Alright, make your peace with the world and your loved ones, everybody! Once she realizes the implications of what he was just talking about, the Apocalypse cometh.
oh man oh man oh man better hit the deck when she know what he was saying because Hell is going to break lose oh and her clueles face is cute i like it keep it up man
@Deo, The decision was reached between the artist and I that instead of trying to get two or three updates a week and occasionally missing an update we would keep with a more static schedule.
Now that said, both the artist and I are happily looking forward to the time when his student loans are paid and he doesn't have to work 40 hours a week in retail and can instead do 40 hours a week on the comic.
Hence why we started doing Donations, your donations for our wallpapers are going a long way towards covering our advertisements.
That stated, is there anything specific you guys wanna see in donations?
@Uhl, that's kinda Ral's thing.
@Groove, I'm a fan of the last one myself
@Comic, I think it started on the wrong foot.
Want some advice? Cut the manga crap. It makes me and probably no small number of other people cringe when they see it. The Western Style of drawing is harder but far better. It shows a lack of skill with showing expressions if you resort to some weird manga convention. I'm just glad that no one fell upside down with their legs showing in the air yet. If I missed it, please don't link me.
Erm... You know Guest (elaborate name!), constructive criticism is something, artists usually appreciate.
But degrading all comics from a certain country for their "bad and inferior" style, when those comics actually show as many different styles if not more than your self-proclaimed "superior" western comics. That's just a load of crap! Especially since the latter aren't drawn in one style alone themselves. There are tons of different "Western Styles" out there. With vast differences.
Now either you are trolling or you are just really, really bad at this "constructive criticism" thing. Either way, your statement above isn't worth the bandwith it uses up, unless you clarify. At least make clear, <i>which</i> style exactly you'd like to see. And actually say and not just imply just what exactly you mean by "weird manga convention".
It was meant to be the normal kind of criticism, not necessarily the constructive kind, although by "western style", I mean a fairly realistic style that doesn't rely on anything originating in Japan, because frankly, outside of American and Japanese comics, there aren't a whole lot of other styles commonly used.
I don't like being called a troll, though. The general consensus among most people (except for the Japanese and a dwindling population of so-called "weeaboos", many of which have serious perversion issues) is that anime is cheap, ugly, half-assed, and only drags quality down. Just look at how many manga-style comics are on the bad webcomics wiki; it's probably a majority.
All I am saying is that a potentially good comic ought not to be wasted by having such awful art, especially when it has been shown that the artist(s) are perfectly capable of drawing it in a realistic and western style.
Manga carries an increasing stigma to it, one that will only get worse as more and more people turn against it. Most people who used to like anime in their youth have now turned against it (including me, to be fair), and fans of that style are becoming ever more insular and perverted. Just look at 4chan if you don't believe me. Soon, that style will be too toxic for most people to appreciate, and it will become a niche product, mostly because in order to survive, it has to pander to the bizaare demands of an ever-shrinking fanbase that increasingly consists of people who have serious mental health problems.
This isn't the random trolling that you see on 4chan, and this isn't some random rant. I still maintain that the western style is, was, and always will be superior, simply because it looks like what it is supposed to be. Like, a persons' closed eyes are not supposed to look like " ^^ ". It looks lazy and rushed, as if it was the results of some person locked in an animation studio for 20 hours a day working on low quality paper in order to rush out 40 episodes of the same sorta crap that was being produced for 30 years by unoriginal minds whose characters all look similar.
If the person who draws the comic was unable to draw any better, that would be a possible, if lame excuse, but the fact is, given what has been drawn, it is very, very clear that whoever draws this has far greater skill and the ability to draw in more than one style. I know this is an unusual way to give praise to a person's artistic skills, but there you go.
Basically, this comic will not go anywhere the creators probably want it to go if the anime/manga stuff keeps up. I hope to God it isn't already linked to on 4chan.
They are going at it with all to see. Not sure who to feel sorry for more. Loth for not getting what the guy meant, the guy for what he's about to experience, or Cade for not seeing what experience the guy thought he was getting.
@Guest, Bravo and well stated. The truth of the matter is that we decided to do a blend. Like Adam Warren, we realize that Manga has it's problems and Western has it's problems. Adam Warren has always been on the outer edges for being just to Western to be a Manga Artist and to Manga to be a serious Western Artist.
