‹‹ First ‹ Prev Comments(31) Next › Last ››

Page 193

Oct26
by Holly on October 26, 2011 at 12:00 am
Chapter: 6-Chapter Six
  • awesomelegacy

    awesome , lol “acquire” is always a good way of getting “things” illegaly fast

    by the way , do you guys think this video have a similarity with this strip http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=12N5WfIgm6I ?

  • Jamming

    Kender Logic:
    If they left it unattended then they meant for someone else to have it.
    -The Masked Hyperactive Kender

  • Dasick

    As a writer you might find this interesting. Even though it was made with gaming in mind, it still applies to comics.

    http://penny-arcade.com/patv/episode/episode-07-pacing

    The reason I’m bringing this up is because this page is a bit too slow.

    I would fix that by (for example) showing them “acquiring” the vehicle

  • http://www.terra-comic.com Holly

    Honestly, things have been difficult for me on the creating side, not just cause of the injury but for a variety of reasons. Needless to say, my hearts not really in it lately, I feel like I’ve given it all I had and I’ve failed.

    I’m not looking for sympathy. I just feel… I might need to end this webcomic :(

    Maybe try again later when I actually have a clue what I am doing.

  • Obakeinu

    Hmm…depending on what they want, this means sniffing around the future equivalent of a ‘doughnut shop’, Jabba’s ‘garage’, or…

    Unless there’s a ‘Maul-mart’ handy.

  • Dasick

    As a writer you might find this interesting. Even though it was made with gaming in mind, it still applies to comics.

    http://penny-arcade.com/patv/episode/episode-07-pacing

    The reason I’m bringing this up is because this page is a bit off in terms of pacing. If you were to graph, panel by panel the level of excitement/stuff happening, you would probably get an almost level line.

    A quick suggestion off the top of my head:

    Show them “acquiring” the vehicle, then have their conversation as they are blasting off to save Agrippa.

    Acquire vehicle (small peak)
    Conversation stuff (valley)
    Blast off to save Agrippa (bigger peak)

  • Dasick

    Drat, misclicked the submit button earlier, can I get a delete of the draft comment and this?

    2Holly – if you really want to end this comic, can I recommend doing some sort of a short story in comic format? See if you can tell a story in 20-30 pages…

  • RJB

    Just wanted to say that this is a great comic, it has been moving a little slower than before but quitting is not the answer – perhaps recover first and meanwhile you can map out the future pages – I look forward to reading every week and hope it continues!

  • http://www.terra-comic.com Holly

    I suppose it would be a bit hasty to just flat out quit. I really just need to focus on the story Drew and I wanted to tell, instead of worrying what everyone thinks. I really do care about this comic, I just feel so stressed when I update that everyone will hate it, and that’s stupid.

    I really need some time to focus, so maybe taking a break to heal my wrist and recharge is the best thing for the future of this comic.

  • http://snipergirl0907.deviantart.com/ SniperGirl0907

    @Holly – Awww honey nobody hates your updates! *HUGZ* stop giving yourself an ulcer, your a damn guinius girl & you know it! C:

    Listen, it sounds to me like a case of inpending artist’s block (the wanting to quit is always a symptom), your focusing too much & getting stressed as a result, plus the wrist isn’t helping of course 😛 I’ve had this problem plenty of times before whilst writing my own fanfic & the best way to beat is take some ‘me’ time & just chill ^__^ go for a walk somewhere, read some comic books/graffic novels, watch TV, do other art stuff, just broarden your mind and don’t stress over what people are expecting of you; with 6 chapters under your belt, & all beautifully illustrated, I’d say you’ve got the formula of this comic in the bag 😉 Don’t think you have to be the internet’s greatest artist, just be a great artist and let the critics think what they want, you are a talented, gifted illustrator for which no one can put you down (& anyone who does is a philistine & a twit!), your a total original & I’ll bawl my eyes out if you say farewell to Terra TT__TT.

    Anyway, the page looks smashing! the first panel in particular is well done, I see your perspective has improved compared to the eariler chapters, plus the colour range is nicely even yet dynamic; good job! 😉

  • Drew

    @Dasick So I assume you want action on every page? In comic book terms this pages is called an Establishing shot, you do it whenever you switch to a new location. This is a long form comic about characters, there are going to be scenes without action in them, all action would completely ruin what we are going for.

