Genejoke
reviewing

Lol yeah- there are two sorts of unhelpful reviews:
Puff-pieces and Tear-downs.
Two different extremes- One is for the benefit of the comic author's ego and possibly to curry favour with them or promote them. The other is for the ego of the reviewer and to entertain the reviewer's audience.

Neither are particularly helpful for improving the quality of the work because that's not the focus. It'd be fantastic if it was, but when it comes to those extremes, it's not.
For example, a site like “your webcomic is bad so you should feel bad” won't give you any insight on how to write a better webcomic, but it MAY entertain you, and if it does then it's done it's main job.

As a working webcomicer, when looking for useful stuff to apply to yourself or pick up pointers on how to better give a review, you'll know to steer clear of reviews where there's an over-abundance of obvious hyperbole (like a silly Yahtze game review), or a clear attitude or thread of bias that runs through the whole thing- as in “this work is like this because the author is a…” and "here is another example of the same sort of thing, the author is obviously…"

A useful critical review, as opposed to an entertaining one, will be quite balanced throughout as the reviewer seeks to evaluate each point on it's own merits: ie. “The art is rendered extremely well, but the detail can overwhelm the action in the scene. The story has a slow pace and is structured quite unevenly, especially toward the end, but the dialogue was punchy and helped build the action” rather than “the art is good, I liked it. The writing is horrible, the author cant write,”
- The latter isn't really balanced it just pits different aspects against one another without properly evaluating them.

Helpful criticism was something we had to do a lot of back when I was doing fine art at Uni :)

———–
I didn't mean to sound as if I was displeased with all my reviews in the review forum though! From memory some people DID indeed pick up on some issues, and I do appreciate it when people have nice things to say, even if that's not really the place for it.

Someone
I didn't mean to sound as if I was displeased with all my reviews in the review forum though

I didn't take that from it at all, don't worry. I often find i start trying to be constructive about the art (or whatever) and come off harsher than I want to.

Another thing that bugs me about badly taken reviews is the whole “it's just opinion not a proper review.” well all reviews are opinion. Granted some are put across better than others but at the end of the day all reviews are opinion. Also much is down to personal preference. The hardest thing for me to review is gag a day strips as most look like crap and have all the artistic merit of a baboons arse. But if they make me laugh then… well does't make for a very insightful review. Also what makes me laugh seems to offend a lot of people :)

In reviews and comment above threads people have said things like…

Asbin
You do see a high level of improvement and the artist is really good at perspective (also rare in webcomics) But the sketchyness of some of the line art can be eye bleeding at times. And the coloring can be sometimes just way to busy. But it is improving.

tRickityHouses
noticed the text boxes and bubbles are kind of messy and need some work.

Warpedwenger
The art is down right ugly but functional. I never had any trouble understanding what was happening and that's important.

here are some little things like typos that could be easily avoided. I call for more quality control.

pigtail studio
For instance I don't dig your word bubbles and the pixelation. Everything can be smooved out and much neater. Fonts are okay, your sound effects are actually the best in terms of fitting with the actual comic. Like you need to make it more appealing terms of 3d mixing with text. If you are beginner at the program that you are doing the text and actual comic graphics, I suggest to really study tutorials, like photo touch ups*, exportation with less pixelation, different approach to brushes and bubbles.

All of which have spurred me to improve, well mostly. I'm still rubbish at editing my own work though. The thing is all of those comments were done well and didn't seemed overly harsh or complimentry.

What happened to the Review Duck that was mentioned in the quackcast?

probably got drunk and abusive :)

Glad to see this one is prompting some discussion! i don't think the quackcast warrants its own forum yet though. :] But ONE DAY….

Motivated by our own quackcast, Oz and I are going to try out a couple things with the features. Not a full on critique but something more reviewy. We'll see how that goes this week.

The review duck was just an image that someone had made and hosted in their files area. Anyone who wanted to notify others that they were open to critique would just post the img /img code for that in their author's comments or as part of their custom page HTML. It did help some people out. I suppose it probably went away during one of the big site crashes when things got lost and members came and went and not everything got remade like it used to be.

There's no reason why it couldn't come back. You'd just need a good image and people willing to use it. So a bit of artistic work, and some organization. :]

Welp the next one will be another double-length that gets split up, haha. Oz and I really need to rein it in. This was a topic worth spending a lot of time on though!

Are there guests in this one too?

Nah, just lots of good info. :]

(BTW, if your sig image is going to be 250 wide, it should really only be 100 tall.)

With the talk of project wonderful you neglected to mention about the free advertising, or zero bids.

Granted it will only work on sites with no other bids and requires more work as they limit it to 2 days at a time but it can potentially pay off. You get your moneys worth anyway.

I think the new way of talking about features was pretty well done (except when Ozone hijacked the critique for Ponzi).

How do you decide what to talk about in these podcasts?

