Olaf's comics blog

“We also discussed, very briefly, the ambient barometric pressure.”
“You’re telling me you guys talked about the weather.”
“Yes. Very briefly.”

When the Penny Arcade guys launched pages two to five of Lookouts, I was struck with awe. This was a great concept. However, I was looking forward to their other new concept — Automata — even more.

Now, Automata page 2 is out.

Seriously, everybody should read this. Make sure you start on page 1, if you haven’t seen it already.

And what I like perhaps best about this is, surprisingly enough, not the comic itself, but a comment Jerry Holkins makes in the blog post accompanying the comic:

“I get five pages of this thing, to assert a few more facts about the world these characters live in. That’s not enough to tell a full story, not at the full resolution of this world, and I’m aware of it – so my aim is, instead, to tantalize the shit out of you, and get us in position to tell a wider story in the future.”

Seriously, am I the only one that’s paralyzed with awe from this?

I get the impression that many comic book readers and webcomic readers are also videogame fans, so it shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone that I own a Nintendo DS and occasionally play it. Why Nintendo? Well, I haven’t played enough Xbox or Playstation to really get an impression of them, but I’m a story person, and I get the impression that Nintendo games more often focuses on good stories than videogames for other consoles. But I digress.

Anyhow, my current favorite series of games is the Ace Attorney (Phoenix Wright / Apollo Justice) games.

One thought has occured to me, though: What is it that separates these games from comics?

The Wikipedia article for Ace Attorney says that these games are adventure/visual novel games. While the Wikipedia article for visual novels amusingly enough opens with “Not to be confused with [...] graphic novels“, I think it’s worth looking at the similarities here.

• Scott McCloud defines comics as “juxtaposed pictorial and other images in deliberate sequence, intended to convey information and/or to produce an aesthetic response”.
• Wikipedia defines visual novels as “an interactive fiction game featuring mostly static graphics, usually with anime-style art”.

First, let’s remove the “usually with anime-style art” part. A little further down in the article we see that “[a]s of 2007, all major visual novels are produced in Japan”, so most of them being drawn in anime style is a logical consequence of that, not something that defines the medium.

In both cases, we have stories told with images. Granted, in visual comics you mostly see only one image at a time on the screen. But does that disqualify visual novels from being called comics? I don’t think so. While I prefer my comics having several frames on the screen at once, the lack thereof doesn’t mean it’s not a comic. It’s still a story being told with images. I would argue that there’s mostly one image on the screen at a time in The right number, too, but it’s definitely still a comic.

Ace Attorney uses small animations. These animations mostly aren’t that big, though, just looping images to give the impression of people being alive. It’s still the player that has to press a button to make the story progress. I would call these images static enough to qualify as comics.

And then there’s the interactivity, of course. Is it still a comic when you as a player can choose the outcome of the story? Sure it is. Even Disney comics have had examples of “choose your own adventure” stories. And this has been implemented in webcomics, too, for instance in Daniel Merlin Goodbrey’s “Choice”. Just because you click where you want to go instead of turning to page 54, doesn’t change the principle of the concept. Comics not only accept interactivity, they *encourage* to interactivity.

Basically, I would say that the only difference between comics and visual novel games (if we dismiss those that use lots and lots of animated cutscenes) is that the games have a soundtrack. Still, the soundtrack could be removed, and it would still be a visual novel according to the definition. Watchmen isn’t any less of a comic just because I decide to listen to Bob Dylan while reading, either.

Visual novels are comics. At the same time, they’re videogames. It may feel absurd to think of videogames as comics, but if you skim through the last chapter of Reinventing comics, aren’t these videogames exactly the kind of product Scott McCloud is describing?

The Ace Attorney series has sold more than 3 million units worldwide and has recieved pretty good reviews. I recommend Phoenix Wright games to everybody interested in videogames. And what’s the reason I like these games? Because they, through a series of beautiful static images, manage to tell me a compelling and extremely interesting story.

Just like comics.

Making comics is not just a matter of writing and drawing the perfect sequential art. If you can’t get people to read your comic, it doesn’t matter if it’s Eisner Award material or garbage. And while there are many really expensive ways of promoting your comic, I strongly suggest that you check out the free ones as well. It may be because of my education, but it seems that a recurring topic on this blog will be recommending the use of social media.

Let’s break it down and look at one big channel at a time. Today: Twitter.

This Friday, I wrote the following tweet:

I should really start to follow more people in my own timezone. All the good tweets occur while I’m sleeping. (Okay, ALMOST all.)

But after writing that, one thing has occured to me: Out of the 46 people I follow, 22 are Norwegian. And I also follow Swedes and Danes. So why do I sometimes get the impression that everybody I follow are Americans?