    The penny arcade video you showed proved my point, we just came from action which would be at the peak of the graph and now we are going to a less tense scene which would be a dip in the graph. You need to look at the entire story not just one page, based on what you said the entire story would be a peak which isn’t good IMHO.

  • Jamming

    Holly, what ever you want to do (short of quitting) is fine with me. Everyone has ups and downs in their lives, just don’t let those temporary things rule over you. What you do here is entertaining and you should be proud of that. I don’t think Dasick would care enough to tell you how he thinks it could be better, if he did not enjoy it as it is. Do your best and keep doing it, success never happens if you are absent.

  • http://www.terra-comic.com Holly

    I’m not planning on quitting anymore. Drew and I talked about it, and we know that this is just a low that comes with putting a comic online for nearly three years. It can sometimes be discouraging, especially with tendonitis, but I won’t let that stop us from continuing to update this webcomic.

    I’m starting physiotherapy for my wrist next week, I’ll ask them what kind of a break I will need to take in order to heal. I’m sure that exercises are the answer, as taking anti inflammatory pills just seems to be a temporary solution.

    Either way, I’m posting a special update this Halloween (with a fan comic from sniper girl :D). I’ll be sure to give more details on what is happening with the comic then.

    Thanks again for the support, sorry again for this constant BS with my injury, trust me, I’m plenty sick of it by now. I just want it gone.

  • Vuther

    Go to any doctor and ask them if they think dealing with injuries are BS. They shouldn’t think so!

    It’s good to hear you’re not feeling down about continuing this webcomic. Is there something us commenters are doing that’s making you worry about updating so much that caused you to think this is the first place?

  • Jamming

    !!! Happy Feet !!!

  • Gillsing

    If you and/or your wrist needs a break, or even quit the comic, then that’s MUCH better than a lifetime of pain as you force yourself to work on the comic until your wrist gives up completely. Without any medical education, I’m going to assume that the first pain is just a warning of things to come if you don’t take it seriously enough to back off and let it heal. I’ve had some early warnings of repetitive strain myself, and I adjusted REAL fast. So while you may worry about people hating any given page, I worry that you’re not going to let your wrist heal properly because pages have to be made, no matter the cost.

    And this comic looks and reads great. (I love the colours.) Whenever anyone might suggest otherwise, it’s definitely not worth worrying about. This is not a work for hire. You’re in charge, and any opinion or advice is just something you can consider at your leisure.

  • Ty

    Admittedly i’m no expert on comics and don’t read that many comics, but have started to read Terra on a weekly basis and wanted to put in my two cents on the issue. First of all Holly & Drew I love you work and think its been great so far. I personally think the pacing is spot on, I personally much prefer not to have action in every scene if it means I get to more story and a better feel for the characters. I read comics for the story, now wonderful art like your is defiantly a perk, but in my opinion good art but no story don’t make a comic worth reading. I have really enjoyed how you have told the story so far and you have told it well so far in my opinion and that’s the reason i continue to come back to continue to read Terra week after week. Am I sure you could find ways to cut out some panels, sure, but I don’t personally see the problem in a few more panels of dialog, you aren’t working on a tv show or movie here or even a commercial printed format (not saying I won’t be buying vol 1 as soon as I get back to my house from being deployed underway), but there is no set minutes and seconds or page count to the panel you have to meet. Plus everything seems two thousand times slower when you have to wait between 3 and 7 days for another page.
    Anyways you no doubt already knew what I’ve said above, basically I wanted to say that I love your work so far, but do what you want to do, you are the authors and artists, tell your story how you want to not how us commenters think you should and I hope your wrist starts feeling better again soon because am I looking forward to many more updates in the future.

  • Korbel

    I agree with TY here. Plus, in my experience, when a show or comic or movie or video game starts catering to what the fans want instead of making it what the creators feel it should be, the quality drops off. So take the comic where YOU think it should go and have fun with it, and we’ll have fun seeing what you come up with. Just take our suggestions as what they are, a friendly critique that can help you improve your work. Not that work of this quality needs much improvement.

  • http://hard-graft.net Prestwick

    Oh I HATE it all right Holly….HATE it when I go several days without my Terra fix that is! 😀

    I understand your woes and I think self doubt is something which afflicts many artists and writers when they start worrying about the same question over and over: “will anybody read my comic?” If you’re stressed out about anything else in life (and this could be anything btw) then it could be a sign of burnout.

