Official ZU Summer Sprite Comic Contest. Voting Closed, Congrats Lantean!

The crowd is going wild here at Sprite Comic Stadium today! We're here in the press box with GoldStud, your host for this Sprite Comic Contest. Oh! And look! The contestants are coming into the arena! Here they come, it's-

(1)Mr. Hooch and his comic, Ding-Dong, Link is Dead

(2)The Atlantean Lantean with Zeldish: A Sprite Comic Ch.2 Part 2

(3)The astute Stupidmahn wielding A Comic by Stupidmahn

(4)William and his sprite comic, Pollydoodle

(5)GoldStud with The Triforce is a Sheep

(6)Woah! It's Sage of Fire with Back and Back Again

(7)The Duke of Shanty, Mr. Fish with his Fish and Penguin #8

(8)And finally, Lurrrre! with Leapordy!

Now remember, you may vote for any number of the above comics. Just know that if you vote for all of them, that's about the same as voting for none of them. Please do not vote untill you have read every comic. Pick the ones you liked, and may the best comic win! This poll will close 14 days from now, or until a clear winner emerges. And remember, Lantean is the reigning champion, but his title is at stake!

Yeah!
Finally!

Yay, the entries are up!

And I'm sorry GS, I should have given you a title for my comic. The comic isn't even number 8 in the series, despite what the filename says. But its okay, don't worry about changing anything, I doubt anyone will notice/care much. XD

Now, I must read the entries!

lolk, epic
i laughed so hard at a bunch of them
;3 voted

....wow. I really need some practice Oh well. My vote goes to goldstud and lantean. Great work guys.

i get teh feeling that people aren't reading all the comics ;3
Mr. fish's was done really well, forgot to vote for it when i pressed tho
Sorry fishy D:

also: i feel so unloved D: i put so much effort into my comic ;~;

I only really liked Will's and Blizzy's. The rest were okay.

So I read the entries, and even if my criticism may seem a bit harsh, I honestly loved them all. I'll put up a short mini-review of each one, along with my decision to vote or not vote for it:

Hooch's Entry:

What can I say about this comic that I didn't already tell you about in my long-winded PM, Hooch? I know this is an older comic of yours, so you may already know all of its faults, but I'll point them out anyway. So the text. There's a lot of it, and you have no speech bubbles. The comic is readable even without the bubbles, but you are still crowding text. I'm no saint on this, but when you're crowding panels with stuff, that's a good indicator to split it into more panels or cut things out. Anyway, I thought the comic was well written (although I was a bit confused at times), and I loved the last three panels. Thanks for participating, I know you really didn't wany to, but I'm going to give your comic a no vote.

Lantean's Entry:

This is easily my favorite out of all of them. The comic just flowed so smoothly from one panel to the next, and I was engaged with the story. There weren't a whole lot of graphics in the comic - mostly just text - but the graphic tricks you do pull show incredible attention to detail. Also your use of the diagonal poses of the FS Links to establish a 3d environment in some panels are very well done, and help break sprite comics out of their 2D casts. Not a funny comic by much, but the content is interesting and enjoyable, so I'm definatley giving this comic a vote.

Stupidmahn's entry:

I really don't like the concept of putting anything other than white in the background of speech bubbles - especially not colored gradients - but you actually manage to do a pretty good job with it this time. I liked the idea of the close up of the notepaper, even though the execution isn't perfect (the paper looks kinda...stoney). The special effects were good too, the action was clear and flowed pretty smoothly. But the white space (or red space, in this instance) in the comic is unforgivable. There's so much space in between the panels, and the panels seem arbitrarily placed down. Its not something hard to fix - all you have to do is move the panels around a bit. And the story of the comic, while random and somewhat amusing, I didn't find to be particularly funny. Sorry, but I'll be giving this one a no vote.

William's Entry:

Okay, so I laughed a lot on this one. I'm not sure you came up with the joke for this comic by yourself, but it sure was funny. Anyway, your biggest problem is your speech bubble placement. Remember, English folks read from left to right, then top to bottom. Your placement seemed inconsiderate of this fact, and so more than once was I reading a text bubble first when I should have been reading another one before that. This and some other minor panel placement/white space issues ruin an otherwise good comic. No vote.

Goldstud's Entry:

I was somewhat divided on this one. The graphics were all done nicely, as I expected, aside from a couple minor issues (I'll delve into those later, perhaps). And the narrative was very clear, everything flowed smoothly, but after I finished reading the comic, I felt like, "What was the point?". Sure, the last panel was kinda funny, but the rest of the comic seemed...I dunno. It might of fit better in a broader narrative, maybe it doesn't make as much sense alone. But for the good graphics and funny last panel, I'm giving it a vote.

Sage of Fire's Entry:

Short but sweet. A couple things though, for as big as your panels are, the sprites are very small in comparison. You should try zooming up on things for a better shot of the action. Also, using "L" and "N" to signify Link's and Navi's speech in the 3rd panel was a little unintuitive, and I had to think a bit to figure them out. The panel would have done just as well without them, though. A solid submission overall, but nothing really reached out and impressed me, so I'll give it a no vote.

Mr. Fish's Entry:

What can I say? It is what it is. I'm going to go ahead and vote for it, since there really is no way to trust that everyone else won't vote for their's, so authors feel free to vote for your own submissions.

