Jun01
A BONUS STORY ARC COMIC STARTS!
After two years of what the movie folks call ‘development hell’, the Car Wash bonus comic is ready for release! I initially planned this thing to be a print-only comic that would conclude Puck Volume 2, but then Puck Volume Two never really happened due to low (to no) demand, so now I’m putting it as a voting incentive! Yay! Every week will bring a new page, and new pages will be dropping all summer, so please…
VOTE TO WASH THAT CAR REAL GOOD!
I hope not. It should just stay in the family.
Papa Shnorf is everyone’s Papa. So family all around.
I was referring to Phoebe’s family. How would Satan react?
But anyway, I’m curious about something. If you had to total the amount of time from concept to end i.e. posting, how much time in total does each week’s comic entail. On average and this past week’s past as well, if you don’t mind.
Thanks
How long does a comic take me? Too. F#$%ing. Long. But let me break it down.
It’s hard for me to calculate, really, because I work in a fairly scatterbrained fashion and am usually multitasking a little, so I’m sure I really lengthen the process through my lack of focus. But be that as it may…
-Drawing the comic takes on average about four hours. It can take longer, like eight hours, if I need to draw new backgrounds.
-Inking the comic takes as long (or longer) than the drawing, and the more drawings I did, the more inking needs doing. Four to ten hours.
-Scanning, vector tracing and prepping the comic is a step that takes way more time than it should – about one to two hours.
-Coloring is really dependent on the number of characters, their outfits, the backgrounds and more. But it’s the longest process at about five to twelve hours.
-Adding word balloons and lettering is the fastest part – one hour.
-Posting (and doing all the attendant social media stuff) takes one hour if all goes well. It sometimes takes longer.
So yeah, I would estimate that the comic alone (forget bonus stuff like the incentive images and the like) takes at minimum 16 hours a week to craft, and at maximum it can sometimes go over 40 hours.
For all that work, you’d think it wouldn’t look like such trash.
Trash?
I’m no artist so maybe my opinion means little. But, trying to be objective here:
1) Character: we can always tell who each character is, without them wearing a uniform.
Too many comics relying on superhero outfits so you can tell who the character is.
We knew Blonde Puck was still Puck, just blonde and without freckles.
If you saw Phoebe without horns, we wouldn’t go “Who is that?” we’d go “What happened to her horns?”
2. Action: Most of the time we know what’s going on without dialogue.
The words makes it better but think of how many times you’d follow the story without out words? That’s art.
3. Extra points for the Aura Of Emotion. More artists should use it.
Like I said, I don’t know squat about Art but if you’re feeling your art is trash because of popularity,
it seems to me that the reason this comic is not consistently in the Top 10 has little to do with art (or the writing for that matter) but the subject matter: slice of life with humor and responsibility.
Adventure stories sell, and this is not.
Maybe if you were to start over, Puck could beat up criminals with her super-strength and solve crimes with her 621 years of experience; Phoebe could be her “Spying With Lana”-like sidekick; Daphne could do something furry; but instead it looks like this story is about a flawed person who chose to raise an adopted child in an absurd world – first college, which is inherently absurd, and then parenthood – also inherently absurd. There’s just not enough explosions and titties to draw a mass audience, I guess.
(I suppose the wonderful “Questionable Content” may be an exception, but it rose to fame with barely adequate art, and while it does do thoughtful drama (like it is this week) it does not do responsibility).
Well, that’s a lot of words for something I don’t know much about. I just don’t want you to feel discouragement when your art is fine.
Well, I thank you for the vote of confidence. You may be onto something that ‘responsibility’ and ‘lack of action’ are factors in lessening the popularity.
When I started Puck as a webcomic, and for about the four or five years after that, I thought that with enough of a push, it could actually become popular. And the numbers (for a while) held that up. The audience was consistently increasing; the revenue was growing. Then it plateaued, though, and every since then it’s been shrinking.
Over the past few years, I’ve slowly (painfully) realized that I can promote the comic as much as I want, but it simply won’t help it grow. There’s something about the comic that just … limits it. I’m not sure what it is. It might be thematic, like you said. Other theories I’ve had include:
-The weekly update schedule is a barrier. When the story is serialized and the most recent story arc took a full two years to complete, that’s a hard pill for many people to swallow.
