Websnark

Comment from: Nentuaby posted at February 27, 2005 4:11 PM

Y'know, there's another message I can see in this, too. In many ways, Brent comes out of this a better person. He's healthier, more alert, he'll probably be happier once he gets over the change. And that's something he took upon himself, without prompting from others- remember, nobody actually told him to give up coffee, he just missed a morning due to a broken pot, 'sobered', and decided to stay clean afterwards.

The others are unhappy not because they see something wrong with Brent, but simply because they see that he's changed. But ya know what? People DO that. Skull's childlike nature makes this scary for him- children don't like things changing, even for the better. They don't understand it. It scares them. Cole is, in a way, much the same- he's so used to change in his friends being temporary or superficial, this blindsides him.

But it's Brent's right to change, isn't it? I mean, if a person's got any prerogative in life, it's self improvement. Making yourself a better person shouldn't be something you have to ask your friends about. It's something any good friend will learn to live with, even if change is frightening to them.

"No, I just want him to be... Brent" is the naive response, uttered with a childlike faith that everybody will be exactly the same, forever. The truth is that he IS 'just Brent,' v2.0. He's changed, but on his own initiative and hopefully for the better. I think what we're about to see is all the childlike personalities at PvP (and ultimately, about everyone but Jade has one) going through a bit of a maturation process as they deal with this.

Comment from: Hazelip posted at February 27, 2005 11:26 PM

Yeah, that's cool and all, but 2005 is shaping up to be the year that Kurtz just phones it in. We're just now through February and we've had a filler run of his old crap from college, and only four of the Sunday strips in color. Not feelin' the PVP goodness much lately...

Comment from: Eric Burns posted at February 27, 2005 11:35 PM

I disagree, Hazelip.

He did a con, and during the con he did filler stuff. In previous years, when he's been out of town and doing Con stuff, he's traditionally done filler or had guest artists. This isn't anything new.

As for color on Sunday? Wow, could I not care less if it's in color or black and white. If there's a strip, I'm content.

This isn't 'phoning it in.' Not when the writing's been good and nuanced and interesting, which it has.

In my opinion, anyhow.

Comment from: Dave Van Domelen posted at February 28, 2005 12:03 AM

Isn't this the Saturday strip? With the Sunday strip (color or not) not out yet?

Comment from: Dave Van Domelen posted at February 28, 2005 12:05 AM

Never mind, it's actually Sunday.

Comment from: Eladria posted at February 28, 2005 12:23 AM

For a long time, I've been a Penny Arcade die-hard (I have several strips on my wall at the office) and a PvP reader. And through the feuds, I've always pretty firmly been in the "If tomorrow I have to pick, I'm picking PA" camp. And I've even said to friends that while PvP is funny sometimes, I don't care for it as much, and sometimes wondered why I read it.

This strip gets to it. Kurtz is good, Eric's right on that point. I'm no PvP fanboy, but he does good stuff. In a long term manner. And this strip really points that out. Instead of the Gag-A-Day or occasional delving into dreaded Continuity, Kurtz embraces it, and I wholeheartedly cheer on his forward moving strip. To have a strip actually evolve is JUST the kind of strip I hope he's running here.

Comment from: Shadowydreamer posted at February 28, 2005 12:23 AM

It's no secret that I disagree with about 90% of what Mr. Kurtz says, but I've always enjoyed his comic. When I stop enjoying it, I'll stop reading it. I'm sure he'll be thrilled to give me a full money back refund. ^_^

Comment from: FlaGator_ posted at February 28, 2005 2:28 AM

Eric, is there a more appropriate thread to post in to draw your attention to an interesting Webcomic development? I hate to post messages to unrelated threads like this, but I don't know where else to put it.

Anyway, I wondered what you thought about the end of Ian McDonald's horrid "Meanwhile in the Dimension Of..." filler strip for Sluggy Freelance.

Sorry for interrupting, now back to your current thread.

Comment from: FlaGator_ posted at February 28, 2005 2:37 AM

Eric, is there a more appropriate thread to post in to draw your attention to an interesting Webcomic development? I hate to post messages to unrelated threads like this, but I don't know where else to put it.

Anyway, I wondered what you thought about the end of Ian McDonald's horrid "Meanwhile in the Dimension Of..." filler strip for Sluggy Freelance. I think it's a long time coming.

Sorry for interrupting, now back to your current thread.

