15aug04
This particular essay will deal with the differences between hand drawn comics and sprite comics. I have been reading the funny pages for most of my life. My favourites have been Garfield, Bloom County, Beetle Bailey, and so on. I read them only to be reading them. I really didn’t get much enjoyment out of the comics page until much later in my life. When I started drawing my own comic I gained an appreciation for what other cartoonists went through. Drawing Garfield sitting on a counter can take up to several hours to complete. I my self just did a quick sketch and called it complete. Recently I have gone back and re-read some off the stuff from the Eighties and understood the jokes better. I think this is because the humor in most comics is not aimed at kids like most people seem to think. Taking my all time favourite, Bloom County, the jokes are adult oriented. From Steve Dallas competing with the wheelchair bound Cutter John for Bobbi Harlow’s affection, Apartheid in South Africa, to Donald Trump buying out the comic.
The winter of 2002 I discovered the sprite comic. The first one was Shadey Theatre. I enjoyed it because it was an interesting take on a video game I played entirely too much of. This was something I had always wanted to. I dreamed of taking the actual graphics and making new stories. Then along came Bob and George and I was hooked. One day I said to myself: “Self, this whole sprite comic thing seems to consist of nothing more than copy/paste; I bet I could do that.” Took a lot of comics before I got something that looked halfway decent, as evidenced by my scrap section. (By the way, take the ‘s’ off scrap.)
In the year and a half I have been doing the sprite version of Ravy, I have come across several differences between it and the old hand drawns. The first one I noticed was speed. It takes me longer to do a sprite and opposed to a hand drawn. Mostly this is because they were all just a quick sketch. Of course, times very depending on what I am doing. A hand dawn with Foxy took forever. There was just so much detail too her head to try and draw and make it look good. On the whole, it would take me about five minutes to do a three panel comic. A sprite comic will usually take me thirty minutes or more. I really don’t know why.
Next I noticed camera angles. They are pretty much non-existent in a sprite comic. You have only that 2D side view. You don’t have looking up, down, side to side, odd ball, over the shoulder, and so forth.
Publication is another difference. Most newspaper comics have to deliver on a daily basis. A web comic can and often is published at the author’s leisure. Sometimes this really irks me. Some like Dave Anez are dedicated and update most everyday. Some maybe once or twice a year; I’m not kidding. Rick O’Shay updated his comic a total of ten times in the year I was in Iraq. Speaking of publication, Jim Davis gets paid by newspapers to draw Garfield. I have to pay to publish Ravy on my web site.
I’ve mentioned dedication, let me elaborate. I’ve seen web comics disappear after as little as maybe ten comics. Some manage two or three hundred. Deccus made it 200 before he quit. I’m about ready to hit, on the official count, 650 comics. Unofficially, within the next month, I will have done more comics this year than I did last year. In the year and a half I have been doing the sprite version of Ravy, I have done more comics than some get done in three or four years. Now Cartoonists, if they strike it big, have to be dedicated for not just years, but decades. Charles Shultz did Peanuts for about 50 years. Blondie has been around for 70 years.
Self insertion is used quite a bit in the funny pages, but it is nowhere near as bad as a web comic author doing it. For the life of me can only come up with one instance of a cartoonist using godlike powers: Gary Larson in the last two Far Side panels.
The biggest difference I have noticed is the background detailing. Take a look at the comics in your newspaper. You don’t see much in the way of back grounds. I think this because time and space. Syndicated cartoonists have a daily concrete do or die deadline. They don’t have time to draw extensive backgrounds. Often they will draw one panel with a background to set the scene, then leave the rest blank or with some form of shading. It also depends on the author and their mood. Bill Waterson once said one day he would do a comic full of detail, then do one the next day with pretty much nothing in it. Some like Berkeley Breathed saved all the creative juices for the Sunday edition. Even then he would gravitate between simplistic and superfluous. On the issue of space, When a comic is first drawn, it is done on a piece of paper much lager than a 8.5 by 11 inch sheet of paper. This is shrunk down by newspapers for space. You lose a lot of detail and things become very blurry. The only real solution is to not draw a too much. Stick with what you really need.
Web comics tend be more detailed. Of course that depends on the author. I like having lotza details; though my favourite background is the main hallway, just a wood floor and a single colour wall. Dave Anez typically uses a single colour floor, single colour wall with two lines running through it. On occasion he’ll go less, or all out. Others like me, or Deccus go all out all the time. My reason is that I like to see such things and I like using them in my comic. Let’s admit it; it is a lot easier to use a background that somebody else made, namely Nintendo or Capcom.
Here are some examples of what I’m talking about. This typical of what you see in the newspaper. Graphically dull.
Looks better with a Garfield style background.
Even using MS Paint I came up with something that looks better than nothing and helps convey the story.
Finally we have an example of nothing and an all out. This is also a case of too much: too many characters and too many words at once. It is almost too hard for me to see. (I think I’m about ready to break the world record for using some variation of “to” in a paragraph. 2, to, too, two, tu, F2, and ni, which is 2 in Japaneese.)
One final note: ever notice that a newspaper comic maker is called a cartoonist, while a web comic maker is called an author? Like that lends any credibility to what we do.