Slashdot Mirror
Daily Grind Webcomic Challenge
Dauntilus writes "Bent Comics is sponsering a web-comic contest. Contestants put $20 into the pool, and they must update their comics 5 times a week. If they fail to update on time, they are out. Last artist in gets the pool. The contest started yesterday with a sweet $1,120 in the pot. A few big webcomic artists like Scott Kurtz (PVP) and Chris Crosby (Superosity) have even show up for the fun."
someone let the guys at ctrl alt del. know and penny-arcade...they would own all!
Good Karma, Bad Karma, doesnt matter to me... I'm still going to say whats on my mind!
That eliminates Penny Arcade :-(3x a week, frequent screwups, but worth the free price of admission all the same.) Call me greedy, but I'd love to see PA daily =)
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
That's a good point. There will certainly be a group that simply won't quit. Should be interesting.
http://www.busyweather.com/
Of Real Life Comics. I read that daily too along with PVP and Superosity. Personally I was hoping Piro would join in, he'd be first out :)
"Love Is" and "Rex Morgan" are better comics that "Bloom County" or "Calvin & Hobbs."
- Crow T. Trollbot
http://www.checkerboardnightmare.com/
My money's hoping for Greg Dean... The pot's gotten pretty large now... he's moving... he could use the money. He draws Real Life. (reallifecomics.com)
an experiment of quality vs quantity
Depends who is "sponsering" it.
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
"they must updated their comics 5 times a week"
I swear, someone is putting nonsensical grammar into every single article, just to see how we squirm and ped.
My other processor is big-endian.
It doesn't appear that any of the strips have to actually be good. Me and my stick-figure-guy could win this one.
Wait so this is basically a contest to see who's life is so devoid of content that they never miss a day of logging on and updating their cartoons ... sounds like whoever wins is really the biggest loser ;)
Squidi hasn't missed more than perhaps one or two updates in two years on A Modest Destiny. But, he is rather unpopular among the webcomic community
Nice way to borrow money from those 'big webcomic artists' ;)) I bet at least 2 of them will produce 5 comics a week for a very long time...
Have you ever seen Get Fuzzy? Granted, it's not a web comic (though it may be on comics.com or such) but they guy must have a time altering machine, for all the detail he puts in that strip. Wood grains, individual hairs, even the New Zealand All Blacks logo on Rob's cap. If the guy can do that strip daily, who's got a leg to stand on to say they can't?
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
When you get addict to a webcomic (and i'm addict to a few ...) It really bothers you when you don't get your daily comic ...
UF does a pretty good job, it's updated daily, but quality varies, Down to Earth is amazing (in quality), but updated in a ver irregular way.
It would be gould to see DTE in the contest, daily dte updates would just rock.
WTF am I doing replying to an AC at 5 A.M on a Friday night?
One word:
Stencils
Art is not hard to crank out fast. Ideas are. I'm far more impressed with Dilbert than Get Fuzzy.
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
Is that this will be going on for at least 2 years. And then it will be down to 5. The only thing that is going to knock some of these artists out is some for of accident to their person or a sever server failure..... Uh... Shall Slashdot Slashdot those Slashdot wants to lose at update time?
Fly me to the moon Let me sing among those stars Let me see what spring is like On jupiter and mars
::cough::Jim Davis!::cough::
This rating is Unfair ( ) ( ) Fair (*) Funny
Sigh... If only. Modding would be so much more fun.
and we deleted![/strongbad]
The difference between spam and poop is that you don't have to dig through septic tanks looking for real food. -- Me
Or we could make a Japanimation style comic where Slashdot editors have super-human powers and hunt down and destroy Troll posters. Doh did you here something. AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH
News Reporters Make Tasty Polar Bear Treats!
I think anyone that's ever tried a webcomic knows that consistency is the biggest challenge. It's hard to develop a routine and get strips up in a timely fashion with some degree of regularity. That's a critical factor in determining a strip's early success at drawing an audience. Internet users are lazy, and if you don't have any timeliness, they move on. People might counter with Mac Hall or Megatokyo, but those premiered during a slightly less dense webcomic atmosphere. Also, they drew audiences in with the art, which is the other key component. You can slack off on the updates if your art kicks ass and still maintain a decent audience. Hell, if you get both you become a rising megastar like Apple Geeks or Scary Go Round.