Everyone is entitled to their opinion, and everyone who can logically and rationally back up their opinion has my respect. I myself can't draw. Order of the Stick looks better than what I do, so I make my piece writing, and in my own opinion there are far better amuetur writers out there than me.
We tried to choose the widest blend on the internet to appeal to as many fans as we can. But I can pretty much tell our Demographic is probably 90 to 95% male and mid teens to mid twenties.
The artist and I are from a generation when if you wanted to watch Anime you dug through the bargain bins and were happy for a dubbed version of Sailor Moon. I've seen this decay in anime, and I'm certainly one of those who used to love reading Manga. Not so much anymore. But that said Chris Clarmenot and a few other writers have killed it for Western Comics.
I don't know if we're on 4Chan, other than the one Image of Cade dressed up as Getter Robo G's Getter Dragon I put that there trying to see if I could start a Meme. One of our Fans pointed out where on Rule 34.
As a creator of the comic I can either shake my fist and pull an Alan Moore and not accept that people will want to do something to my work I didn't anticipate, or I can accept that at some level, the naivette, that they like my work enough to do their own spin on it.
@ Guest; First thanks for reading and sharing your opinion, I'm glad for any and all feedback so keep it coming. Second I've stated on previous pages my inner conflict of developing my style, trying to draw like a badass (a la Michale Turner, Jim lee, Adam Kubert, ect.), but still keeping my love of the manga style since I grew up with stuff like Ranma 1/2, Tenchi Muyo!, DBZ, and of course Akira. So everything I draw is part of the grand experiment, since there are still a number of things I'm terrible at drawing. I ask, please keep reading, try to enjoy. But bear with me, since I'm using this comic to sharpen my teeth, find what works, what needs work. And again, thank you for reading.
I think your doing a good job eflint, comic art isn't easy I shpould no I cant draw a comic book worth crap that's why im the author of my comic which hopefuly will be up soon
First of all: I did not call you a troll, I said that you 'might' be one. Experience says that at least 5 out of 10 people to write a post like yours are.
You however did just more or less call me a so called weeaboo with very likely serious perversion issues, thankyousoverymuchforthat.
Not many comics outside America and Japan my ass! While it's not as big anymore as it was in the past, the French/Belgian comics still are big. Around here (read Europe) still just as big if not bigger than the American comics in fact. You know, things like Tintin, Lucky Luke, the Smurfs... I could go on for hours here.
Realistic art style... I've seen only a very few Western comics coming at least close to some manga I've read in that department, Crying Freeman being a nice Japanese example here. I told you, there are at least as many if not more different styles in manga as in Western comics. Don't base everything you say on things like Pokemon, Naruto and tentacle porn!
Same goes for "awful art" and "low quality". Heck, an anime was good enough to win the Academy Award for Best Animated Movie only a few years ago. And that one wasn't really an exception from the rule qualitywise, at least not among cinema releases.
The "General consensus"... yeah right! That's probably why sale numbers of anime and manga are still rising, even though it long has become part of the mainstream. Yes, there are many people who share your opinion. But it's pretty far from being the general consensus. And if you'll ask around, most people who used to like anime either still do or just don't really give a shit anymore, save for some still cherished brands. Only very few have actually turned against it. At least around here (read: Central Europe).
I said it before, I'll say it again: There are Western comics, but there is no such thing as one Western Style as you put it here. There are dozens to hundreds different styles in Western comics, many of which are no better or worse than most average manga styles.
The stigma, manga and anime carry with themselves is actually strongly DEcreasing.
A decade ago, when I said to like anime and manga, I had to explain to people that there was way more to it than porn.
Nowadays all I need to explain is, that there is more than series just for kids and Naruto.
Now you don't like a certain manga style, the one that is probably best known in the west and often copied by webcomics: That's fine. And I'll heavily agree that there is an overload of it on the net. With a huge dosis of low quality, badly or completely uninspired drawn stuff.
But that doesn't change the fact, that there is a lot of good stuff out there as well. Mainly off the web, that's for sure. But the way you are degrading a whole source of origin here (not genre, mind you. Manga is not a genre, it's a definition of origin, no more.) is just wrong.
And don't forget that the whole good/bad discussion with art will never really be an impartial one.
