That sucks that you're having difficulties with the scripts for chapter three and that your toy budget has been curtailed.
I was having the same problem with my strip and it's one of the (smallest) reasons I put it on hold. I guess I didn't feel I got enough attention when I returned and felt it wasn't worth the work. I know I'm part of the same problem though because I don't post nearly as much as I'd like to on other comics that I really enjoy, including yours, Elf. I really need to start posting more to show my appreciation of the great stories on here. I definitely do what to tell you how genius I think it is making HA Jazz a Decepticon. He certainly has the look of one when compared to the rest of the cast. The difference of aesthetic practically screams evil.
For me its not so much that a lack of feedback discourages me, as it fails to encourage me. And while making the story is a certain amount of fun all on it's own, it's much more fun with comments. I don't always comment on the stories I read, either, but I do try to remember that everyone wants to know they've made an impact. I do find it amusing that no-one's called me out on mistransforming Blackjack (HA Jazz) in the last scene, tho. Thanks! This whole story started when I got HA Sideswipe and said to myself "he looks like a Cylon. Why would Cylons be building Transformers?" At the same time, the only Decepticon Alts I had were Shockwave and Ravage. So the whole "Shockwave gets Cylons to build more Decepticons" thing goes back a long way... most of the rest of the story is nothing at all similar. The script thing is bugging me, but I'm now trying to write the last scene of Chapter Three, so it could be worse. I did have to push Jetfire back to at lease Chapter Four, but that's good from a money perspective anyway... And while losing the toy budget sucks, it's both sobering and reassuring to realise that I can drop 300$ out of my monthly income and only have to give up my toy budget. O.O ! Anyway, it's only until January when my boarder comes back from her extended trip.
And that's Chapter Two! Between GenCon, September Long and a couple of weddings, I figure I'm probably not going to be posting more until the back half of September. As I get things finished and the timeline gets more precise, I'll let you all know. Many thanks to those who've stuck with me this far!
I noted the posts about lack of comments... so here I go, hoping to keep up the encouragement, because you do damn good work. I am really enjoying this strip thus far. I don't know if it's the use of Alts and MPs, but it's really clear that you take some inspiration from Coolhand, Starfire, and Pol (in a very good way). Yours and the other three I have mentioned are the 4 strips that I have bookmarked and look forward to. You've done a really nice job with the script, photography, and overall design. Obviously yours is not as effect heavy as those other guys (how many strips are?), but you do a good job of working within your abilities. I appreciate the time you guys put in to give us a few moments of free entertainment, so thanks for the hard work. Sorry I've never commented before, I just never have really felt the need to do much but sit back and enjoy. But if positive feedback (or even simply constructive criticism) gives you the much needed motivation to continue, then feel free to ask me to stroke your ego anytime! As a final note, your customs are awesome, and possibly the best I've seen. Do you do all the custom work yourself?
I like the subtle differences in the eyeglows. You're making a lot of work for yourself though, if you have lots of scenes with multiple glow An' your Jazz-speak is far-out, dig? Enjoy your summer, and see ya in September!
Very good. That HA Jazz makes for a brilliant 'Con. I'm certainly looking forward to seeing what happens next. Enjoy your summer.
You're welcome! And thank you for reading. I myself consider those other stories you mentioned some of the better ones, too. A lot of it is, for me, the quality of the writing. I've read some stories that I just couldn't get into because of poor pictures or poor effects, but a story with bad "art" but good layout and writing will grab me and hold me. So that's what I'm trying to do, too, make up for crap f/x with good dialogue! Well, I have to say that if mine are the best you've seen you really need to surf the Radicons forum more. Mine are acceptable, but for the most part nothing more than head-swaps. Most of the heads are painted, of course, and there's a bit of body paint on Dead End, Motormaster and Ratchet, but only detail work where it won't get rubbed too much. Even the girls' heads are, from my perspective, just headswaps - an aquaintance made the 3-D mesh and a friend cleaned it up and put it through Shapeways for me. But thank you for the compliment nonetheless, I take great pride in doing small changes to make unique characters. I hear you, mate. But it's done now... and it's not that bad, since I'm doing pretty simple glows. The biggest challenge was getting my notes organised so I could remember who's eyes were what colour! After that, it's just workflow, and doing bits in batches: load all the shots with just Jazz, for example, and then all the ones with Jazz and Prime, then the just Prime, and so forth. It's kind of like painting minis. I'll try not to disappoint! Next chapter will introduce some of Blackjack's buddies.
