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Post by eerr on Jun 21, 2016 7:58:44 GMT
Section 2 completed, and I think that the adventure is probably so much nothing like it used to be that its an appropriate time to ask for a second set of critiques if anyone wants to! LinkNow there's this struggle see, about putting things in stories that can't be shown. It's a heroic effort, but in the end everything is either realistic or symbolic. Alright so you've made a visual novel- I've spotted several points to discuss. The novel is glitchy, maybe because I first tried the website with noscript up? or maybe just in general. I hope "what will you do now" was the end, because I couldn't get past that part. I don't really care about the characters. Why should I? It's not detailed at all. Doing just the bare minimum in a single dialogue repeatedly is a bore. Instead I would have stuck with just one dialogue and made it interesting. Or so the theory goesA program is complete not when there is nothing left to add, but nothing left to remove. You can't do everything, superman. I am seriously itching for some cause-effect here. A story with no cause-effect isn't a story. What are you making? A visual novel that isn't a story? Maybe I'm just missing the point and it's all incredibly obtuse and meta. Maybe throwing steinbeck at the blue diamond was a bad idea. My cheatsheet to check for good writing, is reading them aloud in a funny voice. Although looking at your dialogue with that in mind, I guess you just wanted it to be passable? My cheatsheet for checking adventure picture quality is reading them as a nice sentence. In conclusion I was unsatisfied. But why? I'm not a girl! Also I got distracted by the glitches. The rest of your adventure was funny because it was weird and parody. But nothing about the visual novel was interesting weird or detailed parody to me.
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Post by continuityofficer on Jun 21, 2016 9:11:41 GMT
Section 2 completed, and I think that the adventure is probably so much nothing like it used to be that its an appropriate time to ask for a second set of critiques if anyone wants to! LinkNow there's this struggle see, about putting things in stories that can't be shown. It's a heroic effort, but in the end everything is either realistic or symbolic. Alright so you've made a visual novel- I've spotted several points to discuss. The novel is glitchy, maybe because I first tried the website with noscript up? or maybe just in general. I hope "what will you do now" was the end, because I couldn't get past that part. I don't really care about the characters. Why should I? It's not detailed at all. Doing just the bare minimum in a single dialogue repeatedly is a bore. Instead I would have stuck with just one dialogue and made it interesting. Or so the theory goesA program is complete not when there is nothing left to add, but nothing left to remove. You can't do everything, superman. I am seriously itching for some cause-effect here. A story with no cause-effect isn't a story. What are you making? A visual novel that isn't a story? Maybe I'm just missing the point and it's all incredibly obtuse and meta. Maybe throwing steinbeck at the blue diamond was a bad idea. My cheatsheet to check for good writing, is reading them aloud in a funny voice. Although looking at your dialogue with that in mind, I guess you just wanted it to be passable? My cheatsheet for checking adventure picture quality is reading them as a nice sentence. In conclusion I was unsatisfied. But why? I'm not a girl! Also I got distracted by the glitches. The rest of your adventure was funny because it was weird and parody. But nothing about the visual novel was interesting weird or detailed parody to me. I didn't know there wher any significant glitches, and they did't appear when testing, but it may be that thats because of how the site works by taking links from various websites and moving the assets. Apparentally they will be releasing a way to create a downloadable version soon, so hopefully i could make that and that would hopefully erase any glitches for people that thats a problem for. As a note, yes, that was the end. The main reason I did the visual novel thing was to create a way to show various things happening simultainiously, since at that time the character's hadn't met, and thus it could become a mess of character in a close range that should be doing things that are off screen. I do agree with you however that it would have probably been better in highnsight to try some other way, and I don't think I will do it again. I'm confused on what you mean by some of your critiques though. Mainly 'maybe throwing steinbeck [...]', 'my cheatsheet [...]' and 'I'm not a girl!'. If you could, it would be nice if you could elaborate on those.
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Post by eerr on Jun 21, 2016 12:49:21 GMT
Well I keep reading arcane signals 'about being meta' into what people do. Throwing steinbeck into the blue diamond= making the world meta about art. I just do this naturally. It actually makes it harder for me to write a good review. (both me reading into things and people going meta)
My cheatsheet is just the best way I know. I'm not actually experienced at making forum adventure it's just stuff I learned on MSPAF, so it works in theory... So I listened someone else's advice. I feel the dialogue could be slightly more interesting. In theory.
Visual novels with shipping appeals to girls, right? MSPA supposedly has more girl followers than guys. But the forums are the better part made of men. I don't think your novel appeals to men that much.
