:Why are we so excited about free-as-in-beer?

[Airsick Moth]

Man, I'd hope all webcomics are dedicated to free-as-in-speech. That's not much of a platform either. How does Rocketbox pay its bills? Out of pocket, of course. We're not trying to say we have a wonderful solution to artists getting their dues, but one of the things we wanted to get across is that it's sort of a copout to take down your old archives once you move to a payment model. Or at least a harsh move. Does it work? It must work reasonably. But, we're also sort of idealist saps. It's not supposed to be a slap at anybody, even if I kinda don't like that idea. Part of why we put this together is to get discussions going about this kind of thing. I feel like there's no amateur webcomics sense of community. If webcomics ever make a newspaper story, it's usually about some well-known traditional artist moving bits of work to the web. Also, give us some time, the site opened yesterday.

Re:Why are we so excited about free-as-in-beer?

[TRACK-YOUR-POSITION]

How do authors of free as in beer comics pay for themselves? They get a real job. That's what I find exciting about free comics--the idea that drawing comics is something that EVERYONE can do, not just the very few artists (either the best of the best or the lowest common denominator, depending on your point of view) that the web comics economy could actually support. I think the best webcomics (some of which have already been mentioned, BTW) have no revenue model whatsoever. They don't cater to fans, they offer no apology, they don't feel obligated to release more comics after their inspiration has run out--they're made by people who have a vision, implement the vision, and let the art stand on its own without tethering it to some commercial effort. Modern Tales is about super-elite artists producing content to sell to the proletariat stuck working real jobs. Free comics are about everyone producing comics for everyone. Basically, the same do-it-yourself movement that drives Free Software.

Re:Why are we so excited about free-as-in-beer?

[dalassa]

Many comic artists are moving to selling dead tree versions to raise money. I'm also glad to see that more of the comics that sell t-shirts are moving away from cafe press: example MegaTokyo has gotten a store on ThinkGeek. In fact due to recent circumstances Piro is trying to make a living off being an artist. The problem is that very few webcomics are actually good, or even updated regulary.

And now the obligatatory comic plugs:
Something Positive
Errant Story

Web comics worthy of attention

[tootingbec]

First, a quick disclaimer: I have no personal or financial interest in any of these. I own no stock in Adobe or Wacom. Consarnit, I can't even draw.

One of the best comics on Modern Tales are Patent Pending, a drama that is drawn by the same guy who does the comedy Goats (which is free). Two other awe-inspiring MT strips are Makeshift Miracle and American Born Chinese, the former for its art and the latter for its psychological insight.

Three free strips deserving of special mention are Wigu, Achewood, and Scary-Go-Round.

Note that none of these strips concern teenagers who play video games. Hope that's not too much of a disappointment for anyone.

And let us not forget Bruno

[tootingbec]

Chris Baldwin spends hours out of his every day laboriously crosshatching Bruno. Does he ask us to pay? No, never. Should he? Well, based on his journal, we could all worry less about his health if he did.

And some apear to be doing just fine...

[Obliterous]

For example, MegaTokyo.

Hell, you've probably even seen His banner add here on slashdot.

Piro Recently made the decision to got 100% FT on making His webcomic work, and has a dead tree version coming out this december. It seems to Me that He's doing reasonably well with making a free comic pay for itself, and possibly even put some money in His pocket....

Not to piss on rocketbox, but Piro's doing good, and I dont see anything but vaporware promises from rocketbox yet...

Dont get Me wrong, I read some of their comics daily, But this also means that I've been hearing about rocketBox for three months....

Re:And some apear to be doing just fine...

[Airsick Moth]

Megatokyo is doing great things, going it alone. We're not snubbing them or saying "we're doing what no one else is doing!" We just wanted to talk webcomics and pool our resources to shed light on great unknown webcomics, and offer a helpful community and feel-good hippie stuff like that. I also think you should "go veggie."

Re:And some apear to be doing just fine...

[zaren]

Piro Recently made the decision to got 100% FT on making His webcomic work

Well, he did have a bit of incentive, having just been laid off from a full-time job :)

Re:And some apear to be doing just fine...

[Obliterous]

Well Yeah, BUT... if it had bwwn myself that was laid off, I would have been out pounding the pavement, looking for a new job, not drawing a webcomic...
but then again, I cant draw a pencil, much less a comic...

First comic figure "700 year old mickey mouse"

[viggen]

and in a church of all places!

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[account_deleted]

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YES!!!

[Ultra64]

HOORAY FOR POKEY

Ok it's not a comic but still

[GiorgioG]

HomestarRunner/Strongbad Email
It's definitely an entertaining flash cartoon series ;-)

Christmas in September

[Crasoum]

gift special. The Preview will also have a free side-dish of claw-shrimp

Webcomics? Yes! Here are my favorites:

[de la mettrie]

• PVP Considered the best by many (and me)
  
• Kevin and Kell Very inoffensive, but quaintly interesting.
  
• The Adventures of Mayberry Melonpool A take on Trek. Goes way back.
  
• Nodwick A D&D henchman's life.
  
