Internet Comics that should never be?

[Cid Highwind]

El Goonish Shive.

Seriously. What. The. Fuuuck?

[Mike McC]

Well, with super minimalistic comics, like xkcd, you don't go into it looking for art. In fact, xkcd would probably work just as well as text-only, as emails fired back and forth between nerds. And sprite comics, it makes a huge difference if the sprites are just pasted in generic backgrounds. Compare 8-Bit Theater with 99% of other sprite comics, and you will see that Brian puts a lot of actual effort into making 8-Bit actually look decent. And, while not technically traditional, methods of digital manipulation could be considered a type of artstyle, and Brian's command over photoshop and the medium has most definately improved since he started the comic. He didn't need to improve, but he wanted to display the best looking product that he could.

Dominic Deegan started off with an amaturish, "I Learned To Draw From Polykarbon" artstyle, and then it never improved. It stayed at a barely passable artstyle that is miles from good, and he shows no inclination to actually improve it. Some with Buckley. Outside of his cookie-cutter poses, his ineptitude really shows. And the style has barely changed since the first day. In fact, it has arguably gotten worse, because now he employs some rediculous shadow angles and atrocious gradient shading.

Now, some comics, say, Templar, Arizona and The Adventures of Dr. McNinja, have had absolutely fantastic, professional looking art from the get-go, so you wouldn't expect much in the lines of actual improvement from them, save for some refinements here and there. But really, just because you've got to a point where you can consistantly draw recognizeable characters, the doesn't mean you should halt all artistic development. A mediocre artstyle really can hinder a comic. And refusal to improve is the mark of a mediocre artist.

[ironymaster]

Well new style of art is okay, but when it starts to prevent you from releasing new comics. Then it officially turns into a bad thing.

[TDK]

Originally Posted by BraveFencer Shinryuu

Dominic Deegan started off with an amaturish, "I Learned To Draw From Polykarbon" artstyle, and then it never improved. It stayed at a barely passable artstyle that is miles from good, and he shows no inclination to actually improve it.

Okay, I seriously do not understand at ALL people complaining about Deegan having bad art.

In my opinion the art is not bad in the slightest. And it has improved noticeably. Things are easily recognizeable, the proportions are never ridiculous, scenes can often be described as awesome, he easily shows gore, sexuality, emotion, etc and you can easily tell what's going on 99% of the time. Seriously, explain to me how it is bad art. And don't give me stuff about his lack of desire to improve or things he does or whatever, that makes him a bad artist, it doesn't make the art bad.

[Mike McC]

I think that my opinion of his art is best summed up by that one infamous blog:

Originally Posted by Your Webcomic is Bad and You Should Feel Bad

Yessir, that's animu style. It is not based off manga, no it is not. It is based off anime. Specifically, very cheap anime. Read on and you'll see what I mean. Rather than drawing a nose and chin, Deegan characters have a snout. Now, fair's fair, even cheap anime isn't quite as bad as that, but that's roughly how it goes. Cheap anime has its side views as a pointy nose running down into a chin, with the mouth stuck somewhere in the cheek. This is so the mouth can flap about all it wants without having to animate anything else. Like I said, cheap. But there is absolutely no reason to do this in a comic, where you do not have to draw things so the inbetweeners can animate more easily. Still, Deegan does it. ...

Yes, now click "last" and scoot on to today's comic. Doesn't matter when you're reading this, because Terracciano's art has gone through no significant changes since day one, apart from being a little less sketchy and the snouts becoming a little more snoutish. Yes, more snoutish. The man has no fucking concept of what a human being looks in profile, and apparently has no compulsion to better himself and try to render his characters in a manner that doesn't make the webcomic look like The Adventures of Porky Trotter, Pig-Person. Still, it's been five years since he started his terrible comic. Five years of drawing, and nothing's any better than when he started. That's so bad you'd think it'd take effort to stay that bad. Yeah, Terracciano's plenty happy to stagnate himself and keep on excreting the same kind of blasé crap...

[TDK]

So your argument is he has a specific style for drawing faces and the art hasn't improved dramatically? See because if I was going to call anything bad for that (which I am not), it'd be the artist, not the art.

And, well, maybe the comic. The comic is admittedly overly-dramatic, not terribly believable character-wise, over-complicated and just...Kinda lame, but the art is at the least fine.

Edit: Okay, reduction. I guess I just don't pay attention. Upon review, YEAH from the side the snout thing does look pretty stupid. But the art isn't bad, he's just lazy when it comes to drawing people in profile. Which I suppose does make it bad, but only for people from the side.

[ironymaster]

Speaking of unbeleivable characters, CAD comes up. I mean c'mon, an idiot gamer who does whatever he wants and gets away with it and he's not rich? C'mon, I find it hard to believe, as would I believe about the rest of them.

[Masked Jedi]

Originally Posted by ironymaster

Speaking of unbeleivable characters, CAD comes up. I mean c'mon, an idiot gamer who does whatever he wants and gets away with it and he's not rich? C'mon, I find it hard to believe, as would I believe about the rest of them.

You're doing a great job of integrating yourself into this community, but every so often you say something like this and remind me that you're new.

Not a criticism, just an observation.

[Lumenskir]

That's fine and well right up until you turn your character into the magical singularity angel.

1) Just so we're clear, I do essentially agree with BFS, I just copied and pasted POS's argument from awhile back because I remembered it while complaining about Partially Clip's pretentiousness and 2) I am so glad I stopped checking up on DC's updates because waiting 3 and half months just for the opportunity to see the guy shove his head four more feet into his ass is a younger man's game.

[Savage Thinking]

Speaking of Dominic Deegan, there's one thing I'd like to point out:



I'm sorry, but that's all kinds of messed up.