Comic for Thursday, October 20th
Well, I reckon the ground got the worst of her attempt at flying anyway.
It’s been mentioned before that humans (particularly other mages) interfere with magic to varying degrees. Naomi is essentially using mana-based sonar based on this principle. This is the sort of thing that most other mages would view as some combination of clever, stupid, and impossible, so… basically Naomi classic. We’ve seen before that she can intentionally project her mana to some degree; she used a vastly more concentrated form projecting a huge amount of mana into ball to break Kally’s ethereal wall during the airball match.
Whose this fellow? What’s his deal? Why was Naomi having trouble finding him standing right there? Ah… well. That’s a long story. It was once it’s own story it’s such a long story…
Man, this chapter will hit a lot of things that I sort of expected we’d get to way less than almost 3 years into the story. Maybe I’ll just make the first button point at the start of this chapter and save myself from having to redraw the archive… 😛
New vote incentive will hopefully be up tomorrow, got a little busy midweek here, but we are well buffered still!
PS: If you want an avatar or want to update your avatar, I’m expanded the range of avatars; just let me know if you’d like a different character appearance, chibi or normal, expression, w/e. Still just a character’s head, let’s not go too crazy here. Yup, this was spearheaded by your pestering MayW. Some people are never happy 😐 (I kid, feel free to request w/e you want, and I’ll get around to it sooner or later 😉 )
Loading ...
I would love an avatar of Julie… or maybe Michelle. (I’m sure that’s her name :-p )
The black haired analyst. (the one that told Peter about Kallie)
I love the panel with her nodding her head. Its so cute. But, the lines make no sense when you cut just her and turn it into an icon.
You are running a poll about which aspect of your art/comic needs the most attention…
On that, your art has reached a level were all is fairly well balanced.
I feel you have reached a plateau in your art development. This is not bad, this is just a fact of getting better at something.
First you know nothing, then you have a fast rise, then you plateau. From there it is long slow incline of improvement for the rest of your life.
So, you have made it to “good enough.” There really isn’t one area to be improved anymore. Now it is a matter of doing the best you can in the time you allot yourself.
You will get faster and better with practice. You will learn some new tricks along the way, but hell if I can explain how one comes about learning them.
I have really enjoyed your comic over the years.
I appreciate the input! I am always happy to hear when someone’s stuck around and enjoyed comic so long! I’m glad that many people find the art “good enough”, but I know the art is still a major barrier to some people in reading the comic (based on feedback). I appreciate that I can’t make everyone happy, and that bounding progress is unrealistic, but that’s why I’m hoping to target the effort to a few focal points.
I think the lack of distinctiveness of the faces is a good example of where outside feedback helps a lot – this is definitely an issue I am aware of; but I think I tend to get used to my own art; since I knew which character is which, it’s obvious to me. Now it’s something I know that I simply need to spend more time on making sure I have a way of expressing facial differences consistently and clearly within my style – something I am not sure that I currently have. I think feedback is critical at getting better at most anything, and I prefer getting feedback from the nice people here than… other sources 😛
I made three avatars, like any of ’em?
Listen to BuilderOfCastles. BuilderOfCastles speaks great truth. Do not listen to trolls. Trolls are not your friends, they are simply pond scum that have learned to use the internet, and are seeking to make you feel bad about yourself.
Just because someone says that they would read your comic if you were better artist, it doesn’t mean that they aren’t lying through their teeth. I read a LOT of webcomics, and, believe me, you are firmly in the mid range of artistic ability, and are steadily improving.
For what it is worth I am firmly in camp “good enough”.
That said, I think the poll shows an excellent understanding of the direction needed for progress, and I was happy to provide feedback with it. The character faces are far better than they once were, but with a few notable exceptions (like Arron) they DO look very similar.
This page is a great example of poses done right, but “stiff” and “awkward” could describe a lot of pages.
Just seeing the poll options gave me confidence you are on the right track.
I like the middle one the best.
Like I said, with her nodding, it is sooo cute, but it is like an inside joke that only inside peoples would get.
And now, dun dun dunnn, I am probably supposed to save the image and go over to Gravatar central and upload it…. unless, of course, you have a built in system for that.
I got it. You are free to use it as a gravatar if you want, but I can link it to your username/email for this site, so whenever you post using those, it’ll use that avatar. I reckon most people prefer site specific ones.