Lurrrre!'s Entry:

I have long considered your skill creating sprites to heavily outdo your skill making Sprite Comics, Lurrrre!, but this comic proves me wrong. The graphics are good, the action flows smoothly and the comic is funny both in concept and execution. One minor gripe though is that the fonts you use for you speech, while pretty, are a little hard to read. Other than that, I loved this comic, and it will be getting a vote.

So there you have it! Feel free to rip my comic a new one, God knows it could use it. But overall, I was very impressed with the submissions of this contest, and I feel that everybody did a good job. Huzzah for the Shanty!

Yeah!
Oh and thanks fish I am a surprise in every bite!

What can be better than a hot summer day with swimming in the evening?

Answer: A hot summer day with swimming in the evening and the contest popping up afterwards! ^_^

Alright, time for some Blizzaviews!

Mr. Hooch: I understand that this is an older comic, and Mr. Fish already pounced on it. I agree with what he had to say, I wouldn't be saying anything much different, so I shall be merciful and stop typing now. No, now. Now. Now. Now. GRR! Stop typing NOW!

That's better...

Gah! I'm still typing! Sorry, Hooch! ^_^'



Lantean: A comic that has been over a year in the making, but one wouldn't be able to tell, would they?



Stew: If only you had followed my advice... You would have gone far! I gave you an edge on the competition, but you didn't take advantage of it. Tsk-tsk. Mr. Fish said almost exactly what I said earlier in the PM (especially the part with with the mentioning of too much red space and the note). I could understand if you were too busy or something. Regardless, it's still hilarious, so you get my vote! ^_^



William: Um... Well, I wasn't in favor of the humor, and the text was way too small, not to mention that there's way to much black space. I get the feeling that you were being very lazy with this comic.



GoldStud: Dude! That was so cool! It was short, crisp, funny, and refreshing! The perspectives were excellent, like, sprite comic-ing 2.0 excellent! I envy your natural talent for random humor. Minus a few problems with grammar, this was easily one of the best comics here! Oh, and I was bombarded with nostalgia of past times while reading it.VOTE GET! ^_^



Sage of Fire: Well, it was funny, I'll give you that. Especially the last panel! But, the balloons were very jagged and could use some smoothing. Also, different text for each different character? That's a big no-no. The L and N thing was very weird too. Other than that, funny comic! Keep up the good work, and do your best to raise the bar. Before you know it, you'll look back and see how far you've come. ^_^



Mr. Fish: Whatever am I gonna do with you? You've been appointed a mod of this section, yet your sprite comics STINK! S-T-I-N-K!






Nah, just kidding!



This comic is classic! What's better than having a comic full of humor? I'll tell you: a comic full of humor with Mr. Fish and Penguin! Absolutely hilarious! Reading that sure felt like we are letting the good times roll once again! Your comic is very unique, and it never gets old! I do have two problems with it though.

1. The walls started doing tricks on my eyes. I guess it's not good to put such patterns in close proximity to each other.

2. YIKES! SPRITE REMINISCENT OF SEMI-JUGALLO LINK STANDING ALL WEIRD! *SLAP!*

That aside, you get my vote! I've always had a soft spot for penguins. ^_^







Lurrrre: I saw the first few panels, and I knew right then and there that you were getting my vote if I had to die trying to click the button!

Oh, and that's extremely unique humor! Good job! (Though, the text was a bit hard to read.)









I'll have to say that through the many sprite comic contests I've participated in since being here at ZU, this one has got to be the best so far! Good job, everyone!

Thanks for the compliments Lantean. My excuses are as follows though (I have to defend myself )

Most everything can be explained by me saying "I use MS paint and ONLY MS paint." As I'm still practicing my photoshop-ing-ness. And the different text and L and N circles were just something I saw on a few different webcomics that I thought worked. Oh well, thanks anyways, I'll be sure to try harder and take into consideration what y'all said. Oh, and the "frank" joke, you can blame all 90's cartoons for that kind of humor XD

Originally Posted by Mr Fish

Lantean's Entry:

This is easily my favorite out of all of them. The comic just flowed so smoothly from one panel to the next, and I was engaged with the story. There weren't a whole lot of graphics in the comic - mostly just text - but the graphic tricks you do pull show incredible attention to detail. Also your use of the diagonal poses of the FS Links to establish a 3d environment in some panels are very well done, and help break sprite comics out of their 2D casts. Not a funny comic by much, but the content is interesting and enjoyable, so I'm definatley giving this comic a vote.

Thanks! ^_^

The plot-moving thing was inevitable. It was coming for a very long time. So... I did my best to make it as entertaining as possible (like sprinkling a bit of humor with highlighting important things in red and having Red snooze through the whole thing).



EDIT: Didn't anyone catch the Suessical the Musical reference? I'll give you hint: it's highlighted in red.

2. YIKES! SPRITE REMINISCENT OF SEMI-JUGALLO LINK STANDING ALL WEIRD! *SLAP!*

That's because the girl is a rip from Mega Man Zero, where SemiJ edited his Link sprite from.

I actually thought of using a different sprite for the girl, but ever since I was thinking of the comic, it was Ciel from Mega Man Zero who seemed to stick in my mind as the sprite to use, so that's what I went with.