Sofox's Spiels

Well, let's get this started
Sofox at 4:17AM, Oct. 2, 2007
(online)
posts: 20
joined: 5-30-2007
Hey guys,
So, seeing you're here, I assume you've taken a look at my comic, Marty the Platformer. Since that Drunk Duck has made it so easy for comic artists/scripters/creators to unleash their ill conceived thoughts and rambling on the world in this handy textual fourmish/blogging thing we have here, I thought thought I'd indulge what must be at the forefront of your curiosity in my fascinating and stimulating story about how my scribbles and whimsical writing has come before you on web pages in comic form; because there's got to be some of you out there that are curious. Right? Curious why a guy would spend hours of his ever so precious life making stories about a pine martin on a video game platforming parody? I know I am!

N——E——way, the comic you see before you is actually a few years old. You see, I actually wrote these comics a while back when I was full of optimism and wonder in the amazement at discovering webcomic. Naturally, when we see awesome things we want to imitate, but fortunately I had the belief that there was something unique and my own personal style I could bring to a webcomic, which is pretty darn important when your in a field where countless other people are doing a similar thing.

The problem was, how to exactly to bring this out, and after a few ideas, floated through my mind, I came across a concept that I actually found it fun to write for, which made me settle on it. It came from playing one or two platform video games in close proximity to one another, and I just had fun thinking up ways to piss take some of the more ludicrous aspects of them. It was the sort of thing I wanted to read, something that was just funny and humourous without trying to get all caught up in drama or serious stuff, just fun good laughs. With saying that, I am now struck by a severe fear as to whether I've lived up to that or not. Like I've said before, when you're this close to the material, it's hard to get an objective view. It's important to chose something you like writing for as a subject, of course, it's not going to be all downhill no matter what you go for, but actually enjoying yourself as you write can make all the difference, both for your motivation to do it and the actual quality of the comic.
I started the comic by finally drawing a few panels, (I had practice from a previous attempt at a comic with no future that hadn't made it past the 2nd comic), uploading them, and so on so forth. I actually got a bit of steam going by getting other guys in my college class to read it.
Like I said, the comic pages so far have been old, I went at it pell mell at various parts, but later relaxed and the updates slowed down. Technically, I never officially “stopped” the comic, because the last comic was done in a very piecemeal over the course of 2 years (by the time I reuploaded this here, the art had already been done and if my hard disk hadn't failed, I would have had a partially completed digital file of it on my computer). I've decided to really go for it this time, and since Vindibudd's comment, I've done some degree on re-mastering on nearly every comic I've reuploaded here. As well as finally finishing that comic that has my record time for being “in the making”.
I think I made mistakes the first time I did the comic, not enough exposure, generally a lot to learn about making comics, here I'm hoping to start anew and give the comic everything I've got.

Satire is a great form to write in because a lot of the work is done for you. Setting, character types, plot structure… just as long as you keep the audience laughing long enough and are humourous about the whole thing you can get away with blue murder in completely ripping off anything you want. It's also convenient: got yourself in a plot hole? find your story is getting slightly infeasible? finding you're too close to the material that “inspired” you? Just make a joke and get out of it!
The comic was made by sketching in my sketchpad, digital layout (text, bubbles, frames) was originally by a pirated edition of Photoshop, now GIMP. Uploaded of course onto Drunk Duck, though on my previous website I had a basic php system that read my spiels from my uploaded text files and the uploaded images from a specific directory.
Character designs came from sketching Googled images of the real animal that the character is, and hence assimilating its basic characteristics. After that I redraw the character to in a from that makes the character easier to express and communicate, usually making them bipeds in the process. I've had minimal need for clothing, but what I draw I want to fit in with the style of the character.
Being a parody, the plot to some degree written for me, but I'm unlikely to just go along with it if it doesn't suit me. There's a general sense of direction, and a bunch of isolated jokes, or groups of comics in the future have already been thought up, but for the large part, I'm improvising a lot of the jokes and dialogue, while keeping a loose sense of where things are headed. I don't want to be too rigid, or I might strangle the life out of the comic or kill jokes or possibilities, because you're more focused on what you want things to be, then letting youself come up with ideas for how things could be (for isntance, Marty meeting Sandy before leaving the town could have easily not been written if I hadn't let myself go with the flow). Having said that, pondering about the future is good and I've allowed myself to write a few things that may link up with things that happen later on.

Jokes, well, I come up with the jokes by being loose, and having fun with the scenario, characters and where things are going. It's good to watch other various forms of comedy and what appeals to you.

So that's about it, I hope this will go well in Drunk Duck and I really enjoy getting back to work on it.
If you have any questions, comments, critizism, praise, scathing reviews, you can e-mail me at theNOSPAMsofox–gmail.com . There's also these newfangled Private Quacks on Drunk Duck, and I've also set up a simple, functional Forum. I will say that there are probably a lot of things (good, but also bad) I probably don't notice about the comic as I'm too close to it, so any suggestions and comments are greatly appreciated. Also, there's a

Well, so much for now. I hope you all really enjoy reading about Marty's adventures and I hope I can ensure that you do.
This is Sofox, gasping at having finished writing this thing, signing off.
last edited on July 18, 2011 10:25AM

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