"Still rising"? Anime and manga sales have been plummeting for years, along with the population of Japan. There have even been news stories on how manga studios in Japan have been shutting down due to lack of demand for their products and lack of people interested in writing and drawing them.
A single anime was good enough to win a single academy award. Big deal. There have been none before or since, and every other time that position has been filled with a piece of western animation. Dozens on one side, one piece of anime on the other. Not good.
If anime were "part of the mainstream", it would not be in a separate category in stores. Were it mainstream, anime would be situated next to other works in sections classified by their genre, like adventure or mystery.
A decade ago, Dragonball Z and many other anime were standard fare on Cartoon Network and other channels. Not so much anymore. Anime is in decline, and the fanbase is turning more and more inward. This has led to a rise of increasingly weird, perverted material. Let's not discuss some of the stuff that could encompass.
The fact that you go to such extreme lengths to defend such a bizarre kind of comic art shows that my earlier classification of you is probably close to the truth.
Guys, as much as I love the discussion I think this might be a determent to future readers to see a huge debate on the latest page.
In that vein I created a thread on the forum to house your discussion. I like the back and forth and don't want to curtail it just move it.
It's amazing to see how much the comic has grown since the first time I stumbled across this through curiosity of new comics to read. That makes me all giddy inside. :)
wow. that made my day reading that art debate. now, to business.
first off, bravo to guest for being able to defend his/her opinion so brilliantly, and not being one of these trolls that criticize and never visit again. Lukkai, having not seen your response to guests rebuttal yet, i still agree with several of your points, even tho i would tend to side with guest on a lot of the points.
now,even tho i commented earlier on the whole separate conversation misunderstanding dealy, i just want to throw out the fact that i love the art in this comic, and seeing how it has progressed and evolved into a style kinda of its own. seeing how my artistic ability is limited to abstract tribal patterns, and drafting with a pencil and paper, this is pretty cool to me. not that i dont enjoy some anime or manga, like naruto, dbz, final fantasy, yada yada yada, but this is a honest to god evolving and expanding work of art. EFlint, MirlinthLoth, my hat is off to the pair of you. you have done an astounding job with this comic, and i always am looking forward to the next issue. please, dont give up on this!
now, mirlinthloth, i believe you asked what we would like to see in a donation wallpaper. while i do enjoy the past few nsfw ones,i have something a tad more complicated, time consuming, difficult, and frustrating in mind. you have been warned.
i want to see an all out battle scene, with the our favorite heros beating the crap out of a demon horde or something. something dark, violent, politically incorrect, you know, awesome. Lets say a scantily clad loth with her sword cutting someone in half, ral doing his glowing eye walking death mage of doom thing, cade in assassin getup backstabbing someone with the bag on his head with a crazy look on its "face", and finally kinuko in that outfit she wore when she beat up that ghost kicking the shit out of someone. with them side by side, surrounded by fire, blood, dead people, and pissed off enemies, this would be awesome. understandably, you might have to charge more than 3 bucks. i would pay 5 in a heartbeat, and because its you guys, i would go as high as 7.
now whether you actually go with this or not is completely up to you, but if you choose not to, i would like to commission this of EFlint that he make this a backburner project and i will pay him for it when its finished.
Did you leave Sevikira out of the battle scene on purpose, figuring maybe she hasn't been with them long enough to be part of the core group? She is listed as a "main character" in the wiki along with the original four. On the other hand, Loth will probably be happy if Sevikira gets left out!
Now that said, both the artist and I are happily looking forward to the time when his student loans are paid and he doesn't have to work 40 hours a week in retail and can instead do 40 hours a week on the comic.
Hence why we started doing Donations, your donations for our wallpapers are going a long way towards covering our advertisements.
That stated, is there anything specific you guys wanna see in donations?
@Uhl, that's kinda Ral's thing.
@Groove, I'm a fan of the last one myself
@Comic, I think it started on the wrong foot.
also it change when he describ her aperence
ps why the heck did my last post post twice?
But degrading all comics from a certain country for their "bad and inferior" style, when those comics actually show as many different styles if not more than your self-proclaimed "superior" western comics. That's just a load of crap! Especially since the latter aren't drawn in one style alone themselves. There are tons of different "Western Styles" out there. With vast differences.
