Bay 12 Games Forum

[stupid]I have an idea about the story behind the art change! Remember how early on people would say things like 'replace all the warriors with armless children' and 'use elephant noises to lure elephants to the cage trap'? As we started going on to such important matters as this:

Spoiler: Serious Business (click to show/hide)

the art style became more grim. I propose we all make retarded suggestions, give Amala a few reasons to kill another elf

Spoiler: Like So (click to show/hide)

and the illustrations will be cartoony again within an update or two from now![/stupid]

[silly]You're quite right; clearly we should have all the elves form a bridge, using themselves, tickle the Titan, and have a large, noisy party in celebration of their victory, inviting all of the frogmen over to our camp to sing thiiiis while playing pin the tail on the Titan.[/silly]

It feels like the comic's drawings are matching up with the location; back when the elves were in their happy homeland, everything was light and silly. Now that they're in the dangerous and soggy swamps, the lines are thinner and their are more of them, which is reminiscent of a drizzling rain to me. Maybe when the caravan reaches the mountainhome, the art will be blockier and more minimalistic, fitting with the dwarven theme.

You raise a valid point, I didn't consider this.

Elves will die.

Yep.

We still have a long way to go, stating again we haven't met any other humanoids.

I understand what you mean by that, but wouldn't the frogmen be considered humanoid?

Quote from: Araph on December 22, 2011, 09:38:24 pm

At any rate, the art throughout the entire comic has been consistently the highest quality out of any long-running thread.

Fully agree.

What Araph said.

I don't think it's possible to disagree.

I would like to say that I enjoy this comic immensely, I'm looking forward to seeing the story progress, and I'm interested in seeing how the artwork changes as well.

On the popularity and attracting readers:
I first looked at the comic a bit more than a year ago; the most current page at the time was when one of the dwarves was thanking the other for talking some sense into William, at the time the website was a mess of images and it was hard to navigate, I dismissed it as a shoddy piece of work done by someone with a lot of talent, but was putting very little effort in, and I didn't bother looking at anything else besides that one page (although to be fair this was before I got into webcomics) a few months ago in late summer, post-xkcd discovery, I saw the link to the webcomic, and decided to take a look at it.  I didn't recognize it and started it from page one, the next day I had read through most of it and was wishing I had done this a year ago, what I had mistaken for lack of effort was actually carefully planned art progression.  Ever since I have been periodically checking it along with all of my favorite comics.

Most of the things that originally drove me away are gone now, however, I do think that cleaning up some of the original images might help a little. 

Another thing that might help is a character page, or even a short paragraph on the world detailing interesting stuff that might not necessarily be explained in the comic itself [such as the lack of apples and horses, or even just a short history of the world (unless you're planning on revealing that as the comic progresses)]. 

Another idea might be to include a sample page with some scenes that could stand alone, or give hint at the story without revealing
much (Such as the beginning of the kobold chase or Josephs awakening or really any of the goblin's scenes).

I don't know how you feel about this, but you might consider trading links with another small time webcomic or (if you're making any extra money off of the advertisements or feel like putting a little money in) you might consider buying advertisement space on a more famous webcomic.  Sluggy Freelance I know offers cheap advertisement (I do believe it's less than or around a dollar) on a pay-for-a-day basis, and I (personally) think that Sluggy readers would be interested in this comic, as they have a definite liking for long reaching plots and Chekhov's guns.  And being the longest running comic on the web, it has a large following and you would probably get at the very least a couple dozen hits.

I would also like to thank you(r) (advertisements) for introducing me to Sandra and Woo although I prefer your comic immensely.

A few questions:
1. Is this still going to be done? 
2. What is the gameplay going to be like? 
3. Will we have the option to be traders/pirates/mercenaries/military or even try to start our own colony?
4. What's the universe like?  Star Wars-esque? Firefly-esque? Will there be (obligatory) aliens? Will they be suspiciously humanoid? 
5. How many players are being accepted?  One for each crew member? Are we all occupying the head of one captain?  Or are we some sort of a hive-mind of the entire ship and crew?