Welcome to the “has avatar” club! 😛
“I reckon most people prefer site specific ones.” Interesting. I’ve always preferred having a single gravatar that I use everywhere, for simplicity’s sake.
and thank you
Just have art redrawing as a side project for when you’re bored. You’ll get it done eventually.
Also, art isn’t the definer for me for if I read or not. It’s a bonus, certainly. Good art typically means having an easier time of visually telling what the hell is going on.
Really though, once a story gets around to suckering me in, I just have a hard time not finishing it. Forget popcorn, pull out the tents. Here for the long haul. Those have an easier time making for better stories, anyway.
(And hell half the time this doesn’t even NEED story or context, tons of the funny stuff can be with minimal context and it’s just about as funny, too. Like, probably at least half of this chapter, you can have just one page, or less, and it’s still pretty damn funny of a page. Ya done goodly.)
Exactly. Great story-telling, even with so-so art, is much more likely to pull me in than great art with so-so storytelling. (I would have thought that was true for most people, but apparently I’m not as representative of “most people” as I thought.*) 😉
And your art has come a long way, and I’m still only up to 2016. Seriously. Start reading the archive for Questionable Content https://questionablecontent.net/view.php?comic=1 and see how many years it took him to go from so-so to the level you’re at now. And he was updating 5 days a week!
*See my comment above.
Well, he avoided getting clobbered. That is one of the nicer “hair fluff” effects yet. Bonus points for it being in the rain…
Curious to see how this goes. Looks like he wants to talk. Unfortunately Naomi is not known for her peace negotiation skills…
He is quite good at not getting clobbered. Some would go so far as to call him a “not getting clobbered professional”. It may even be on his business card.
“We have eyes on her”, see THIS LINK, Panel 8. I’m guessing that these are the eyes Arron was talking about. D’oh, oops!
Wait you got front page page comments to show up on the front page? AWESOME.
Also its almost getting boring seeing team Peter suprise (or at least give an aproximation there of) EVERYBODY.
Yes, been playing around with the page a bit, never liked how people had to click in to see the wonderful comments we get ;). I demoted the blog posts off the front page, since I don’t use them much and they are mostly just me rambling anyway.
I reckon he’s more surprised by the pugnacity than much else, and well, Naomi is shockingly pugnacious 😛
Naomi and Mium are, however, are pretty unusual specimens, so I won’t promise this is the last time someone is surprised by them 😛
Tom!! Holy shit, he makes his appearance! About time! ^^
Well, I’m glad you got that subtle hint out of your system… 😐
If it helps, that is exactly who I guessed it was before getting to the comments. Though I have been expecting him to show up considering his cast page entry basically screams there is more to his story, and the sweatshirt matches exactly what he is wearing on the cast page.
He has made an interesting entrance here. Following Naomi cannot have been easier, and he avoid getting clobbered better than anyone else we have seen yet.
I was going to praise the author for the panel layout. They really emphasize the action and movement while not showing us the spy’s face. But this comment sort of spoils that. I guess not all commenters know that the “Contact” page seems to be the de facto place to put spoilers and wild speculations.
But, I agree with Amaranth that the fact that the mystery character is wearing the same sweatshirt (same color, even) as a certain guy wears on the cast page is a big hint. Too big, even.
Second appearance, actually. Click THIS LINK.
Ah, the weird shit I drew back in the day – why did I even include Tom’s past appearance there? I should probably read through those early pages more often, but it does hurt.
How many people do you think would notice if I just made the “first” button point to the start of this chapter? 😛
Actually, the appearance started on the page before — 14, which triggered an archive dive from the very beginning. I see the story changed some with your edits. I only vaguely remember what was there however.
@PastUtopia There was another typo on an early page 20 or 21. I think I dropped a comment on that page too so it should show up there.
PS: this editing window is really annoying with the binding of the arrow keys to page navigation.
I got it, I think (the typo, replied to your comment there).
The original pages are linked in the comments of any updated pages. Plot-wise, nothing should be significantly different, though there are usually more words on updated pages. This is mostly because the new page format is significant larger 😛
Yeah, the arrow key problem isn’t something I can easily fix. This is actually why we haven’t switched to the other commenting system, as it has that problem all the time, not just when editing the comment.
@Just_IDD: That’s true, but his name is on the page I chose. I guess I count those pages as one appearance.