Websnark

Comment from: Bob Stevenson posted at June 7, 2005 2:58 PM

I use both the expanded canvas and flash on More Fun at Graphic Smash. There are no animations, no fancy back and next buttons and no music. I do have a preloader that I throw into each file that lets readers know how long they'll have to wait for the thing to load, but that's it for bells and whistles. Almost all of the art's done directly in Flash as well (ten panels with backgrounds, none repeated, is usually around 100k).

So why do I use it? For me, it's more about working style than delivery. Flash lets me treat my strip as one big drawing board. I throw reference material right into it. I move panels figures and backgrounds all over the place. I work on pieces of panels at widely varying sizes (Flash scales with no loss thanks to vectors). The interface makes the whole process just a little more fun and a lot more fluid. As for the expanded/infinite canvas stuff, I only break the borders of left and right when Shaenon encourages me to have at it. More often, Flash is about the work-space than the product so most of my strips ride a few panels in one direction and that's it.

I also do a strip on paper (HB) and much prefer it, but if I've got to be chained to a computer for art, I prefer Flash to any of the other graphic tools I've played with. I understand the problems with fills and effects. Heh, Cat Garza and I had a great conversation about them a few years ago, but for now the benefits to me outweigh my need to use bitmapped fills.

Sorry to ramble, but for once, I've got some experience with something you're writing about that I though worth sharing.

Comment from: Eric Burns posted at June 7, 2005 3:07 PM

Bob -- and doing it for reasons like that at the least legitimizes it in my head, whether I care for it or not. It's not there to be there, it's there for a reason. If that makes sense.

Comment from: William_G posted at June 7, 2005 3:25 PM

Honestly, I think it's best use would be in NOT producing experimental works, but in making the comic's navigation so easy that even the laziest of web monkeys would happily use it to read a comic.

None of that pesky scrolling. Click. Click. Click.

And with images being smaller, you can have the entire strip in one spot instead of having to load another page.

Basically, it's made the simple uses even better.

Comment from: Stuart Robertson posted at June 7, 2005 3:46 PM

You could have the Flash app load the panels as required, cutting down the time you wait for the entire comic to load.

An "infinite canvas" comic is a strange hybrid of comic and animation. You spend a lot of time watching things pan, zoom and scroll about, rather than reflecting on the composition and design of the page. Then again, if you have to scroll down a long webpage, in some ways that's the same kind of thing.

Comment from: Sean Duggan posted at June 7, 2005 6:33 PM

While we're at it, now that I use Firefox, I wish every comic had text-based links for moving forwards and backwards. It's so nice to be able to read through the archives mouse-free when desired. And, while I'm on the issue of easy comic navigation, please don't hide a way to access your archives. I've had strips where I was halfway through the archive when my browser session crashed. Most strips, I just click on the archive button and find the last link visited. Those without an archive section, I guess at a rough date, then go forwards or backwards by halves until I find my way to the strip. Some strips, and the flash-based ones are often big culprits here, embed the comic navigation in an area where you can't access it directly /and then hide the archives/! It's almost like they want the higher bandwidth bill of me stepping back through history one comic at a time to find the one I was reading... *shrug* Then again, if they get a high price for ad impressions, maybe it does make sense. Anyhow, easy ways to jump back a dozen or a hundred strips is key. I'm very thankful that it's built into the default Keenspace site templates, for one.

Comment from: Kendra Kirai posted at June 7, 2005 9:48 PM

I really, really dislike flash-based navigation, because I like to download an entire website's archives...like I plan to do with Sluggy Freelance, since I haven't read in such a long time...and read it locally with ACDSee. I can zoom in, I don't have to look for the 'next' button, I can easily find my way back there in the case of a crash, and it's just eighty times faster reading that way. I can (And have) read over a thousand strips in one day in this way, when it would have taken at LEAST twice as long even on broadband to do it all by hand.

Yes, I know it's not 'nice' to do that...but I'm sure I'm not the only one who does it, and it's just plain *easier* than navigating normally. Especially since I dislike using the mouse and tabbing to the 'next' button would take forever because of the often large amounts of links around the comic. (Not to mention the flash-based ads that like to 'trap' the focus of the tab-key-to-next-link thing. Those are the work of evil, evil people who should be ashamed of themselves)

As for infinite/expanded canvas....A lot of the time, even with mouse scrolling and such, so many of them are just annoying and difficult to read. If a comic isn't easy to read, I think the artist/writer/whatever has failed. I don't want to have to scroll for ten minutes to reach the 'punchline'. If I have to, it had better be one HELL of a great joke (Or ending, whatever), or it will simply not be worth it. (Which is why I refuse to pay to read webcomics. There's no way to know if it'll be worth the money. If I like a webcomic enough, I'll buy a collection, especially if it has extra stuff. I'm not going to buy something sight-unseen or seeing only two or three strips of hundreds beforehand. I'm missing out on Narbonic because of this, and it kind of bugs me...but I'm still not going to pay to read something unless I'm pretty sure I'm going to ENJOY it...and unless I'm pretty sure I'm going to get ALL of it. Paying ten bucks a month....okay, fine, but each month I want something besides up to thirty or so more strips to read, and if I stop paying, I don't want to be left wondering what the cliffhanger was.

