Creative Decision Pet Peeves

[joannekwan]

OK So we got threads about character design pet peeves, writing pet peeves, and art site pet peeves, now let's talk Pet Peeves about Other People's Creative Choices. Where people choose to do something with their comic/story that just rubs you the wrong way and you question why they made such a decision.

I'll start with mine:

• Couples where one party looks like a minor/child, and it's never addressed exactly how old they are (and the other party is clearly older in appearance). I don't want to read about a Lolita relationship without full warning, please. Even then … >.>
• Characters using recent contemporary slang (ie. bae, chill, etc.) in a serious period or fantasy period piece. It just breaks immersion for me.

Yeah, I understand it's their story and they can do what they want, but it doesn't stop me from narrowing my eyes and flaring my nostrils.

So have you guys ever come across something while reading that make you go, "Why? Just why?"

[KoreanTacos]

I can't stand the long introduction through internal dialogue boxes... When I see that I think that the character isn't actually interesting enough to show me through other characters or the environment. Just seeing "Hi, my name is..." will turn me off. It's cliche and it can turn me off from even attempting to read a comic if it literally starts that way.

[joannekwan]

Oh, I thought of another.

• When characters switch to chibi mode and it's still a serious story. -_-

[AnnaLandin]

Oooh. Hmm. I haven't had enough tea today yet, so the only one that comes to mind right now is this one:

• The corset-scene. You know the one - when Strong Independent Female Character (tm) protests against traditional feminity by refusing to wear this corset, mom! It's oh-so-hard-to-breathe-and-gaaah-so-restrictive-(this-is-a-blunt-metaphor-for-how-restrictive-it-is-to-be-a-woman-hint-hint-can-you-tell). It goes hand in hand with a bigger thing I dislike ("you can't be a strong female if you like girly things because girly things are inherently lesser"), but it's just the bluntest visual example.

[heterodont]

The only one I can think of are poorly timed or cringe-y jokes (like moana's 'tweeting' joke) or jokes making fun of 'sjws', i.e "i identify AS AN ATTACK HELICOPTER", etc. or the recent marvel villians "consider this your TRIGGER WARNING"

eugh

[Kura]

• this 'manga' reads right to left (manga in brackets because it's not actually a manga)

I know it kind of a dumb thing to be bothered by, but REALLY have to force myself not to immediately close the comic just from that alone ><

[J.Lovelace]

When in fantasy comics males can be any type of creature, like big buff hairy anthro wolves or walking trees, but their creature females look like human women just with different skin color, additionally with animal ears/tails or wings/scales and that's it.

Hmm speaking of which, when anything that's female HAS to have breasts. Bird woman? Breasts. Lizard woman? Breasts. A woman that's literally goo - breasts.

[indagold]

Person changes coloring and shading styles every single day of the week. "Todays page is black and white, tomorrows page is fully colored and shaded, this page is just colored but without lines, this is just lines, this is just rough sketches" Make a decision and stick with it.

Bright garish colors or default computer colors for everything.

Copying a style you've seen a billion times before and not doing anything with it. Your Cal Arts SU style or generic anime style(I still see some invader zim, bless their souls). I will avoid those comics like the plague because of how bland they are in terms of art direction.

[Down_the_Rabbithole]

• Bland characters. If I can't even pick a word to describe a character, or they just speak in dialogue that anyone in the comic would say (no unique inflections or mannerisms), I lose interest. I need to feel something for the characters, and I can't feel that if I'm basically reading about human wood-blocks.
• Same face syndrome. This one's more minor because I can get around it, but it's hard for me. My stupid brain starts getting people confused, especially in a black and white or gray scale comic.
• Emoticon faces. This irritates me because, again, it's generic. There's no differentiation of how characters show happiness, sadness, embarrassment, etc. It's boring to look at.

[WakaXO]

•When a creator kills off a character for no reason other than shock value. This is even worst when the character death has no impact on the story/characters, and the story basically continues without much reference to the death or consequences therein.

[kristintipping7]

When a Western a comic creator trying to emulate manga writes dialogue the sounds like a poorly translated manga dialogue. They don't use contractions in the right places, have weird sentence structure, ect. It's a very particular kind of bad dialogue that I used to see all the time in webcomics. It seems to be less common now. Maybe it's because manga translations have gotten better on the whole. Every time I see it I'm like "God, you know that wasn't and intentional creative choice in that manga you read, right?" It's this weird thing where they're drawing inspiration from something they love, but they don't understand what about it made it good in the first place, so they're just copying EVERYTHING whether it was important or not.

