A friend tells me that Metabots is actually a serious endeavour, that saddens and sickens me. Failure Rating 110% (This impossible statistic is just for you, Mrs. Anal Retentive Elementary Statistics Professor!). Anyway, here's the promised second half of another one of my boring ass essays.
I remember when I first stumbled across a webcomic. Back about three or four years ago, when there weren't all that many of them. A dozen or so, probably. I think it was Sluggy Freelance that I first read and enjoyed. It had a unique style, the humour was funny. Aside from being a bit raunchier, it wasn't all that different from a syndicated newspaper comic strip at all. Daily black and white, with colour on Sunday. There were a few others, as well: Kevin & Kell, Superosity, Penny Arcade, and PvP Online. The scene was new, fresh, unexplored, unexploited, and ripe. It took talent to become known, to wrestle a spot among the notorious and popular.
I picked up a pretty long list of webcomics that I frequently read pretty quickly. I loved it, it was all for free, and it was all so easily accessible. My father had this habit of taking the newspaper to work and we on the homefront, namely my mother and I, never saw ink nor newsprint of it. Which was annoying, because I've always been an adamant fan of comic strips. I still read them when I get the chance, but, quite frankly, webcomics are just too damn easy to read, so I'm not overly motivated to fetch a paper when I can get my fix with a double-click.
As the years went on, the scene became saturated. Supersatured, even. With the rise and fall of Big Panda, and the founding of Keenspot, now Top Web Comics, and so many other sites simply dedicated to listing a directory of comics, to say that the presence of webcomics on the internet has ballooned is to say that Walmart is a store. In other words, obvious.
I've noticed a few patterns. In general, you have the comics that, really, boil down to spin-offs. To count off the number of strips that wish they were Penny Arcade would take awhile, alone. You have the comics that are done by friends for friends, which, on occasion, become something hugely greater than just a photocopied page passed between a dozen friends. I think the most notable examples of that would be 8-Bit Theatre and Mac Hall. Which brings me to the sprite comic. Watch me segue into a new paragraph centred about them, too.
It was the accidental use of Megaman sprites by Bob And George that gave life to this new medium. Instead of fading into obscurity as another horrible hand-drawn comic strip that possesses art so hideous that it grossly overshadows the decent writing, Bob and George became a strip with decent writing accompanied by easily recognizable and, more importantly, replicable images. Blah, blah, skipping the whole controversy of copyright infringement and what have you, let's just say the genre of sprite comics is now hotter than... Uh, fire?
What's my take on the idea of sprite comics? Well, it gives someone with no artistic ability, except for possibly a knack for collage, to make a strip and exemplify his writing ability. That's great, that's fine. The problem arises when you account for a bunch of lazy bastards who can't draw and can't write, and think that throwing gay jokes, shit, and profanity into a blender is a comic strip worth posting on the internet. I have read way too fucking many sprite comics that never should've been made. So, what do I say? If you happen to be an aspiring comic strip writer who can't find a matching artist, go for it. If you think that "U R SO GAY!!!!!" is a good punchline, then you should do two things: first, don't make a sprite comic strip, and, second, ram the nearest spoon so far into your eye that you die.
Sprite comics demonstrate the age of art we are in. The age where massive reproduction is a higher priority than refined talent and practice. I don't believe it is exactly a bad thing, for it gives people a greater chance at becoming an artist and honing their ability. It marks the end of the aristocracy being the only class of citizens who have the luxury of creating art in some form or fashion. I meant for this essay to be more serious, but I think I kind of failed and lost the will to think it through. Maybe I'll redo it someday, but, for now, this is what you get. Enjoy.
Adios.
Orotund Brio of Art
Embodiment of a Vociferous Zeitgeist: Online Comics
I remember when I first stumbled across a webcomic. Back about three or four years ago, when there weren't all that many of them. A dozen or so, probably. I think it was Sluggy Freelance that I first read and enjoyed. It had a unique style, the humour was funny. Aside from being a bit raunchier, it wasn't all that different from a syndicated newspaper comic strip at all. Daily black and white, with colour on Sunday. There were a few others, as well: Kevin & Kell, Superosity, Penny Arcade, and PvP Online. The scene was new, fresh, unexplored, unexploited, and ripe. It took talent to become known, to wrestle a spot among the notorious and popular.
I picked up a pretty long list of webcomics that I frequently read pretty quickly. I loved it, it was all for free, and it was all so easily accessible. My father had this habit of taking the newspaper to work and we on the homefront, namely my mother and I, never saw ink nor newsprint of it. Which was annoying, because I've always been an adamant fan of comic strips. I still read them when I get the chance, but, quite frankly, webcomics are just too damn easy to read, so I'm not overly motivated to fetch a paper when I can get my fix with a double-click.
As the years went on, the scene became saturated. Supersatured, even. With the rise and fall of Big Panda, and the founding of Keenspot, now Top Web Comics, and so many other sites simply dedicated to listing a directory of comics, to say that the presence of webcomics on the internet has ballooned is to say that Walmart is a store. In other words, obvious.
I've noticed a few patterns. In general, you have the comics that, really, boil down to spin-offs. To count off the number of strips that wish they were Penny Arcade would take awhile, alone. You have the comics that are done by friends for friends, which, on occasion, become something hugely greater than just a photocopied page passed between a dozen friends. I think the most notable examples of that would be 8-Bit Theatre and Mac Hall. Which brings me to the sprite comic. Watch me segue into a new paragraph centred about them, too.
It was the accidental use of Megaman sprites by Bob And George that gave life to this new medium. Instead of fading into obscurity as another horrible hand-drawn comic strip that possesses art so hideous that it grossly overshadows the decent writing, Bob and George became a strip with decent writing accompanied by easily recognizable and, more importantly, replicable images. Blah, blah, skipping the whole controversy of copyright infringement and what have you, let's just say the genre of sprite comics is now hotter than... Uh, fire?
What's my take on the idea of sprite comics? Well, it gives someone with no artistic ability, except for possibly a knack for collage, to make a strip and exemplify his writing ability. That's great, that's fine. The problem arises when you account for a bunch of lazy bastards who can't draw and can't write, and think that throwing gay jokes, shit, and profanity into a blender is a comic strip worth posting on the internet. I have read way too fucking many sprite comics that never should've been made. So, what do I say? If you happen to be an aspiring comic strip writer who can't find a matching artist, go for it. If you think that "U R SO GAY!!!!!" is a good punchline, then you should do two things: first, don't make a sprite comic strip, and, second, ram the nearest spoon so far into your eye that you die.
Sprite comics demonstrate the age of art we are in. The age where massive reproduction is a higher priority than refined talent and practice. I don't believe it is exactly a bad thing, for it gives people a greater chance at becoming an artist and honing their ability. It marks the end of the aristocracy being the only class of citizens who have the luxury of creating art in some form or fashion. I meant for this essay to be more serious, but I think I kind of failed and lost the will to think it through. Maybe I'll redo it someday, but, for now, this is what you get. Enjoy.
Adios.
EOF
posted by c.Jay Wrong at
4:13 PM
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