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yes, there's the dark blue and then the light blue in the chair

they are very close to each other and hard to see

which program are you using neighbour?

i'd suggest using a the straight line tool to trace over it and smooth out those lines.

and wow synthetique... i'm surprised at you

i really like it, it looks like it's made up of paper cutouts

i would also like to see maybe one more building on the right side of the window and get rid of the black outlines on the shelf and plant. nothing else has black outlines and they all look good.

the blue colour for the chairs is reallllly deep and dark while the highlight is barely noticeable to me. i'd suggest maybe trying either a lighter blue or just use a lighter highlight colour.

i like the desk and it's minimal texturing, what would it look like with a LITTTTLE more texture on it?

eric

i guess my question is, are you going for a direct Bill Watterson or, judging by the title of the thread just being inspired by him?

cause if it's direct then yea, use all the tools bill used, but if it's just inspiration then i think you're doing fine, the colours look nice and remind me of sunday morning comics [like calvin and hobbes and foxtrot, which always reminded me of eachother colour wise] and the trees are reminiscent of the way bill draws them

guess i better explain myself a little more, unless you and evenwolf would like to keep arguing over me? hehe

If I come into the critics lounge and there's an amazing bit of art [and it happens a lot] and i want to tell the person that it is good and that i can't find anything wrong with it then i should be allowed to do that.

this particular thread bothered me because 4 posts... in a row... barely adding up to 5 words. that's just silly. and I'd still like to know what the hell 'AA?' means but I think evil just posted and moved on.

i also don't want this forum to become one of constant total crit but again i want to differentiate between praise and just posting an emoticon. "Wow, I really like the way the wackadoo really looks like it's flimbanging in the whooha. Nice job!" that took me 5 seconds to type, that's only 4 more seconds of your life instead of posting an emoticon.

if the art is really that jaw dropping and there is absolutely nothing you can ever possibly ever ever say about it ever, like your hands just melt when they touch the keys and you have to wear gloves just to post 8 eyepopping emoticons in a row with plenty of exclamation points... then we have a problem. art like that shouldn't be out there among the people where it can do harm!

this forum is 99.9% helpful and critical, it's just this was too much.

also loominous, there are plenty of very talented people who do post here. and if i were to post some art i would do it and not just wait for other people i found talented to post. if i posted and waited for pessi then i should have just mailed it to him. for me at least i would want EVERYBODY'S reaction to it. Just because I went to art college doesn't mean that my opinion will always be better. I think that everyone has the ability to critique art, if you look at it and you don't like something about it, tell the person. it's that simple.

when it comes to things like colour theory and composition, a novice may not know the terminology for it but i still think that an artistic person will be able to spot some problems.

"The colours are wicked bright man, they make my eyeballs bleed!"

"Reduce the saturation on the reds and yellows."

i may be babbling now but see what i mean?

and i see what you mean loom, if the majority of posts are helpful crit what does one or 2 smiley posts hurt? well i guess the answer is it's just personal to me. like i said before, if they can't spend another 3 seconds saying WHAT they find so emoticonilicious about it then how will the artist know what's so good about it? it's like general praise that will make the artist feel good sure [though it would annoy me a little] but shouldn't we at least try to pinpoint one thing that we can tell the artist that will let them know why they should feel good?

also to clear another thing up, lately i haven't posted any art because my game is going well and i don't have much to ask help on. I also like to surprise people with what i'm working on.

i guess what i should have added is that when posting art it's always with a little reserve because i don't want a lot of wowowowow. i want to know what works and what doesn't, knowing what works makes me happy and knowing what doesn't makes the art better. i hope that doesn't sound pretentious because that isn't my intention at all.

hope i didn't ramble on too much

eric

jesus CJ you're a total emo freak... look at all those CDs... look at those glasses, nice hair!

oh and great coffee cup man... could it get any bigger?

is that an herbal cigarette i see? sheesh!

oh and you look real sad reading over your poetry that you hastily scribbled in gym class while you sat on the bleachers and collected towels from the real men...

nerd

what in the hell does that mean?

i'm sorry but that makes absolutely no sense

stop posting here





it's a short suggestion but the most powerful one i think



and stop signing on to #ags

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

WOOP WOOP!

I enjoyed it yes i did

the dialogue between ace and granny was hilarious and being a three room game it was quite the cute

hooray!

i don't think this is any place to discuss bestiality, rodekill...

while chrille's gone let's tear PB up! hehe

i think one of the most interesting things about PB is the dream Jake has after the first day

it shows that he's effected by the murders. if only there was more of this is could go into the Psychological Thriller section

working on my game

i like how i'm the only one who mentions this

Music:

music is as tricky a mistress as everything else in a game, as was said "the music kicks in and you know an

emotional part is coming up" i think this is a good thing sometimes and a very bad thing sometimes.

let's take another harrison ford movie, Regarding Henry:

Spoiler

After he is shot obviously, he goes looking through some closests and comes apon a box of letters written to

his wife from a lover.