This became kind of a rant, I suppose...Sorry about that, but I'm kind of passionate about my webcomics.

Comment from: Kendra Kirai posted at June 7, 2005 9:51 PM

Oh, another thing about infinite canvas..of it's just scrolling up and down, which one would probably have to do anyhow, I don't mind that too much. Girly is okay about that. It's just one really loonnnng page. Not twelve dozen post-its scattered all over the house with numbers to tell you which order to read them, which is what many of the 'infinite canvas' comics I've seen approximate.

Comment from: Paul Gadzikowski posted at June 7, 2005 9:58 PM

And, while I'm on the issue of easy comic navigation, please don't hide a way to access your archives. ... Anyhow, easy ways to jump back a dozen or a hundred strips is key.

I keep a list of webcomics whose archives have failed to keep me engaged once I started them. Included are all webcomics whose archives I've started only to discover that there's no calendar index for finding my place the next time.

Comment from: Eric Burns posted at June 7, 2005 10:12 PM

I really, really dislike flash-based navigation, because I like to download an entire website's archives.

[...]

Yes, I know it's not 'nice' to do that...but I'm sure I'm not the only one who does it, and it's just plain *easier* than navigating normally.

Which is exactly why some people have gone to flash based navigation, actually. That practice ends up costing the artist money for the bandwidth, while you don't actually see the strip in the context of the page, their advertising, their business model, and so forth.

So... you're more making the case for flash based navigation than against it.

Comment from: Steve Mollmann posted at June 7, 2005 10:21 PM

I just read that Delta Thrives strip. Wow. As you said, it was beautiful-- I wish there was more than just the one strip available to read, unless I'm missing something blatantly obvious.

But... Mimi's Last Coffee... what's the point of all the side endings? They just seemed there for the sake of it (especially the bomb one); the part of the strip that mattered was the horizontal one.

Comment from: gwalla posted at June 7, 2005 10:27 PM

What, you mean Flash can be used for things other than animutations and anime loops set to silly music?

Comment from: Aerin posted at June 7, 2005 10:55 PM

That Tarquin engine is fascinating. I want to write a story just to make use of it.

Comment from: gwalla posted at June 8, 2005 12:31 AM

Kendra: where's that "$10/month" figure come from? Because the only subscription sites I'm familiar with are the Modern Tales ones, and they're about $3/month.

Comment from: Montykins posted at June 8, 2005 12:51 AM

I quite liked Mimi's Last Coffee. I wonder if the fact that Scott McCloud is an excellent cartoonist gets in the way of people analyzing his ideas. I mean, just because one person (Scott McCloud) can do these multi-branching cartoons doesn't mean the concept is rich enough to be a whole genre. There's a chance that people read a McCloud Infinite Canvas piece and are reacting more to the McCloud part than the Infinite Canvas.

Also, how come micropayments are always associated with webcomics? Surely the concept can be applied to any sort of online content, so that's more of a "digital marketplace" innovation than a "future of cartoons" innovation.

Comment from: William_G posted at June 8, 2005 1:20 AM

But... Mimi's Last Coffee... what's the point of all the side endings? They just seemed there for the sake of it (especially the bomb one)

You'd surprised how many things people do just because they can do it. Everything from stealing a lawn gnome, to climbing Mt. Everest, to having side branching on their comic.

It's these silly actions that later generations take and learn how to apply them in a practical manner. To the benefit of everyone else.

Comment from: William_G posted at June 8, 2005 1:45 AM

To put it another way:

This is what happens when you demand everyone think in lockstep

Nothing get's acheived

This is what happens when people start rebelling against the status quo

Ah, let the sweet sweet bells of webcomic freedom ring!

Comment from: Kendra Kirai posted at June 8, 2005 4:23 AM

I was just pulling a number out of thin air, actually. But still, once the exchange rate and the interest on the credit card comes into play, it may as well be ten bucks a month. If I could get LIFETIME subscription to a single webcomic, maybe. But there's just not enough that I think is good enough from the preview stuff to justify it. Personally, I much prefer the 'free content, offer books with an extra or three' model. That way the people who buy get something the others don't, but nobody is forced to pay to read the main story.

I am honestly unsure as to why people do it otherwise...I mean, sure, there's the whole 'comicbook' thing...but at least those have collections that you can buy that have whole story arcs. The subscription model for webcomics is like...buying a book, getting the first five chapters, then having to pay the same price again for all of the next chapters, without ever knowing how many chapters the book will HAVE. Without ever knowing if one day the author will just decide 'I don't want to do this anymore' and stop without resolving anything. (I'm still annoyed about Cool Cat Studio ending partway through a storyline, and the people involved simply moving onto something else with no explanation I can find)

And William_G...actually, the american founding fathers were rebelling against the fact they were getting taxed up the ass without being able to say anything about it. And everyone thinking in lockstep....need I remind you that China has always been kind of hard on those who go against the status quo, but had some of the most advanced thinking of the times? The amount of art that was achieved? Sun Tsu? Ming Dynasty? GREAT WALL?

