Two things. First, Fan Art update! Ellie drew me another fanart over the weekend, a Pants drawing just in time for Halloween!!!
Secondly, I wanna talk briefly about reader feedback. Couple strips ago, I decided to try adding some hatching to the thicker portions of the outlines as a shading method, in my usual “throw crap on the wall and see what sticks” style.
I was on the fence about how I liked it as an art style until I read a reader comment mentioning how much better they liked the artwork back when I did the “cel” style of shading.
Something about that comment stuck at me and I had to admit they had a good point. So, dunno how apparent it is in this strip with all the snow obscuring everything but I thought I’d bring the cel shading back and, well… see what sticks to the wall, as I do.
RIP hatching.
Oh no… That semi truck is forboding… Please don’tbtell me we’re about to lose Pohl… Alternative is that it’s spmething that has an effect on her powers as a latent Echo…or nothing at all. Personally, I vpte for soor number three.
(Seriously, tho, keep u the amazing work. I’m on thw edge pf ky seat every update!)
Both they and it are driving in the correct lanes, so with a little bit of luck, nothing’ll happen and it’s just scenery:)
I think maybe the thing to pay attention to is not so much the truck, but the snow.
Selkie does not do well in cold, remember. Nor, I expect, does Pohl, although as an adult, and an Echo, he normally knows how to keep himself safe. But what if there’s an accident? Pretty sure we’re not going to LOSE Pohl, that wouldn’t fit into the story-shape so far, but he and Selkie may be endangered. Todd may have to do some life-saving of his own.
i was hit by the same thought – compared to humans, sarnothis are WAY more in danger in the cold. forget about accidents, a simple break down of the heating and pohl+selkie would be comatose within minutes!
I suppose I’m the only one who thought the truck looked like a dragon. However, it doesn look threatening to me.
When I was a toll collector years ago, I sometimes thought that some of of the trucks looked a little bit like dragons. In particular, the one from The Neverending Story.
I LIKE your “throw styles in and see how they work” method. It’s interesting. Sometimes it’ll lead to progress, other times it’ll be a step backwards and require some changes.
The hatching was a bit distracting, though. I’m not sure it works so well with the thicker outlines. There’s something to be said for a nice, clean style. (Also, if you haven’t yet read them, go check out Scott McCloud’s books Understanding Comics and Making Comics (and, if you like, the one between those two), which might give you some interesting insight into possible styles and how things work. I found them enlightening.
P.S. It’s the Extra Life charity fundraiser again (November 4th)! Last year we gamed for 16+ hours and raised $127.78 for Seattle Children’s Hospital, just 22 cents shy of our goal. This year I’ve doubled the goal and hope we get somewhere near it.
I’m waiting on the start of the month to “seed” the fund (make my first donation), but the page is all set up, and the link should be under my name on this comment. On Saturday, November 4th, my YouTube channel should have gaming videos posted roughly every half-hour throughout the morning and afternoon (we can’t livestream, due to sucky internet) and as much as I can manage through the rest of the day.
https://www.youtube.com/user/Kilyle
…missing parenthesis… another reason I hate not being able to edit my previous posts. Sigh.
I tend to be concerned with a comic if I can go back years and be unable to tell the difference between that and the latest strip. When the art style ceases to evolve, the story tends to also stagnate.
I feel there is just that far you can improve before you are pretry much changing style.
I like this comic for it’s simple and utilitarian art style, it does the job of conveying stuff without getting in the way of the story. There are a lot of webcomics where the art is really nice and complex but actually makes the action hard to follow for me or just look so busy you miss the details that matter.
I particularly love this in EGS (egscomics.com). Like, just go to the site and compare the first and the last pages. And yet, the evolution had been gradual…
The art evolution in EGS is incredible, but the thing I’m more impressed with is the evolution of character.
Tedd starting out as “In case you can’t tell, Tedd’s a guy” and being a Chivalrous Pervert (if we’re generous) from the get-go, and by now having come out as genderqueer and one of the most positive, supportive friends in the world of webcomics (and a woobie).
Diane starting out as a straw antagonist type and developing into a strong friend with a razor-sharp intellect that picks up on connections intuitively.
The way the relationships that in any other medium would be pretty much fixed have instead moved around and allowed for growth and change as the characters, fairly realistically despite all the magic and sci-fi elements, try to work out what their true desires are and how to best express them and connect with others.
The way that certain negative characters have developed stories to make them more sympathetic — and characters who are largely sympathetic, such as Tedd’s dad, have maintained certain negative character traits (in his case, being unaccepting of Tedd’s cross-gendered behavior). Very like Selkie here, in that regard.
It’s far too easy to make a list of “unacceptable bigotry” and terraform all the sympathetic characters so they never express these ideas, but in the real world, most people are sympathetic, and most people have prejudices of one sort or another. It’s far more interesting to explore prejudices within the framework of an otherwise sympathetic character than to just “other” them (as in, “only They would be prejudiced; We are above that sort of mindset”).
