Bill watterson style comic.

[SLaMgRInDeR]

i must say thank you to Pessi for introducing me to Calvin and Hobbes, i love this comic so i decided i had to give the style a go too, heres my short strip...


Waddaya think?
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[Unilin]

That sucks.

[Grundislav]

Yeah.

[Czar]

lol, as someone would have said. AA?

[SLaMgRInDeR]

That sucks.

Gee thats kind...
This is the CRITICS lounge, CRITIC meas saying what sucks about it, not just that sucks!
:

Urine's, i mean Unilin's Gingerbread men are no intelligent race...

anyway, i want C&C on art, not on story.
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[rodekill]

That's no gingerbread man... that the Imagination Zero mascot.

Anyhoo.

I think you're doing alright.
My main suggestion would be that you should plan out your panels more beforehand. I can tell you drew all the characters before adding the panel boxes and word bubbles, everything looks squished. Try doing a rough sketch first, just using basic shapes for the characters, but at approximately the same size as they'll be in the final comic, that way you won't waste a lot of time drawing them over and over if you need to move them.

[Esseb]

What rode said, and please don't copy Watterson. I don't mean art wise, but the characters and appearance. Calvin's parents would never EVER be busy watching TV. I used to draw comics based on other comics when I was little, but you just end up not caring about what you create because it's not really your creation. That goes for a parody as well.

[MrColossal]

see this little happening shows my point, them posting that sucks and other one word answers is JUST like posting WOW!11!!

they offer nothing constructive it's just one people see as worse than the other

but as for your comic

I don't really know what's going on and i have no idea how it's inspired by watterson's "style" at all, except that it's a kid that looks just like calvin and he has parents.

if i were to pin point watterson's "style" i guess i'd say it was in comic strip form, meaning all in a row on one tier, usually 4 or 3 panels long with a punchline at the end. Unless it's a sunday comic then it was in colour with 3 tiers. And the stories involved a child with an overactive imagination.

http://www.ucomics.com/calvinandhobbes/1992/07/24/

http://www.ucomics.com/calvinandhobbes/1992/07/25/

http://www.ucomics.com/calvinandhobbes/1992/07/19/

bill watterson rarely broke out of a grid format the last one i posted is an example of him breaking out of it, your comic is technically in a grid format but the panel sizes change and become octogons and a half circle, watterson's comics are usually always in rectangles and ruled out

as rodekill said mayhaps you've drawn the figures before ruling out the boarders and if you say you're immitating Bill's style this is a large no no, to be honest i don't think you even came close to anything like Bill's style and really didn't give it any consideration, i'm not saying this to be mean i'm just saying, there are tons of things different between your comic and calvin and hobbes.

there are little to no backgrounds in your comic and calvin and hobbes is sometimes pretty sparce but the composition is what counts also, panel two is HUGE! for just an image of john saying that he's bored. panel 4 is split into two panels and his parents are just floating heads and everything is all clumped together. ..OH! i just saw what was going on, he kicks the ball and a worm sticks it's head out of a hole and kicks the ball back... i thought the middle bottom panel was an arial view of john hitting the ball with his head. and the panel shape of that image is dreadful, i really suggest sticking to a panel grid of rectangles at first before changing the size and shape.

maybe you should just read calvin and hobbes and enjoy it and then draw comics and say they are yours. there's no need to try and emulate bill

now i know you're just doing this for fun and not a lot of people know a lot about making comics [i went to college for it and there were only like 20 people in my class] and i don't want you to think i'm making unfair judgements on your comic, the only thing i ask is make your own comics.

eric

[rodekill]

Man, I totally would have taken that course.
Stupid not living in New York City.

Anyways, eric has a point. Composition is like, the most important thing, even beyond drawing capability. I also think it's one of the hardest. You should read tons and tons of comics to try to develop a instinct for it. Even then it'll still take a lot of practice.
I guess the biggest thing is, don't give up and keep working at it, despite what other people may say.
(Todd McFarlane got like, a thousand rejection letters before he got any comic book work, and now he's a frigging trillionaire.)

[Andail]

As much as I appreciate Eric's tutorial, it's understandable that people will react a bit harsh when the artist claims to have achieved a Bill Watterson style. I'm sure neither Unilin nor Cap'n Jack would have been that blunt if the thread had another title.

[SLaMgRInDeR]

ok guys, thanx for the Crits, i'll try and make another strip using these ideas,
Mr-collosal: i meant bills art style, but ill try those too to make it more Wattersonish.
Thanx
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[MrColossal]

what in the hell does that mean?

i'm sorry but that makes absolutely no sense

[SLaMgRInDeR]

it means when i said watterson style comic, i meant comic using watterson style drawings, but i wil try what you said anyway.
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[loominous]

A probable reason why people are acting harshly is that the thread title is very pretentious.

If you d have called it "Bill Watterson inspirered" or "Bill Watterson attempt" etc you wouldn t claim to be on the same artistic level as he is. Most of the things you ve said so far suggest that you believe that you are.

At the moment you re obviously a novice; that is you may well be most talented painter there is but your current skills are very basic. So to avoid flaming I d suggest you choose your titles/words more carefully.

[salvius]

Am I the only one that did not get that AT ALL?!!!??!?!?!?  How was the title pretentious?  It says 'Bill Waterson Style' not 'Perfect Bill Waterson Rendition' or whatever.  I don't get it...  Maybe people shouldn't read into everything so much.  The posts, in any case, are considerably more rude than needed.  People need some ATTITUDE CHANGE!  Jesus.

Other than that, slamgrinder, you need to make the comic more streamlined.  As it currently stands, it is kind of hard to read properly, and it took me more than a few looks to figure it out.

[Pessi]

I'm totally with Salvius.

No matter how the issue is presented, people should keep calm. "That sucks", doesn't contribute to the discussion even as humor, in my opinion. When it comes to something like this (personal production that is made with best intentions, so to say), people take offence very easily. I'm very surprised to hear that from Grundislav and Unilin. Whereas, I might instantly take it as fooling around, Slamgrinder might not. I'm not saying you should stick a disclaimer in every post. I'm saying: keep the posts matter-of-factly on this board, please!

Anyway, I think we should give all the credit to Rodekill, Esseb and especially MrColossal for helping him out! Too often we only notice the bad things instead of good.

I hope were not scaring anyone from posting on this board with these discussions. I don't know if we're getting a bit too harsh on what to post and what not. But to me, it all seems to come down to this: keep your posts on-topic and keep the tone of your post positive! It's hard to go wrong with that in mind.

[Andail]

I say people should make more honest attempts at creating art. Not pretending to do something that can't even remotely accomplish.

To me it seems Slamgrinder saw Pessi's thread, and jumped on the bandwagon without much reflection on why and how he would do it.

So he tossed something together that vaguely resembled Calvin, but there is no story, no sincere attempt at creating a reasonable plot or original art for that matter.

If I had brought such a creation to my (former) art-class, I would have recieved almost as harsh comments as Unilin and Grund handled out.

Not because it was just bad, but because it was a pretentious attempt to mimic something that I hadn't put down any efforts in studying or sincerely trying to copy.

Come on, people, this is not a serious attempt to copy Bill's style, it just has a Bill Watterson label on it.

Seing as the Critics Lounge gets bigger and bigger (now even bigger than the Chit chat forum), I think people should publish only what they have put down the tiniest bit of effort in.

Nota Bene: I didn't say you can only publish GOOD things, so please no moralising about this or PM:s or whatnot. This isn't Gestapo.
I say, publish things that you can look at afterwards and say that "I did a sincere attempt at creating something - I made an effort."