• Dork Tower Dorks like you and me. Good, but strips get rare these days.

What are your favorites?

best punk-rock comic strip

[divide_by_0]

One of my old room mates started a online comic strip nothing nice to say. I have been amazed by the huge response he has received from people since it went online. Highly recomended to anyone interested in DIY comics from the little man (tm)

Yes, yes promotion is always good.

-divide

Hey Illiad!

[Seehund]

"an effort to help other comic creators improve their art"

Are you reading this? Now all you have to hope for is another effort to help comic creators make their comics funny.

Bleh. :)

Some more good comics

[Shade, The]

Here's some online comics that might be worth checking out:

Sluggy - Students, aliens, ghosts, psychotic rabbits, evil kittens. One of the oldest and niftiest comics online.
User Friendly - Linux, geeks. You get the idea.
Megatokyo - An online manga following Piro and Largo whilst stranded in Tokyo.
Schlock Mercenary - Not too good art, but usually a very good and suitably sci-fi-ish plot.
Clan of the Cats - A modern-day witch cursed to change into a panther. Good artwork.
RPG World - Great art. A parody of almost any role playing game (the console variety) you'd care to play.
Ghost Cat - It's a cat! It's a ghost! It's ghost cat!
Elf Life - Elves, fairies, barbarians, time travel, romance, comedy, and very well drawn as well.
Exploitation Now! - An anime-ish comic with good art and an interesting, if sporadic, plot.
Real Life - It's real life. Except it's not. Reasonably funny.
Penny Arcade - The mother of all gaming comics. Very funny :)
Sephen - A relative newcomer, but wow! Great pencil-work!
8-bit Theater - The grandpappy of all sprite comics. I think. It's funny anyway. Go read :)
Demonology 101 - Fantastic art, fantastic plot! If only it came out more often! Ah well, the world isn't perfect.

Oh, and I can't really get away without mentioning my brother's sprite comic, Pixelated!. It really isn't bad. No, really! :)

Re:Some more good comics

[Clover_Kicker]

I should mention Argon Zark here.

The good news: Charley Parker is a kick-ass artist, they don't look like comics at all- visually stunning.

The bad news: New comics are downright rare, but he's been at it since 1995, so you can enjoy his accumulated work.

Re:Some more good comics

[Zaak]

Schlock Mercenary doesn't have good art? At the beginning of the comic that was true, but he's been drawing a daily comic for a long time now and his abilities as a cartoonist have vastly improved. If you have seen his recent work and still think it's not good art, what do you think it lacks?

TTFN

Re:Some more good comics

[Shade, The]

Compare it to Elf Life, or Clan of the Cats, or Sluggy. It's not bad art, but I wouldn't class it as good art either. Kinda in the middle. Maybe I'm being too critical though :)

Re:Some more good comics

[TobyIRC]

Exploitation now is a dead comic. He's released a book. Also, i'd like to note that most of those are hosted by KeenSpot, the Premium version of Keenspace, a comic hosting site. Keenspace provides free hosting to anyone, and for some reason they even accepted mine! Anywhoo, i think that lethaldoses is with keenspot, not sure. RocketBox may be a co-location for my comic in the future.

Re:Blah

[CokoBWare]

WTF are you thinking dude? Your wife will be going apeshit! Better go to divorce.com and get your on-line divorce papers! ;-)

Everybody knows...

[sielwolf]

That the best online strips are Jerkcity, Leisure Town, and God's gift to man: Pokey The Penguin.

Those three have done some very interesting and unique things with the media other than just being print comics in cyberspace.

comic storylines

[(DR-C245H)]

I would tend to agree with the posts concerning the need for better storylines being priority over better art, at least initially.
Perhaps there's room for artists to get together and provide a service such as this also? Take sites devoted to providing info on the technical aspects of amateur video productions (eg. slashcam), they also have articles on making good on storylines etc.
Cover both sides of the coin and we're sure to end up with better storylines and better art ;)
Two of my favourite online comics luckily have a bit of both it would appear; Stars and Steel is a comic with what appears to be a storyline which is fairly decent and a lot of potential, with art which is not too bad at all either - the other, Outsider, is a comic which is reminicent to me of the Wing Commander games with the whole space saga thing going on there, the art being pretty damn well done there also.

There's potential out there ;)

DR-C245H

When in Rome...

[handsomepete]

As long as people are randomly promoting other webcomics (shamelessly, I might add) in this thread, I thought I'd toss in my two cents:

Achewood
My New Fighting Technique is Unstoppable

Also, if anyone knows what happened to the author of the Larry the Cow comics (the guy that supposedly hassled the Gentoo mailing list for 'stealing' his poorly drawn cow face to use as their logo), reply. Those comics were damned funny. They used to be located here.

Bill of Rights for Comix...and programmers?

[Anonymous Coward]

Scott McCloud, all-around comix genius and online pioneer has a Bill of Rights for comic creators that lists "rights" a lot of us would like. His list includes:

8. The right to prompt payment of a fair and equitable share of profits derived from all of our creative work.
9. The right to full and accurate accounting of any and all income and disbursements relative to our work.

