Ravy 2011 Pg. 40.

Long long time ago I made mention that I spent hours pasting together a new background, then forgot to save the extra stuff not used in the panel.

A week later I found it.

I have a not new, but new to me way of making these. I save them as JPGs. The dithering gives backgrounds and objects a "rough textured" appearance. I like it. Of course I then resave them as PNGs to prevent any further dithering.

One more thing:

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How Other Comics Annoy Me Personally: Part 3. Take your pinky off teh shift key.

I'd bet you're probably thinking I have certain people in mind. Of course I do. I'm constantly taking the time to quickly look at their webpages and comics as I type this out. But I'm not going to name names. Why not? Because I keep seeing these annoyances repeated over and over. Just because teh really cool kids did it, doesn't mean you'll (me) be cool as well. Just because they did this spectacular effect, doesn't mean it was any good to begin with. Count how many times it was used. If was used once, or even a few times, (or even in every comic,) probably wasn't a good idea to begin with and is not worth repeating.

In this rambling misgiving I am going after the comics themselves. What I am NOT going to do is criticize story, jokes, writing, or even the art. What's good and what is not good is subjective. One person finds stick figures a number one, the next finds it crap. Someone may think jokes about lesbian twin sisters are funny, or maybe they think it's just gay.

I just got done reading a comic about a fairly popular video game amongst a group of hardcore fans and discovered that while the art style was very distracting, I found myself ignoring it and reading the text. It was well written and the jokes were pretty funny.

Another reason I won't name names is that I don't want to piss off certain people. SO I'll just go back to my random ramblings.

Headers and footers. Sometimes these can be excessively too large. I opened up one of these comics in MS Paint with the magnification set at 100%; I took a tape measure to my monitor and measured it. The whole comic was about seven and a half inches tall. The header and footer was two and a half inches. Really? Inch and a quarter apiece? Really? That really is annoying. You got to have some way to identify your comic sure, do a cover page. (Please not a “click here to enter.”) Put in some fancy, but small and undistracting title bar and if you must have a copyright statement keep it short, sweet, to the point, small, and undistracting.

Keep in mind how people read. Since I come from a European background I read left to right so I construct my comics the same way. I try and keep it so that there is no question as to which speech box is to be read first, second, third, and so on. The second will usually be to the right or below the first. Only rarely do speech boxes cross panels. I try not to cover up the characters at all costs. Though sometimes I have no choice or I need to hide something for a while. The text is clean and crisp (usually for easy editing if years later I find I mispelled a word,) and it is on a flat white background.

However, people still haven't learned from other people's mistakes. I've seen this font that puts a halo around the text. This would be a cool effect for angels, but not every character. It gets to be very difficult to read with the background showing through. Speaking of that, FOR GODDESS SAKE DON”T FADE THE TEXT BOX INTO THE BACKGROUND! On top of that DON”T USE A FONT LESS THAN A TEN AND THAT IS ANTI-ALIASSED! You do this, people won't read your comic because they can't. You may have Superman like vision, not everybody else can see through Lois Lane's clothes.

Now the occasional misspelled word is okay, but not okay in every line. Use a word predecessor to type everything out first and then copy/paste it into the comic. Get one with a spell check. You can download Open Office for free. (Buy the weigh, spell chucks wont cats gamma.)

How do we read? Typically you don't move your head , you don't move the book, you don't move the monitor. You move your eyes. (And sometimes lips.) So make sure you consider this: NO LEFT TO RIGHT SCROLL BARS! It is annoying to have to stop reading, move the mouse to the bottom of the browser and move the screen, continue reading, stop, scroll back to the left, continue reading, stop..... you get it? Be sure to chose a panel format that prevents left/right scroll bars. Consider the flow of the comic. Will the reader be able to at least understand which way to read it? I've seen comics constructed like it was a game of snake. You start in the upper left, then it's up, up, down, down, left, right, left, right, and Mr. T as B.A. Baracus.

One final bit about flow is once in a while I'll see the up to down method. It's not just a webcomic thing. Some nationally syndicated cartoonists and my local paper will often chop up comics to do this for space. It's annoying.

Here is one thing about writing and flow: This comic I was reading last year seemed as if it was changing stories halfway through the comic. Out of an eight panel or so comic, it felt like I was reading a different comic at around panel five. Not really annoying, just confusing. It was beautifully animated, just not a consistent read within one single comic.