Comment from: Rakishi posted at June 8, 2005 6:16 AM

I really dislike most flash and javasrcipt based controls for regular comics. For example, AlphaShade's flash interface feels sluggish to me and I just find it annoying (may be my computer however no other flash has problems asfaik).

-Bookmarks: I don't usually read large archives in one go, and so I like to bookmark my current position so I can easily go back to it. Flash and heavy javascript controls fail miserably at allowing this from what I've seen. Needless to say instead of trying to remember which page of which chapter I left off on I'll probably simply not bother coming back to the comic.

-Tabs: Sometimes I like opening a certain page in a new tab, gives me more control and so on. Flash (and javascript sometimes) again fail, and this goes for any page which uses flash buttons.

-Enlarge: Firefox has this neat extension that lets me enlarge an image... I use it a lot as many webcomics are way too straining on my eyes (if I can even read the text) in their normal size (unless I lean forward a lot). This can be added to the Flash however it seems like reinventing the wheel and the only example I have on hand feels like a p1 (ie: AlphaShade). Needless to say it'd be nice to have readable text, which may I add Mimi's Last Coffee seems to have, however you can't win them all.

-Lack of integration in general: Again using AlphaShade as an example, I can't page down/up nor use the scroll wheel to move around a page (if zoomed in). The slider has a 3 second delay on a zoomed in page and there is lack of size control.

The best archive system I've found so far is the one used by some comics on Graphic Smash, where I go through the archive a few dozen comics at a time. They all load while I wait so no loading times in essence, navigation is easy and I can enlarge easily (no annoying banners on the sides). The only annoyance would be bookmarking although I can bookmark the archive page itself and scrolling through a few dozen pages is much easier than pressing "next"/"prev" links dozens of times.

The Tarquin engine seems to respond nicely however it still has a lot of white space on my screen (1024x768) but the text is readable so it doesn't matter much.

William_G: China rebelled against their former government (ie: they went against the status quo), so you've just countered your own point by showing what horrible things being rebellious can lead to.

Comment from: Sean Duggan posted at June 8, 2005 7:23 AM

The subscription model for webcomics is like...buying a book, getting the first five chapters, then having to pay the same price again for all of the next chapters, without ever knowing how many chapters the book will HAVE.

You have a point. I keep putting off subscribing to some of these sites because I know that if I wait longer, I'll have even more archives for my money. I feel the same way about having purchased SolSuite. It costs the same amount if you buy it now or a year from now, but buying a copy does not entitle you to new games that come out for it; you have to buy a new copy for that.

The risk of a webcomic person just suddenly quitting is an annoyance too. At least with book companies, comic book companies, and the like, you're pretty much guarenteed the rest of the books in a series (which is one of the reasons it's virtually impossible to pitch for a series as your first books for a publisher, too much up-front investment). *wry grin* Admittedly, in some series like the Kencraytch sagas by PC Hodgell, they may be spaced out over 20+ years... {eagerly waiting for Jame at Tentir or whatever the title will eventually be...}

Comment from: Paul Gadzikowski posted at June 8, 2005 7:51 AM

my favorite expanded canvas trick -- cutting and pasting the same panel nine or ten times in a row without even varying text, to convey a sense of blank staring

I did this once, almost.

Comment from: William_G posted at June 8, 2005 10:13 AM

Historically, China has always been one of the most despotic societies. In fact, when viewed through modern eyes, most all of the cultures we tend to tip the hat towards for being memorable societies would be considered utter crap that needs wiping out. and while it's semi true that the Chinese communists did rebel against their Japanese overlords, Mao's revolution was little more than alternative group of thugs to Chang Kai-Shek's group of thugs. A situation that had been ongoing since the fall of the Qing. Where Mao won was with the propaganda machine, where he would vilify the opposition.

It's very effective. And it doesn't take much effort.

However, the goal was the same. To replace one group that demanded lock-step thinking with their own.

What made the founding fathers of the USA so special was that they were determined to create a socety that would prevent this sort of oppressive overlord from taking control. (And really, the taxation issue was just the match for the powder-keg)

So, these widly experimental thinkers, these innovators, these dirty hippies, went and created a document that would serve as the pinnacle of human thinking. A document that has not been matched nor surpassed by any group of thinkers since: the American Constitution.

They could have easily substituted the the English throne for one of their own, but they didnt. Wildly rebellious, innovative thinking that put a bullet through the head of the age of absolutism.

So when it comes down to it, the Tarquin Engine, and Flash are tools meant to allow people the luxury of innovative thinking in regards to comics. That's not to say they're the webcomic version of the American Constititution. But people who shit on them just for their not "being the same as everything else", could be seen as on par with either Mao's or Kai-Shek's gang of thugs.

So, once again, Flash, Tarquin, and expanded canvas = sweet liberty that allows you do use them or not, as you see fit.

God bless Merlin, god bless America, and god bless you, even if you're a lock-stepping webcomic nazi.

