Steve Troop kicks it up a notch and three quarters…
When I see something that makes me go “DAMN!” I just have to say something about it. This past week, Steve Troop took down years of archives for his Melonpool comic and started all over– a bold move on it’s own, but what he’s put in it’s place is a little dose of WOW.
Melonpool is now BIG. It fills up most of your screen and really focuses on the comic itself, and gives me the feeling of well, the feeling as if I were holding an original piece of bristol in my hand. It’s really exciting to see a creator really expand, and do more. He’s increased the size, it’s daily AND it’s in color for now. I’m really impressed, and it takes a lot to make me say that. Plus, he’s set himself right on up for EASY print collections that will fill like full on comic books. I’m interested to see what he does with this. With places like comixpress available, (if they open up new biz soon) it would be optional for him to have a monthly comic book available lickity split too.
I have thought about such things in the past, about just having a BIG comic, in a comic page a day sort of style, that would either flow in and out of stories or whatever I wanted to do for that day. I remember expanding to the bigger Yirmumah’s last time around this year, and I had a ton of complaints from people who said they had to scroll down… BOO HOO… Look at Steve’s Strip! You have to scroll just a bit, but hell, it’s so fun looking, I don’t mind doing it, and no one else should either. I never ever got that “anti scrolling” thing…. Bah!
Anyway, check out the new Melonpool… it’s groovy.
November 12th, 2005 at 11:33 pm
Steve’s really cool. I met him last weekend at Wizard World Texas. He told me of his plan to do this and I was really amazed. It looks really good though!
November 13th, 2005 at 1:25 am
Your comic wouldn’t be hurt by a little scrolling…especially when you leave the big joke in the last panel. Sometimes, you draw so much attention to panel 4, I look there first and ruin the surprise.
November 13th, 2005 at 10:43 am
I am confused as to why idiots would bitch because they had to scroll. They must be the same ones in DJ’s killfile that ask why he doesn’t post nude pics of his wife. This calls for a special delivery Brick of Silence service.
……………………
Are you Dave Pissant?
Why, yes.
Did you recently email a complaint about having to scroll in a web comic?
Yes, yes I did. I hate..blah blah blah.
Just answer the question. We’re here to settle the complaint.
Wow..personal service.
Yeah..personal
…………..
The world would be a much better place if stupid complaints were handled this way.
November 13th, 2005 at 10:45 am
Oh dude– you wouldnt believe what people complain about… That SCROLL Issue, I bet every webcomic creator has heard more than once, especially ones that you have to scroll to see.
Yeah, its retarded. People will always find something to complain about
November 13th, 2005 at 10:46 am
I put the sound effects in those damned arrow brackets and they got killed.
(KNOCK KNOCK!) — first thing before the inquiry
(sound of bricks hitting idiot) — after mentioning that it was personal
November 13th, 2005 at 1:39 pm
Vertical scrolling isn’t a legitimate complaint. This is the web. Horizontal scrolling is a legitimate complaint, but it looks like Troop has made his strip just narrow enough to avoid that (on 800×600 displays). I like the new format.
November 13th, 2005 at 1:41 pm
Yeah, the horizontal scrolling DOES get on people’s nerves.. there should be no reason for that, although I’ve seen some really long comics pull it off, as a style flow thing.
As well, if people are still using 800×600 res for their screens, they need to be Spak’d and move on up to 1078 at least.
November 13th, 2005 at 9:58 pm
I’m inclined to agree, DJ, but keep in mind a lot of people surf the net from work, and you’d be amazed at the dinosaurs that are still out there, over which the poor readers have no control. Right now about 24% of my readers have 800×600 resolution. When you’re dealing with real-world situations, this kind of stuff makes a difference. That’s why I haven’t just said “screw you IE for Windows” and plastered transparent PNGs all over my site.
November 15th, 2005 at 3:04 am
I’m probably not going be popular for saying this. But scrolling sucks. Regardless of which type (although I agree horizontal is worse). It’s something we put up with on the web because we have to.
However when a webcomic does it, a lot of the time it’s simply inertia and is pointless. The computer monitor isn’t a dynamic piece of paper, it has different dimensions. When you fit a webcomic for the page instead of the computer screen, it’s annoying. It’s point #5 in Scott McCloud’s “I Can’t Stop Thinking.” http://scottmccloud.com/comics/icst/icst-3/icst-3.html You might not agree with him all the time, but I personally think he’s hit the mark with that point.
Having said that, I’m not going to e-mail the creator to complain about it. IF they ask for feedback, well it’s their own damn fault. I’ll either suck it up or move on (I’ve yet to move on simply because the creator doesn’t know the shape of a computer screen ;)). Having said that, some of the time there IS a point for it. For example Melonpool and Alpha Shade do it because they specifically wish to print it in a book (I don’t get Scott’s “cut it in half” comment). I wish it was possible to still size the panels in a way that is optimal for the screen but can easily translate to a book (Steve Troop actually looked into that, and found that the cost increased, so he decided against it), but there isn’t in most cases, so I’m fairly understanding.
However a lot of cases it’s simply inertia. They might have originally thought it up as a comic book and failed in that avenue, or they might just never think of restructuring the panels.
Also on DJs point of comicbooks out monthly. He -could-, but I doubt he will. If he was able to make his living off Melonpool, then he’d have the time to do it and I could quite likely see him doing it. But until he CAN live off Melonpool, I can’t see him trying to keep a job, update the webcomic daily and try to create a comicbook each month. No sane person would try to do that. But we will get comic books out around 3 or 4 times a year, with each book being about 90 pages (just from what the webcomic is, so no exclusive content from what I’ve heard).
November 15th, 2005 at 3:45 pm
There will be exclusive content in the books. I plan to put in sketches and commentary at the end of each volume chronicling what went in to that particular volume, as well as things you might have missed while reading it the first time.
November 15th, 2005 at 7:29 pm
Aaah, neat. I was afraid that there wouldn’t be any commentary in the new books
Crazy as it might sound, I certainly enjoy those.