I can't get invested when the characters are just gags. I find Sarah funny at first as a parody of all those nonbinary characters. As 'a bad choice'.
When I look for reasons to care, I find she is not realistic, not relatable, doesn't show established motivations in her actions, and nothing about her adds drama. Also I completely forget everything she ever said, except winning the game with everybody? and even that is only because I just read it.
Terezi likes flavors, enjoys justice, wants to investigate crimes, and is both blind and a troll. I distinctly remember she talked about justice, liking flavours, and killing a whole lot of people.
She even acts like she is constantly tasting delicious flavours,
You've got four John Egberts, aka characters that are just anything you want them to be.
I think you dug a deep generic hole. So I was of the opinion, the journey matters just as much as the destination, if not moreso. Frequent updates are great but I want you to take your time.
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Post by continuityofficer on Jun 21, 2016 12:57:23 GMT
Well I keep reading arcane signals 'about being meta' into what people do. Throwing steinbeck into the blue diamond= making the world meta about art. I just do this naturally. It actually makes it harder for me to write a good review. (both me reading into things and people going meta) My cheatsheet is just the best way I know. I'm not actually experienced at making forum adventure it's just stuff I learned on MSPAF, so it works in theory... So I listened someone else's advice. I feel the dialogue could be slightly more interesting. In theory. Visual novels with shipping appeals to girls, right? MSPA supposedly has more girl followers than guys. But the forums are the better part made of men. I don't think your novel appeals to men that much. I can't get invested when the characters are just gags. I find Sarah funny at first as a parody of all those nonbinary characters. As 'a bad choice'. When I look for reasons to care, I find she is not realistic, not relatable, doesn't show established motivations in her actions, and nothing about her adds drama. Also I completely forget everything she ever said, except winning the game with everybody? and even that is only because I just read it. Terezi likes flavors, enjoys justice, wants to investigate crimes, and is both blind and a troll. I distinctly remember she talked about justice, liking flavours, and killing a whole lot of people. She even acts like she is constantly tasting delicious flavours, You've got four John Egberts, aka characters that are just anything you want them to be. I think you dug a deep generic hole. So I was of the opinion, the journey matters just as much as the destination, if not moreso. Frequent updates are great but I want you to take your time. Makes sense. I feel like in my head I can see the characters as distinctly different personalities, but at the same time, those differences may not be communicated well, and that's something I should work on. The problem may stem from the way that I was writing being that I try to make the chracters a kind of voice through filter that I impose on the diolouge, but that may not be working. In future update's I will try and do this. EDIT: It's notable that the main reason I update so often is because it was suggested to me by my therepist to try and find a "fun" activity that is also "work" to allow myself to take breaks from feeling like im not doing anything. But I do agree that I should try spending more time on each one, and I think the best thing might be to take breaks in between and try doing other things, then going on to edit, then repeat untill I'm happy enough with it.
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Post by eerr on Jun 21, 2016 20:48:08 GMT
Makes sense. I feel like in my head I can see the characters as distinctly different personalities, but at the same time, those differences may not be communicated well, and that's something I should work on. The problem may stem from the way that I was writing being that I try to make the chracters a kind of voice through filter that I impose on the diolouge, but that may not be working. In future update's I will try and do this. EDIT: It's notable that the main reason I update so often is because it was suggested to me by my therepist to try and find a "fun" activity that is also "work" to allow myself to take breaks from feeling like im not doing anything. But I do agree that I should try spending more time on each one, and I think the best thing might be to take breaks in between and try doing other things, then going on to edit, then repeat untill I'm happy enough with it. No the voice you are using is coming through very strongly! I just feel that you can add some details to it. Writing wise it sounds good but not great. Maybe I'm just being greedy for the same plots you can get in >Bara? but then again most of your competition has something to draw inspiration from, like a previous forum adventure. I'm actually suspecting that Andrew Hussie does a ton of research to make his twists and ending.
