Ben Paddon

Category: Webcomics

  • And Now: A Writer Critiques A Cartoonist

    Firstly, full disclosure: Scott Kurtz and I had a bit of a falling out last year. Despite this I remain a huge fan of his work, and once my finances are more balanced I intend to pick up the books I haven’t bought yet (namely, all of the post-Awesomeology ones). PvP is consistently one of the most entertaining webcomics out there, and it’s one of the comics I look forward to each day.

    Despite this, it’s hard to ignore that Scott’s art has been a little… well, difficult to look at lately.

    I’m no artist, but take a look at the latest PvP. Compare Jade (black top) with her sister, Miranda (the “hot librarian”). Compare the physique of the two – Jade is well-proportioned and distinctly cartoony, while Miranda appears to have a cartoon head affixed to a body with reasonably human-ish proportions. The two styles don’t mesh. It hasn’t worked, and it pulls me out of the comic. That’s not even touching upon Miranda’s hair, which is apparently a character all of its own with its own feelings and motivations.

    This bizarre juxtaposition of the real and the cartoon also occurred in the previous strip, where Miranda is a little less cartoony than in today’s strip, and yet is still human enough to clash with the distinctly cartoon appearances of Jade and Brent. The proportions of her head are even worse in this strip. If Miranda had always appeared in the comic in this form (and she hasn’t) I’d wonder if she and Jade were actually biological siblings. Perhaps Miranda was adopted. Perhaps she was found amidst the wreckage of a small, slightly too-real space vessel, the last survivor of a planet on the edge of the PvP reality and a bordering “trace-comic” universe that was destroyed by, I don’t know, space zombies or something.

    And here’s that weird reality-bending look again, this time with Jade appearing to be the quasi-real person instead of Miranda.

    Looking through some of Scott’s other recent strips, it becomes rather apparent that his weakness appears to be the female form. All of the male characters – Cole, Brent, Francis, Robbie, as well as Skull the Troll (gender variable) – are distinctly cartoony, and drawing those male characters seems to come incredibly easily to Scott. I mean, look at this strip. The character designs, the shapes… they’re brilliant. Yet Jade and Miranda aren’t coming as easily as they used to back in the old “head and shoulders” days. Drawing a cartoon-friendly version of the female form isn’t something Scott’s quite got a handle on yet.

    It’s likely because he’s trying to push himself by drawing his characters in more dynamic poses other than the more static look of earlier strips – something I definitely approve of – but you can see it’s still a learning process. He’s not quite there yet. He’ll get there, provided he can push beyond the “trace stuff from the real world” phase he’s been in for the last couple of years and start using reference photos as, well, reference photos.

    For now, though, he’s stuck in this weird webcomic Uncanny Valley. It’s a tricky spot to be in, and it’s far too easy to get comfortable in that space and not want to leave it, but hopefully Scott can push forward. In fact I’m all but certain he can – it’s been a joy to see his art grow from strength to strength these last few years, and I look forward to seeing that stuff because once Scott has it all figured out his art is going to shine brighter than ever.

    Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to tell Jamie Oliver how to be a chef despite my having virtually no experience in the kitchen other than operating a microwave.

  • Not Quite Life

    I stopped writing my slice-o’-life webcomic before my artist had even drawn the first strip because, frankly, I found the entire thing boring to write. I couldn’t engage with the characters I’d created, which is perhaps problematic because the central character is basically me. The premise was semi-autobiographical, dealing with a young man who gets out of a serious relationship and tries to reconnect with his former best friend, someone his ex had tried to push out of his life. That happened, and I wanted to tell that story.

    The problem is that I wanted to tell it three years ago. Now I feel like I’ve moved well beyond that point in my life, and revisiting it just to try and tell a not-quite-what-happened version of it for a webcomic doesn’t sit well, especially as I was trying to make it work in a gag-a-day format. So, no. Not interested. Pass.

    This presents an additional problem – I want to work on a gag-a-day comic again. Fried ended in 2006 when, after three years, I realized I was bored with it. Jump Leads exceeded Fried‘s lifespan at the start of this month, not just in duration but in quantity. Jump Leads remains fresh because by its nature it has to. We’re never in the same universe for more than a few months. It keeps things interesting.

    But in a weird sort-of way I want to do something a little more grounded, with characters I can drop into random scenarios and just have fun with. I think I’ve come up with a concept that is grounded enough to work as a gag-a-day, but quirky enough to keep me interested. And funnily enough, it’s based on a short film I wrote back in 2007.

    Last night, for the first time in three years, I sat down to sketch characters. I don’t know if I’ll be doing anything with those sketches – I’m no artist, by any stretch – but that’s also how Jump Leads started way back in 2006. I’d like to take that as a Good Sign.

