Sprite Comics Vs. Hand Drawn... BloodBath??

[CanadianSkin]

So i was wondering who thinks that Sprite comics are better than Hand Drawn or vice versa... a friend and i just had a huge argument about this. i personally think they both require alot of well planned thought. i personally am not a big fan of most sprite comics ive seen... because they suck... but there are a lot of great ones. i love 8-bit theater, but im also a big fan of hand drawn.


:bmage: <- is my new god by the way

[CanadianSkin]

oh and one more thing that really dosent go with this... the GI Joe and Transformers in a comic... ive never seen it but i heard about it.. anyone know if its any good?

[Mr. Wind-Up Bird]

Hand drawn comics require, I think, more skill to create. To draw the comics and not just copy sprites is, I think, a biger accomplishment. 8-bit being the rare exception.

[GatoFiero]

They both require good writing. Drawing comics have the weakness of being craply drawn. Sprite comics have the weakness of using generic sprites. It equals out pretty well, but i do notice that a larger percentage of drawn comics tend to be better than sprite comics. But both have their exceptions and abismal failures.

[TheZeroMan]

It's probably best to try not to generalize between them, because then sometimes you just brush a really good sprite comic or hand drawn one out of spite for that genre.

If its funny I'll read it.

YES TAKE THE MIDDLE PATH!!!! COP OUT BAY-BAY!

[Joe Falco]

A good sprite comic equals a good hand-drawn comic. They're both artforms. Use pixels or lead for medium...whatever works!

[Meister]

It doesn't matter for me as long as there's good content, though I tend to have high standards for the art, regardless of it being sprited or drawn.

And putting together a sprite comic, 8-bit-style, is much harder than it seems. (I did one once... the sucker took me about two days, with concept and all)

There's one thing about sprite comics that irks me. I have yet to see one of them with good character development and a deep story. Most sprite comics seem to concentrate more on the funny, which is great in itself, but I'd like to see a sprite comic with as much character development as, say, Sluggy Freelance (which is funny too, but also kinda dark at times).

[Solid Shadow]

I agree that both are forms of art. One is not necessarily more difficult or more acceptable than the other, except in the opinion of the individual reader. Personally I'd prefer to hand draw Not Metal Gear but with a family and full time job and such, I simply don't have the time for such an undertaking. Spriting was the obvious answer for me, and I try to give it the same emphasis that I used to give my hand drawn comics when I self published some years ago.

There are very good sprite comics just as there are very good hand drawn comics. However I think there may be more shitty sprite comics out there than shitty hand drawn comics. It's been my experience that having no artistic ability, in the traditional sense at least, usually tends to dissuade people from ever picking up a quill and bristol board; far too many people who should never, ever, ever attempt to put together a comic or story of any kind seem to think that they can throw together the ever loving gawd of sprite comics in a matter of seconds with a few stolen sprite sheets and MS Paint. If that statement (read: opinion) offends anybody in particular, well, sod off.

I would imagine that somewhere there's a web forum populated entirely of movie writers, producers, and directors, and at this moment they're having a flame war over "Filmed vs Digital"...

[Dante]

I think Solid Shadow's hit the nail on the head... it's not really the matter of the *medium*, but the message. Hell, I think we'd all know a crap comic no matter how it was presented, though bad art can turn people off a good comic.

But I'd still prefer hand-drawn, because the really good hand-drawn comics can convey far more meaning than sprites, and if an expert is doing the comic, it can be done very fast and very well (sometimes even both at once). However, crap hand-drawn comics are exactly that - crap.

IMO, sprite comics are easier to learn, but the problem is finding all the sprites you need and thinking of ways to make the same sprite say different things.

[Solid Shadow]

IMO, sprite comics are easier to learn, but the problem is finding all the sprites you need and thinking of ways to make the same sprite say different things.

When I first read this reply, I thought, "This guy's nuts. Finding sprites is a problem?" Then I realized, "This guy's absolutely right and I salute his insight." Mainly because it dawned on me that if more spriters took the time to find decent sprites, we wouldn't have approximately 456,987.24 sprite comics featuring a mix of 8-, 16-, and 32-bit Mega Man and Sonic sprites.

I ran across a sprite comic about a year ago (can't remember for the life of me what it was called; if anybody recognizes my description please let me know) that was made entirely of sprites from very obscure NES games. Sprites that you just don't see every day. Not a MegaMan or Sonic or Black Mage in the bunch. Very good stuff, it was. Wish I could find it.

[Hamelin]

Was it Oldskooled?

[Dynamite Kid]

I find the sprite/hand drawn thing to not really get to the crux of the issue. An artful use of sprites can be just as good as hand drawn. Somw of the best cartoons on TV today (Williams Street) can be best described as a mix between sprite and hand drawn in the way they're animated, and they're still friggin' hilarious! In short, as long as it's funny it's acceptable.

[Atma]

The only sprite comic I ever really liked is 8-Bit theater. All the other ones just seem to have lame jokes.

[Dante]

The only sprite comic I ever really liked is 8-Bit theater. All the other ones just seem to have lame jokes.

Villain seems pretty good, but the guy explains abit too much and uses a bit too many references for his own good sometimes.

On a side note : 100th POST! WATASHI SAIKO!