Humour, comics, tech, law, software, reviews, essays, articles and HOWTOs intermingled with random philosophy now and then
Filed under:
Internet and Blogging by
Hari
Posted on Thu, Jan 7, 2010 at 19:24 IST (last updated: Thu, Jan 7, 2010 @ 19:37 IST)
I read quite a lot of webcomics these days; not least because I create comics regularly myself and I like to study others' creations: artistic techniques, characterization and storytelling. The webcomics I read vary a lot in theme, content as well as skill level of the artist - but most of them have one thing in common: humour.
I get bored quickly of story-based webcomics because the long story comic format is not ideally suited for the online medium. A 60-page comic book can be read in about an hour (or less if you're a quick reader). The same 60-page comic posted in a website can be tough to navigate (and incredibly tedious to follow if it is not updated frequently enough.)
With that in mind, I wanted to collect a list of my personal likes and dislikes on the topic of webcomics. I am well aware that I myself cannot achieve these ideals so easily in my own creations, but I set tough parameters for others, so sue me. 
First, the likes:
Like
- Wacky but lovable and easily identifiable characters (think characters like Daffy Duck, Bugs Bunny and Yosemite Sam of Warner Bros' fame).
- Strong but not excessive use of bright primary colours and tones.
- Visual as well as verbal humour. Reliance on character expressions and actions in building the humour.
- Less reliance on punch lines or finish dialogs and more emphasis on humour distributed throughout all the panels.
- Consistent, but not excessively predictable situations.
Dislike
- Flat characters or characters that are too perfect or ordinary.
- Lengthy inordinate dialogues between characters.
- Arbitrary characterization: for instance where two characters can easily swap positions and the situation still makes sense.
- Excessive reliance on breaking the fourth wall or using cliched punch lines or endings.
- Complex scene composition: heavy use of background artwork which confuses the reader and creates a lot of "noise".
I feel that webcomics are the perfect medium for creative expression. There are so many types and varieties of them around; it never ceases to amaze me what ideas people come up with for writing a comic. Great artistic ability is almost never necessary or sufficient to create a good comic. When drawing a comic, what matters is the unique and distinctive touch of the creator.
This is why I am not much interested in anime/manga style illustrations: they all end up looking like they came out of a factory assembly line. Unfortunately a lot of artists pay too much attention to these technicalities and forget about the creativity bit. End result is that their work looks more or less similar to a hundred others. Ugly or beautiful, what makes a webcomic special is the author's unique style and storytelling ability.
4 comment(s)
Then again, when you find some good ones, they are real gems.
Comment by ray (visitor) on Fri, Jan 8, 2010 @ 00:28 IST #
Then again, I try to do things differently myself and rarely go by popular culture. Maybe being an Indian gives me some kind of advantage because I'm not really very familiar with aspects of Western humour which seem to recur frequently in online comics.
Comment by Hari (blog owner) on Fri, Jan 8, 2010 @ 08:15 IST #
Comment by Dion Moult (visitor) on Fri, Jan 8, 2010 @ 13:37 IST #
Comment by Hari (blog owner) on Fri, Jan 8, 2010 @ 16:47 IST #