Comment from: FlaGator_ posted at February 28, 2005 2:43 AM

And sorry for the double-post. It gave me an error the first time, and I can't find a way to edit or delete one. And sorry for this post apologizing for the double post. And sorry for making this post longer than it needed to be by apologizing twice. And that apology was pretty unnecessary too. So just generally sorry all around.

Comment from: Haver posted at February 28, 2005 4:53 AM

Iron-man, aye?

I think we're going to get the best deal here.

Comment from: Hazelip posted at February 28, 2005 6:45 AM

Sorry, Eric. But this is a predictor for the rest of 2005. Yes, he does fillers for con trips, but c'mon. How many times has he promised to establish a cache of mateiral so that his absences, or his con trips, won't impact the strip's daily commitments?

As for color, here's a fine example of fanboy-bar-lowering. Kurtz sets it at a level with color Sundays and you go and lower it for him. I like the strip too, but he's just plain slackin' here... It's a strip on the computer! How freakin' difficult is it to color it?

Comment from: Squiddhartha posted at February 28, 2005 8:01 AM

Hazelip: color a few strips on the computer, then let us know how difficult it is.

Comment from: Haver posted at February 28, 2005 8:40 AM

Pretty goddamn difficult.

Comment from: BigJT posted at February 28, 2005 9:20 AM

I actually prefer it in B&W. I mean, his colouring is fine in a technical respect, no complaints there. That said, seeing the characters in colour is, for me, like reading a book, and then watching a movie based on it. Whether it's what the author (or in this case, artist) pictures the characters looking like, it's not quite the way I picture the characters. In PvP's case, I never pictured Marcy as a redhead (is that magazine a magnet for redheads or what? statistically, they've probably come close to employing every redhead in the city), nor do I picture Cole or Francis having reddish noses (an unmentioned alcoholism on Cole's part, and a serious acne problem on Francis'?). Yes, I realize the red noses is a comic standard, but I just never pictured it for the PvP characters.
I don't know, but if he never colours another strip for as long as he's doing PvP, I won't complain. I probably won't even notice.

Comment from: Eric Burns posted at February 28, 2005 9:38 AM

I like the strip too, but he's just plain slackin' here... It's a strip on the computer! How freakin' difficult is it to color it?

Okay, now I'm pretty sure you're just screwing with us. I mean, let's set aside the fact that "colorist" is a damn hard job to begin with -- both between developing character specific color palattes (and never screwing them up), making certain all colors plus the background don't clash with each other visually, and the fine art of gradations so the colors look natural. Let's just stop and consider time.

For every shape on the screen, you have to either select it or retrace a selection around it. You have to select the right color (every time, or you get complaints), you have to do the fills, you have to go through close up and cover over any gaps that got missed, you have to do the post-processing, and then you have to go over the strip with a fine tooth comb and look for what you screwed up, because you know if you get it wrong you're going to get e-mails. No matter how minor it is. If Kurtz colored yesterday's strip and got the Starbucks cup the wrong color green in the wrong proportion to white, he'd get angry e-mails.

A good number of the strips that are in color employ third party colorists. Suburban Jungle and Sluggy Freelance are just two of them -- it's just more work than the artist has time for. A whole bunch of other artists just don't do color. When time gets tight, color's the first thing to go, as well.

In putting together Gossamer Commons and searching for an artist, I completely dropped any thoughts of color early on. This isn't because the artists weren't capable (have a look at Greg Holkan's Nemesis. It's both really good and color). It's because I wanted moderately elaborate artwork and also wanted to be sure we could maintain a three strip a week schedule. Color was just easiest to drop out of the equation, given that.

Suffice it to say, you didn't exactly strengthen your argument here, so I'm assuming you're just messing with us.

Comment from: Nentuaby posted at February 28, 2005 10:10 AM

I happen to disagree with the original assertion that Kurtz skipping color strips is anything to even take particular note of, but I can't say I entirely agree with you on how hard it is to color a PVP. I agree, creating a color scheme and getting used to coloring it takes time. And for a strip that already has complex line art and shading, the coloring can take forever. However, PVP is really a very simple strip to color.

There are maybe fifty regions of flat-filled colors and 40 or so shaded bits in a comic. The color schemes are simple, and he already closes his lines in the black-and white art (which makes it a snap to just drop a bucket tool on most regions, and makes coloring even the tough ones more forgiving around the edges). Once you've got the initial outlay of your time designing the colors sorted out, with a bit of practice you can color a full four panel strip in fifteen minutes. I'm not just pulling numbers out my patookis, I practice my photoshop skills this way. And while fifteen minutes isn't entirely a trivial outlay, it vanishes into the full production time of seven strips a week like spit in the ocean!