Finally got some time to myself again, and this comic was one of the first I wanted to catch up with. I know I've said it before but the customs on display here are mouth-watering, and the sheer number of them is equally impressive. Nice to see Ravage slinking around and throwing out little barbs here and there at Shockwave whilst never directly confronting him. Very kitteh-like. He's also aware the Swindle is dealing Shockwave's HA shells to the Seeker faction, but doesn't appear to have said anything yet, so either he's biding his time for his own agenda, or he's told Shockwave and Shockwave is biding his time...or Ravage also works for Starscream? Hard to know with the kitteh. I guess we won't know until he makes his move... I really like your take on Silverstreak as well. His Regenesis self seems to view the general world, even combat, as a mere inconvenience that should in no way be allowed to get in the way of a good conversation. That's awesome! It looks like this is a game-changing point in the plot. Up until now, neither side wants to commit forces to anything decisive because they've got no way to replace what they loose. But now the Shockwave Cons have a method of bringing new troops online. They can afford to take losses, and from the look of it the Seeker faction is close to getting the tech as well, thanks to Swindle and his ever hungry bank balance. Unless the good guys get even the playing field, they're going to get ground away by simple attrition. A note on the glows. As nice as they are, I think they could look better. Have you considered making the core of the glows white? At the moment, a lot of the glows are solid colour and, whilst nice, look like an applied section of colour rather than a burning light with a hot core and a coloration effect at the edge. Polenicus does some nice work with glows for eyes and lasers, and I stole his technique for OOTDL. StarfareMK2 does something similar with his glows, and seems to have his own unique effect for energy weapons which have a white core and a blue shimmering haze effect around them. I don't know how he does that one but it looks nice. I might just be me, but white-glow eyes really sell the illusion of a living, active being, whereas the current glows, whilst nice, can look a little dull sometimes. As for getting more comments per update, I know what you mean about it helping to provide motivation. It's not really an ego thing, it's more that part of the fun of being a story-teller is knowing that people are enjoying the story. Interacting with your audience via the comments can be just as much fun as telling the story. I think a lot of strips tend to be slow burners, gathering readers as they go along, so whilst it might take a while to get the comments going, I think they WILL come, especially given the quality of the material on display here. Also, a lot of people tend to read and not have time to post, which I know I can be really bad for. (I'm trying to kick that habit.) A couple of suggestions that you might find useful: -Post cool pics from the strip in the cool stuff threads. Don't swamp them with pic after pic, but the occasional pic that turned out really well can do wonders for getting new readers, as the cool stuff thread has lots of hits and that can draw people to the funnies who might not otherwise come here. It's a bit mercenary, I know, but if we writers don't promote our stuff, who else is gonna? -Hold a few updates back to build up a backlog and then post one update a week to keep the strip on the first page and in the Funnies sidebar on the main page. A lot of people tend to just explore what's on the first page, or what's featured on the front page. Posting one update a week will keep the strip more visible and at the forefront of the readers minds, and that will generate more hits. Again, it's a bit "tactical", but good fiction deserves exposure. -Getting a cool sig pic can work wonders. Think of your sig as your cinematic "one-sheet" for the comic. If your strip could have a film poster or a book cover, what would it be? Your current pic showcases the customs, but just in the form of headshots and doesn't tell me much about the quality of the effects or the photography on offer. Could you create a sig that showcased the customs, as well as your effects, photography and storytelling skills? Basically, something that says "click me for awesomeness." Hope this is useful. Really looking forward to the next update.
