Isotown

[Stupot]

Yeh, things like the tomato patch can be ignored after a while.  They are little details that the regular reader can assume are in constant cycle.  I wouldn't expect you to keep changing the tomatoes every time for realisms sake as the town grows ands more things become a priority.

The only other option would be to draft in some willing buddies and give then maintenence jobs so you could get your pal Yuri to be in charge of keeping the flowers, plants and trees in cycle.

I think that might be taking it a little far though.  It's fine how it is, I was just a bit bewildered by the random...

Spoiler

T-REX

[close]

...incident.

Looking forward to tomorrow.

[Oliwerko]

Guess I join this, cause I've read the whole Isotown so far.
Interesting idea there, but I lack a few things:

1. People.
There is a building in progress, with no one in sight. Road is building just with use of cement mixers (or whatever it's called in english). I would liek to see more people there. Bystanders watching, people on the bus stop, people on sidewalk walking from place A to place B - for example with bags from the shop to their home.

2. Traffic
There's not much traffic there. There are cars on car parks, but not much traffic. It'll be good to add something here and there. Traffic accidents, police chases and so on.

3. Maintenance and accidents
Make road crack, pipes brake, so the water is leaking, make trees fall, and so on.
Make people wash windows, repair their cars. Hope you know what I mean.

Now, something more:
I don't like 1 thing: You focus mainly on building. I know that the concept is "city growing", but try to add more story to make it interesting. Like I wrote in 3rd point up. There's sipmly too much building.
Also, you jump from one "style" to another too quickly. One time, there are 2 small (REALLY small houses), a bit later, there's a BIG market - for who ? For those 2 people ? And after the 2 small houses, a GIANT block of flats is being built.
You are growing the city a bit fast and chaotically.

It just lacks a bit of logic. I guess you should play SimCity a bit more to learn how things go - work opportunities, and so on. The game is perfect for learning such things.

So the conlusion of my opinion: build less, build with logical order, add a more story, people,traffic, accidents and maintenance events.


I'm not telling you what to do, just what I would like to see to give you some ideas.
Looking forward for next update, keep up the good work 

[radiowaves]

Ok, let me give you some inspiration while praising myself:
http://www.pixeljoint.com/pixelart/15325.htm#

[space boy]

That looks pretty nice radiowaves.
I have yet to read the isotown thingy but the idea seems original.

[Kinoko]

Not to trash anyone's ideas or jump to anyone's defense here, but my opinion on this is that the fact that there are only a few cars and a few people and a few residenial homes are what adds to the charm.

It's cute. It's funny. I mean, who -really- wants this to be super realistic? Where do we draw the line? I for one don't know jack about building practises and so the amount this guy knows comes across as really expert to me. It's about as much as I, as a little lamen, can handle. Anymore realistic building practise would probably bore me to tears.

Conversely, if it were anymore wacky and insane, it would seem pointless. "Well", you may think to yourself, "a town is dull. Why not a space port for flying whales in the sky?".

My opinion is that there are just enough rules to make it interesting and challenging while still being fun.

Simplicity. This is what pixel art is about. The charm of Isotown for me are simple things achieved with little effect. It shouldn't be too fast-paced nor too grindingly realistic. It should set itself some boundaries but feel free to break them when it (uh, he) wants. It's a comic, ultimately. It's there to be entertaining, but that entertainment is, most of the time, based on it's unique and simple concept.

Radiowaves - that's gorgeous.

P.S. Lego is fucking awesome. Simple coloured brick original Lego.

Beauty in simplicity and restriction coupled with flexibility and charm. The mechanics behind this have a lot in common with what so many of us strive for when making games, surely.

[Vegeta897]

Ahaha, you never cease to amaze me with your posts, Kinoko.

The lack of people bustling around and traffic in the streets is simply a design decision. I really didn't think it was very important. Not to mention, if you hadn't noticed, the poeple are huge when I do draw them. Isotown is a little too small scale to be drawing people in it as a common thing. I'm not really aiming toward showing the exact look of a real town, nor am I aiming to make the exact buildings of one. I've had people tell me the exact thing you are telling me now time and time again, but I'm not going to shift the focus of Isotown because of it. Yes, lol, I know how a city works, I've played Sim City a lot. Please don't assume my intelligence based on my webcomic please :p The reason I only have two houses is because it would be boring if I spent 100 panels just building houses. I decided I simply want to cover a range of a lot of buildings just to keep things interesting, as well as try as many challenges in drawing different types of buildings as I can. (At one point I want to try a rollercoaster)

That's some very nice pixel art, Radiowaves. The art style I've chosen for Isotown is really nothing similar to a more gritty dirty realistic look like in that picture. Isotown doesn't use a whole lot of realistic texturing.

[Shane 'ProgZmax' Stevens]

I definitely think your project deserves more recognition than a lot of generic webcomic type things out there because the idea is pretty fresh (as far as I know, anyway) and it kept me interested for awhile.  I'd like to see some focus shift back to the people of Isotown as it was in the beginning (Ian's short feud with Sam, for instance) because observing stuff being built does get boring after awhile, even considering the amount of effort you put into the stages (which is admirable).  Basically, I'd say not to be in such a hurry to make the buildings and establish and evolve the people in the existing shops (Ian, Paul, whoever works in Tacos, some mallrats that hang out around the apartments, maybe an Isotown Bully).  Character pieces (humorous ones, usually) are often the most entertaining in the panel-based structure you're going with.  Don't be afraid to slow down Isotown a bit and focus more on character/building/situational hysterics .  For instance, I thought the unused pipe was a forgotten piece of the gas piping and was expecting the gas station to explode nicely -- stuff like that will give you a nice breather from all those building stages and the viewer something interesting and different to look at while the town slowly builds, bringing in new characters and situations. 

Keep up the good work.

[Ghost]

I definitely think your project deserves more recognition than a lot of generic webcomic type things out there because the idea is pretty fresh

I second that, Vegeta.

Keep up the good work.

And that too.

Kinoko IS right, you got one thing bang slap down right, pixel art is about abstraction and simply-ness. I totally understand your decisions to move the focus, and it works well. It's like comics and backgrounds- they're drawn every once in a while, and we assume they're there for the rest of the panels. I actually imagined some off-panel bystanders 

Isotown is really a nice, fresh and entertaining little story. Plus, it taught me more about iso perspective than a lot of pretty complicated tutorials because it's something in progress. And the tone is so calm and serene, too, so, don't know, fitting. It's a bit like being gently led through the forever growing of a town, with little nods to details that might've been missed by the first quick glance.

I'm still reading through it all, but you've already made a fan. Me, that is.

[Vegeta897]

This is by far the best Isotown thread I've seen on the internets.

You guys are expressing such incredible details as to why Isotown is enjoyable, I'm astounded. Thank you so much, you're awesome.

[voh]

Well, you did come to the right community. It doesn't matter what it is, about 50% of all threads turn into C&C threads

But that's a positive thing. I know that when I want an opinion on something, this is the place to go, whatever it is

[Oliwerko]

And the tone is so calm and serene

Yes, forgot to mention that I REALLY love those colors. Couldn't be better.
Vegeta - sorry about strong opinion, I kinda got insane. Just wrote that to kick in my ideas, don't take me too serious