Just a quick post for this week.

Tree Sprocket, by Al Nennig, is one of my favorite comics. But, it needs to update its newspost more often. While the comic itself always updates on time, the newsposts have been considerably neglected as of late. Although his most recent comic came with a newspost, it was only a sentence long; the last update before that was August 28th.

If you update the newspost as much as the comic, which Tree Sprocket used to do, people will come to expect the same consistency out of the newspost as well. Even if you make no claims of the newspost's importance or schedule, people begin an association similar to Pavlov's dogs. Eventually, to update the comic and not the newspost leaves readers feeling only half-satiated.

A newspost satisfies in ways a comic cannot- the two complement eachother. The comic provides a dose of abstract humor and the newspost grounds the reader back into reality by perhaps talking about where the comic idea came from (while not ruining the joke), or maybe pointing out a "happy-accident" that occurred during the comic-making process. Alternatively, the newspost might become something of an unofficial blog where the author offers a tiny morself of information about their personal life. Not so much information as a LiveJournal (god forbid) would present, but just enough to give the reader some sense of who it is that's making the comics; the author begins to sculpt a personality of their own outside of their comic.

It doesn't take much to update the newsposts with the comic. A simple blurb about the comic itself (while avoiding the temptation to explain the joke or point out how funny the punchline is), and/or a tidbit on the author themselves, answering questions such as: did they have a good weekend? What'd they do? Any cool songs they've heard recently? Movies? Anything. Just give us something.

People are quick to complain about Sprite comics, but when's the last time anyone's given them much thought?

Sprite comics come in two flavors: humor, or story. Humor, in the sense that they’re mainly dick and fart jokes, and story, as in they try to tell a serious narrative. Neither work because sprites don’t have a great range of artistic variability.

People that make sprite comics are most likely individuals that have an idea, something that they have their hearts truly set on; they want to tell a story or tell jokes, but they feel they don’t have the artistic ability to achieve it. Therefore, they’re willing to resort to one of the lowest common denominators of web cartooning.

Just listen to this comic’s description:

Legacy of Light: “No one was left who could remember how it had happened... how the world had fallen into darkness. At least no one who could do anything about it... no one who would oppose the robots, none who would challenge their power. ...or so Dr. Wily believed.”

This is not a bad pitch for a comic. It sounds like the author is really trying to tell a story, something that’s gripping and real.

But, then you read the comic and the typical panel looks like this:



Are you serious? That’s the character “drinking himself into a stupor”? It looks more like he’s drinking ash out of a burlap sack.

Now, if Legacy of Light was actually drawn it could separate itself from MegaMan just by a few degrees… something that would allow readers to gain something of an appreciation for the world the author’s trying to write in. However, because they’re using sprites from the game itself, the most the author can hope to bring to the readers is the slight nostalgic feeling of remembering how they beat Bubble Man with only 3 health left back in 2nd grade.

I was going to write a detailed paragraph on the “humor” side of sprite comics, but then…



I realized there was no humor to speak of.

As a side note, no sprite comic should ever move for a close up.



Ever.

Sprite comics are not bad because of their stories or jokes. Well, not the former, anyway. It’s that the medium Sprite authors are working in isn’t suited for their aspirations. They need to move on, and find something better. They need something where they have a greater control over their characters, environments, and angles… all the sorts of variables that allow for a freedom that making comics with sprites deny. They need to upgrade.

Of course, the best way to do that is pick up a pencil and learn to draw, but failing that the next step up is to start using Garry's Mod. Comics made using the Half-Life 2 engine are in the exact same camp as those made using Sonic or MegaMan sprites. Both use a game as their “art,” and both are made by those who want to tell a story or craft jokes. There’s considerably less comics made using Garry’s Mod than Sprite comics, but they do exist. Apostasy (link goes to Yahoo download site... comic only available as a .zip) utilizes Gary’s Mod to tell a story in a manner akin to a graphic novel.



For humor, there’s the always-referenced (and personal favorite of mine) Concerned: The Half-Life and Death of Gordon Frohman.



However, that’s not to say that making a comic by manipulating a next-gen game is a surefire way to make a good comic… it all depends on the person behind the controls. If you have a terrible sense of humor, you make a terrible comic. Simple as that.