Well, thanks. Like I said before, the customs are mostly k/os with headswaps. But I'm happy to have rounded out the cast. Indeed. Even I'm not sure what Ravage is up to. I keep thinking I've got it down, and then I work on the next bit and he's off somewhere else... See, that's my best example of the character writing itself. The script for the fight scene just says "Several frames of shooting, and then Streak gets whomped." Putting it together, it just needed something else in there besides "pew pew" and now Streak has a clear quirk. Yay! Something that hasn't come out but isn't really a secret is the 'Bots have factories. Any non-fatal casualty can be quickly repaired or even have a whole new shell built; that's implied by having a perfectly intact Tracks in part 2. What they can't do is create new Sparks. This weighs on Optimus and is the primary reason for the low tempo of operations. The 'Cons were forced up to Fort Nemesis in little more than a rout, and have very limited resources. They can't build shells, and can barely manage to repair them. Many 'Con Sparks are now prisoners because their damaged shells had to be abandonded to the 'Bots. The Seekers have more capability in that regard than the 'Cons, but still fall short of complete shell construction. (Especially of a Seeker shell, which is much more complex than a BinalTech.) Starscream does have a number of Sparks, captured from a raid on the Autobot holding facility - but only a dozen. (The rest, and this will come out eventually but again it's not a secret, were destroyed when Hun-Grr, who was part of the "distraction assault," went berserk and ruined the holding facility. Hundreds of Decepticon prisoners and Autobot wounded were lost that day, and only Starscream knows exactly who he saved.) Jetfire and his Searchers are in a comperable place to the Seekers, in terms of manufacturing capacity. And the Cylons can build pretty much anything, they just aren't really clever enough to invent something. I did try to follow Polenicus' tutorial, and ran into the double problems of using a differently organised program, and a more limited version of that program - I use Photoshop Elements. After fighting with it for a while, I just gave up. I know my eyeglows are very basic, but at the end of the day I'm not trying to do awesome vf/x, I'm trying to put forward my narrative, and as long I can keep them above the minimum threshold for people to enjoy the story, I'm good. Otherwise I just end up stressing about them and it stops being fun. Exactly! Very well said, sir! You're suggestions - which I shan't bother repeating, they're just up one post - are all very good. Some of them I'd thought of, some I hadn't. I'm most keenly aware of the sig banner. I'm not thrilled by my current banner (though I have been trying to plant hints by changing the faces to show upcoming people) but I just haven't had a good idea yet. I'm not really a visually creative person... At any rate, I'm back from GenCon, Chapter three is written (mostly, there's some tweaking called for) and I've pretty much found ways to work aorund my new budget. So photography should resume soon, and the next update is hopefully only a few weeks away.
I woke up feeling groggy and vaguely depressed. Then I read my email. Thank you, sir, for making me smile. For those who do follow me, I fear I'm not going to make my end-of-September resumption as planned. Real life is such a nuisance, neh? Though one of the timesucks is a new friendship that might maybe be more someday, so I'm not actually sorry. I have been working, though! Chapter four exists in outline form, and over the last week I've shot scenes one and two and half of scene three. Of course, they're the easy ones, but it's a start! I'm not going to make any guesses as to when it'll be up - but it is in progress. Hooray?
Yeah... wouldn't it be awesome if it didn't, though? "I'm sorry, sir, I can't help you find that obscure bit of case law, I have to go take photographs of my toys now." That is assuming I'm straight! (But yes, this is a lady.)
Well, 4 out of 5 scenes are shot. Just the big combat sequence to go. Which needs some work done on props because they can't hold their gun, and Flareup lost her hand. (Actually lost it, it's a custom so the joint is weak and when it fell off I've no idea where it went...) And then the post-work, of course...
Ok, only took a month to finish the last scene! But everything is shot now. I'm kind of dreading doing the f/x for the combat sequence, though... However, I hope to get a decent amount of stuff done on trucking things through. I"m not going to start posting until I'm sure I'll be done scene 5 in time to keep up, though, so this is still going to take a bit. Thanks for your patience everyone!
Dude, I totally understand that feeling! It's one thing to write a sequence on paper, but an order of magnitude more difficult to shoot it, and then add the fx. Can't wait to see what you've got coming though!