-The increasingly serialized storytelling is a barrier. There aren’t many one-off funny jokes that are shareable and easy to access. For instance, if someone sees this particular comic as their first intro to Puck, they wouldn’t even be able to get the joke. For some, this may intrigue them and get them to go back and read the story arc, but I think most people just shrug and leave.
-The early student newspaper comics look like hot garbage. They are what they are, and I don’t hate them, but when that’s your entry point, I think it may be a barrier. Most people when they encounter a webcomic click on that ‘go to first comic’ button. But when the first comics look really, REALLY rough, that can be a problem. I have (off and on) thought of redoing those comics in color with new drawings to bring them more visually in line with the webcomic stuff, but maybe this isn’t the problem and it would just be wasted effort. (I know few existing fans would really be clamoring for that.)
-The art might be … wrong. Not trash, exactly, but not right for the comic. I don’t know how else to put it. I think that it’s not consummate enough to draw in the people who really like ‘lavishly illustrated’ comics. But it’s not goofy or loose enough to be super approachable. It kind of falls in that ‘Mary Worth’ zone of old soap opera comics that died out.
Half a year ago, I considered the idea that the platform was the issue. Certainly independent webcomics are dying. Fewer and fewer comics want to get their own sites anymore. The big platforms like Webtoon rule the comics landscape now. But then I did a big push to put Puck on Webtoon and so far it’s been a total flop. So it’s not the platform. And I’ve been updating that Webtoon version daily, so maybe it’s not the weekly update schedule either. Maybe it’s just that the comic isn’t likable for many people.
I’m out of theories at this point.
Don’t we get to see?
No. Never.
Well, I was curious as to whether that skin color was natural or makeup…
Dude, that’s a suit! Made of polymascot foamalate! So neither actual skin color nor makeup!
Of course not. Nothing that could be drawn would match the ongoing imaginations and curiosity of the readers.
Puck! You’re an almost-married woman!
Heh. 🙂
Almost. But not quite.
Daphne has fur, right?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bCOc7VCSox4
Colin you better put a ring on it.
Well, he plans to, but it’s taking a while.
That’s disturbing. Leave it to the dreaded Illumination Studio to bring us that.
Not a fan, eh? It’s actually a really good movie.
I am not a fan of Illumination Studio. Their movies are always reasonably approachable and financially successful, but the whole studio is essentially a triumph of penny-pinching production values and lowest common denominator values. They carefully craft their concepts to have maximum appeal (like putting fun animals in a movie where they sing already popular tunes), make the movies at cutthroat rates, usually costing them half what other studios pay, and then sink way more money into what really counts: the advertising.
I don’t want to fault them for being a successful business, because … it’s a business. Unsuccessful businesses can no longer do business. But compared to the really inspired offerings from Pixar, or even Sony with their Spiderverse movie, you see and feel the difference. Illumination films always look and feel cheap and focus-tested – not the vision of a creative mind.
I am very, VERY worried for the upcoming Mario movie, and have no idea why Nintendo chose them.
I suspect for all the reasons you stated above – they have a profitable business model and mass appeal through marketing, something that Nintendo really wants. I’m sure as much as Nintendo’s creative people like imaginative, well thought out worlds, the business side really just cares about cash. :/
Stephen King didn’t like it when people sent him artist renditions of what they believed that his stories looked like. His stories world’s evolved through the platen. And he was the sole translator.
So Much Jumping To Conclusions:
1)__Assuming Phoebe stayed with him overnight:
OK, that’s reasonable, but NOT guaranteed.
2)__Assuming that there was Sex:
Yes, she IS the Devil’s Daughter, — HOWEVER, that’s Precisely why she might lead him on, without going all the way. It’s not out of the question.
3)__Assuming that Phoebe answers questions Truthfully:
Why not amuse herself by leading Puck on, with answers that she KNOWS Puck wants to hear? Are you implying that Puck’s responses wouldn’t be entertaining? Seriously?
Somehow this message got eaten by the spam filter. I rescued it. And good thing too, because it makes some good points.
Papa Unmasked
Does that look worth it? That doesn’t look worth it to me.