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Post by Nero on Jun 22, 2016 13:14:17 GMT
i want to see a review for cool and new webcomic
i didnt make it
is that even possible
can you even request critiques for other people's webcomics
hi i want a critique for cool and new webcomic i dont care if you're harsh in fact i want you to be rough i want it hard daddy
btw i didnt make that comic ok bye
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Post by continuityofficer on Jun 22, 2016 13:22:19 GMT
i want to see a review for cool and new webcomic i didnt make it is that even possible can you even request critiques for other people's webcomics hi i want a critique for cool and new webcomic i dont care if you're harsh in fact i want you to be rough i want it hard daddy btw i didnt make that comic ok bye Its difficult to critique something so heavily decxidedly shitty as A cool and new webcomic is, because it's hard to know what's ironic and what's not. When Jack recently had annoyingly long parragraphs of 'and then' and 'he saids' without really much interesting happening, was that a joke on when people do that, or bad writing? Is the sometime weird lack of fluidity intensional to give off that shitty feeling of jumpy jpeg in narrative aswell, or is it bad writing? Is that weird thing where the non-shitty characters seem to have glow around just their head sometimes, but also their whole body other times, and other times not at all an intensional way to show their disconnect from this world or is it inconsistant art direction? I don't know, and no one but o and whoever the forum member who is probably o in duisguise knows, and if I where them, I would just pretend that the former was the right one, even if it wasn't originally.
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Post by heyitskane on Jun 25, 2016 3:10:09 GMT
Ok, so how bad is this garbage I made? mspfanventures.com/?s=15132&id=1
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ilikeswordz
Moppet of Destiny
Halloo hullo! Just that dude who's making >BaRA a thing.
Posts: 117
Pronouns: he/him/his
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Post by ilikeswordz on Jun 25, 2016 3:44:50 GMT
Ok, so how bad is this garbage I made? mspfanventures.com/?s=15132&id=1 I don't think I can say much about it. It's too short to make any critical judgments about it. On one hand, it looks like your average Sburb spin-off. On the other hand, it doesn't have much else going for it at the moment. What's the name for? Noobstuck as in the characters are noobs, or Noobstuck as in this is a parody of newbie fanventure makers? (I do not mean the latter in offense, I just didn't know what your intentions are for this adventure since it's so dang short) Artwise, be careful with using antialiasing if you want to preserve the MSPaint look; I turn antialiasing off on my brushes, paintbucket, magic wand, and on my transformation tools. I would suggest make things in .PNG files rather than .JPGs since the latter makes shitty artifacts that you can't get easily remove.
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Post by eerr on Jun 25, 2016 4:08:06 GMT
Well let's see, reading Alliance Bound would take awhile. I'll get to it. Ok, so how bad is this garbage I made? mspfanventures.com/?s=15132&id=1 My main complaint is that characters and objects tend to lack depth. Otherwise the Scratch game is quite good for a formative work. I'm not entirely sure what kind of depth perspective a Sburb adventure uses, but I see varying line thickness in multiple places.
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Post by heyitskane on Jun 25, 2016 4:21:18 GMT
Ok, so I called it noobbound because I'm new to this whole fan adventure thing, and I'm using it mainly to test and refine my skills. Just thought I'd clear that up.
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Post by eerr on Jun 25, 2016 4:38:46 GMT
Ok, so I called it noobbound because I'm new to this whole fan adventure thing, and I'm using it mainly to test and refine my skills. Just thought I'd clear that up. Oh I just realized you are already using varying line thickness. I guess I meant I see lines more fractional, and slightly varied? I see many artists do something divine with multiple passes and a thin brush with a tablet.
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ilikeswordz
Moppet of Destiny
Halloo hullo! Just that dude who's making >BaRA a thing.
Posts: 117
Pronouns: he/him/his
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Post by ilikeswordz on Jun 26, 2016 4:19:16 GMT
Should this thread be in the Cradle? Most of the adventures that asked for critiques are either uncradled or were close to being uncradled. I dunno, it seems more relevant to the Forum Adventures page than the Cradle (the other threads that were moved are fine where they are now though).
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Post by Sharkalien on Jun 26, 2016 4:36:17 GMT
Should this thread be in the Cradle? Most of the adventures that asked for critiques are either uncradled or were close to being uncradled. I dunno, it seems more relevant to the Forum Adventures page than the Cradle (the other threads that were moved are fine where they are now though). I'm not sure, actually. It was in the Cradle on the old MSPAF, but maybe it was only there to keep things even? There are three stickied threads left now, anyway. I'll move it back
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Post by drifloon on Jun 26, 2016 14:48:39 GMT
Its difficult to critique something so heavily decxidedly shitty as A cool and new webcomic is, because it's hard to know what's ironic and what's not. When Jack recently had annoyingly long parragraphs of 'and then' and 'he saids' without really much interesting happening, was that a joke on when people do that, or bad writing? For what it's worth, I'm pretty sure that was just an attempt to faithfully recreate Jack's style of narration in Homestuck proper. If you look at, say, this page, this page or this page, it reads pretty much the same. So I actually thought that was well done for what it was, since it captures the voice of canon Jack well.