Comment from: Kendra Kirai posted at June 8, 2005 10:25 AM

About my method of reading webcomics being an argument *for* flash based stuff....that's not entirely true either. EXTREMELY rarely will I willingly click on a banner ad for something that isn't entirely free (Such as another webcomic) or an internal thing, like something the artist of the comic is selling. In fact, until I started using firefox (Just recently), I ignored banner ads as much as possible. WITH Firefox, I simply block everything that isn't an internal ad or for other comics. That won't change if they go to a flash-based or other archiving system, and in fact will almost certainly make me stop reading the comic that does this altogether because it's just too damn annoying to keep up with anymore.

Basically, they're not going to get any money from me anyhow unless they make it WORTH it for me to give them money...and if they make it hard for me to read their comic, well...it will *never* be worth it.

Isabel and Terrence Marks have the right general idea...their comics are free (At least, Spare Parts, Namir Deiter and You Say It First are, not sure about any of the other stuff they do), but you have the OPTION of donating a certain amount to recieve a boatload of extra stuff. Now, I wish their donation levels were a little bit less pricy, but the prospect of all that *stuff* is wearing down my reluctance..even though I probably can't really afford it. (Living in Canada really bites when everything worth buying is in America) THAT is the kind of stuff I wish would be offered by more artists. Of course, not everybody is the kind of cyborg art creating monster Isabel Marks is (She does what, like twenty strips a WEEK, fully colored, when most people can barely crank out five black and whites? She CAN'T be human), but they don't have to offer THAT much. THAT is the kind of model I'd support over subscription of 'micropayments'. (Which are a complete load. A quarter to read a comic you might not even like, going by a few cropped images from a few panels that don't even give you some kind of idea what it's about? Plus whatever fees are included in using the service to GIVE them that quarter? It's like being forced to buy a book based solely on the picture on the cover, which is RARELY if EVER quite like what's on the inside. Yahright.)

Anyhow, that's another little rant from me...but I'm kind of passionate about this subject.

Comment from: Kendra Kirai posted at June 8, 2005 10:32 AM

The British throne is pretty much a figurehead, you do realize this, right? The Queen has very little power to actually DO anything. It's almost entirely the parliments. VERY unlike America, nowadays, where what the president says is gospel and everyone else Hates America And Is A Dirty Terrorist. Bush has even gone so far as to claim a HOLY MANDATE. This is what emporers and the like tended to do. 'I was chosen by God, so everyone who doesn't agree with me is a traitor!' From there it's a not-very-big step to proclaiming you ARE a God, and demanding everyone worship you.

But this is getting into politics, which really isn't what this discussion should be about. Lets stop it here, shall we?

Comment from: SeanH posted at June 8, 2005 12:39 PM

Ripping the comics from a site without going through the individual pages is an extremely unfriendly thing to do. Many comic artists (notably Clay of Sexy Losers) consider it theft, and not without justification - you're viewing the comics that took them time and money, using their bandwidth to do it, but you're not viewing the ads that pay for their rent and food. Obviously not all artists see things like that, but, well, it's a good way to hurt artists financially. Same with adblock. Does it really kill you to have a banner ad on the page? I know guys with websites who wouldn't be able to make rent without those ads.

Comment from: Aerin posted at June 8, 2005 1:45 PM

I agree with SeanH. Most webcomics try to keep their ads reasonably discreet and not annoying, and some sites like Something Positive and PvP use the comic's characters in their ads, so it's almost like filler art. I appreciate the work that webcartoonists do, and I'm shortly going to launch my own comic, so the absolute least I can do is to have the ads there. Depending on the advertising model, sometimes just having hits on that page will give them money. Personally, I'm working on programming my site so that Firefox adblock won't work (the joys of open source). It's out-and-out theft, and it hurts the entire webcomics community when people are too damned impatient and cheap to let a banner ad or two load on their page. I find it a bit hard to believe that someone who claims to be passionate about webcomics has no qualms about ripping off the artists, and thinks they're perfectly justified in doing so.

(Sorry if I'm stepping over the line, Eric, but stuff like this pisses me off like nothing else.)

Comment from: Pooga posted at June 8, 2005 2:48 PM

I agree with the comments of Aerin and SeanH on this one. I thought we were maybe beginning to get past the moronic mentality that equates the web as a distribution medium as having so little value that it has to be given away, at least among people who consider themselves active fans of the medium. "Those stupid artists and writers dare to think they should be able to make money from their creation?!"

There are plenty of legitimate reasons to not support a comic in some monitary way. Including, to be fair, feeling that the product is priced higher than you feel it is worth. I just find it hard to believe that someone who would identifies themselves a fan of a comic also considers the monetary worth of that comic to be nothing. Or actually less than nothing, as ripping comics from a site is costing the creators bandwidth without even the meager chance at recouping any costs from ad revenue.

Also, Kendra, the argument about "not paying for a comic because I can't evaluate it from a few free samples"? While there are indeed plenty of subscription sites where I feel this is the case, I'm going to have to call a BIG bullshit on using Narbonic as an example. When I previewed the archives, I initally thought Modern Tales had accidentally unlocked her archives! Shaenon has several complete storylines, both recent and older, available for free viewing. If you don't like it, or don't feel it's worth CAN$3.70/month for the MT subscription, that's fine. Just don't whine that she's not giving enough away to make a decision.