Considering the price of Admission was getting on a sugar high and public embarrassment, must have been good.
And I’m pretty sure that Phoebe would tell all of it was bad.
I don’t think she’s capable of lying, so … yeah.
Oh, Colin, Colin, Colin …. when you live with adult women, you learn the advantages of selective deafness!
I will posit that it’s more advantageous to have incredibly good hearing but feign selective deafness most of the time. A useful strategy in all environments, really.
Hm, good point. That way you have the best of both worlds: awareness of what they really think, and no obligation to react to it.
This really should have been included in the Relationships shop manual, but we never get a manual anyway.
Don’t tel me that Colin hasn’t thought the same, except with Tracee…
A;so, I hope Daphne picked a spot that’s…not…in North East Hamilton for this scheme. Gotta go where tha dollahs at, like Ancaster or Westdale. Heck, in Ravenscliffe they’d make a fortune…
To keep it in line with the general geography of the comic, they are set up not that far from the Queenston traffic circle. Which, admittedly, is not a location that has a lot of big spenders. But I sometimes like to highlight the rougher ends of my fine town too.
Well if Phoebe’s satisfied, I guess I can put away the tar and feathers.
Well, not just yet. Let’s see where this goes.
Regarding the vote incentive: Oh that’s right. I’d forgotten that about her schemes. 🙂
She hasn’t.
Good! I’d to think she was relying on me to remember it for her.
I bet he’s bald. You don’t come out of a suit like that without matted ratty hair. And we both know that thing’s not too ventilated (given what he uses it for). And the trope IS called the Bald of Awesome..
Unless he had a chance to clean up. The (He) Cleans up Nicely is in effect.
We will never know. So whatever theory you have about his appearance, it will never be proven wrong.
Whenever creators are intentionally obtuse, I like to posit this question to them – “Do *you* know?” 😉
Do I need to know?
I am fully against the narrative drive to ‘fill in all the gaps’ which seems to be all the rage in storytelling recently. Its origin can be traced to the encyclopedic world-building of writers like Tolkien. Then add a dash of Star Wars, and a big heap of J.K. Rowling, and now everyone wants to know the deep lore back story to every dang thing that ever appears in a story. I feel oddly alone on this front, but … I. DON’T. CARE. I actively LIKE having some mystery in the world. I like not having answers. If there’s an unknown, that doesn’t mean the creators need to make it a known – unless the explanation is really interesting and intriguing and brings us in deeper. But it usually isn’t. Usually the explanations are workmanlike and dumb (see ‘Solo’) or complicated and baffling (see ‘Crimes of Grindelwald’) and every time they ‘fill in the gaps of the world’, I can’t help but feel that they’ve ruined it just a little bit. Not a big bit. But a little.
When it comes to my own comic, I’m also curiously uncaring. What does Papa Shnorf look like? No, I don’t know. Because any answer I could give would not be as good as not knowing. Similarly, I legitimately do not know what Daphne’s origin is. I have two or three back stories that I’ve thought about, but ultimately none of them are as satisfying as the mystery. So a mystery it will remain.
I think audiences sometimes mistake puzzle mysteries in narratives for information gaps. For instance, in an Agatha Christie mystery, the killer is a puzzle mystery – Christie knew the answer before she even started the story, and she crafts toward the reveal, so when you find out the answer, it’s surprising and satisfying and leads the audience to say, “Ah HA!” But that’s the result of craft and planning; it’s hard to do.
Then audiences encounter narrative information gaps, like, “What is the Kessel Run?” This is also a ‘mystery’, but unlike the crafted puzzle mystery, its an unknown thing that is unknown to the audience AND the writer. It was never crafted to be solved. And when a writer retroactively tries to go back and solve that mystery, it is almost never, EVER satisfying. Some writers (not naming any names but one rhymes with ‘Nowling’) will unconvincingly claim that they actually ‘knew all along’ and had ‘planned that from the very beginning’, but come on. COME ON. She ain’t fooling anyone.
