Some advice on comicocity.

[Norrathian]

Hi.

I've done a couple of humour stories (set against EverQuest but it really isn't that specific) and I was wanting to make some comics out of them/based around them.

The downside is that I have very little artistic talent. I was thinking of actually using EQ sprites, but I no longer play so I can't get a big enough collection.

Can anyone think of anything I could use as a basis that's versatile enough?

Here's what I was thinking of for the first panel, it's adapted from one of the scenes from the first chapter of the Planes of Parody. (http://www.norrathian.net/article.php?art=poparody1)


*In the Plane of Tranquility....*

A: "Tell me again. Why have we come here IN SEARCH of bloody danger?
G: There are heroic deeds to be done!

A: But you can't DO heroic deeds...
G: What! I have managed many a gallant act!
(Men in background) Gallant act! Ha! More like ruining my hedge... (next)-Or ecological vandalism- (next) -Try manslaughter!

G: Look, I've made some mistakes in the past, but still-
A: Graham. Remember the cat up the tree incident? When you ended up SNAPPING the damn tree? The poor cat...

(In the background, old men debating: "Pfft, only manslaughter? You got off lucky pal-")

G: (looking down) I wanna kitty.

[Viper Daimao]

have you thought about drawing the comic? or finding an artist? sprites of any kind are extremely limiting. I know Brian never would have used sprites if he thought 8bit theater was going to be some big popular comic.

[Norrathian]

That's the point Viper - I can't draw well enough.

Well, to put it another way - I don't have PhotoShop and I don't have a scanner, so there's not really much I can do artistically. Even if I had something resembling talent.

I can use PicturePublisher to do some graphical stuff though.



PS: Seeing as that was my first post, I haven't yet had time to say that 8bit is brilliant. :D

[Meister]

Well, it's probably best you go to a sprite site (this one (tsgk.captainn.net) or this one (www.gsarchives.net) should do) and poke around the sections. Maybe the even have EQ sprites; if not, SNES RPG sprites usually work good for this kind of purpose, but as they are used frequently, recoloring or editing them would be a good idea. If you don't know how to do that, look for tutorials or ask people in the Arts & Crafts section.

I like that script, by the way. The visual of the last panel made me chuckle.

Some more advice for sprite comics:

- Resize your sprites properly, without any interpolation (it's called 'Pixel resize' in PSP) and using "whole" values. For example, you can resize a sprite to 200%, 300% and such, but not as good to 150%. I hear MS Paint is good for resizing as far as the "no interpolation" thing goes.

- Pick the right file format. .gif or .png usually work fine. Never use .jpg for sprite comics since it tends to make them blurry.

[Norrathian]

Well. I went and had a go. I don't think I will have another. lol.

http://www.norrathian.net/img/comic1.html

[tazz31406]

This one's good too:

http://clik.to/ninsprites

[Loyal]

Yeah, I like that site. It actually has FE7 Sprites!! ^_^