Comment from: Chris Anthony posted at June 8, 2005 3:20 PM

Kendra, I hate to dogpile like this, but something you might not be considering is that the "clickthrough" model of web advertising is, in my experience, widely considered to have failed. Many, if not most, advertising models now base payment on impressions - individual views of each ad. The justification that "I wouldn't have clicked on the ads anyway" doesn't hold under an impressions model, where whether you see the ad is far more important than whether you click through.

(I admit, here, that I use Adblock on ads as well; but when I use it, it's strictly on ads that annoy me somehow - like the dancing "punch the monkey" ads or anything that uses sound. If the ads aren't actively bothering me, I do my best to live and let live.)

Comment from: Eric Burns posted at June 8, 2005 3:35 PM

Chris -- traditional clickthroughs no longer really apply to many current models, though. Take Blank Label, which is an ad impressions style site. I paid for X number of impressions -- which is to say page views where the ad showed up. I then got a report detailing the number of times my ad was successfully served up, versus the number of times people clicked. Blank Label got the same amount of money either way, however.

On the other hand, to my knowledge when software like adblock is employed, that becomes a page that doesn't register as having an impression (which is how it should be, since I as the advertiser don't want to pay for an ad that the viewer doesn't see). Those pages become "free," then.

And taking a scraping program like Kendra described, and using it to pull all the strips off at once without showing them within the context of the site, is a far sight worse than ad blocking, to my mind. In that case, the reader is also avoiding the cartoonist's tip jar, the merchandise the cartoonist has developed -- any and all possible ad models. It's literally the consumption of resources while denying all possibility of recompense. That's just not a good thing.

It really has little to do with "free" versus "subscription," as a result. A "free" site that supports itself through advertising, merchandising or donations is a site with a business model. Circumventing that business model circumvents -- in the case of the professionals like Kurtz or Milholland -- their having food on their table. If such practices become widespread, then ultimately either they need to find methodologies that are harder to scrape or they have to fold their tent and do something else for a living.

And since I like reading those comics, I don't want them folding their tents any time soon.

Comment from: Kristofer Straub posted at June 8, 2005 4:04 PM

One thing I'm discovering handling Blank Label's ads, if I can shed light on this from the other end of the equation, is that a well-made ad literally quadruples your business or more. There's a broad spectrum of ads we're running right now, and all of them are doing a well-above-average clickthrough ratio, but the ads that just say, you know, "My Comic's Name" and a grainy picture of the cast far underperform the ones that are eye-catching or have an interesting tagline.

I don't think banner ads have failed from what I've seen. Unfortunately there's TWO ways to up your traffic: (1) make a thought-provoking, interest-arousing ad, or (2) lay down some obnoxious flashing lights and monkey-punching. The internet seems to prefer the latter.

Comment from: joeymanley posted at June 8, 2005 5:52 PM

I think it's kind of cute that we have a whole new generation of "I don't care if the cartoonist suffers because of my consumption choices" kiddies in the webcomics world. If they ever came up with any new arguments, or actually said something clever, I'd consider them more of a serious issue. But it's always the same-old same old. This one almost reads like a particularly accurate parody. I haven't heard these kinds of self-inflating, chest-beating justifications for thoughtless behavior since -- oh, I don't know, the last time I read that old thread on the Narbonic board where Shaenon announced she was joining Modern Tales (I revisit that thread every year on March 2, the anniversary of our launch). "I like the donation model -- but I've never donated! It's too expensive" Yep, yep, yep.

About the same time we launched, Penny-Arcade ran a strip where one of the characters was getting kicked out of his apartment by his landlord, because the character thought he should be able to pay the rent whenever he felt like it, and set the amount himself.

I've always thought that that might have been a sort of subtle nod to us (they also, not-so-subtly, linked us when we launched, with just enough snark to make their readers actually come visit -- unfortunatly, on the same day I had a 10-meg John Barber Flash comic on the homepage -- how's that for bringing it all back around to topic!). And I've appreciated Penny-Arcade ever since then.

But I'm rambling now ... must stop.

Joey

www.moderntales.com

Comment from: joeymanley posted at June 8, 2005 6:20 PM

I think the perfect implementation of the Tarquin Engine would be in mainstream comics. It would be a far better (and probably easier-to-automate) way to encapsulate standard printed comic books within a snazzy "interactive" design than what they do now at Marvel dotcomics, and what they used to do at CrossGen's comicsontheweb. I'd hope they'd pay Merlin more than twenty bucks for the use of it, though.

But I said I'd stop posting. Sorry.

Joey

www.moderntales.com

Comment from: Simon Lunn posted at June 8, 2005 6:52 PM

Costs nothing to look at an ad. Some of them may be irritating, but if we're at the site anyway, it's not as though it's a major chore to glance at them.

And the "Currently Selling Our Soul To" note on Something Positive is superb.