[close]

now there is NO music in this scene. why? because music would AUTOMATICALLY tip us off that something was going to

happen. for all we know he's just puttering around the house. The reveal of what is happening causes more emotion

than the music would ever because it takes us by surprise.

what i mean is that music can be just as stereotypical, "hmm i need to evoke emotion, i'll use some slow violins

and use a close up" instant stereotyped emotion. This isn't ideal and is mostly used in bad media and to me it's

instantly spotted and dismissed.

i enjoy when i don't have to feel lead around by the nose for emotion and the music i described above is just that,

so be carefull

lechuck: i don't think that you were really supposed to be afraid of lechuck. it was a comedy game and he was a

comic part of that game.

emotion: i feel that emotional content is very subjective and sometimes i've felt more emotion for the crappily

written 20 pixel high main characters of some AGI games and not for Guybrush. The connection you feel with the

story and character is so personal that a designer will never fully know how his players will react that is why

stereotypes are used so often. My friend Stieg and I are debating on how to create a game with no BAD guy, reading

through Philip K Dick's book there isn't really a bad guy and if there is you realize by the end that he's just a

guy like the main character, he means no ill will, they just don't agree.

by adding a stereotype you can easily tell the player "this man is bad! hate him, this is the love interest, get

awkwardly aroused at her! this is the main character his personality is toned down so you can easily inject

yourself into him."

then we move onto Myst with no main character and a shitty story. I did't feel anything for any of those people and

i definetly didn't feel any triumph when Attrus was all like "There I took care of them... Go away now."

Move onto Half Life [i know not an adventure game but it had more story telling than most games ever] No main

character but done well, sure he had a name at least but the first person view and the fact that he had no actual

personality made me feel more a part of the game world. I would have liked more options to define myself more as a

character [save this person, go out of my way to shut this down, not killing scientist and having it impact the

game more] my actions only changed the game world in how the game world wanted them to, like opening doors instead of character interaction.

Move onto Discworld, TOO much story for my tastes. Everyone had a LOT to say and they had no problem saying it in a poorly acted voice. The dialogue kept going and going and I felt bad skipping it but it pertained not to the game at all, just added to the humour of the characters and the world. Which is fine but... too much.

nonlinearity: i'm all for it, it's hard as hell to write for and can be done poorly. I don't think having a branching point at the end of a game is good. Like choose who lives or dies now!! If you're to have them they have to either be covertly happening with stats throughout the game or happening many times through the game. Under a Killing Moon...2 was it? Had multiple endings and they depended on dialog choices and actions as far as i remember. Alice In Wonderland and Below the Root had branching paths if only because talking nasty to someone may make them hate you for the rest of the game and you have to find another way through the game, and that was all the way back in the early 80's. I don't really know where I'm going with this sorry If it seems floaty.

To the emotion in cutscenes, again to bring up half life, i don't think control has to be taken from the player we just have to change our definition of cut scene, half life had "scripted sequences" which were pretty much cut scenes, unskipable moments where your actions were limited to walking around and listening to the actors act. Walking by a window and seeing just beyond it a man fighting with a headcrab, you can't save him and he eventually dies, or men falling to their doom in an elevator. These could have been cutscenes where we get all dramatic angles and crazy music but sticking to the players eyesight and the players field of view i think opened up all new levels of dramatic tension and emotion. how many times did i try and run to someone's aid as an alien in an air vent ate them, i knew that it was a scripted scene but i still tried a few times to get there before they died.

i'm gonna cut out here before i lose direction more than i already have

love,
eric

........i like the super mario brothers movie......

http://www.gimp.org/

free painting tool with layers and it appears animation support

the three inches doesn't really bother me either, i guess it does balance out the whole banner i was just curious

and darth, was your first post "great" a joke or did you not read what i wrote?

but flippy, once you start understanding and using layers you will notice your productivity sky rocketing, i recommend Photoshop because that is what i use [and it came free with me tablet] but gimp will do just as well. it may take a second to get used to the controls but i believe it's totally worth it

eric

seriously people... 3 one word answers in a row? evil's was only 2 letters

is that all you have to say? and if it is i don't think it's helping anything besides take up space.

this is the critics lounge not the boatloads of praise lounge, i take the rule:

Critique that isn't constructive in any way, like "Oh, that sux, man"
That won't go anywhere.

from the forum rules post as also pertaining to these kinds of posts.

sorry to be so rude or whatever but the reason i don't post art here is because i hate when people post "great!" or "WOW EYEPOPPING EMOTICON!" i'd post here to have my art critiqued not praised

and flippy:

why the 3 inches of total blackness on the right hand side?

and you may think that it's an amazing feat making that with no layers but it's just a waste of time. i figured you'd want to work on your game not spend way too long making a signature icon

i'm not meaning to be harsh with that statement, just saying that you're wasting a lot of time juggling mspaint and i hope you aren't trying to impress anyone that you are, hehe

eric

hey guys stop this, don't you know who this guy is?

it's Chris Shannon!!! that's right! THE CHRIS SHANNON! The professor of economics at berkeley!

The author of "What To Maximize if you Must" and "Uniqueness, Stability, and Comparative Statics in Rationalizable Walrasian Markets"

obviously i don't have to tell you all how important this means to us, thanks for stopping by, how can we help you Mr. Chris Shannon?

Eric

i know dave, i played the demo, but maybe i missed it but i didn't see any documentation telling me what res to play it in so i just loaded it without switching