They could do it - it just might be worth the dough. this is a great idea to motivate constant updates, 5 times a week on a quality comic would be a lot of work though, I update once a week which is plenty while doing other life-oriented activities.
Hmm.. maybe I'll start doing a quickscribble comic and compete on the quantity side.
air and light and time and space
Darby Conley does the strip for a living. He doesn't need a time machine, just the extra 8 hours a day the rest of us are working. It's still an awesome strip, and it makes shittily-drawn and shittily-written strips that much worse by comparison, but just keep in mind he's not quite the superman most webcomics people with fulltime jobs and a daily strip must be.
And it's not even Jim! I understand it's his factory floor of lesser minions who do the drawing.
My brother once decided to collect the daily Rex Morgan in a big old scrap-book to try to figure out what it was about.
after he had gathered several months worth together it still didnt make any sense.
air and light and time and space
The server's slashdotted. Can someone post a mirror of the rules?
[
google's cache of crowncommission.com/dailygrind
-- Boycott Shell
get fuzzy is available, and i love it
it will be in the key of delicious!
turn up the jukebox and tell me a lie
But whatever. I'm a troll now.
The key difference between a Programmer and a Senior Programmer is that one of them is Mexican.
Get Fuzzy is just plain awesome.
Here's a good one
And another
And their website
-Ares
If the guy can do that strip daily, who's got a leg to stand on to say they can't?
Thats his full-time job. Most webcomics are done as a side hobby, and as such dont get the same investment of time.
but yes, if you've got the time there's no reason you couldnt do a daily strip.
air and light and time and space
Hey, and what about Scott Adams? I'm sure he would win the prize, Dilbert has been there for more time I can remember and in a 7 days a week basis!!
He happens to get paid to do that...
Though it is a fantastic strip, funny, well drawn, etc. It reminds me of Calvin and Hobbes (though Bill Watterson had a hard time with even getting the 5x daily + Sunday out).
Scott Kurtz is horribly inconsistent, sometimes missing two consecutive days. He's a good sport to put some money in because he must know that he's basically lost before the contest even begins.
As others have mentioned Diesel Sweeties is always on time, at least for the three years I've been a reader. I can't recall a single time R has missed a day. Even the wonderfully consistent Penny Arcade has faltered at times.
Imho publishing on time - whether it's five times a week or just once a month - is crucial for a comic. That's why I don't read PvP or Megatokyo anymore.
The initial idea must have been a competition to provide that extra bit of incentive for the creators not to miss an update. With comics like PvP and Superosity in the running, it's now a race to see who gets to the grave first.
Kurtz boasts going years without missing an update (what about those sickdays and guest weeks?), I'm sure he can easily keep updating for years without fail if he makes the effort. The same goes for Chris Crosby of Superosity. For them it's not an incentive to update, they're in it for the money!
No one's going to win this now, it's never gonna end.
I'll put my two cents in for a comic from my college days -- the Brute Squad. But you're lucky if that is updated once every five years...
One man's Funny is another man's Offtopic.
If the guy can do that strip daily, who's got a leg to stand on to say they can't?
ESPECIALLY if their full time job is to do the comic.
Diesel sweeties would do fine. It's been going strong for a few years now, daily comic on your email every morning. Good stuff too.
Yet another cheeky attempt at getting cheap labour. They get a site with daily updates down for free.
It reminds me of some design jobs that had a task for possible applicants. When you applied for the job, you where given a brief from one of their customers. Whoever did the best design, got the job...meanwhile the company got paid a few thousand for the guys work before he even started.
I have a comic (Bertoline) posted in my signature. Check it out, it should appeal to some of the dork masses. Some are good, some are TERRIBLE. Hahaha... Let me know if anyone else knows if it's too late. Give me some hatemail about my comics too, that'd be nice
Berto
Yeah, I think Squidi's achievement in sheer quality and production values over a period of years has been quite amazing. I can't say I'm wild about the new style backgrounds (or the dangerous tendency to start making Art with a capital A), but I have to take my hat off to the guy for the sheer amount of quality images, text and plot he has produced. As a comic, it's funnyish; as an exercise in continuity and development, it's outstanding.
I'm not quite sure what all the troubles surrounding the artist actually are. His editorials (except maybe when he gets political) strike me as remarkably organized and sensible, not the work of a net.kook at all... but it sure looks like he annoyed a lot of people somehow.
Whence? Hence. Whither? Thither.