Oops, Am I criticizing something I said I wasn't going to criticize? Put it to you this way, writing to me is the most important part. So what about stick figures? Good writing will overcome that every time. Then again, what's that song by Tim Wilson?

Plan ahead on your publication destination. If you have your own site which allows for the format, size, and color depth you desire, great. But not everybody can spend the money. So you decide to use a freebie site instead. These freebies can have many limitations. Some are not mentioned. Facebook changes all formats to JPG. They say you can upload a GIF, but it is re-GIFed at a lower quality or even changed to JPG. I have to consider that. One of my local papers runs a bad cartoon contest every year. I have to print out the comics, then they scan them in and resize for the paper. I've learned to make compromises of number of colors and what colors to use. For one comic I had to change the color of Penny's speech box so it wouldn't blend into the background.

Keep in mind that site providers will often shrink large comics down. So the reader will have to click on a thumbnail to see a slightly larger version, click on another thumbnail to see an even slightly larger thumbnail, to click on that to be blinded by white background.

Filenames. Keep your comics organized. If someone is asking about comic number 1495 you can look it up real quick and give an answer immediately instead of stalling for days trying to track it down. Plus, some readers save comics, they do like to reread them in order. A number of free providers have this strange tendency to generate completely random filenames. Like comic number 1 suddenly becomes 34r78106re2807314 b1bx018exb7t1e82t7bex871290te087.

If you can't control the file name, put the comic number in the header or footer.

Ravy 2011 Pg. 39.

Click Here.

Just like that, I completely throw you for a loop.

By the way, I have been conducting a experiment for about a month now. It seems to be working. I plan on implementing it soon.

Here's a hint: target="_top"

How Other Comics Annoy Me Personally: Part Two.

Continuing where I left off with web design and go in a more attitudinal direction.

Overdoing the graphics. Now the choice of a simplistic design versus a grandiose is a personal one. (Sometimes it seems as if the cartoonist spends more time on the back and next buttons than he does the actual comic). I believe that the comic is the most important part. That is why I said previously is to put it at the top and centered so it loads quicker. Putting up a bunch of surrounding graphics drastically slows down load times. Especially if you are on a slow server.

I use a cable modem, four GB of ram, Phenom 2 3.0, and a VelociRaptor. Some comics still take more than 20 seconds. Some of those comics are in JPG. You can say I'm being impatient, but think of all those people that are still on dial up. Combine a slow server with dial up and you can just forget about ever having an audience or even having a guy come back twice.

So what you can do is change servers. Which may mean a new URL. Please be sure to leave a note on the original site saying you have moved. I have given up on many a comic because I had thought the cartoonist had given up. Only to find years later that that I am now years behind in reading and collecting.

You have your nifty new high speed server. So now you think it is time to retool everything with all the new Java scripting, CSS, and layouts you have been studying on for months. Please don't shut down your site. Leave it up. You can do all this retooling on your hard drive without having to upload anything. Please continue updating the comic as you do this or else people will think you gave up. If you take your site down and only leave a message about it being under construction, and it may take longer than you think (it always does) and people will think you gave up. Also you won't get any new readers because the search bots can't crawl your site. So if there is an explosion of interest in some obscure Japanese video game, and you did some comics about it, you may wind up missing the boat.

You’re done with the retooling, spent weeks testing, retesting, and testing some more to make sure everything runs correctly. And you tested it some more. You've uploaded it. No complaints, or no complaints worth paying any attention too. Now's the time to take that extended vacation.

Please TELL US give us a time frame as to your expected return. Remember, these can take longer than you think (it always does.) When it does, give us a note saying that updates will resume a little later than expected.

Oh yes, updates, the thing that annoys me the most. Even if you have no regular update schedule, you have one. You fall into a habit of posting new comics at a certain time all the time. Fans are very smart and figure it out real quick. If you think that just because you don't have an announced schedule and you can skip today's, this week's, or this month's update, think again. Because of the fact you will fall into the habit of screwing off updates. It is always better to piss off readers with the content of the comic or your blog than it is by not updating because you're trying to get the date with some chick in a video game.

You must always update at the same time all the time. Us true fans are always forgiving of down servers, bad weather, melted CPUs, or a total loss of interest. Just be sure to tell us that you have found out that this thing called “woman” is more interesting than some comic about obscure Japanese video games, magic girls, and lesbians.

Next week: The comics themselves.

Ravy 2011 Pg. 38.

If you don't click here now, it may be too late.

Ain't nothing like forgetting those tiny little details that causes you to have to do a last minute mad dash to fix things.