This, by the way, is 94% of the reason why the sequel Star Wars trilogy was a broken mess that I despised. I liked The Force Awakens just fine, but then Last Jedi came in and showed that there was no narrative consistency there. You had one writer pooping all over the ideas of the other, and so the ‘answers’ we got didn’t really line up with the questions. Then you had the third movie where Abrams came back to poop on the poop, and nothing made sense AT ALL. And really, it was doomed from the start. If the writer posits a mystery that the writer doesn’t have an answer to from the beginning, the answer will never be very satisfying. Ever.
I have a webcomics counterexample: El Goonish Shive. There it’s really hard to distinguish what was deliberate puzzle mysteries and what was though retroactively … unless you look at what author is saying about it.
But, well, retroactively filling mystery is HARD – much harder than having it prepared from start, especially if you focus on making the mystery “really surprising” instead of carefully reviewing what was said and shown already to make it match well.
I’ll have to take your word for it. I’ve never read EGS. Even though Puck has been compared to that comic many times.
First off- bravo for taking a stand that too few creators will. I never cared for the prequel Trilogy of SW because nothing in it lived up to the backstory I had long made up in my own head.
Frankly, I don’t want to know what Satan or the hotdog guy really look like; nor do I want to know Daphne’s backstory before Puck took her in. None of that would improve the comic. So, while I may joke from time to time about what’s under the green mascot costume, I’m happier not knowing.
I have no idea how someone can compare Puck and EGS; I love reading both but they’re two completely separate genres. About the only thing they have in common is fan service and that applies to 90% of the webcomics out there. If I had to compare Puck to any other comic, I’d probably pick “Something Positive” because of the sarcastic humor and the adorably mean-spirited characters.
I think it’s the fact that there are fantasy beings in a modern setting. That’s it. People often think on a very surface level when comparing stuff.
Tolkein is on another level. He was telling histories and left mysteries, too.
GTG, Goldberry is waiting!
Tolkien’s lore sprang from his own deep well of creativity. He was exploring and fleshing out his world without having anyone ‘clamouring for more’. It was his own curiosity that drew him in. I think that’s what makes him unique.
Even Tolkien had a few mysteries. We’ve seen neither hide nor hair of the Entwives. Only heard of them. Best mental image and behavior I can give them resemble dryads. Opinions will differ, of course.
I knew the Kessel Run from the books before that universe suffered a cosmic retcon (it was like millions of stories all crying out at once and were suddenly silenced). It was a dangerous route by the Spice mines of Kessel, because it was close to The Maw, which was a cluster of black holes. (Yes, writers later filled THAT gap in too, “Abeloth” for those who remember).
Luckily for the world I’m not much of an artist or a writer, I mostly just write code. Often my storytelling is just handwaving for engine limitations. Well, that and that software abhors gaps. I do have an ugly tendency to fill gaps, though. I can’t leave magic as “magic”, it gets categorized and quantified. Which works for creating rulesets, I guess.
A good memorable mystery was the Demon Castle War of 1999 in Castlevania. They deliberately left that a mystery because they could never hope to do the events justice.
It also amuses me as to how the timing of this topic lines up with a manga I follow, a character mentioned how learning too much about a subject killed their enthusiasm for it (I had to be vague).
Man, I tell you, if I inadvertently triggered you with my comment about creators who are intentionally obtuse, I apologize. If I’d known it was going to upset you so much, I either wouldn’t have said it, or I would have tried to word it better.
My meaning was that some creators are intentionally obtuse to the point of frustration. My response to them is partially to give them a little well-deserved ribbing for it, and partially to assuage my own desire for better understanding of the ‘mystery’. If the creator admits there’s a solution, at least that’s something. The old trope of ‘more is less’ eventually mutates into ‘nothing at all’, and the audience walks away feeling empty, angry, and sometimes a little bit stupid. You get writers who smirk and say “Well, we’ll just have to wait and see..”, which is a smarmy way of saying “Guess you’re gonna have to buy the other twelve books in my series if you want to find out.” Behavior like that always brings me back to Gabe Newell and his ludicrous obtuseness about the Half Life series. At any time, he could have just said “Nope, we have no plans for new games right now. The timing just didn’t work out right”, but instead he trolled interviewers with increasingly cryptic statements that just served to inflame the fanbase. And that’s something that creators have to understand – if they create ‘mysteries’, they shouldn’t be surprised when the fans, already invested in their overall creation, become interested in these mysteries, make theories about them and ask questions about them. I’m sure it can be irritating, especially if you don’t want to reveal it, but if the alternative is people leaving in boredom or frustration, maybe the mystery isn’t as creatively integral as it seems to be. Fans like to pick apart their fandoms. They like to discuss things. More often than not, it is less a demand from the creators for more info and more harmless and enjoyable theorycrafting with fellow fans. If the creator provides input on the discussion, that’s great. If the creator gets angry at them for it, not so much.
