Let Boredom Reign

So, I have started a webcomic based on highschool called "Let Boredom Reign", which can be found here: http://www.freewebs.com/drusthraros.
Please read, (hopefully) enjoy, and then come back here with praise/comments/DEFINITELY criticisms/ideas for future pages. Things are going pretty slow right now, but are speeding up fairly nicely. I took months to get the first page net-ready, but only a few weeks for the second.

The drawing style reminded me of Simpsons for a moment.

The second page was perfect, that's EXACTLY what high school did to me too xD

*does a comparison* And I thought I was being original, there. No worries, though. It's different enough for me not to get sued. And thanks for the compliment. Did they really do the lunch thing, though? That was a little bit of an exaggeration on my part.

They did the lunch thing at our school in the first week or so, in the canteens, to help out the newbies.

The comic concept is very good, but may I ask what programs and tools you use (mouse, graphics tablet, etc) out of curiosity?


~ Lishie

I sketch it out on paper, first of all. I think better that way. For the first page, I scanned it in and basically had to draw over it with Paint (I used the line tool, mostly). For the second page, I just used the line tool to sketch what I had drawn and then used Adobe ImageReady (which is exactly like photoshop) to put in the colors because the black and white bled into each other. That saved a lot of picky-paintbrush time. I use the laptop's touchpad.

Deros Wrote:I sketch it out on paper, first of all. I think better that way. For the first page, I scanned it in and basically had to draw over it with Paint (I used the line tool, mostly). For the second page, I just used the line tool to sketch what I had drawn and then used Adobe ImageReady (which is exactly like photoshop) to put in the colors because the black and white bled into each other. That saved a lot of picky-paintbrush time. I use the laptop's touchpad.

Ohh, right, I see. *nods*


~ Lishie

Alright, so after a (unbelievably, impossibly, mind-crushingly) long day, I finished the third page. I will actually put some effort into each one soon, instead of simply making one frame and copy-pasting it, I promise. Now, I would like a bit of help. First of all, I would like to actually color the logo, but I have no idea what colors to go with. Secondly, if any of you have any ideas for the current chapter, feel free to make them, as I have no clue. The next chapter will be "Learning the System", and will encompass their first few weeks. Third, once again, critiques are extremely welcome. I know I did a sloppy job, I just want to know how (I probably won't change whatever it is, but I have a reason for wanting to know that will be made very obvious very soon). So, without further ado, the new page: <!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="http://www.freewebs.com/drusthraros/lesstimetoeat.htm">http://www.freewebs.com/drusthraros/lesstimetoeat.htm</a><!-- m -->

One of my favorite things about reading webcomics is to see how much the artwork improves over time becasue of all the practice the artist is basically forced to get in order to keep up with a posting schedule. So I'm not too worried about the sloppiness now since after a while it will get much cleaner looking and develop it's own style as you find the best way to go about drawing it.

As for an idea with Title colors, I;m gonna throw out Blue background with yellow lettering.
As for ideas for future strips, mine are all copy written for a site Terro is making cause he wants to share my awful sense of humor with the (NC-17) world. You should be fine for strip ideas, though. Just do what you've been doing and use your friends and experiences from high school. Their a gold mine if you know where to dig in your head for the really good/bad ones.

If I may throw out a bit of con-crit:

Our (well, more Lishie's, but this is before she found out she was multiple) old webcomic Offbeat College was very similar. It died a bit of an early death as it was really hard to get it up on the Internet (lack of scanner, then a scanner was bought, then it didn't work with our computer) ... but I digress.

While writing for it, we looked around college for ideas. We listened to conversations amongst our peers, picked up pop-culture references, practised anatomy and general cartooning skills (specifically, Offbeat College was manga-ish) and even watched anime like Azumanga Daioh - day-to-day school life. I suggest that to you, as yours seems to be of a very similar genre to ours, and it could give you ideas and a plot for it - so yes, I back up Chai's advice there.


As for the graphics-side of things ... try saving it in PNG format so that the colours are less likely to 'fuzz'. Another tip is, if you do the strip on a large scale then shrink it, the line-art will look smoother (we use that tip all the time).


You are doing well though, and I look forward to seeing it progress.


- Blake

I know exactly what you mean, Chai. I still get this "Whoa" feeling when I click between the "Last Page" and "First Page" buttons on CtrlAltDel. He got really good.

For the title colors, I think I'm going to give it a try, but since I'm not doing any background coloring at present, I think I'll change it to one part having blue lettering and the other having yellow lettering with a black outline so that you can still read it. I'll try it out when I start the next page.

It's a shame that your ideas are all already taken, but thanks for the advice. I think I have an idea already, in fact. One thing that has always plagued me: Introduction games. Plus, it'll give me a chance to make sure that I didn't forget how to use masks.

EDIT: To Momo: Thank you so much for the advice. I really, really, honestly think I'll try it. I zoom in anyway to work on individual frames, so having it large in the first place shouldn't cause any problems. Just need to switch to using four-pt lines instead of two-pt.

EDIT PT2(because I missed some bits): I had mostly been planning to talk with my highschool friends, but any ideas would help, and a lot of college students were in high school not too long ago, and unlike me, may have actually had some high school experiences. Thank you again for the advice