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Post by ratboygenius on Jun 26, 2016 22:41:16 GMT
Heyyo, back in 2011 I started writing a little adventure called Shackstuck. It took place on a Sonic the Hedgehog forum that I also posted it on. Most all characters were user submitted and were included to match their online persona's. As you can guess its a very niche story and not that good. I stopped writing it in 2012 but recently picked it up after the end of the second act. It's now at 900 pages and still going steady. My artistic skill is similar to that of an elementary school student, but I think I've made decent use of the assets that have been submitted. Basically, I'm wondering what an outsiders perspective would be on the comic. There's lots I could improve and feedback would be wonderful in regards to writing a better story for a wider audience.
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imglasses
Your shit is wrecked
Meet the Meme Team
Posts: 633
Pronouns: they/them/theirs
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Post by imglasses on Jun 26, 2016 22:59:10 GMT
i want to see a review for cool and new webcomic i didnt make it *** btw i didnt make that comic ok bye That sounds like something the author of cool and new web comic would say.
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Post by eerr on Jun 27, 2016 23:17:58 GMT
Yo, I'd really appreciate some critiques for alliancebound. It's about 3 years old now(sheesh) but it wasn't until recently that I've been updating it as much as I've wanted to, and knowing how peeps view it and getting feedback would be nice. Well first off: Swearing. I find swearing relatively uninteresting in conversation. In a story there are any number of more interesting ways to write a character. Express using words how someone feels! Use some hand gestures, anything more interesting than a vanilla 'fuck'. Short and sweet swears are just story telling that could be anything else. I mean yea, it might be how you built your character, but your character is a bore! Sacrifice some effort, some realism and make their words more entertaining. A forum adventure is ninety-nine percent journey and that means every last word is precious. " All 3 movies have very interesting plot-lines and relationships between the characters. And also the benefit of magic. " Now this is just screaming for you to be specific! Show rather than tell! And if you didn't see any of the movies, its not hard to look them up, or make something out of thin air. Let's say, The dashing Sinbad saves his friends. as oppposed to Something interesting happened.
I laughed at the title 'harmoniousBakingspray' Why does composingSilence know about Derse already? You could tell the reader why. I feel like your showmanship is slightly lacking. Namely you have no dramatic build up to fighting the imps. The rest of the panels could look a little bit more like sequential art. Seeing smaller movements of the character really adds alot.
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Post by SpottedBlades on Jun 27, 2016 23:43:38 GMT
I think a immediate problem I notice is that the opening probably pushes away a lot of potential new comers. Since your already in an overly saturated market (stuck adventures, especially with trolls), impressions are important, but I think the art puts people off. Alright. I'm almost done replacing the 2013 panels with something more pleasant. If you really want more people, if you where able to somehow pull of a REALLY GOOD plot point or twist, you could get some more people to read, since people would tell people too. #NoSpoiler As said above, I'm rebooting the old panels and texts into something less amateur. I won't request a second critique (I don't know how that would work) but if someone who's never read Zodiacstuck could tell me their first impressions, or if I could get someone's before/after comments, it'd be really good. As for Item Unoriginal, it is good despite being quite basic. However the overall plot has some holes here and there, and characters seem to be defined by quirks more than personality. Still, they're funny, and can be developed. I wish you'd have expanded more on the items themselves, like where do people get them, how do they get their names, and such. Unless you plan to do that later, of course. I won't comment on art and visuals, cause everyone has their style. You have room for improvement, and that's what matters.
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ominousscientist
Nipper Cadet
waiting for the day ill finish my stories
Posts: 74
Pronouns: [any]
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Post by ominousscientist on Jun 28, 2016 2:17:13 GMT
Yo, I'd really appreciate some critiques for alliancebound. It's about 3 years old now(sheesh) but it wasn't until recently that I've been updating it as much as I've wanted to, and knowing how peeps view it and getting feedback would be nice. Well first off: Swearing. I find swearing relatively uninteresting in conversation. In a story there are any number of more interesting ways to write a character. Express using words how someone feels! Use some hand gestures, anything more interesting than a vanilla 'fuck'. Short and sweet swears are just story telling that could be anything else. I mean yea, it might be how you built your character, but your character is a bore! Sacrifice some effort, some realism and make their words more entertaining. A forum adventure is ninety-nine percent journey and that means every last word is precious. " All 3 movies have very interesting plot-lines and relationships between the characters. And also the benefit of magic. " Now this is just screaming for you to be specific! Show rather than tell! And if you didn't see any of the movies, its not hard to look them up, or make something out of thin air. Let's say, The dashing Sinbad saves his friends. as oppposed to Something interesting happened.
