Since I've already blathered on at great length about my own comic in this blog over the past year, and won't add anything to what I've already said about my friend Jeroen's Shadow other than that you can now read it for free, there's only one Clickie contender in the "Epic" category left to discuss.

The work on Albo Helm's site is of a very high quality, but for the purposes of the contest I think it has two counts against it. One is that it isn't really a single epic - It's a collection of unrelated stories and more than a few gag comics. The jury should really have picked a single story to nominate. The other is that a lot of the material on display wasn't made for the web, and it shows. I'm no purist, you'll understand. About a quarter of all the Rogues of Clwyd-Rhan material ever published on the web wasn't made especially for it, and this fraction will go up once I start on the publication of The Stone of Contention. But it was carefully adapted to the web: the lettering enlarged in proportion to what I'd have done in print, images endlessly massaged until they'd look good on screen. I miss that aspect in Albo's work. Like many of Donna Barr's early comics scanned for the web, much of the work on Albo's site doesn't read well (Donna learned quickly though, and the web versions of storylines like "Bosom Enemies" read very well on the web indeed).
That said, it's appealing stuff! I'd already seen Würzeln in print back in '99, but Oudegracht and Mouth Almighty both justify Albo's nomination.

Perhaps unsurprisingly in the light of my blog entries of the past few days, Courtly Manners will be briefly interrupted on Monday and Tuesday, April 18 and 19. I have too much on my plate preparing for Clickburg and don't want the climax of the story to be spoiled by rushed artwork. Horses aren't easy to draw, y'know.

There are about a dozen episodes to go in the story. I'd like to wrap it up in good time, but, like I said, not at all cost.

This Clickie contender: Bignose and Overbite I like a lot better! It has nice, light art that reminds me a bit of Andy Konky Kru and a storyline that starts out seemingly aimless and improvised but ends up rather intricate. It doesn't go very deep, but the formal play is interesting and entertaining without being obtrusive, and many of the jokes are funny.

It just had to happen. Just after yesterday's angsty ramble on extended hiatuses, Wednesday White on Websnark posted a commendation of Jeffrey Rowland's terse notice:

OC for Wednesday will not be available due to an issue regarding an event.

saying

See, folks? THIS is how it's done. Not with paragraphs, not
with angsting...

Well, this one's going have paragraphs again, and maybe some angsting. But it will also have a point. Because I deliberately left the point hanging in that other post.

(more...)

... but I tried to get into fellow Clickie nominee Han Hoogerbrugge's Hotel and all I got out of it was confirmation of my prejudice that Flash is really only good for crude political satire with squirrels in it.

That's not to say there isn't some interesting stuff going on, visually, but for me, it's not enough to justify sitting through the whole thing, alternately waiting for the next thing to happen or hunting for things to click on. And the repetitive music drives me nuts!

I've always thought that the point of interactivity was to give the audience more control over their experience of the work. This just makes me feel lost and frustrated. Give me singing squirrels any day.

Edit: As a fellow Clickie nominee I must protest.
It is also great for putting a frog in a blender.

edited by Cmkaapjes

Lib Dem, apparently:

Who should I vote for?

Your expected outcome:

Liberal Democrat

Your actual outcome:

Labour -17
Conservative -23
	Liberal Democrat 36
	UK Independence Party 6
	Green 31

You should vote: Liberal Democrat

The LibDems take a strong stand against tax cuts and a strong one in favour of public services: they would make long-term residential care for the elderly free across the UK, and scrap university tuition fees. They are in favour of a ban on smoking in public places, but would relax laws on cannabis. They propose to change vehicle taxation to be based on usage rather than ownership.

Take the test at Who Should You Vote For

The reason I expected Lib Dem instead of Labour was that I voted "neutral" on quite a few questions, which is what their Dutch equivalent would do.

(Via SBBS)

For a guy who's supposed to be the brains behind a webcomics exhibit and a nominee for a Dutch webcomics award, I'm remarkably unfamiliar with the work of most of the other nominees. However, I can safely say that Poepoe by Fokke & Sukke artist Jean-Marc van Tol is fast becoming one of my favourite comics.

The downside to this is that I'll have to add a comic to my front page hotlist which will never be promoted to Keenspot or the Modern Tales family, because Poepoe is very much a hobby for the creator, who makes a fine living indeed from Fokke & Sukke. There goes Nostradijkhuis' track record down the crapper...

I've been meaning to post this for a while, but because it's the sort of thing I expect to get either a bit of flack or a lot of unnecessarily concerned responses for, I kept putting it off. Now that this award nomination is on, I have a reason to post this sooner rather than later, which is fundamentally similar to my previous reason for putting it off: people on the internet tend to be quick to jump to conclusions, and I don't want the wider webcomics-reading world to think that the concerns raised below were sparked off by me not winning a Clickie or something.

Aanyway. A few weeks ago I channeled Robert Fripp and posted this on my Livejournal. Since then, I have come to a decision, which I will reveal tomorrow. But first, if you're a Rogues of Clwyd-Rhan or Courtly Manners fan, read this from beginning to end - and don't worry.

(more...)

Just when John Allison goes back to pen and paper, I've finally gone and tried to teach myself the basics of Illustrator to bring you: scary-go-cap'n! In my quest of creating the weirdest images it's rather surprising it took me 4 years before I finally did one in Illustrator. I postponed learning the program for ever, though I'm not sure why. I quite like it, and mean to experiment with it a lot the coming time.

Rogues of Clwyd-Rhan has been shortlisted for a Clickie in the "Epic" category. There are four other nominees in that category, including Jeroen "cmkaapjes" Jager's Shadow, making that part of the shortlist a bit of a coup for the vast and evil Modern Tales empire.

(more...)