NEWEST ARIETAL is NOW online!!! Great story by Robinja

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robinja
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Re: NEWEST ARIETAL is NOW online!!! Great story by Robinja

Post by robinja »

Thank you so much Darkfist!! :D
Plenty more (mis)adventures to come in the next parts..,
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Naj
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Re: NEWEST ARIETAL is NOW online!!! Great story by Robinja

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I understand that it's difficult to strike a balance between information and implication. It's not exactly an easy balance to make, especially without much feedback (if any). As far as the main characters, everything is handled well. My main concern regards the introduction of tertiary characters, particularly Chief Collins and the accountant Hannah could have been handled better. Now Chief Collins I understand is peripheral at best so consequently is not as important, but Hannah's two main scenes (hanging and the apartment encounter) are pretty far spaced apart and only connected peripherally (tax returns) with a lot happening in-between. The main problem stems from a very common tendency of artists in general to make their characters look the same, especially when it comes to "pretty women" who suffer the most from this effect, once again not unique to Dofantasy but widespread throughout the entire mass-market artistic world.

Hannah is not named in her introductory scene, and when she reappears much, much later, it requires a fairly keen observation and attentive mind to put 2+2 together, and it would not be implausible to assume they are entirely different people and that the girl hanging upside down was someone else. The main issue here is that Hannah's introductory scene leaves her unnamed, and in any work of fiction, especially one where women are as disposable as this genre, not having a name is a great way to make a character disappear from the readers' attention and terrible for helping them connect the dots. It's the same problem with Chief Collins, since his singular panel leaves him unnamed, he's filed under "generic yelling police chief" and it is difficult to connect him to Natasha who is introduced later.

And I think that's the main problem. Unnamed characters are quickly forgotten, and two characters who should be key but aren't presently are forgotten too quickly, and neither Chief Collins nor Hannah are particularly characters that ought to be downplayed.

While there's no real sense in crying over how the comic played out, I do think it's something to keep in mind for the future, particularly regarding Hannah/Emma who share nearly identical looks (pretty redhead) and have similar sounding names. I can see that being a particular problem you might want to be aware of as the story progresses.



Also, sorry, I just assumed you'd done the lettering/bubbles/soundfx yourself since that's what I do in addition to the writing. I guess the placement and size of the dialogue blocks is also mostly out of your control then, in which case I can hardly fault you for that. I didn't know you were working with a writer/letterer. I know I've been guilty on more than one occasion of just dumping all the text into a single block in the interests of time or simply out of laziness, but it's just not good design. Nobody wants to read a wall-of-text, least of all our readers who have more "urgent" matters to attend to. But you don't have to sacrifice quantity or quality, just break up the same amount into multiple blocks.

For example, let's take the big text-block you have for the cafe/flashback sequence and break it down:

=====================
I've never had a boyfriend. Even if Vuk allowed me, how could I broach the subject of my lifetime orgasm ban? And lord knows what he would think of the pierced shut pussy Vuk has condemned me to. Not to mention the huge back tattoo confirming that I am the property of Vuk's gang.
---------------------------
No, that life is not for me. I have never spent more than a half-hour, nevermind a whole night, in what colleagues and friends think is my "apartment." It's like a stage set; it only exists for those occasions when I need to maintain the fiction that I have something like a normal life.
---------------------------
I don't feel comfortable when I'm there anyway. It's like I'm acting a part.
---------------------------
All the time I'm not at work for the police or for Vuk, I am down at his warehouse by the docks. He as his men f@ck me and t@rture me for their amusement and to let off a bit of steam.
---------------------------
That's okay.
---------------------------
It's my duty.
=====================

I did a small bit of editing. Same amount of text, easier to read chunks. You might need to remind your writer/letterer to do this, especially for larger paragraphs, or else he/she might simply default to wall-of-text.

In summation, it's mostly just nitpicking, but remember to name your tertiary characters (especially if they're important later on), and try to more evenly distribute the textwork as best you are able to improve pacing. The textwork's pacing can also be improved by breaking it up into more readable chunks.
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robinja
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Re: NEWEST ARIETAL is NOW online!!! Great story by Robinja

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Thanks again Naj, I take your points. Yeah, you've hit on a particular pitfall. If you're writing a story and you have a good sense of the back story and how all these characters fit together, it becomes very real to you and you can sometimes forget that all of this is not obvious to the reader. I'll certainly bear this in mind for BL2&3 and other projects.
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Naj
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Re: NEWEST ARIETAL is NOW online!!! Great story by Robinja

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It's understandable which is why external feedback is always a good idea to remind oneself of the readers' perspective and needs. In an earlier, non-fetish work of mine, I'd thought a character was sympathetic but really she was a selfish brat, and it took a friend (well, many actually) pointing out how despicable she was that I finally got the message and made the appropriate changes.

Frankly, I'm just glad you were mature about it. Too many people are hyper defensive of their works and have a hard time separating constructive criticism from an attack on the self-concept.
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robinja
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Re: NEWEST ARIETAL is NOW online!!! Great story by Robinja

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For sure, and I do appreciate your perspective on this. I'm not precious about my creations. I really enjoy the whole process of writing comic scripts and seeing them come to fruition and I want to make sure that it's something that the paying customer will appreciate and want to see more of so that I have the opportunity to do more of these....
Last edited by robinja on Sun Jul 27, 2014 3:39 pm, edited 1 time in total.
veralynnlost
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Re: NEWEST ARIETAL is NOW online!!! Great story by Robinja

Post by veralynnlost »

Absolutely loved the comic. I think my only disappointments were when it ended and that I did not really get to see the main character in her cage very well. It would be cool to see her waking up an having her "breakfast."

Either way, an automatic buy for the sequel.
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robinja
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Re: NEWEST ARIETAL is NOW online!!! Great story by Robinja

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Thank you veralynnlost! :D
veralynnlost
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Re: NEWEST ARIETAL is NOW online!!! Great story by Robinja

Post by veralynnlost »

Any news about the sequel?
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robinja
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Re: NEWEST ARIETAL is NOW online!!! Great story by Robinja

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[quote="veralynnlost"]Any news about the sequel?[/quote]

The sequel Bad Lieutenant 2 is in production at the moment and just over half way through. I think Bego might be doing a "what's cooking" post soon about works in progress and will probably feature one page from BL2...
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Naj
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Re: NEWEST ARIETAL is NOW online!!! Great story by Robinja

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Should be interesting! Looking forward to it! :22
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