  • Some Thoughts Concerning Webcomics, Procrastination, and Getting Serious About Your Work

    Last year I acknowledged I had a problem with procrastination, and this year I’ve started taking steps to overcome it. In the last two weeks I’ve worked on a Jump Leads script I’d been putting off doing for two months to the point where it’s very nearly finished, I’ve begun working with the rest of the Jump Leads creative team to screw down the details of an upcoming multiple-issue story arc as well as fleshing out a new character who we’ll be introducing at some point in the future, and I’ve redoubled my efforts to find a new dayjob. I’m also looking at ways of raising capital to properly publish the second book as well as to republish the first, having nearly sold out of my own stock, and trying to raise the profile of our little webcomic.

    The Jump Leads stuff is particularly important because last year I realised that if I want to make a career out of writing, specifically out of writing Jump Leads, I need to be about 5,000% more focused than I have been. I need to stop looking at it as a hobby, as something for my portfolio while I wait for something bigger and better to come along and start looking after it properly.

    It’s started to bother me when I see people in the webcomics community – that is, the lower end of the webcomics spectrum where you’ll find people such as myself – who in one breath say that they want to make a living out of webcomicry, and in another mention that they haven’tupdated their webcomic for the last three days running because they’ve been playing Modern Warfare 2. Or re-watching Firefly with the cast commentary. Or, y’know, they just haven’t gotten around to it yet.

    How can you possibly be serious about making a living as a webcartoonist when you don’t even have the discipline or the inclination to get your comic drawn and updated? We’re talking about people who say they’re on, say, a thrice-weekly update schedule but who haven’t updated their comic in a week and a half, and then they wonder why their already small readership is dwindling.

    It’s even worse when their Twitter feed is littered with tweets along the lines of, “Will draw next comic after this game of Assassin’s Creed II.” Then “Whoa, is that the time? I just got sucked into that game! I’ll draw the comic tomorrow.” Then “Gonna jump into Assassin’s Creed II again. Man, that game rocks.” Then ‘Why isn’t anyone reading my webcomic? 🙁 🙁 :(”

    If you want your webcomic to succeed, the first rule is “Make it worth reading,” and the second rule is “Stick to your fucking update schedule.“*

    And while I’m on the subject, let’s discuss the relaunched Webcomics.com, shall we?

    To everyone who has pointed out the apparent “irony” of Halfpixel charging for access to the site now when in How To Make Webcomics they decry paywalls with a passion: You make a webcomic. You want people to read your stuff, and there are millions upon millions of webcomic readers out there. They, conversely, make a niche website. There are probably only thousands of fledgling webcartoonists out there, and probably only a hundred or so of those people who genuinely want to make a living from making webcomics.

    To everyone who has balked at the cost: It’s $30 a year. That’s not a lot of money in the grand scheme of things – a drop in the hat compared to the cost of webhosting, convention table/booth costs, travel and accommodation expenses, book and tee-shirt printing, and so on. Brad’s articles – and they are mostly Brad’s articles – are worth every damned penny, and that the guy has been pouring so much effort into them for over a year for free is, frankly, criminal. Brad deserves some kind of compensation for such sterling work, and I for one don’t mind picking up part of the bill. If you’re serious about making a living as a webcartoonist, it’s completely and utterly worth it.

    To everyone who takes offense to the above: If you feel you don’t need Webcomics.com, if you didn’t use it before or if you’ve never really had much interest in the articles, then that’s fair enough and I wish you luck. If you feel it’s something you want or need to have access to but you object to the idea of throwing a twenty and a ten in Guigar’s direction then you need to seriously reconsider whether you’re willing to put in the effort to making webcartooning your job, because if you aren’t prepared to pay $30 a year for articles that could potentially help you improve the way you go about your business (and what you’re doing is business if you’re taking it seriously) then will you be prepared to shell out for hosting? For marketing? For book-printing and all that other gubbins I mentioned earlier?

    I utterly regret not taking full advantage of the website before they shifted it over to a pay model. I thumbed through it occasionally last year but I didn’t have the time – or, at least, I told myself I didn’t have the time – to read the articles in full. I’m kicking myself now. Absolutely kicking myself.

    I’m going to go to sleep, and I’m going to enjoy my weekend. And Monday morning I’m going to wake up at 8am, have breakfast, and sit in front of my laptop at 9am ready to write, and plan, and prepare for the year ahead. What will you be doing?

    * Yes, I’m aware that there’s a degree of irony in this statement considering Jump Leads’ schedule has been wobbly for the last four or five months. No, I’m not going to discuss it.