SMBC Comics Forum

Sorry it is so small; dunno where the big version went;
I drew this a while ago; my idea is to continue comics about this guy (named Ace) and I have some ideas, but my drawing skills seriously suck

BUT one day I will wake up with new superpowers and take over the internet with my ingenuity (had to look that word up btw, to make sure it does not mean the opposite of "genius". It doesn't.)

P.S. I think it kinda fits with the whole SMBC theme, no?

I'm just gonna pick some problems at random and refrain from making a general criticism:
-The text is too heavy and too small/messy to read. It took me ages to even figure out what was going on, and the pay-off wasn't worth it. And why are you repeating the number of species? That just makes the comic longer. Avoid that.
-The punchline is weak. He just goes "dunno, whatever"? Why doesn't he say something vaguely funny, like (my first two ideas) "neither, let me make a pocket with the front of my shirt" or "I'll take a paper bag, but you'll have to kill a fucking dolphin for me to even it out." Note that these aren't even good punchlines, but you can tell that they're supposed to be jokes. You definitely know the comic has finished when someone steps in with "fucking dolphin".
-Too many ellipses. You could take out all of the ellipses here, they simply don't improve the comic. You also don't need a person loudly going "SIGH" unless it's a Garfield.
-What's with the non-linear order? Does it go 3, 2, 1, 4? I don't know what you were going for but it's way too confusing, and not easy to pull off if you're not Christopher Nolan.
-I don't want to tackle the quality of drawing too much since it's simply something I don't know tons about, but the first two panels are wasted whitespace and the background of the last two is just kinda bewildering; for all I know they're standing in an empty ballroom, staring at a couple of live fish, and the man has his ass in front of him. There's no way I can tell what he's holding, either.
-I know this is a point of contention among people who read xkcd/SMBC but a comic that's more about "here are some statistics about the environment!" is, more often than not, going to come off as preachy and/or not funny. I'm not saying that science/ethics jokes can't be funny (although sidebar: they can't) but you can't let the jokes be bogged down with the facts, and assume that your clever and insightful revelation will somehow carry the comic anyway. Although that's what both xkcd and SMBC rely on all too frequently.
-You may be able to get more detail in the text/drawings by making the panels bigger. That'll make the backgrounds and text more legible.

Well THANKS for your advice, that was very thorough. As I previously mentioned, this was my FIRST comic ever so I had no idea what I was doing. There's definitely plenty of room for improvement.

I come from a place of love, man. Good luck on your future endeavours!

Um.. correction... I'm not a man... I'm a woman but thanks!

raisinflames wrote:Um.. correction... I'm not a man... I'm a woman but thanks!

Ohhh, she* totally got you DR!

*or he, I'm no sexist

Man is a genderless term, man.

DonRetrasado wrote:Man is a genderless term, man.

In that context, I agree.

And it irks me when people call foul on it as being gender bias.

alright there were a lot of words DR wrote that i'm not bothering to read but here's a bullet point list of my issues with the comic as presented

• panel order makes me feel like i am reading 'memento: the comic'
• feels absurdly preachy, like something a semi-disillusioned cell of the ELF would write
• image size is rather tiny, 600x200 doesn't really give you room to draw details
• the first two panels are just text and whitespace, cutting the actual 'art' space to 300x200
• you need to work on your lettering and writing in straight lines instead of curving down into oblivion

I didn't really find it funny, but I figured that's what you were going for as you said you were aiming for SMBC style and Zach stopped being consistently funny years ago.

edit: reading over this again I realise it sounds harsh, but I think you can improve if you work hard and maybe take a few figure drawing courses

Getting a plastic bag does not kill marine wildlife, the bag actually has to get to the ocean to do that.
If you're worried about deforestation, maybe you should find the net loss of greenery every year (generally measured in hectares of forest, I think?) instead of pulling bullshit statistics out of your arse.

You've already gotten a lot of solid critique, so I'm not going to bother with that. But I just want to say don't be discouraged. First comics are almost always bad, and a lot of my favourite webcomics, the cartoonists have some pretty bad ones that came before. So good luck and keep at it.

Edminster wrote:

• panel order makes me feel like i am reading 'memento: the comic

I already made that joke!!