Cloudscratcher Options

[Viashino_wizard]

Damn, I was counting on some Burt X Jacques action.

Must... resist... porking... joke!

[Yaoi Huntress Earth]

I'm sticking to the principle that, content-wise, the comic will never go beyond what I saw in cartoons as a kid in the 90's.

That's cool. We could use more all-ages stuff in the webcomic world.

[Gold_TSG]

It's coming along pretty ok thus far.

[Agnitio Ex Machina]

Steampunk furries.
In all due seriousness it's turning out pretty well. I don't like the design of the reptile dudes though. Feels a little sketchy. The "good guys" are done very well, on the other hand, sort of like An American Tail.

This post has been edited by Agnitio Ex Machina: May 8 2012, 09:33 PM

[Master of AFTER]

Sorry if I'm a tad late to the launch party—I wanted to comment on this sooner, but this week has been treating my balls like a pinata. Every fucking day it's something else, I swear.

Thumbs up on the first batch of pages, Shmeckie. Nice to see you finally got all the issues with the coloring/shading worked out. The comic looks great; everything is very clean and vibrant without looking too cartoony or deviating from that distinctly hand-drawn look your art typically has. I can't comment much on the story at this point since there hasn't been much plot development yet, but all of the characters that have appeared so far have made a fairly strong first impression. I can tell I'm going to enjoy getting to know these guys as the story progresses.

The only thing I might liked to have seen done differently concerns the fact that some of the dialogue is a little exposition-heavy. I know you're trying to set up a very detailed backstory for the comic's world and characters as early as possible—and I do prefer this "mention plot points here and there" approach vs. confining it to lengthy walls of text later—but some of it seemed a little contrived. Specifically, the exchange between Burt and Jacques on page 4 felt like they were talking directly to the readers rather than each other.

That small criticism aside, I think Cloudscratcher is off to a strong start. The website turned out great, and the comic itself is full of promise. I look forward to reading more.

[Waffleman]

Good job on this, Shmeckster. It's like if Snoopy's fights against the Red Baron were an entire world.

[Shmeckie]

Anyone who has taken the liberty of visiting the site today will find a batch of shiny new pages just for you! ...And everyone else who visits the site...

[Agnitio Ex Machina]

An introduction to the religion of the snake-people, one with Catholic undertones! Deus vult!

[Protto]

Seeing Felix miffed so early on in the comic was pretty fun, since you mentioned that we'll rarely get to see him getting all riled up. Those crates on the first panel of the eleventh page are also really well-drawn. That's not a weird thing to pick out, is it?

One thing that sort of stuck out to me was the lighting in Sogaat's room. Shouldn't one side of the cabin look a little dimmer? Seeing as it's only lit by one lantern there... Plus, the shading is extra light in the living quarters, which makes it look a bit like the whole place is illuminated by fluorescents.

[Shmeckie]

There's also an open window and it's daytime. And yeah, the "J-Word" is one of the few things that genuinely riles up Felix. And no, that's not a weird thing to point out.

[Protto]

There's also an open window and it's daytime.

...Oooohhhh~!

I thought that was a mirror...!

[Douchenozzle Hunter Jack]

Brilliant stuff, Shmeckie. I appreciate adding another rare internet gem to my reading collection.

[Shmeckie]

Dos new paginas, and the FAQs and Info section goes up, as well!

[Viashino_wizard]

Dos new paginas, and the FAQs and Info section goes up, as well!

Well it's ABOUT TIME.

Excellent as always, though the Captain looks awfully unexcited for someone ending his sentences with !?

[Agnitio Ex Machina]

Suggestion, tone down the resolution for the menu bars and background. They're using far more bytes (and thus time and bandwidth) than they should. They even take longer than half a page of the comic ffs.

Also the new dog character "Smith" is borderline "comparison with Goofy from Disney". It's either the angle of the nose tip or the length of the nose but it definitely has to do with the nose. Just thought I'd give you a heads-up.

This post has been edited by Agnitio Ex Machina: May 18 2012, 09:36 PM

[Shmeckie]

Well the comic is drawn in Disney style, so...

Also learn you som'm; that's called "dogface." It's a facetype Disney used a fuckton back in the day. Not just for Goofy.