I'm surprised that more comics don't do this where the author of Sam and Fuzzy states that he has a buffer of about 22 comics so he never misses an update.
Of course, he only updates MWF so he's not eligible for the pool.
--------
It's OK to be social, just don't tell anyone about it.
Not only Chris Crosby, Brad Guigar, Ryan Smith and Steve Troop have joined from KeenSPOT... ...but up and comming artists Jennie Breeden (The Devil's Panties), Bruce Goer (A Day in the Life), and Matt Johnson (Cortland) have joined from KeenSPACE.
The SPACE team WILL WIN!!!
--
# Canmephians for a better Linux Kernel
$Stalag99{"URL"}="http://stalag99.net";
Even weirder: Pokey The Penguin. Be sure to check out the archives (the one currently on the main page isn't as bizarre as some of the earlier ones). And hey, it's a penguin so you are automatically required to love it, being a Slashdot reader and all.
> I could update my comic a ton of times a week if it was done poorly.
Hands down, UserFriendly is the best counter-example to your statement. It's timely, funny, and consistent.
Penny-Arcade couldn't win this competition....they rarely update 3 times a week, it would be a cold day in hell before they updated 5 times in one week. I love Penny-Arcade, but their updating is sporadic at best.
No, it's ridiculous.
I bet the creators of the contest have the money in an interest account, or maybe they've already spent it.
All it takes is for two "professional-level" webcomics (PvP, Dilbert, etc..) which almost always update daily, to join and the contest will run forever with no need to ever pay out.
Tat goes on unannounced vacation. Not that I mind, but it's not true.
... which is, of course, Dilbert, updates daily, 7 times a day, for the past few years... There isn't a webcomic out there that could compare to its greatness.
The Slashdot Effect
probably not safe for work btw
Shouldn't the point of a contest like this be to spur webcomic artists to produce reliably so that they can become more prolific, not to put cash in the pocket of someone who has already shown he can put out a strip a day on a regular basis?
Why would a webcomic artist who has already shown himself able to produce one comic a day for the past several years (even if it's not up until 6pm) enter into a contest like this?
The point is to provide a challenge and provide competition. For people who have already proven themselves in this arena, they are merely making it psychologically impossible for the intended audience to participate and hope to win. Someone who *just might* graduate to the next level of comic production may have decided to make the plunge and make a living at it. But with people in the competition who have already shown they can do it, how many people are going to drop out just because they know that they won't be able to compete in the very long run that this contest will inevitably go to?
I think it's a bit sad when people who are already making a living at webcomics decide to get involved in a contest that's obviously not aimed at them.
No, I didn't go to the site sponsoring the competition. If they intended these "semi pro's" to participate, he's scamming a sizeable loan out of a lot of people. If they didn't intend them to participate, it obviously wasn't stated in the rules. If they didn't even think about it, they're shortsighted.
Funny, before reading this I was returning from lunch, remembering Refrigerator Johnny and my futile attempts to find anything online about it. So now I search again, and lo and behold, http://www.clowntimecomics.com/
58 months, not weeks. Going on five years now.
cartoonist, schlockmercenary.com
Guys, it's too late. The deadline was midnight on Feb 28th. Oh well, I'll still have to keep making new ones anyway :(
Berto
Schlock Mercenary Ownzors all. Updates everyday, Howard even has a queue going on. He has declined to enter though, because he hasn't missed an update in years. And that's just unfair.
Oh, and the comic just plain kicks ass. Really. Start at 1 and read the whole thing. You won't regret it.
That's right. All your base.
Great...
I just love any comic contest that emphasizes stamina over humor.
It's cheap that it's only web comics. They don't have to compete with the heavy hitters like Mark Trail and Prince Valiant. I wish we could get those twice a day. Talk about funny!
True, but my point is there's an extreme example of detail and Darb kicks it out daily. A simply drawn strip should be no problem, unless the artist is a perfectionist which kicks the idea of time right into a cocked hat.
I drew in highschool and could knock out several pages in a 50 minute Advanced Lit. Adding color, photo editing and so on are variables I didn't have to consider. My quality wasn't great, but it was better than Cathy, which should account for something ;-) The main point was did the gag work. I may give this another go in the near future, but I'll probably be erratic in terms of schedule and money won't come into the picture, it'd just be for fun.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
The side effect of this is beneficial to the web audience.