Now either you are trolling or you are just really, really bad at this "constructive criticism" thing. Either way, your statement above isn't worth the bandwith it uses up, unless you clarify. At least make clear, <i>which</i> style exactly you'd like to see. And actually say and not just imply just what exactly you mean by "weird manga convention".
I don't like being called a troll, though. The general consensus among most people (except for the Japanese and a dwindling population of so-called "weeaboos", many of which have serious perversion issues) is that anime is cheap, ugly, half-assed, and only drags quality down. Just look at how many manga-style comics are on the bad webcomics wiki; it's probably a majority.
All I am saying is that a potentially good comic ought not to be wasted by having such awful art, especially when it has been shown that the artist(s) are perfectly capable of drawing it in a realistic and western style.
Manga carries an increasing stigma to it, one that will only get worse as more and more people turn against it. Most people who used to like anime in their youth have now turned against it (including me, to be fair), and fans of that style are becoming ever more insular and perverted. Just look at 4chan if you don't believe me. Soon, that style will be too toxic for most people to appreciate, and it will become a niche product, mostly because in order to survive, it has to pander to the bizaare demands of an ever-shrinking fanbase that increasingly consists of people who have serious mental health problems.
This isn't the random trolling that you see on 4chan, and this isn't some random rant. I still maintain that the western style is, was, and always will be superior, simply because it looks like what it is supposed to be. Like, a persons' closed eyes are not supposed to look like " ^^ ". It looks lazy and rushed, as if it was the results of some person locked in an animation studio for 20 hours a day working on low quality paper in order to rush out 40 episodes of the same sorta crap that was being produced for 30 years by unoriginal minds whose characters all look similar.
If the person who draws the comic was unable to draw any better, that would be a possible, if lame excuse, but the fact is, given what has been drawn, it is very, very clear that whoever draws this has far greater skill and the ability to draw in more than one style. I know this is an unusual way to give praise to a person's artistic skills, but there you go.
Basically, this comic will not go anywhere the creators probably want it to go if the anime/manga stuff keeps up. I hope to God it isn't already linked to on 4chan.
Everyone is entitled to their opinion, and everyone who can logically and rationally back up their opinion has my respect. I myself can't draw. Order of the Stick looks better than what I do, so I make my piece writing, and in my own opinion there are far better amuetur writers out there than me.
We tried to choose the widest blend on the internet to appeal to as many fans as we can. But I can pretty much tell our Demographic is probably 90 to 95% male and mid teens to mid twenties.
The artist and I are from a generation when if you wanted to watch Anime you dug through the bargain bins and were happy for a dubbed version of Sailor Moon. I've seen this decay in anime, and I'm certainly one of those who used to love reading Manga. Not so much anymore. But that said Chris Clarmenot and a few other writers have killed it for Western Comics.
I don't know if we're on 4Chan, other than the one Image of Cade dressed up as Getter Robo G's Getter Dragon I put that there trying to see if I could start a Meme. One of our Fans pointed out where on Rule 34.
As a creator of the comic I can either shake my fist and pull an Alan Moore and not accept that people will want to do something to my work I didn't anticipate, or I can accept that at some level, the naivette, that they like my work enough to do their own spin on it.
Sheesh, where do I start.
First of all: I did not call you a troll, I said that you 'might' be one. Experience says that at least 5 out of 10 people to write a post like yours are.
You however did just more or less call me a so called weeaboo with very likely serious perversion issues, thankyousoverymuchforthat.
Not many comics outside America and Japan my ass! While it's not as big anymore as it was in the past, the French/Belgian comics still are big. Around here (read Europe) still just as big if not bigger than the American comics in fact. You know, things like Tintin, Lucky Luke, the Smurfs... I could go on for hours here.
Realistic art style... I've seen only a very few Western comics coming at least close to some manga I've read in that department, Crying Freeman being a nice Japanese example here. I told you, there are at least as many if not more different styles in manga as in Western comics. Don't base everything you say on things like Pokemon, Naruto and tentacle porn!
Same goes for "awful art" and "low quality". Heck, an anime was good enough to win the Academy Award for Best Animated Movie only a few years ago. And that one wasn't really an exception from the rule qualitywise, at least not among cinema releases.