Advertising…?
I think for now I'll stick to the HELWID forums.
When I'm ready to plug again.

But man… Ozone knows his stuff.

UH! You're just going to LEAVE us with that cliffhanger? Gosh, now i have to wait anxiously for part 2.

Going with what Bff satan said… 2 part quackcast might be better a couple of days apart rather than a week. That way you don't have to lessen time on featured comics and they remain a little more current.

Personaly I'd prefer that it was just an extra long episode. :(
But a shorter time between them is a better suggestion!

BffSatan
UH! You're just going to LEAVE us with that cliffhanger? Gosh, now i have to wait anxiously for part 2.

LOL, advertising talks are exciting ^_^

Genejoke
With the talk of project wonderful you neglected to mention about the free advertising, or zero bids.

Noted. In our defence though- We were covering so much that there were a lot of subtleties and aspects that we didn't get into unfortunately. -Like the length of campaigns, getting in when a bid is first opened up and grabbing that lowest bid position so when other bids run out you'll always be there, Positioning of ads on pages and how that makes a huge differences, how differing ad sizes perform etc.

DarkGesen
But man… Ozone knows his stuff.

Thank you! That's a great compliment! ^_^
I'm sure there's a few people out there that'd think I was a noob though :)

The free aspect is what drew me to PW, I have no desire to spend much of anything advertising my stuff as I don't think it is good enough to warrant the expense. When I do something i consider good enough I will use every tool at my disposal to sell it so this is going to come in handy.

There's nothing wrong with being thorough, guys. I can't wait for when you talk about how to make money off your webcomic. It's like you guys know exactly what I want to hear.
I know I probably say this every week, but another great podcast!
And Ozone, it's Newgrounds, not “Newsgrounds” XD

Genejoke
Going with what Bff satan said… 2 part quackcast might be better a couple of days apart rather than a week. That way you don't have to lessen time on featured comics and they remain a little more current.

These double-length ones have both involved quite a bit of extra effort on our parts (me for the interview, oz for this one) so I'm a bit relieved they decided to spread them across two updates. :] There might be some other issues with it, but it wouldn't hurt us to ask them.


I dunno why Oz said we'd have a podcast about how to make money off your webcomic, since I've never been able to do so and don't know how, and most other people don't know either. T____T If it were that straightforward everyone would be doing it. I feel like that is really more a topic for someplace like the Webcomics Weekly - you know, people who actually make a living with their webcomics. :] We've got no credibility in that respect.

skoolmunkee
These double-length ones have both involved quite a bit of extra effort on our parts

Yeah, that's quite evident.

skoolmunkee
I dunno why Oz said we'd have a podcast about how to make money off your webcomic, since I've never been able to do so and don't know how

Never mind. Guess this is one of those things I'll have to find out myself.
Thanks for another great quality podcast!

skoolmunkee
I dunno why Oz said we'd have a podcast about how to make money off your webcomic, since I've never been able to do so and don't know how, and most other people don't know either. T____T If it were that straightforward everyone would be doing it. I feel like that is really more a topic for someplace like the Webcomics Weekly - you know, people who actually make a living with their webcomics. :] We've got no credibility in that respect.

Speak for ya-self crazy munkeelady. I made a few hundred off of mine when I was big on pushing the popularity stakes. ;)

There are many and various ways, but you MUST put the work in. It can be very hard work, or not too hard, depending on which road you go down. But yeah, we should totally do a bit of a feature on it ^_^
-It's one of those goals of popularity afterall. If we didn't talk about it, it's like talking about dating without ever getting to the relationship and the sex part- a bit unfinished ^_^

I'm sure sometimes people only want the dating. :colbert:

Anyway, that just means it's another one I'll leave all the work to you. :] LET'S DO IT

I know I'm a bit late to the boat on the reviewing thing, but hey, I'm catching up at my own slow pace.

Anyway, if you happen to be like me and are incredibly stubborn about your comic, and part of your brain starts listing off the locations of each knife in your house when you see a negative review, here's my tip on how to NOT make an ass of yourself and look like a jerk for the rest of eternity.

Ignore it. Not in the sense of “Oh well he said it's bad so he's wrong forever nyeh nyeh”, but after you read it, don't reply. Don't do anything about it for a couple weeks. Keep making your comic, drinking slushees, whatever it is you do. Then, after you've had some time to calm down, come back and read it again. You'll be amazed.

What at first appeared to be a hateful basher, denouncing every single aspect of your comic, declaring you should be crucified, and being incredibly rude, will magically transform into a very helpful list of things to consider. Yes, even that photo he uploaded of his burning you in effigy has disappeared.

Usually people will perceive negativity as a personal attack, so when you take the time to reanalyze it, you'll be pleasantly surprised.

I have one thing to say, and it's to Ozone.
Best. English. Accent. Ever.