I know a guy named Sig.
hahahaha, lasagna!
woo hoo! it's monday!
gar har har -- spiders being squished
woo boy - kick the dog off the table...
best comic ever... do you really NEED more than four jokes?
...a perl script that uses the GD library to draw random squiggles and the fortune file for text. Updated from a cron job.
:)
Indistinguishable from half the web comics out there IMHO
I'm sorry. It would be extreemly easy for someone (or a couple people) to keep doing something once a day for the rest of their lives. I predict this is going to take a very long time to resolve.
Now, it might be intresting they put the money into a mutual fund or something, so that if the contest did take years, the reward would be worth it
ReadThe ReflectionEngine, a cyberpunk style n
No, actually I think the biggest loser is some snarky dipshit who has nothing better to do than to rag on the creative efforts of others, while doing nothing himself.
Congratulations.
Close counts in horseshoes, hand grenades, and thermonuclear weapons; not in this tontine. You miss, you're out.
None of these guys are (IMHO) old-style sydicate pros-- those guys have better things to do than take candy from children. PVP also doesn't qualify-- it has to be at least a M-F daily; MWF folk need not apply. Although I wonder if David Willis could have gotten in with his Roomies Redux/Shortpacked/Walky (TR/MWF/S-when-the-fans-pay) mix. Moot now.
//Information does not want to be free; it wants to breed.
I could have sworn that the day after Kurtz entered, he had a news post up on the site saying that he'd somehow missed his update due to having labeled it February 29th rather than March 1st. Then again, he could have just been saying that the update was late, not that it wasn't within the "update within the day." ^_^ And I loved the strip where Francis takes up the gauntlet.
This sig has absolutely no significance and serves only to take up screen space and waste the time of the reader.
PVP's 7 days a week for about a year or so now. Ever check the archives?
--
# Canmephians for a better Linux Kernel
$Stalag99{"URL"}="http://stalag99.net";
Where's the creativity?
Superiosity and schlock can beat that easily.
...
The only way someone is going to win this this decade is if Chris Crosby's weight catches up with him and he falls seriously ill
Angels 2200
Wandering Ones
Something Positive
The Devil's Panties
General Protection Fault
Irregular Web Comic
Alien Dice
Wapsi Square
Bruno
Clan of the Cats
There's plenty more at my web comic page.
I drank what? -- Socrates
Archives don't tell everything. He's been late for more than one daily deadline, and even IIR occasionally missed at day outright-- but made it up later, which is why the archives has no holes. That wouldn't cut it for a newspaper, and won't make it here. The rules require posting of a strip by Midnight PST, no excuses.
Kurtz has a shot, and I'd be astonished if he's in the first half of the losers, but while I think he'll might make it to the top 10, I don't think he'll take the money. I'd bet on Troop; the man demonstrably can't stop putting out his comic even when he tries. =)
//Information does not want to be free; it wants to breed.
Programmers should have a similar contest.
Programmers have to post 100 lines of code (tested and debugged) Monday - Friday before midnight.
Casey & Andy is probably the best geeky webcomic in existence! Though Irregular WebComic runs a close second...
What a great idea! How about all the Slashdot submitters put $20 in a pot, and the last one who hasn't put in a dupe wins the pot?
If you are religious and you enjoy Tatsuya Ishida's daily CONGRATULATIONS you are enlightened.
I don't remember Sinfest ever missing a day, but I've only been following it a couple of years.
Hmmm, Tatsuya might not be happy about me slashdotting his site... um, here's a google cache of the first comic, that'll scare some of y'all off.
I'd take a once a month (if you are lucky) gem like Sexylosers over something that's updated just for the sake of it. Clay (aka Hard) sends a mail out when he's finished a comic, and it's always a pleasant surprise. Be warned it's the least work-safe comic imaginable - the warning says If you are offended at all by full nudity (both sexes), images of sex involving consenting adults, images of sex involving only one person, risque humour or human secretions of any kind, this is NOT the site for you.
Wigu does manage to be good every weekday, but it takes something special to keep that work rate up, which might be why Wigu has just reinvented itself for the 2nd time, becoming "Magical Adventures in Space", now that the Wigu Tinkle storyline has reached it's natural conclusion... still full of topatoey goodness though!
The other one I check every day apart from the usual Dilbert (ocassionally very funny - but a lot less often these days) User Friendly (thank goodness for ad blocking!) and Diesel Sweeties is Scary Go Round which is beautifully crafted, and has a quirky English humour that appeals to me, being a quirky Englishman.