Well, to be obnoxiously rude and arrogant: Because they are better tweeters. Not just because they tweet more, but they tweet in a way that makes me care. I want to follow them on twitter because it feels as if they have a lot to say. I doubt that their lives and their comics are extremely more interesting than their Norwegian counterparts. But they manage to make me care anyway.

I’m by no means an expert, and this blog post is solely based on what I personally like and dislike. But here are six things you should think about when setting up and using your Twitter account.

Link to your website/webcomic from your profile. It may seem like a trivial tip, but this is very important. Not because you’ll get tons of visits that way (I don’t know if that’s the case), but because it is a great way of letting people get to know you right away. Twitter nicks are often hard to decipher, and if your name is a common one, people will use your homepage link to figure out who you are. And if you put up a link to your webcomic here, your fans will go “HOLY CRAP THIS IS THE JOHN DOE, THE CREATOR OF ‘FRANK DOORKNOB’!”, and people who have never heard about you will have a look at your webcomic to figure out what impression they should have of you.

Tweet frequently. This one is hard, because it involves figuring out which parts of your life is worth tweeting about. Well, check out what the cartoonists you love tweet about. Read the tweets of Scott Kurtz, Jeph Jacques, Kate Beaton, Gabe, Tycho… Check out their Twitter feeds. I don’t know why, but these people manage to tweet frequently without boring me. Most likely, many of the people you follow do the same thing.

Twitter is not RSS. There has been situations where I’ve considered following someone on Twitter, and decided not to because *all* their Twitter updates were information about new blog posts. As I was already subscribing to that person’s (or in this case, institution’s) RSS feed, the tweeting didn’t give me anything I didn’t already know. Don’t let your Twitter account be an exact copy of your RSS feed. And don’t update only when you have a new comic out or a new shirt in the store. You should let your followers know, of course, but let them know what’s going on at other times, too. Check out the tweets of Jeph Jacques — he tweets every time he has a new comic up, but he also lets his followers know about the process that’s leading up to the finished comic. If the comic is late, he’ll tell us why. And when he’s not working on his comic, he’s tweeting about other things he’s doing. Don’t make your Twitter feed an RSS feed.

Twitter is not your personal diary. And by that I don’t just mean that you shouldn’t write your credit card number or post erotic photos there. What I mean, is that you should do your best to keep your tweets interesting. Do you love your girlfriend? That’s sweet. Do you love Jesus Christ? Okay. But I’m not interested in hearing that ten times a day. The people I follow on Twitter rarely mention their spouses/boyfriends/girlfriends, and they never tweet about their religion. Sure, there’s nothing wrong in mentioning how much you love your wife every now and then, but she’ll probably appreciate it more if you tell her to her face.

Follow people. Follow other webcomics creators. Search for your favorite cartoonists on Twitter, or find them through their websites. And try finding not-very-famous webcartoonists, too. I’ve experienced that people have started following me, I have checked out their website, and bookmarked that website because the comic made me laugh (that’s you, @EQComics). I still have no clue how he found me, but he did, and he got himself a new reader that way.

Link to your Twitter account from your website. Twitter has widgets that lets you keep your readers updated on what you tweet about. Get your existing readers to follow you on Twitter by giving them your Twitter link. You’ve put a lot of effort into making each of these readers to find you. By getting them to follow a frequently updated Twitter account, you make sure that they don’t *forget* you.

These aren’t the top six tips to using Twitter. I don’t even know if all of them are that great. But all social media have two rules in common: Use them, and use them right. That goes for Twitter, too. I’m still trying to figure out the hows myself, so I’m not the very best of help here, but I’m trying. And you’re doing yourself a great favour if you do the same thing. Twitter won’t make you famous overnight, but it will help you promote your comics when you learn how to use it.

The Eyrewood reaches top to toe,
And through this wood we all must go.
Let winter freeze, and summer burn!
What men must know, a boy must learn.

Lookouts page 2 is out, and it looks awesome. I’m really looking forward to see the rest of this.

If you have no idea what I’m talking about: Penny Arcade geniuses Jerry Holkins and Mike Krahulik recently decided to do something different than usual, so they published the first page of three new comics stories: Lookouts, Automata and Jim Darkmagic. After that, they let their readers decide which of these comics they should make a full story of.

The result was a tie. And since they can’t do both: Holkins and Krahulik will make Automata, while Becky Dreistadt and Oliver Grigsby make Lookouts.

I never voted because I couldn’t make up my mind, so I’m thrilled that they’re doing both. Both Lookouts and Automata was absolutely beautiful to look at, and they both had very intriguing and interesting concepts. I’m very excited to see how this turns out.

By the way: I love the Lookouts emblem. Scroll down a bit on this page to find it in wallpaper format — I just started using it myself.

If you haven’t seen Lookouts yet, check it out, and remember to read page one first. It’s completely different from regular Penny Arcade comics, but like anything else Holkins and Krahulik makes, this reeks of quality. I’m enjoying this, and I can’t wait to see Automata.