    As for the debate over the page and as a writer I would suggest that you take a look at what you’ve got down script wise and make the call yourself. Theres been a high tempo action scene already and as you update twice a week I think slowing down the pace a little to set it up for the next big action scene is understandable. Also remember that constant action makes it harder to flesh out the characters and thus the story.

  • http://portaloflight.wordpress.com Johanan Rakkav

    I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve thrown out my material in whole or in part, only to have it re-emerge in some other form and force me to reconstruct the universe all over again. And you think you have problems with writer’s block. :)

    Your pacing here is just right. It reflects the way real people live, move, talk and think, especially if someone’s injured. It sets the stage for what comes next, which you can make as fast as you please.

    Biases can come in thanks to gaming on the one hand and a lot of filmmaking on the other. Those of us more used to a “literary” style have no problem with the pacing here. If you want to pace this like a game or like many a modern film, be our guest. Otherwise, trust your cognitive processes, including your unconscious ones. Not everyone will relate to your personality type or style of creativity as readily as others but that doesn’t make them right; it simply reflects a difference in native and/or developed taste.

    Oh, and make sure you take care of that wrist. :)

  • Dasick

    @Drew Got me there, and using my own references as well. How embarrassing :S /@

    I guess my brain tells me there isn’t enough action since there are several real world days between, even though in comic time there has just been a crazy action filled peak.

    With that being said, the theory is that to get good pacing you have to hit the curve on both the macro levels (the story arc) and the micro levels as well (for comics I guess that would be the individual panel flow). But thinking about it, I would have to sit down with chart paper to plot out excitement for a lot of things, to determine how well this page is paced. Reading the comments and reviewing the page again, if I had to eyeball it now, I would say the pacing here isn’t the problem. But…

    I saw this page and I felt like something was wrong. My first instinct, off the top of my head, was “wah, make more stuff happen!” (in hindsight, pretty rude on my part. sorry :S ), and I linked to the pacing video because I thought that in this situation it would advocate more stuff happening.

    I know that this is the Establishing Shot page, and it’s a nice one. I like the opening panel, and the backgrounds really sell the idea that this is the right place to ‘acquire’ a vehicle (no reason you cannot integrate this with a more action-y page though, but I digress). Still, the focus here are the characters, which is where I feel the tint of “wrongness” coming from.

    They’re talking, and that is good. Through their speech they’re expressing their unique personalities, also good. They’re announcign their intentions, so that we as the readers can really look forward to the rescue scene, really great! And while they’re talking they’re walking then standing still, which… erm, maybe that’s where I’m getting the “wrongness” factor from.

    If you’re used to a more literary style, then you might not hear the bells ringing, but this is a comic, not a novel. A novel is a conceptual work of art, just having words there is ok; in fact, if the author is interrupting the dialogue to bring you the latest news of how many millimetres the character moved since she last spoke, the general consensus is that the author should be fired (OutOfACannon[AndIntoTheSun]).

    But comics are primarily a visual storytelling medium, pictures should be telling the story, with the words playing the support role. But from this page, I get the feeling that it’s the words that are the driving force behind this page, and the pictures are merely playing a support role.

    That’s why I suggested they do something while they’re talking, and as examples go I just picked the most obvious one (and I do realise that the most obvious example isn’t always the best), and I just blamed it on pacing, because I didn’t think through my post.

    Upon some reflection, I think that my problem with this page is that the charcters’ actions aren’t used to their fullest potential when expressing their state, emotions, intentions, themselves etc. That is, for the most part, they’re just standing and talking.

  • Jamming

    See all that stuff Dasick wrote, that is the love of a fan. It took him abit of time to work all that out. He likes it and seems to want more of it. Otherwise he wouldn’t put much time inio those considerations.

  • http://arkturium.deviantart.com Arktur

    So I’ve been reading this for a bit, and I have no problem in terms of getting bored or wondering about pacing. To the point where I am quite happy to read it from the beginning just for kicks. I really enjoy the story that you two are making, and I hope that you get out of its creation as much as you put in, because you are clearly putting in an assload of effort. Tell your story to us, we would love to hear it.

    (My sides hurt in sympathy for Grey.)

  • http://www.lightning-powered.deviantart.com LP

    Dasick just gave the critique I would do nearly anything to get. You guys are great.