"Intellectual property" is much easier for others to enjoy without payment than it is for the authors to create. No, I'm not bashing Napster. Tower Records steals more from its artists each day than Napster-analogues do in a year.

Great resource for online comic artists: Keenspot

[Lumpish Scholar]

Several years ago, some online comic artists banded together and formed Keenspot (and its sibling network Keenspace). Hosting, forums, artist control of whether pop-up ads (vs. only banner ads) appear for any given comic, optional subscriptions for ad-free reading; good stuff.

Among my favorites there: General Protection Fault, Help Desk, It's Walky (formerly Roomies), Lost and Found, Real Life, and Schlock Mercenary.

Free, full color web comic? I am doing it!

[cyb3rllama]

I have been following comics all my life, and web comics for a few years now. Last year I decided to take up the challenge of doing a web based comic myself... almost a year later I put my first page online.

http://particlesphere.com/ is a full color, free web comic hosted by meta4ik media, a multimedia company I work with on the side. I put a years worth of work into it before I even put a site up... so even though my traffic isn't booming yet, I fully anticipate things to take off eventually.

What am I gonna do about bandwidth/hosting costs when it gets big? Get creative... dedicate myself to delivering high quality merchandise and content and rely on the friends I have made and will make in the process. Don't try to do it alone... it's a community that you're really trying to create. That's why megatokyo.com and others like it are becoming successful, they are dedicated to building the community around their comic and being loyal to the fans.

Photoshop is cheap, but GIMP is Free

[yerricde]

sure they do! afterall, photoshop is free isnt it?

Photoshop Elements is neither Free nor free, in fact it costs $100, but GIMP is just as powerful and is both Free and free.

At least Sonny Bono didn't write it

[yerricde]

At least Sonny Bono didn't write the cartoonists' bill of rights; otherwise we would have seen

13. The right for the aforementioned rights to extend to our heirs in perpetuity.

Re:At least Sonny Bono didn't write it

[heptapod]

And don't forget

14. ????
15. Profit!

Lots more free WebComics

[slashkitty]

Just look www.WebComics.com, where we have had over 100 daily and weekly webcomics online for years. We also provide resources for online cartoonists for free, like comic scheduling, archiving and promotion. There is also a nice SlashBox of some techie comics from WebComics.com.

Not hosting, but...

[dacarr]

I have a small rotating list of comics I read, that uses an array of shell scripts and cron jobs to self build.

This is not blatant whoring

[Lord Omlette]

If you're into forum role-playing, feel free to drop by Battle Forum and maybe you too can wind up in the comic.

Set Expires

[Pseudonymus Bosch]

Stetting long Expires: times can help as well.

SVG?

[sirshannon]

online comics seem like a place where SVG could be of service. yes/no?

Irregular Illustrated: Avatar Wars.....

[vortexau]

I only have TWO Pages of my Irregular Illustrated Story on my page:
Avatar Wars, which is a story of TEXT and IMAGES that basically takes all that to lead up to the final panel gag.

Its based on a period when several Posters to the Forum at Amiga.org were producing modified versions of certain Poster's Avatar Images! There are some bits (I hope funny) in the text that likely don't connect with folk unfamilar with the Amiga Platform.

Someday I MAY continue this 'Computer-generated' Story.
.

Here's my webcomic

[wolverine1999]

Hi,

I've got my own webcomic, too. It's apokalupsis - a variety of concepts from sci-fi to bible adaptations with something for everybody. I do it
for fun. I haven't updated much recently but I hope to make a new update soon...

a friend of mine just started a new comic

[cthulhubob]

If you like post-apocalyptic fairy-tales with zombies, or skateboarding, check out Red Moon Rising It's based on a White Wolf RPG campaign he ran a few years ago, told from the point of view of an NPC, a 12 year old skateboarder named Andrew...

and it's fucking awesome! Click the link now, human!

Sprite comics

[Greymore]

"8-bit Theater [nuklearpower.com] - The grandpappy of all sprite comics. I think. It's funny anyway. Go read :)"

Although I love 8bit, I gotta pop in on this. Bob And George [bobandgeorge.com] is the granddaddy of all sprite comics. If you actually read the essasies on 8bit, Brian mentions it. Of course, now thanks to both of them, tons of sprite comics are all over by tons of people (including myself). I'd plug it, but I doubt anyone cares to read it. ;)

Last Post!

[alpg]

It appears that after his death, Albert Einstein found himself
working as the doorkeeper at the Pearly Gates. One slow day, he
found that he had time to chat with the new entrants. To the first one
he asked, "What's your IQ?" The new arrival replied, "190". They
discussed Einstein's theory of relativity for hours. When the second
new arrival came, Einstein once again inquired as to the newcomer's
IQ. The answer this time came "120". To which Einstein replied, "Tell
me, how did the Cubs do this year?" and they proceeded to talk for half
an hour or so. To the final arrival, Einstein once again posed the
question, "What's your IQ?". Upon receiving the answer "70",
Einstein smiled and replied, "Got a minute to tell me about VMS 4.0?"

- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...