I laughed at the title 'harmoniousBakingspray' Why does composingSilence know about Derse already? You could tell the reader why. I feel like your showmanship is slightly lacking. Namely you have no dramatic build up to fighting the imps. The rest of the panels could look a little bit more like sequential art. Seeing smaller movements of the character really adds alot. Thanks for the critique! Considering that I first started this when I used to swear a lot it really effected the way my characters talked and it's good to know that other people notice so I could change it up. I guess even though I've edited parts of the beginning it feels almost.. bad to I guess? To change what I already established in the way my characters talk. It's pretty difficult to insert panels inbetween to add in more details since mspfa doesn't have a feature to(besides posting a panel than rewiring the links. Which can turn pretty whack) Thanks again though, I'll make sure to take note of your points!
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KrispyKBacon
Scampermaster
Don't vape on the pizza
Posts: 219
Pronouns: she/her/hers
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Post by KrispyKBacon on Jun 29, 2016 4:42:50 GMT
Welp. Notequest's first chapter has ended. Now that the first chapter is over, I'd like for someone to critique it again. I'd like to know if there's anything I can improve on so that the next chapter will be better than the last.
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ilikeswordz
Moppet of Destiny
Halloo hullo! Just that dude who's making >BaRA a thing.
Posts: 117
Pronouns: he/him/his
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Post by ilikeswordz on Jun 29, 2016 8:14:52 GMT
As said above, I'm rebooting the old panels and texts into something less amateur. I won't request a second critique (I don't know how that would work) but if someone who's never read Zodiacstuck could tell me their first impressions, or if I could get someone's before/after comments, it'd be really good. Just my first impression- The intro was really rushed. Unlike most adventures which introduced characters one at a time so the reader got a feel for each one. We basically got 5 new characters all at the same time. That's a lot of characters to take in at the same time. All of your characters seem to be introduced this way- if you ever intend on retconning the early plot, it might be best to spread them out a bit. Maybe every 5-10 pages before each new intro with maybe 1 or 2 exceptions? In terms of art, there's a funky contrast between some super complex and shaded scenes and the simple, pixelly characters. It's throwing off the aesthetic (not graphics, it looks ok, but the art looks jumbled because of the funky shading). My suggestion would be to ease up on the airbrush, don't use it too often. Stick with the MSPaint look for one scene and maybe do the coolio Photoshop/painty style in another, but don't try to them up mashup. Sometimes, simpler is better- you work really hard on your art I can tell, and it might save you some trouble ouo"
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FuzzyWish
Nipper Cadet
mobius trip and hadron kaleido garbage
Posts: 79
Pronouns: they/them/theirs
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Post by FuzzyWish on Jun 29, 2016 21:42:07 GMT
ABOUT TIME I THROW THIS BACK IN THE THREAD gurgling noises THE ART AT THE BEGINNING IS REALLY BAD so is the plot but that's before i had an idea of what gybR was going to be
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Post by SpottedBlades on Jun 30, 2016 1:37:35 GMT
One of the hardest things to do when retconning a fanventure is pagination. Current Mspfa.com url system is based on page number and not page itself. So when you've already linked to certain pages in the mirror on other media (and I did that a lot), if you put up a new page between old ones all links will be misplaced, as their numbers will have changed. And that's what's hard. If my old self used 20 pages to introduce four characters, I'm stuck with 20 pages to work with, no more no less. Unless the pagination system changes as a whole, I can't add any more pages. Even the best screenwriter has to rush a story when they don't have enough paper to write on. Curse you, old me. Curse you.
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Post by Zerio on Jun 30, 2016 3:46:50 GMT
One of the hardest things to do when retconning a fanventure is pagination. Current Mspfa.com url system is based on page number and not page itself. So when you've already linked to certain pages in the mirror on other media (and I did that a lot), if you put up a new page between old ones all links will be misplaced, as their numbers will have changed. And that's what's hard. If my old self used 20 pages to introduce four characters, I'm stuck with 20 pages to work with, no more no less. Unless the pagination system changes as a whole, I can't add any more pages. Even the best screenwriter has to rush a story when they don't have enough paper to write on. Curse you, old me. Curse you. If you want to keep links on the same pages but still add extra pages to old scenes, you could make use of the "Next Page" option so additional pages don't need to be "physically" there. Of course, the downside to this is it'd make the log page kinda screwy, and potentially confuse readers by the nonlinear page number in the url. Not to mention it would probably be kind of tedious to set up, depending on how many extra pages you want to add.
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