"Legend of the four Ms" by Dustfinger

Hello everyone. My name is Dustfinger (as you can see to the left) and, yeah, you guessed right, I'm going to show my sprite comics here.

Eps. 1: The story begins, I think...
Eps. 2: The story begins. Seriously.
Eps. 3: The chance of your live
Eps. 4: Let's watch that red guy...
Eps. 5: Zooom!
Eps. 6: Candy!
Eps. 7: Zoing!
Eps. 8: Meeting
Eps. 9: Silence!
Eps. 10: Brothers
Eps. 11: Games
Eps: 12: What a lovely family...
Eps. 13: Not "Bzzz"
Eps. 14: Cake?
Eps. 15: Like a battlefield
Eps. 16: Splurg?
Eps. 16.2: Another view
Eps. 17: Zoingophobia
Eps. 18: Hypothetically
Eps. 19: Good stuff, better stuff
Eps. 20: A Sparkler!
Eps. 21: Whee, a hole!
Eps. 22: Darkness
Eps. 23: Fall at own risk
Eps. 24: Tomatoes - The Red Menace
Eps. 25: It's all about the hair
Eps. 26: Failed
Eps. 27: Chit-chat and slime

And to do some legal mumbo jumbo:
most sprites are edited Final Fantasy sprites (c) Square Enix
Other sprites will be credited when they appear...

First of all, I'm very glad that this comic isn't about four letters on a whirlwind adventure.

Secondly, I'm impressed. You have a lot of great things in this - art, plot, and humor. One thing I would suggest is to center the text inside of your speech bubbles (most evident in the second-to-last panel) and make the bubbles bigger so that there aren't collisions between them and the text. Other than that, it looks solid. Make more (especially since I want to know who the morons are)!

Ha Ha Ha!

I liked it and it hade good closeups and speech bubbles to, pluse it was funny.
though you said safe instead of save but thats okay because I liked it 8.5/10
do make more please!

So, I used the advice of Linkmaster30000 and Lurrrre! to improve the comic:

It was funny, I'll give you that!

Good:

Good jobs on the close ups and different backgrounds! It's very obvious to me that you know what you're doing, you're very good at it! With the majority of comics here, all you get is the same background over and over, same panel size, and no close ups. This single comic completely blows them out of the water and shows that sprite comics can not suck. In that regard, this is one of the best comics I've seen around here for a long long while! Well done! ^_^

Bad:

Though your skills soar in the department of panels and graphics, your typography is seriously lacking. In all but a few balloons, you did a very poor job with the text. It feels to me like you made the balloons first, then tried to fill them. That's a good way to set yourself up for either A) crammed text that looks very poor, B) Little text in a large balloon, and/or C) Balloons that leave huge bare spots in some areas (like "Wait, no! That's a different story..."). I'm sorry to say it, but this comic has all three in aces.

Let me give you some tips which should help you in that regard.

1. Make sure you type out what you want the text to say first, THEN form word balloons AROUND them.

2. If you run into hairy situations where the balloon seems to big and covers everything, try a rounded-corners box instead. They work very well when used sparingly.

3. ALWAYS type your text in the CENTER format. It looks much more clean and professional. PLUS, text looks a million times nicer inside the word balloons! Give it a try, you'll love it!




I'll leave you with THREE BONUS TIPS from yours truly:

1. Comics look much more professional and neat when you type everything IN ALL CAPS. Don't ask me why, it just does.

2. "Since the TV won't work" in the seventh panel could have been handled a whole lot better. See all that space in the balloon? Well, the guy is obviously shouting, so why don't you enlarge the text to emphasize his point? That would really help in filling the bubble while making your comic all the more interesting of a read.

3. You went through the effort of making the first three panels very neat looking, but you made the rest of the comic suffer because of it. What I mean by that is, it looks like you put time and effort into the first two, using neat effects and such, but seems as if you rushed through the rest of the comic. Time is effort. Remember that.

There are simple, yet VERY effective remedies for this:

A. In the fourth and fifth panels (with the sprites standing and floating), they look like they were cheaply pasted against a background canvas. Like they don't belong. You can easily remedy this, yet add so much more dimension if you simple give your sprites shadows.

B. With the T.V. going pfft, try adding some kind of onomatopoeia (sound effect) like "KSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSHH!" or add some 8-bit Theatre humor by saying "*White Noise*" or something (but if you do that, you need to keep the "*White Noise*" deal consistent but smaller in size throughout the last two panels). That way, you emphasize the fact that it was the television that messed up the story.



When all is said and done, I really enjoyed this comic. You made a good effort in showing that sprite comics don't suck. It was very refreshing! Please keep in mind the tips I have given you, and you'll make your future comics all the better!


Also, I am a graphics teacher that is setting up to teach beginners and advanced (and everything in between) classes for sprite comics. If you're interested, please let me know!

Keep up the good work, and I'll watch your career with great interest! ^_^

@WALL•E:
Thanks for all the tips.

Well, since I made the second one before reading all this, some points are still lacking, but I think making the next one better is as good as improving the current one.
So here it is:
Eps. 2: The story begins. Seriously.


Edit: So, next episode still takes a while, but at least you can now look at a fancy new sig.

Heheh - I like the show's little background voicings. The text bubbles are a lot better, too (though the second panel still has some collisions). I look forward to the next episode!

Funny stuff, Dustfinger. I already made a long post just for you, so I'm all posted out at the moment.

Very nice indeed. And the humor appears to be the same kind used in 8-Bit Theater (Though that may be my mind playing tricks on me due to this using FF sprites...). I'll keep an eye on this.

It's quite easy to tell that this comic was heavily influenced by 8-bit Theatre.

But that's no problem, right, GS?

Yes, they are influenced by 8-bit Theatre. I spent the first half of my summer vacation in reading all 1023 episodes
And I still look forward for every tuesday, thursday and saturday.
But be pacified: It is not my intention to parody FF.

So, here it is, episode 3:
The chance of your life


This one quite took a while

That was really funny, but didn't you already use the tv talking to the character as a joke? D:

I used a TV in all three episodes, but this was the first one who adresses a character. In episode one, he should show a film.
In episode two, he's not even important for the plot.

Episode 4:
Let's watch that red guy...

I think the second to last panel has a typo in the boss' bubble. Perhaps "Hm, maybe he wasn't THAT good of a choice."

That's the only thing so far. I can definitely see the 8-Bit Theater humor, which I enjoy. You pump these out pretty quickly, too. Very nice.

Episode 5:
Zooom!


Enough comics to post in the archives!

The third panel might've had a typo, but beyond that, it was a very good comic. I'm really enjoying this. ^_^

Thanks, that motivates.
(I dont really see the typo...
Tell me, where it is, so I can terminate it!)

Shouldn't it be "I've been standing here for days" instead of "I'm already standing here for days"? "Already" implies present as opposed to past.