Comment from: quiller posted at June 8, 2005 7:32 PM

Personally, I wouldn't cut out the banner ads on most of the comics I visit, because they are generally well targeted. Stuff like comics I haven't read before, books coming out of comics that I like, or links to games on gaming comics or anime on manga comics is stuff that is likely to interest me.

I tend to ignore a lot of the non-targeted keenspot ads, but when people properly target their ads it is more like a feature than a drawback. I consider it like underwriting in a way, (which I suppose further deepens the connection between Something Positive and PBS) a public statement of support for the particular product and a belief that the viewers would enjoy your product.

Comment from: Chris Anthony posted at June 8, 2005 7:52 PM

Eric, apparently I wasn't speaking clearly, because you and I don't disagree at all. In fact, pretty much my entire point was "excusing strip-mining individual comic images by saying that you wouldn't have clicked through the ads anyway isn't much of an excuse, since nobody uses clickthroughs as a revenue calculator anymore".

As for Adblock, I rarely actually use it on ads unless the ad takes any degree of control away from me. If the ad uses sound, it's gone. If the ad tries to grab the Tab key, it's gone. If the ad says look at all this blinking, moving shit when I'm trying to concentrate on the comic, it's gone. Other than that, like I said, I'm content to live and let live. (I downloaded Adblock almost exclusively for its ability to block a single image instead of all images from a given server, so I could filter out non-worksafe LJ icons at work and Giant Bandwidth-Sucking Images and Flash Ads at home. Yes, Virginia, there are areas of the country where you can't get broadband.)

This is going right back to your original argument, to be honest. Does your Flash ad do something useful? (Hint: if I can't right-click on it and open the link in a new tab, it probably isn't useful enough.) Then, fine. Is it just Flash for the sake of giving your ad a bad heavy-metal soundtrack, SINISTAR-quality voice cuts, or a punchable monkey? Then it's useless to me.

Thinking about it, it's probably appropriate to e-mail the site administrator and say "listen, [this ad] is really getting on my nerves, I'd appreciate it if you tended toward more image-based banners in the future". On the other hand, frankly, I think it's equally appropriate to say "I'm blocking off that particular ad so that it's not showing up in my browser; doing so doesn't affect any of the other ads on your site, and in my case it's a choice between blocking that ad and not visiting your site at all."

I hope this makes sense; it's been a long day.

Comment from: SeanH posted at June 8, 2005 8:07 PM

(Hint: if I can't right-click on it and open the link in a new tab, it probably isn't useful enough.)

Amen to that. If I have to fiddle around with things or lose my page in the archives just to follow an ad, I'll almost certainly not bother.

Comment from: Kendra Kirai posted at June 8, 2005 8:30 PM

I'm not entirely sure, but the 'scraper' method, as you said, downloads everything that's on the site...including the ads, which, I would assume, counts as an 'impression' But seriously...I don't pay for internet access to be buried in ads.

As for generally being well targeted...not really. Alice, for example, has a banner that likes to tell me Uncle Sam wants me to take a survey, and that they're 'busting at the seams with single women'. I don't block ALL ads...just the ones that have absolutely nothing to do with the site in question. I don't even block the 'ads by goooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooogle or whatever they're called. Those are almost always inobtrusive enough to ignore. Animated banners? Those usually die. Flash banners? Usually die. Banners that have been known to occasionally pop up with sound? DEFINITELY dead. I haven't encountered one of those 'superimpose the ad on top of the webpage' monstrosities yet with Firefox, but if I ever do, those will be so *utterly* dead...

Anyhow, I'm surprised that nobody has commented (that I can readily see) on my gushing over the NDUnlimited method of making money.

Comment from: Aerin posted at June 8, 2005 8:34 PM

Hmm, I guess I misunderstood how Adblock works, then. Blanket ad-blocking is bad, but blacklist ad-blocking is perfectly fine. And I definitely agree with Quiller that ads on webcomics tend to be pretty well-targeted. The ads you see on Penny Arcade are almost always for video games. (Penny Arcade is directly to blame for my Puzzle Pirates addiction.) Theater Hopper has ads for comics with a similar sense of humor. Something Positive's ads are usually for RPG stuff or other webcomics. I know I've found several of the comics on my regular trawl because they were advertised on other comics. Heck, I didn't start reading Gossamer Commons until the S*P ad ran. Now if the Firefox extension where you click and drag a link to open it in a new tab worked for banner ads, I would be a very happy person.

Comment from: Bo Lindbergh posted at June 8, 2005 8:52 PM

And taking a scraping program like Kendra described, and using it to pull all the strips off at once without showing them within the context of the site, is a far sight worse than ad blocking, to my mind.

Even if that context is painful to view because of the cartoonist's nonexistent web design skills?

Comment from: Joe Zabel posted at June 8, 2005 9:59 PM

I'm really busy and haven't had the time to read all of the above; but I didn't want to miss the opportunity to make a few comments--

1. Flash or something like it has always been part of McCloud's concept of infinite canvas. In the book, he described a comic very much like The Right Number.

2. "Traditional" infinite canvas can be broken down into three basic types--

a. Downscrolling.

b. Sidescrolling.

c. Multi-scrolling.