[alaingrey]

BL tropes bother me sometimes. I don't like reading a comic where all of a sudden it gets sexy for no reason or it has guys calling each other 'cute' and making noises like 'uwaaa' : / Sometimes I really enjoy a stereotypical BL but not the sound effects.

Fancomics make me kind of sad because I can't imagine spending hundreds of hours writing an AU of a video game when you could just make up your own. Along with this goes copying art styles. The SU crew isn't going to see your gemsona webcomic and be like 'yes, let's bring this person onto the team!' they'll do that if you're making some strong original work with your own voice!

I also really dislike the 'one of each kind of gay' casts I see lately. We know every type exists, I don't really want to see a comic with every kind of trans, gay, bi, random sexuality I'd never heard of, and then none of the characters developed beyond the 'they're bi/ace' part.

[joannekwan]

It's a very particular kind of bad dialogue that I used to see all the time in webcomics.

Yesss, like I can't quite put my finger on it, but you know it when you see it! I also find that these types borrow more frequently from scanslations and fan translations, as most of the legit licensed English manga I've seen do a good job of making characters speak in a more "normalized" way.

I don't like reading a comic where all of a sudden it gets sexy for no reason or it has guys calling each other 'cute' and making noises like 'uwaaa' : / Sometimes I really enjoy a stereotypical BL but not the sound effects.

Preach!

[Devika]

Not sure if it counts, but All Girls Want The One Guy or All Male Characters Are Inherently Driven By Their Libido. Ruined so many potentially great stories. It's one thing if it's advertised as a harem or whatever and not pretending to be anything else, those have their place, but when a story tries to be serious, and those thoughts creep in everywhere anyway...

[Michelle]

Same face syndrome drives me batty @u@ Unless your characters are all siblings or something, put more variance into the faces! The whole face, not just "These two characters have different eye shapes".

On the same topic of faces, it irks me when character emotions are essentially iconic "^ _ ^" "O _ O" "> _ >". Expressions shouldn't look like they're projected onto a flat face-sceen. There's muscles and fat and stuff, which move and pinch and stretch with expressions. I like when artists aren't afraid to make their character pull a silly or extreme facial expression, even if it means they won't look beautiful and perfect.

Also ditto western artists making right-to-left comics. To me, it says the artists is copying the surface look of manga without understanding the function, thus making it less accessible to their reader. And if an artist just does it to mimic the manga look, chances are they're copying a lot of other surface-level stuff (like the odd translations). If a design decision unintentionally throws your readers off, even for a moment, you're better off avoiding it.

[SpavVy]

My creative decision pet peeve is when people do the right to left reading direction when they don't live in a country that uses this format -_-;
Or when they use Japanese sound effects and words in their dialogue.
Sorry if this offends people, but It comes across as very amateurish to me.

[Mocha]

I mostly agree with this statement here since it makes no sense to have a story read right to leftwhen the original language its in is read from left to right. However I have met people who had their comics made right to left because they were left handed and had problems with drawing and inking the pannels in order since their hand would smudge everything.

[SpavVy]

I'm a lefty, my comic is left to right and I ink with dip pens. If someone is left handed then it's best to ink on the right side of the page first and work your way to the left.

[Martlu15]

I often get bothered by some of the special brushes some artists use. There are comics that look okay with it (the simple-styled ones), but there are comics that have way too many things to paint to use am acrylic paint brush and so every page looks messy with backgrounds blending into objects and characters.

I also don't like when the colors are full saturation, like 100% red or yellow.

Oh, oh! One more! Speech bubbles with long typed sentences without center alignment and using very small font sizes to fit inside the bubbles. It's important to separate conversations into multiple panels and use a good font. In caps too (unless it's written like The Other End. That works for me).

I don't mean to be... mean. I'm still an amateur in my opinion, I just take notes from other artists before going into making my comic. Those who are very far from good at drawing should either practice a lot or at least (if it's just a simple comic) put effort in making it easy to read and understand. My series isn't very artistic, but I'm learning new things and eventually will get good at drawing trucks. ^u^

[thekinginthesun]

I was thinking about something clever to say about the topic. Really. Then, your comment about lefties coloring from right to left distracted me because I'm doing this right now. I guess it's some kind of left handed instinct.