DarkGesen
I have one thing to say, and it's to Ozone.
Best. English. Accent. Ever.

lol!
It came out pretty weird :)

It was funny. Laugh out loud funny.

Made me laugh. Speaking of community projects you should lead by example and get involved with some again…


So with that not so subtle hint out of the way, could I tempt an admin to illustrate a short story for lite bites?
http://www.drunkduck.com/Lite_bites/
Go on, you know you want to.

If you guys are doing guest appearances, I'd totally be down with some podcast action, I got a good radio voice. But I'm super random, and I just joined like 10 days ago. So people would be like “who?”

But hell yeah, podcasts. I gotta give this a listen.

Genejoke
Made me laugh. Speaking of community projects you should lead by example and get involved with some again…

Haha, I was wondering if someone would call us out on that! Well, I run one but it's minimal work. :] Oz and I both participate in one-offs though! It's the time-investment ones that are a problem for me. I didn't draw anything for over a year and now I have trouble just doing three panels a week, so I think signing myself up for more than that would be trouble (for now anyway). It's also why I feel like I can't participate in Mafia properly any more. Not enough time.

We should look at lining up some more interviews, we'll have to think of a good theme that we could bring someone in for. :] Next couple weeks are kinda busy for me though at least… it has tended to take a couple weeks to line someone up.


The link was a bit hidden at the bottom there, but has anyone had a look at the summary of the quackcast topic in the tutorials section? Oz and I are thinking about making this a regular thing (on relevant topics) but it would be good to know if people think they're useful or whatever, before we put the time in. :]

You could ask people to do short reviews on the featured comics and send you scripts or sound files.

Or get the creators of featured comics in for interviews.

Or talk Harkovast into slipping you a few bucks for the chance to get in on the action and plug his comic a bit.

I think it's a consensus: Oz's go at “British” was Fun! I also liked the pro/con review of the features, tho they got a little long (for me)

As far as a community project plus potential quackcast, what do you think of a revamp of the voice contest?

It's based on an exchange btwn Same (A Reaver by any other name) and Oz in the moan and groan. Basically, A Reaver would provide a radio playcast (since it seems he might have one handy) for download, and then DDers would record a dialogue from it as an audition.

Auditions could be heard on the quackcast and then voted on. Winners would then record their entire character and through some kind of awesome magic yet unknown to me, the roles could be spliced together for a performance.

8D Simple, right?

skoolmunkee
The link was a bit hidden at the bottom there, but has anyone had a look at the summary of the quackcast topic in the tutorials section? Oz and I are thinking about making this a regular thing (on relevant topics) but it would be good to know if people think they're useful or whatever, before we put the time in. :]

This is a great tutorial, you don't have to listen to the quackcast again to get all the info out of it (however i'd listen to this one again just to hear Ozone's british accent one more time). I think it works as am alternative to the podcast entirely (not sure if thats a good thing or bad thing). I think there are a few things mentioned here that weren't in the 'cast. The links were really helpful as well.

Having featured comic people on interviews is interesting, but they'd end up being delayed a number of weeks after their feature, unless we start planning farther in advance when features will happen (which… to be honest probably won't happen). I can't tell if you're suggesting this should be a regular thing or not. One-offs might work out but we wouldn't be able to manage it every week with every feature.

Actually I feel like that suggestion was made before… I'm sure I mentioned a mini-interview idea thing we had for the new site, for featured comics.

ayesinback
I think it's a consensus: Oz's go at “British” was Fun! I also liked the pro/con review of the features, tho they got a little long (for me)

As far as a community project plus potential quackcast, what do you think of a revamp of the voice contest?

This was the other downside to interviewing featured people, it's even more attention/time on the same comics. That was the other question I came in here to ask you all, which is "what do you think of the pros/cons format" - I'm still not entirely comfortable giving criticism to the features rather than talking them up, and it does seem like we're spending longer on them. But it's something people asked for, so it would be interesting to see if people actually like them or if they don't consider it a real difference. (Or if we're defeating the purpose of features by giving them points for improvement.) Or, whether an adapted format might work, like the crit-er just picks 3 main things to mention rather than trying to be more comprehensive?

re: the radioplaycast, anything Oz is working on is cool with me, I think he mentioned it before. :]

DarkGesen
This is a great tutorial, you don't have to listen to the quackcast again to get all the info out of it (however i'd listen to this one again just to hear Ozone's british accent one more time). I think it works as am alternative to the podcast entirely (not sure if thats a good thing or bad thing). I think there are a few things mentioned here that weren't in the 'cast. The links were really helpful as well.

Thanks. :] I think either format has its strengths, but yeah one worry was whether people would see it as a replacement for the podcast, which we don't want. On the other hand, there does seem to be a lot of useful info in some podcasts which it's hard to extract or reference, being in audio. So maybe we'll give that a few more weeks and see what the reaction is?