A pizza of radius z and thickness a has a volume of pi z z a
It'd be nice if we knew about this competition before it started :(
[o]_O
So because UserFriendly is timely funny and consistent, you're saying the above poster could not update a comic many times a week by doing it poorly? Interesting logic.
Honestly, they must be pre-approved... you wouldn't kill your readership...but I bet if someone isn't doing a daily then their creativity must suffer if they are 'forced' to do so. I see this going forever. I mean, it is easy to pump one out if you are aiming for that, and are not worried about it making too much sense.
:-(
A lot of comics don't make too much sense!
The art is only part of it.
Penny arcade should become a daily. I mean, you hit it daily to see if it updates... they should go daily to be more appealing. Don't they do it full time?
They don't have a standard 'show' they regularly cut around into diff formats. Exploitation-now was a very cool comic, full of utter random quick thinking but worked.
then it stopped
#hostfile 0.0.0.0 primidi.com 0.0.0.0 www.primidi.com 0.0.0.0 radio.weblogs.com
Strips must be a minimum of two panels, however, artists may produce one single panel strip per every 10 strips.
No posting of sketches.
Yeah ok, so I mspaint a strip with two squares in it (how do you define panel? stupid!) They do not make a subjective metric on what is a 'submission'.
I could just relentlessly post a shit strip every day, not ovetly shit, just, subjectively, spend 5 mins on a 'quirky' strip.
use a standard 2 stripe bmp template in mspaint... cron job it to load in gimp at 8am every day...
draw two stick men, colour them in...
Submit the drawing that produces as a two page 'not sketch' (how do you define sketch?)
if you are not overtly crap, and quote Larson on 'you don't get paid for the ink' people will have to let you slide.
Then those with integrity to loose will realise you are unbeatable and they will slowly relent one day when they realise they are keeping too much going against you, and you will NEVER quit.
one might keep going just to spite you, but then you say ok pal, you win, whats your address, ill mailyou the cheque, and then...
YOU KILL HIM! muahahhahaah
#hostfile 0.0.0.0 primidi.com 0.0.0.0 www.primidi.com 0.0.0.0 radio.weblogs.com
Sometimes, when noone's around, I check out the SexyLosers (NSFW) comic. It has the some of the weirdest NSFW humour ever. Again, be warned, this is not for the faint of heart.
http://zero-to-enterprise.blogspot.com/
http://www.stupidchildren.com/darn_chauncey_1.html
Not to preach network TV as dogma, but I think some sort of community voting system might have done this contest proud. There's a huge difference between doing a webcomic five times a week, and doing a "good" webcomic five times a week. Maybe if people voted off these ones who were just "phoning it in" this would be a kinda interesting concept...
StupidChildren...the reason jesus is crying
I wonder which comic is the Kramer equivalent in the Seinfeld "Masturbation episode".
"Yah, I'm out."
Geek Of The Day, "A geeky place for geeky faces."
...Howard's buffer dropped to three as of yesterday. It's back up to ten, and he's gunning for a full month's buffering of Schlock for his fans. And as for the Daily Grind Contest, I don't think it's been considered. Just because you've got a buffer doesn't mean that you can't run out and go with a spate of silence on the part of the artist(s).
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
...for him not joining the pot. Unfair, if nobody else with a buffer joins. Could take forever if two or more that do buffer join in. That's not to say that they couldn't join in, really- anything could keep the buffer from updating (A good example would be the artist in our current thread- he only had 3 days left in his buffer because of forces beyond his control until today...). But it does make it harder on those that don't buffer up their strips all the same.
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
There's a great stick-figure comic called Order of the Stick.
Tatsuya has gone on several unannounced hiati in the past; I think the most recent was sometime last summer. It's an excellent comic, and if I was filthy rich I'd pay him not to do such a thing anymore.
For you D&D nerds out there (present and accounted for!), I highly recommend The Order of the Stick. It's just updated Monday and Thursday (soon to be three times a week), but it's excellent.
Education is the silver bullet.
You put a link to somewhere called "Bent Comics" and you expect me to click it?
REALLY lame actually. The success of any creative endeavour like this is QUALITY not quantity.
You can track for yourself whether these comics update with comic-nation.com!
Amen, brother. Thanks for the correction.