[Master of AFTER]

Suggestion, tone down the resolution for the menu bars and background. They're using far more bytes (and thus time and bandwidth) than they should. They even take longer than half a page of the comic ffs.

The resolution of the menu buttons is the standard 72 dpi. I assume you mean the image dimensions, in which case I wouldn't recommend reducing them in size. Making the buttons any smaller would make navigation needlessly difficult on higher screen resolutions. I'm not sure why the web designer opted to go with an image map for the navigation, though. Image maps can slow down older browsers and are usually reserved for navigation fields with unusual shapes; the buttons on the CS site are perfectly square, so using individual images with HREF tags should have worked fine... Maybe there's some advantage to the image map route I'm not aware of?

On the subject of navigation, should the CS site ever be redesigned at some point down the road, I recommend using a top centered navigation menu instead of the current side menu layout. Each page of the comic should be the primary focal point of every page, and having it centered would achieve that better than having it share horizontal real estate with the navigation menu. Also, with the dimensions of each page being as large as they are, you don't want to crowd them any on either side because it will force readers who aren't using widescreen monitors to have to scroll horizontally, which can become quite a chore when you have to do it for every single page.

One last web design tip: Your page description in the index page's code seriously needs to be rewritten:

Set in a world high in the sky, where sprawling cities are built atop craggy-yet-vegitated mountaintops, where an endless sheet of clouds no one has gone below--known as the Cloud Bed--blankets the entire world, where giant steel airships rule the skies, and where a ruthless and powerful empire threatens to dominate the entire world. The series follows the crew of the Cloudscratcher (named for the wing-like protrustions along the sides of its hull, which often leaves what appears to be scratch-marks in the clouds), a group of refugees all displaced by the theocratic Margoth Empire's global campaign of destruction, in search of a mythical place called Eden; a massive plateau, covered in vegitation, rivers, etc. An unheard-of natural paradise on flat land.

First of all, spelling errors and run-on sentences ALL up in this bitch! Second, that is ridiculously long for a webpage description; Google only displays the first 150 characters of a site's description by default, so most people will never even see that unless they look at the HTML code or are viewing the site with some kind of add-on that lets them see normally hidden components like that. All that information would be put to better use somewhere within the content of the site itself. When writing the description, you want something very short and direct such as: "The official destination for the action/adventure webcomic saga known as Cloudscratcher!"


As for the comic itself, I really like the latest batch of pages. That beautifully detailed picture you drew of the city from a wide shot looks awesome in color, and the characters continue to shine. I love the way Felix seems so amazed by everything around him. I've seen SO many webcomic authors fuck up so spectacularly when trying to write and depict children, but I think you've done a good job in that area so far.

[Tonfa]

. I'm not sure why the web designer opted to go with an image map for the navigation, though. Image maps can slow down older browsers and are usually reserved for navigation fields with unusual shapes; the buttons on the CS site are perfectly square, so using individual images with HREF tags should have worked fine... Maybe there's some advantage to the image map route I'm not aware of?

That whole menu is one solid image. I guess the buttons could have been broken down individually but I worked with what I was given.

First of all, spelling errors and run-on sentences ALL up in this bitch! Second, that is ridiculously long for a webpage description; Google only displays the first 150 characters of a site's description by default, so most people will never even see that unless they look at the HTML code or are viewing the site with some kind of add-on that lets them see normally hidden components like that. All that information would be put to better use somewhere within the content of the site itself. When writing the description, you want something very short and direct such as: "The official destination for the action/adventure webcomic saga known as Cloudscratcher!"

I just copypasted that description from his art thread as a filler for the metadata when I realized I forgot to add some keywords.

I'll make that change when I get home from work.

[Agnitio Ex Machina]

Also learn you som'm; that's called "dogface." It's a facetype Disney used a fuckton back in the day. Not just for Goofy.

I understand that but was not the '90s the twilight years for such a design? All I can remember that style being used in is in the Goofy Movie, which was based on the famous character. Anyways since it was intentional, there's no problem in the first place since I was just letting you know.

[Shmeckie]

Colorist is late getting the pages to me. New pages should be up tomorrow or Sunday.