next »

[xerus]

Skaldicpoet, what you're talking about seems to be something like... there's a theme, and everyone makes their own story.  Which, is cool and all, but the point of a comicompo such as this is to take a starting thread and contort it in different ways and seeing what comes out on the other side.  Sort of like the telephone game, but with drawings.

I know that this one took a long time and you guys probably want a quicker turn around on the comics, so what about sort of combining these ideas... next comicompo season could be massive sign ups and then we make comics that are 10 pages long or so, all in parallel?   So say 40 people sign up, so we can make 4 comics.  Each one starts with the same theme (Anthology idea) but the 10 or so pages maintains the idea of the telephone game.

THOUGHTS.

[skaldicpoet9]

That sounds good actually. My idea had more to do with trying to take pressure off of your position as coordinator of the project, so that you would have less to do with trying to motivate people to action and more to do with actually compiling the comic when it came time to assemble it. The only problem with trying to make a consistent story is that some people would be more interested in doing their own derivation of the subject matter, and you get something that is somewhat disjointed story-wise.

I know that this is all part of the compo (and I dig it to be sure) but I think that it is hard to maintain a coherent story when a lot of people try and go their own separate directions. I wouldn't have a problem with doing something collaborative as long as their were safeguards in place to assure that we could attain a semi-coherent narrative. I am just trying to throw out ideas that might be conducive to creating something that could stand alone on it's own as a logical story structure.

I am open to any and all ideas though. A ten page anthology divided amongst five people could work if we coordinated it correctly but in order for it to work we would need to make the submission guidelines to the compo slightly more definitive than they currently are.

[xerus]

Well, managing the comic and assembling it doesn't take that much effort on my part.  PMing people once a week is about 10 minutes of work, so don't worry about that.  Assembling the comic just involves me sitting down for a day and jamming out a php script and some fancy html, which is again not a problem.

Everyone is going to interpret the meaning of the comicompo a little bit differently, but to me it's not really about a "coherent" story.  I mean, if it were a coherent story, then it would be more about giving the next person in line the entire comic up to that point and not just the previous page.  If it gets wacky and messed up then it's just following the nature and desires of the artists involved, which I think is pretty cool.  Making a coherent story is not really what the comic should be about at all, in my opinion.

I think what you are talking about is just a collaborative comic project, and not so much the comicompo as I see it.

And fifth your branching idea seems totally crazy to me still.

[skaldicpoet9]

Well yeah, I was going to clarify that this wouldn't really be a proper comic-compo collaborative type project, just that it would be something completely different. I just think that it would be interesting to take a break from the current format and see what kind of stories people come up with based off of the general theme of the compo.

I should have clarified that I saw this as a mostly spin-off project from what the comic-compo currently is. Hell, I would even coordinate it if people wanted to try something like this, it could be a completely separate, yet related endeavor from the comic-compo proper.

I love the format of the comic-compo compo but I would love to see what kind of various stories that people could come up with given an intriguing theme.

The traditional comic-compo could even run concurrently with this project even...

[xerus]

The traditional comic-compo could even run concurrently with this project even...

Are you CHALLENGING ME?!

[skaldicpoet9]

[astrospoon]

I do think there should be some standard by which you must include some minimum of information on a page to pass on to the next person. It seems like it would work best when enough of the story is kept that it can still be followed in some reasonable manner, but enough is lost that surprising or funny things can happen. Otherwise, we should all just draw pages at once and then try to arrange them into some sort of narrative.

Another possible solution would be to send the previous 2 pages. This could avoid the total breakdown that comes from very minimalist art styles, pages with only one panel, or pages with no text at all. Would let the story carry forward quite a bit more naturally.

[Zaphos]

How about 1.5 pages -- you get the previous page and the bottom half of the one that came before that.

I like the idea of parallel comicompos a lot ...

Also, maybe only allow like 1 or 2 days to draw each page.

[Fifth]

And fifth your branching idea seems totally crazy to me still.

But this is a whole NEW branching idea!  Instead of that weird "dividing by half" thing I was talking about before, this is just a straight-up "every page is sent to two different people" thing.  And so you'd end up with alternate storylines from the same pages.

Code:

     4
    /
   2
  / \
 /   5
1
 \   6
  \ /
   3
    \
     7

...And if you're crazy enough, the latter half would be one person getting two pages, to try and merge everything down to a single end.

Code:

     4
    / \
   2   8
  / \ / \
 /   5   \
1         10
 \   6   /
  \ / \ /
   3   9
    \ /
     7

...Though that's just absurd.

[Inane]

Stop gabbing and upload it before I go to bed!

[Zaphos]

stuff

Ooh, choose your own adventure comicompo -- each page must end with a choice, and then the next artists receive the page + which choice/path they are illustrating

[Morre]

So, while we're at it, may I propose yet another alternate format?

To make sure there's no waiting for a year, increase coherency a bit, while at the same time more or less maintaining the comicompo format, how about making it into an episodical? Every 5 or 10 pages or so, what's been made so far is submitted. That way, people have something to look at while waiting, and the authors get more of an idea of the overall storyline.

Since there's not really much of a punchline or conclusive end in comicompos anyway (well, last ending was great, I will give it that), the comic should be fairly readable in episodes.

Mind you, I'm not sure this is a very good idea, I'm just putting it out there.

[Μarkham]

Choose-Your-Own-Ending Comicompo?

Edit - didn't see this:

stuff

Ooh, choose your own adventure comicompo -- each page must end with a choice, and then the next artists receive the page + which choice/path they are illustrating

I think it would be better to not intentionally/directly show a set of choices, and then the page is sent to two different people who make a choice of their own and make a page for that.

[bateleur]

Ooh, choose your own adventure comicompo -- each page must end with a choice, and then the next artists receive the page + which choice/path they are illustrating

That's GENIUS! I really, really want to do this.

In fact I might even run it, if neither you nor Xerus does.

[Renton]

We can talk about the next comic after this one's out, alright?

Kyle, are you still waiting for that lost page?