Downscrolling is a mundane feature of many, many websites and hardly even registers as infinite canvas. It has all the novelty of shopping on Ebay or reading your email. In terms of comics, it's a troublesome choice, because the direction of the extended page "fights" with the side-to-side direction of the basic comics sequence. But it isn't a serious conflict (print comics are short downscrolling canvases, after all) and many successful comics such as Same Difference are displayed this way.

Sidescrolling is a more interesting choice because it reinforces and extends the side-by-side direction of the basic comic sequence. Aside from folks like Eric who for some reason don't like side-scrolling, it is a very acceptable solution. The problem it has, though, is that the comics sequence doesn't have a visual break in it.

Consider Chris Watkin's cover from an early Webcomics Examiner, for instance: http://webcomicsreview.com/examiner/issue040913/index.html

Chris exploits the sense that the comic really should break to a new line and doesn't. As you travel to the right with the character, you immediately start thinking "When is it gonna end? When is it gonna end?" And that syncs up perfectly with what Chris is trying to convey about drawing a 24-hour comic.

Multi-scrolling is a troublesome choice, because it almost inevitably distracts the reader to try to navigate in two or more directions. I'd say it has a shot at being successful in two circumstances--

1) when the comic is very much idea-oriented. If the reader is being stimulated to think and be aware, it doesn't necessarily clash if you remind them that they're using a webbrowser. And 2) if you are presenting something very big and spectacular, hopefully the awe and the spectacle of it will keep the reader from being too annoyed about how they have to scroll (especially if this is the only way the picture can be shown.) The one time I used multi-scrolling was in a piece for T. Campbell where I needed to show the destruction of the World Trade Center while some other scenes were going on. My gut tells me that not many readers minded that they were being asked to scroll to the right and then scroll down to look over the twin towers.

--

And finally, I wanted to put in my vote for Spiders, rather than Delta Thrives, as Patrick Farley's most excellent infinite canvas comic. In Spiders, the technique is an integral part of a complex story, and helps convey the idea that all of these incongruous events are connected and simultaneous-- and what better way to show that than to put them all on one page?

Comment from: Kendra Kirai posted at June 8, 2005 10:35 PM

To Penny Arcade and Something Positive having good ads...yes, but you see, that's because they CHOOSE who they will advertise for. Most just sign up for doubleclick or something and slap a banner on the site, because they don't have the readership that lets them have choices. PVP is much the same, except everything Kurtz advertises seems to be his own stuff, Speakeasy.net or filecloud...the latter two of which I'm not entirely sure he doesn't have a personal stake in as well. I honestly am not sure why Kurtz gets deals with Image or Dark Horse or whoever he's being nationally published with now while others, like Alice, Namir Deiter, Scary Go Round, Ozy and Millie, etc have to 'settle' for Cafepress and Keenswag. Here's Kurtz with his comic primarily about gamers, and he gets put on comic store shelves across the country with his website on every one...which brings him people to see his ads, buy stuff, etc, while other equally good...or better, if I may be so bold/suicidal...comics have to market to the people who already READ their comics to buy MORE of their comics. That's a bit wrong.

Comment from: Stuart Robertson posted at June 8, 2005 11:03 PM

"print comics are short downscrolling canvases, after all"

With a printed / paper comic you can see the entire page and how all the panels relate to each other. When viewing scanned printed/paper comics on the computer they sometimes require downscrolling, but high resolution or vertical aspect monitors can solve that problem.

"Sidescrolling is a more interesting choice because it reinforces and extends the side-by-side direction of the basic comic sequence. Aside from folks like Eric who for some reason don't like side-scrolling, it is a very acceptable solution."

I think the reason some people may not like side-scrolling is the way they scroll pages. The spacebar, down arrow, and page-down keys let you scroll down a page but usually don't let you scroll sideways. Sidescrolling comics are less convenient if you're not primarily using a mouse. (eg. Laptop)

I think the layout of Jason Little's pages are great examples of formating that works for both the screen AND the printed page.

Comment from: Joe Zabel posted at June 9, 2005 12:00 AM

FYI, the right arrow key can be used to scroll right just like the down arrow key is used to scroll down.

Comment from: TheNintenGenius posted at June 9, 2005 1:20 AM

Haven't commented in a while, so I might as well.

First, the Tarquin comics intrigued me muchly. It's probably the first time I've ever actually read anything by Scott McCloud, for instance, and I really enjoyed the ones by Goodbrey (McCloud's, while nice, had those side endings that seemed more arbitrary than anything, especially the nuclear armageddon one).

As for downward scrolling vs side-scrolling, I agree with Eric in that web browsers are simply far more capable of displaying information vertically than they are horizontally (at least I think Eric said that before; I could be getting my people messed up). Yes, it's POSSIBLE to scroll left and right in a browser window, but more inconvenient. If you force me to actually use the arrow keys or scroll bar to look at horizontal panels, you'd better have a good reason for doing so (yeah, I know that sounds lazy, but so what? If there's no reason for side-scrolling, don't have it).