Heck, J. K. Rowling did great things with the prejudices of major characters, most notably with Ron Weasley, and even found ways to point out the reader’s prejudices with every book (go look up John Granger’s books on the subject, such as The Hidden Key to Harry Potter).
So, yes, the art evolution has been outstanding — it hardly looks like the same comic! But that’s hardly the only outstanding change that has happened across the history of El Goonish Shive ^_^
That was one of the big complaints with Dominic Deegan. Though, to my mind, he had a particular art style that he enjoyed and was easy enough to not be a stumbling block to him as an artist or to most of the readers, and portrayed the action well enough that it didn’t necessarily need to change in order to do its job.
Plus, I didn’t notice any dearth of storytelling; it got a little weird at times, but he brought it all together, and the characters were quite enjoyable. And it’s not like his art style didn’t improve at all — it just wasn’t as much improvement as some people wanted.
So I think that while artistic improvement is generally taken as a given and is a positive thing, the lack of it isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Heck, look at Dinosaur Comics: Exactly the same comic every single time, and still a fun read.
Snow, don’t talk to me about snow. In December, that’s when I’ll be willing to hear talk about snow. Iowa, 1983-85, somewhere in that range, I had my fill of snow for a life time. I’m done with it! You can have all of mine, Take It!
I’m having trouble taking the “blizzard” comment seriously when those roads clearly don’t have slush on them. Can’t be snowing THAT hard or impact visibility THAT much when they’re still mostly concrete-colored….
I live in México, in Cuautla, we have had the most horrid heat filled year of my lifetime, I’ll switch places gladly, you can cover up for cold, but when you’re hot all you can do is get naked and still feel like you’re in the oven of hell
I got two words that tell me one cannot dress up enough to go out, Period;
Thirty Below. That’s all I have to say of cold. Hot is just hot. Any air movement helps cool, right? Air movement when it’s cold just pulls more heat out of you. Please ship me some of your heat, I’ll pay the postage!
On one hand, TRUTH.
On the other, maybe it’s just started snowing and the road hasn’t had time to get covered yet.
PAAAANTS! Also, do what you want with the art. Shoot, even if this just becomes a novel site, i’ll still read the comic^^
So… we are TWO STRIPS AWAY FROM # 1000.
HOLY POOP YOU GUYS.
Had to explain Pants to my husband. I was doing laundry the other day and couldn’t help myself, “Paaants!” Also, what is this hatching that you speak of? I’m a little illiterate when it comes to drawing styles.
Go to the last two pages, notice how the characters all had these weird scratches all along their face outline, like some kind of hair growths?
…was that a clue? Is that one of the reasons Selkie’s power was suppressed?
that Pants drawing is straight up killer — pun intended. Way to go Ellie! Thank you for sharing.
Oh $DEITY, don’t let that snow comment be foreshadowing.
I love this strip <3
Grocery store domination is something I definitly wanna see. I picture Selkie wandering between the shelves with various glowing seafood floating behind her and a big smile on her face. Todd is distracted with something, maye he’s reading a price tag. A little kid stares at the fish while her mother freaks out. The store clerk is used to Selkie/sarnothi by now and just rolls his eyes.
Also, I have to admit that I completely forgot about Pohl’s children. Are they Echos, too? Did they even come up in the discussion between Gien and the others?
Selkie being unable to tell that she’s glowing is concerning, though. Even if she learns how to switch it off, what if it comes back during school or something and she doesn’t realize? It will be hard enough to not tell anyone about her visit and she can’t wear her new clothes to school, either.
They might be echoes since it does seem to have a genetic competent but it’s also implied to not be a sure thing.
They’re also very young. That’s something we’ll probably see in a few years, if it happens.
Dave, while I support your choices as Supreme Being for your universe, I am for artistic growth. So do what you like, but maybe look at Scott Quick’s artwork or Edward Gorey’s work , and look at how fine the lines they use are and how close together the lines they use are to achieve the look they get, and check if your tools pencils or brushes are set to 9 pixels or to 2 pixels, you might like the shading with the finer lines and closer together. But it is more work.
Who are some web-cartoonists that you enjoy the work of?
I initially got the idea to try ditching the colored shading from Gunnerkrigg Court. He mostly seems to only use shading on the characters during big scenes, the day-to-day character art is minimally shaded if at all. I’ve also found I prefer thicker outlines to thin ones (thin outlines sort of don’t even feel like they’re present at all), which is a thing I’ve been seeing in various mangas.
I currently draw with a 30pt custom brush, it tends to be about half that in practice though after pressure sensitivity kicks in.
I’ll check those artists out, thanks! You’d think that after doing Selkie for seven years I’d have stopped with the style experimentation, but I’m like a id in a candy shop sometimes. I see some other artist draw a way and I wanna try it for myself. XD
Ellie’s “Pants” looks a lot more menacing. I’m going to keep that image in mind as the story moves forward.