  • http://Slamlander.Caselle-vpn.Net Slamlander

    You guys do fine work, much better than most. I’m a novelist and I see how this story is constructed. It’s well done, although the pacing could be better, IMHO. However, that is largely a function of update rate. Read in one sitting, the pace of the story works well for a novel equivalent.

    Please don’t stop, the story is compelling and I would like to see where you take it. No Holly, you are not failing at the comic even if your marketing might be a little light-weight ;).

  • http://www.terra-comic.com Holly

    Thanks! The updates do affect the pacing, though this is kind of a necessary evil as I have to co-write/sketch/ink/color/letter/publish everything myself. Sadly, even when I start up soon I have to keep it at one page a week, at least till I evaluate how it is affecting my wrist.

    With regards to marketing, it is reeeeally lightweight, but it’s mainly due to not having enough time and the money for advertising. The comic takes a long time to make (at least 8 hrs a page, usually not in one sitting :P) as well as the fact that I usually have 1-2 commissions on the go every couple weeks (along with other design related projects). My freelancing does get in the way of putting my all into the comic and it’s marketing, unfortunately bills need to be paid.

    The downside to this is the fact that I know marketing plays a huge role with the success of a webcomic, in particular social networking. I’ll just put it out there right now that I’m a bit of a reserved person, and using facebook/twitter doesn’t come as naturally to me as most. But eh, I think I’m starting to get the hang of it.

    That considered, I would guess that most of the readers seem to be coming here via link exchange or… maybe word of mouth (lot of direct traffic, so who knows). It’s a small niche readership, but it’s really nice 😀

    This is something I plan on working on in the future, but for now, I gotta rely on link exchanges and word of mouth :).

  • http://Slamlander.Caselle-vpn.Net Slamlander

    Thank you for responding so quickly. I was surprised 😉
    I have the same problem that you do with Twitter and Facebook and I should actually do more there ;).

    FYI: Rather than using bookmarks, I use a website from a failed dot-com venture of mine, http://caselle-vpn.net . It’s an old-fashioned portal site and should constantly show up as the referrer every time that I view your site. Ergo, it’s really a direct link and not a link exchange, since it is a site that I completely control.

    I am also on Twitter and will follow you. For myself, I also post blog update notifications to twitter when they are made. A number of other sites do this as well, like Girl Genius. I am trying to get Poe and Impy of ErrantStory to do the same. That’s actually cheap and easy to do (post to twitter, not convincing Poe and Impy, that’s less easy since Impy is currently in hospital.

  • Korbel

    As far as Facebook goes, do you already have a Terra page? I’ve checked and can’t seem to find it. If you don’t, I’m sure one of your fans here (including myself) would be more than happy to create one for you and basically look after it for you. All you’d have to do is the occasional blurb about what is happening like you already do here, just to let the fans know you care. (Like Slamlander said, Girl Genius does this as well.)

    You could let whomever is running the page worry about posting links to the updates and such once you give em the schedule, and all you’d have to do beyond what you already do really is give the occasional frame or two as a sneak peek or character art. Drew should probably get in on doing the occasional status/personal blurb as well since he’s involved so heavily.

  • http://www.terra-comic.com Holly

    @Korbel, that would be great! I would have no problem contributing, and I know Drew would too (he is more active on facebook than I am anyway).

    What would be involved with something like that? I’ve never really used facebook for any kind of promotion before. Is it like fanpage or something?

  • http://Slamlander.Caselle-vpn.Net Slamlander

    Actually, WordPress has a Facebook plug-in that will update your Facebook page automagically. Blog posts here will automatically get mirrored to Facebook. I use it on my Slamlander site. They also have a Twitter notification plug-in. Y’all need to start looking into what WordPress can do for you more.

  • Korbel

    -Holly, I don’t know anything about Slamlander’s Word press, but it sounds useful so you might want to look into it.

    That being said, some of the comics I’ve seen use facebook use it to send out update alerts on the main comic and as a fan discussion page. They post character profiles and background, or sneak previews or special images, like the halloween update you recently put up. Commissions info, samples of commissions, and other things of that nature could also be put up. I can post links to some of the comics I follow on Facebook if you would like to see what they do with it. The more people who add the page the better the publicity. If you like I can create the page for you and work with you on it until you get used to. Unless, of course, you would like me to stay on it so you don’t have to.