Another reason I dislike huge horizontal comics is more practical: I'm on dialup (And stuck there, given my location). With vertically aligned comics, I can at the very least start reading the first panels before the rest of the image loads. With horizontals, it forces me to wait until the whole thing is done loading before I can do much of anything. While this may be the author's intent, I don't really like it much, possibly because I'm impatient and maybe also because I don't like having my connection speed become a hindrance in, say, reading through a comic's archives more quickly.

Of course, since I got a widescreen monitor, I haven't had to worry as much about sideways scrolling, but I still find it a tad irksome is all.

(Note that all of these comments were written while tired. The internet's for half-cocked posts, after all.)

Comment from: Aerin posted at June 9, 2005 1:27 AM

I wouldn't say most webcomics sign up for an advertising company. I just went and visited the websites of each one of the nearly fifty comics that I read on a regular basis (none of them are on a subscription model). I've found a few, namely 9th Elsewhere, Instant Classic, Skinny Panda, and Gossamer Commons, that are completely ad-free. Several more, such as Questionable Content, Sam and Fuzzy, Catharsis, and Order of the Stick have only discreet cross-promotion ads for other sites in their collectives, and occasionally for their own merchandise. The rest tended to use Google ads or solicited advertisements, the ones where they choose who will advertise. That's not just Penny Arcade and S*P, it's also Theater Hopper, VG Cats, 8 Bit Theatre, and Dinosaur Comics. Out of nearly fifty, I found only four that used advertising services. Four out of fifty. And only Sinfest had an annoying punch-the-monkey type ad, but then Sinfest has a generally poor site design anyway.

I'm not saying that's an accurate representation of the webcomics community at large. I tend to read higher profile comics, just because they're the ones I hear about. Perhaps small comics are more likely to use something like doubleclick or burstnet, but I sort of doubt it. Webcartoonists tend to be very protective of both their art and the environment in which it's viewed, and as such will try to make sure the ads aren't annoying.

So there are some statistics, just because it bugs me when people make up plausible-sounding figures to support their points.

Comment from: Kendra Kirai posted at June 9, 2005 2:12 AM

Vertical orientation comics have been around for decades you know. Japanese four-panel strips are all vertical, perhaps because of the way japanese is often written in a vertical right-to-left manner.

The problem with side scrolling comics is that we're trained that when you reach the end of a line, you go *down* to the next. The end of a paragraph, you go DOWN to the beginning of the next paragraph. Putting it all side by side just looks *wrong* to most people.

Plus, there's also the subject of 'What about comics that don't always make use of the 'panel' format, such as japanese Manga, where often parts of, or even whole pages are devoted to a single image.

Personally, I just don't like side scrolling 'infinite canvas' comics. For certain scenes they're invaluable, but those scenes can also be broken up by pages in most cases I've seen.

Girly is a good example of vertical infinite canvas.

The ad thing may be true...but several of the cross-promotional ads can be quite annoying too. I'm seriously about ready to block that 'Starscape' ad just because I see it freaking EVERYWHERE and I'm tired of it.

Comment from: Aerin posted at June 9, 2005 2:16 AM

Wow, there's just no pleasing you, is there?

Comment from: Aerin posted at June 9, 2005 2:32 AM

Oh, and to clarify: by cross-promotional, I meant ads by a comic in a collective like Keenspot, Quicksketch, The Gewd Guys, or Dayfree Press that advertise another comic in the collective. Starscape and comics that buy ad space in other comics (like the Gossamer Commons ad on S*P and Blank Label) count as solicited ads.

Comment from: sqbr posted at June 9, 2005 9:47 AM

Wow, I've never commented here before, I feel dwarfed in the shadows of giants etc. But I have Things To Say and noone else seems to have said them. At leat I remembered about the sneaky preview-shows-no-line-breaks-thing.

I am also one of these people who like to read comics all at once, and hates to spend money (especially since the Australian-to-American dollar conversions are not kind). For this reason I had avoided Narbonic despite it looking kind of interesting, but after it got snarked recently and I noticed the last month was free (alas, no longer true) I decided I might as well read it, and then discovered the aforementioned highly generous and nicely organised free archives. I am now so hooked I am seriously considering buying a subscription. The point is that I only have to buy it once to access the archives, and then as long as I remember to check every day I can keep up to date without spending any more. It's less than $4, even in Australian/Canadian dollars :)

I read Bite Me and Mnemesis for free this way, since I was lucky enough to start when they were still free. The only danger is once I'm on the Modern Tales archives I'll be tempted to read as many archives as possible within the month, and thus fail my Phd. Eh.

Kagerou Electric Manga offers the archives as zipped chapters to save on bandwidth, so not all comic artists are against we archive devourers :) But Fireball makes her (his?) money off originals and shirts etc rather than ads, so thats a special case.

Also: I quite like those Scott Mclouds infinite canvas/branching storylines comics I've read, but they all have bit of a light, choose your own adventure feel. I'm not sure I can see them suiting anything really deep..but then again not all comics need to be deep.

I realise I am one of those Bad people who takes with no giving. But I do respect the comic artists right to try to get money out of me :)

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