Slashdot Mirror
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."
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.
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.
/. Oh well...
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
Jack William Bell
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Are you an SF Fan? Are you a Tru-Fan?
When this is the #1 spot on a Top 10 list (the rest are empty), a site needs some help :)
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.)
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
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ping -f 255.255.255.255 # if only
When can I expect to see flash cartoons of "It's the Great Pumpkin, Tycho Brahe" and "A Slicky Christmas Special"?
I'll form my OWN solar system! With blackjack! And hookers!
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
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.
The Anti-Blog
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...
"The Samurai who does not fear death becomes invincible."
im surprised no one's mentioned exploding dog or dieselsweeties. great comics with quality shit for sale.
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.
"Academicians are more likely to share each other's toothbrush than each other's nomenclature."
Cohen
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
The Anti-Blog
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
"Good night, good work, sleep well, I'll most likely kill you in the morning." - Dread Pirate Roberts
New insights on polymorphism
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
I live in Soviet Canuckistan you insensitive clod!
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.
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.
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.
Marc Siry || interactive media professional, motorcycle enthusiast ||
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.
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.
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.
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....
and in a church of all places!
HomestarRunner/Strongbad Email ;-)
It's definitely an entertaining flash cartoon series
What are your favorites?
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! :)
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.
What is music when you despise all sound?
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
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.
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.
Stupid job ads, weird spam, occasional insight at
At least Sonny Bono didn't write the cartoonists' bill of rights; otherwise we would have seen
Will I retire or break 10K?
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.
-- these are only opinions and they might not be mine.
I have a small rotating list of comics I read, that uses an array of shell scripts and cron jobs to self build.
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