The "General consensus"... yeah right! That's probably why sale numbers of anime and manga are still rising, even though it long has become part of the mainstream. Yes, there are many people who share your opinion. But it's pretty far from being the general consensus. And if you'll ask around, most people who used to like anime either still do or just don't really give a shit anymore, save for some still cherished brands. Only very few have actually turned against it. At least around here (read: Central Europe).
I said it before, I'll say it again: There are Western comics, but there is no such thing as one Western Style as you put it here. There are dozens to hundreds different styles in Western comics, many of which are no better or worse than most average manga styles.
The stigma, manga and anime carry with themselves is actually strongly DEcreasing.
A decade ago, when I said to like anime and manga, I had to explain to people that there was way more to it than porn.
Nowadays all I need to explain is, that there is more than series just for kids and Naruto.
Now you don't like a certain manga style, the one that is probably best known in the west and often copied by webcomics: That's fine. And I'll heavily agree that there is an overload of it on the net. With a huge dosis of low quality, badly or completely uninspired drawn stuff.
But that doesn't change the fact, that there is a lot of good stuff out there as well. Mainly off the web, that's for sure. But the way you are degrading a whole source of origin here (not genre, mind you. Manga is not a genre, it's a definition of origin, no more.) is just wrong.
And don't forget that the whole good/bad discussion with art will never really be an impartial one.
I think that about covers it all.
A single anime was good enough to win a single academy award. Big deal. There have been none before or since, and every other time that position has been filled with a piece of western animation. Dozens on one side, one piece of anime on the other. Not good.
If anime were "part of the mainstream", it would not be in a separate category in stores. Were it mainstream, anime would be situated next to other works in sections classified by their genre, like adventure or mystery.
A decade ago, Dragonball Z and many other anime were standard fare on Cartoon Network and other channels. Not so much anymore. Anime is in decline, and the fanbase is turning more and more inward. This has led to a rise of increasingly weird, perverted material. Let's not discuss some of the stuff that could encompass.
The fact that you go to such extreme lengths to defend such a bizarre kind of comic art shows that my earlier classification of you is probably close to the truth.
In that vein I created a thread on the forum to house your discussion. I like the back and forth and don't want to curtail it just move it.
--edit--
It helps if I link the thread.
http://mirlinthloth.proboards.com/index.cgi?action=display&board=gendisc&thread=19
Hehe, boob.
first off, bravo to guest for being able to defend his/her opinion so brilliantly, and not being one of these trolls that criticize and never visit again. Lukkai, having not seen your response to guests rebuttal yet, i still agree with several of your points, even tho i would tend to side with guest on a lot of the points.
now,even tho i commented earlier on the whole separate conversation misunderstanding dealy, i just want to throw out the fact that i love the art in this comic, and seeing how it has progressed and evolved into a style kinda of its own. seeing how my artistic ability is limited to abstract tribal patterns, and drafting with a pencil and paper, this is pretty cool to me. not that i dont enjoy some anime or manga, like naruto, dbz, final fantasy, yada yada yada, but this is a honest to god evolving and expanding work of art. EFlint, MirlinthLoth, my hat is off to the pair of you. you have done an astounding job with this comic, and i always am looking forward to the next issue. please, dont give up on this!
now, mirlinthloth, i believe you asked what we would like to see in a donation wallpaper. while i do enjoy the past few nsfw ones,i have something a tad more complicated, time consuming, difficult, and frustrating in mind. you have been warned.
i want to see an all out battle scene, with the our favorite heros beating the crap out of a demon horde or something. something dark, violent, politically incorrect, you know, awesome. Lets say a scantily clad loth with her sword cutting someone in half, ral doing his glowing eye walking death mage of doom thing, cade in assassin getup backstabbing someone with the bag on his head with a crazy look on its "face", and finally kinuko in that outfit she wore when she beat up that ghost kicking the shit out of someone. with them side by side, surrounded by fire, blood, dead people, and pissed off enemies, this would be awesome. understandably, you might have to charge more than 3 bucks. i would pay 5 in a heartbeat, and because its you guys, i would go as high as 7.
now whether you actually go with this or not is completely up to you, but if you choose not to, i would like to commission this of EFlint that he make this a backburner project and i will pay him for it when its finished.
cheers all
crzymnky666