Again, I’m sorry if I upset you with my statement. It was a throwaway remark made out of my frustration with creators who are intentionally obtuse – as that isn’t you, and you’ve stated as such, which I accept, I apologize for suggesting it. Reading your replies to other inquiries about Papa Schnorf’s identity, it seems like it’s a sore spot for you, and I probably should have noticed that.
The above all being said, honestly, I don’t feel like my one off comment deserved a scathing wikipedia entry in response. My knee-jerk response was “What the f**k, man??”. My secondary response was “Well, shit, if he’s gonna get so bent out of shape about it, f**k him and this comic.” My tertiary response was “Okay, this is obviously something that bugs him, maybe I should take some time to think of a better way to respond.. I do enjoy this comic, after all, and he’s usually pretty chill when he replies to comments.” Hopefully, I accomplished the latter. Peace out.
Dude, I apologize. This is a case where it’s the ‘tone can’t come through in text’ problem. I wasn’t angry at all, and any hostility in my rant wasn’t intended to be directed at you. I AM hostile to some of those creators that I criticized, but you were just making a funny observation. I didn’t read your comment and get angry. I read your comment and smiled and it just got me thinking about that topic, so went on a rant, but I didn’t express it properly.
As for the creators trolling the fandom with the ‘maybe we’ll find out; you just have to keep reading’ thing, yeah, I totally get that. That is a thing, and like you noted, it’s frustrating because it’s obvious they don’t know the answers either. I try not to do that. There are things I have no answers for, and I’ll willingly admit that. And if I come up with an answer that I really, REALLY like, it may happen one day, but I’m not dangling it as a ‘wait and see’ thing. At least that’s not my intention.
Anyway, man, I apologize for my poorly crafted rant that didn’t clearly indicate the target of my rage. It wasn’t you.
That’s fair. I liked TLJ, but I won’t ever claim that it was a flawless film.
But more to the point Tolkien and Rowling were making worlds where the details mattered. You’re making a world where we know most of the details already. This is our world with some differences.
As well, to know what P. Sch. looks like would defeat the whole point of this guy who’s overcommitted to his part.
You do you, man. You’re doing it well.
I can safely assume they share the same jawline as Wilson from the show Home Improvement.
At least until some pesky meddler opens and lets the metaphorical cat out of the box and collapses that painstakingly constructed quantum waveform.
Daphne will really clean up at her new job ! 😉
You, sir, are a punster.
Why is Satan so approving of Papa Schnorf? Being Satan, this endorsement suggests that Papa Schnorf may not be an honorable person. Will Satan ever become aware of Schnorf’s escapade with Phoebe, and will he approve, or be indifferent? Satan’s awareness of and possible relationship with Schnorf also suggests that Phoebe knows more about the mysterious Schnorf than she has ever let on to with her clique.
Longtime lurker and reader here. Catching up on a year backlog of this comic.
Others have said it better, but this comic is good. The fact that you craft it by hand, on paper, the old way, really gives it a feel that is different from most webcomics today. It’s not lost that sense of being “real” that a super polished fully digital (and business oriented) comic lacks. Though I was a bit worried that might be the case back when the emotion colors appeared years ago.
What you’ve got is good. Thank you for creating it.
Glad to hear I still have that homey charm. Though honestly I try to make the comics as polished as possible. The lack of polish is more due to a lack of ability on my part. And there has never been a better description of my work than “not business-oriented”. That is right on the money. Or not on the money, to be more accurate.
Honestly, though, thanks for letting me know that you like it. Sometimes my crushing lack of success doesn’t bother me, but other times it makes me really, REALLY want to quit, delete the site and just disappear. The odd reminder that people do enjoy it helps to chase the darkness away.