Comment from: IvoryTiger posted at February 28, 2005 12:32 PM

$20 bet I update everyday, winner takes the pot?

I think I hear a Triple Snark coming up? (Only fair with baseball season right around the corner). I think this goes nicely with your other article below just draw something, ANYTHING!!!

Comment from: Montykins posted at February 28, 2005 1:15 PM

I'm just worried that an uncaffeinated Brent will be calmer and nicer, and as a result be less funny. It's may sound selfish of me, but I'm willing to sacrifice his health *and* his interpersonal relationships if it means more comedy.

Comment from: Shadowydreamer posted at February 28, 2005 3:14 PM

I do the weenie photo web comic thing and it takes me 15 minutes just to get the picture set up all proper in PSP to put captions in.. I shudder to think of how you could do a good colour job of a comic in 15 minutes.

Comment from: Paul Gadzikowski posted at February 28, 2005 6:35 PM

How many times has he promised to establish a cache of mateiral so that

his absences, or his con trips, won't impact the strip's daily

commitments?

I don't know about other webcartoonists, but I consider my past work

fair game for filler buffer. There's some past work sitting in my prepared

buffer right now. For all we know, this is the prepared buffer Scott was

thinking of when he made that promise. Maybe in July we'll be seeing more

Elementary!

It's a strip on the computer! How freakin' difficult is it to color

it?

Coloring's the most time-consuming part. At least for me. And all I do is

flat colors.

I like what people like about the Brent/coffee thing - the notion that a

gag-a-day strip can have growth and depth that's so natural the reader

doesn't really notice it. I like that people like it, because it's what I'm

trying to do.

But I'm learning that it doesn't pay to look at Websnark midday when there's

a snark on something I save for evening. I'm going to have to stop reading

before I've finished for the day... I think I watered down the impact (no

pun intended) of the whole Something*Positive/Queen of Wands thing

for myself because I saw it here first...

Comment from: Hazelip posted at February 28, 2005 7:50 PM

Nentuaby reads me right. He's been coloring his strip for a while now, he should have his pallet saved and ready to go. He doesn't do very complicated coloring, no shading, no gradients, etc. and yes, all his lines are closed. If he can't take his bucket tool out once a week and color with the very simple pallet he's already established, then yes, he is indeed slacking.

I love reading PVP, but that doesn't slap any fanboy filters on my opinions, or fire up my excuse generating machine. I think it's really funny how much better Kurtz takes critique's like these than his fans do...

Comment from: Prodigal posted at February 28, 2005 10:56 PM

If by "slap fanboy filters on opinions," you mean "discuss things realistically," then perhaps.

Comment from: Phalanx posted at March 1, 2005 2:12 AM

It's a strip on the computer! How freakin' difficult is it to color it?

*shudder* Dude, you have no idea...

The foolish will think it's all just point and click with a paintbucket. Don't forget there's also subtle details like shading and background and colour matching and anti-aliasing, which you don't really notice until it's missing.

Comment from: Phalanx posted at March 1, 2005 2:14 AM

And Scott Kurtz DOES do shading, my dear.

Look carefully ;)

Comment from: Nentuaby posted at March 1, 2005 7:26 PM

Shadowydreamer:

You're absolutely right, it is tough, but you have to remember, he's already done that- even his non color strips go through an immense amount of processing (lettering, line cleanup, etc) to get into finished form, so the hard part of coloring- prepping the image- is already taken care of by the hard part of lettering and cleaning up lines. It's a nice synergy.

And Phalanx, I already mentioned his shading- "and 40 or so shaded bits." It's not complex gradient shading, though, just regions. You lasso a region, set your palent color to black, and crank your paint bucket's opacity down to 20% or so. Bam. It definitely takes an artistic eye, but not a lot of time.

And just to clarify, I am not attacking Kurtz. The entire reason that coloring his strip is such a snap for even a an amature colorist is because the black and white is perfect for it. He does his job as a line artist well.

Comment from: Phalanx posted at March 2, 2005 7:20 AM

Nentuaby: Apologies, I should have addressed that comment. I was referring to the Hazelip "No shading, No gradients" comment, not yours.

Not that I'm defending Kurtz, but fair's fair, I'm not about to stand by and not correct an incorrect statement if I see one.

And doing a lot of colour myself, I do take offense whenever someone treats colour like it's some simple thing because it's done on a computer.

Granted, Scott's style does make it easier if you compare it to a texture monster like mine, but it's not easy. Just easier.

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