Hello everyone! I'd like to meet you! Plus some questions about gifs

[BahamutAXIOM]

I'm not totally new here, I just haven't been very social.

I've been creating the series "NameLess Fools" for about a year now? (REALLY?!) And between creating the actual comic, trying to advertise it, and uploading it, I've sort of neglected this social part.

I used to post on InkBlazers (RIP) and MangaDojo( haven't touched it in quite some time), so I'm not totally a newb at webcomics.

Anyways, I am BahamutAXIOM and as you can tell probably, I like Final Fantasy, One Piece, and other cool things.

Tell me what you guys like, what inspires you, and how you deal with the webcomic life.

Also, questions about GIFs: Does anyone have trouble uploading GIFS or creating them? What are some good processes for creating animated GIF comics that fit the parameters of this site?

I've noticed that optimized GIFS from websites don't seem to work, and my style typically lends to giant filesizes leading to compromises in quality when I finally do update.

Thanks in advance.

[spooktacularprize]

Hi there, pleased to meet you! I found your comic and the art is definitely really something unique! I'm going to try and take a closer look when I get the chance.

I love cartoons and comics, very cartoony styles and a touch of comedy or fun antics; coupled with a bit of a darker or more in-depth plot that unravels slowly over the course of the run; while taking the time for more sub-plots or "episodical" type approaches. This is how most of my stories have been ever since I started creating the more in depth about 5 years ago; although this is my first time seriously tackling a webcomic (I've tackled them many times before, but this has been the attempt I've put the most time into.) I'm also interested by familial relationships, 90s cartoons, themed aesthetics, and tons more.

I've seen people use gifs before on here but I've never actually used them myself. The first page i saw where you included a gif looked good, is it supposed to work differently?

Cheers!

[MissMagicGirl]

Your comic is awesome! Really love the art and animation!

I have recently started to watch One Piece (like a hundred years after everyone else LOL) but it is really great.
Final Fantasy is awesome as well.
I like marvel and DC comics and that was my inspiration. Now I read more webcomics and indie comics and are more inspired by that. ^_^
I also love old horror movies and black and white films in general.

I make a fantasy / comedy seriers here at tapastic: https://tapastic.com/series/magicadvisor

[J.Z.Castillo]

HAI!!! I am Jon! My MC's name is also Jon, it might get confusing when I am talking about him, haha. Anyway, I create BioHazard and Your Heart is My Coffin.

I like to watch anime but I am not very into those really big 5 (I call them the five pointed star of death, you could probably guess which). Right now I'm watching Shokugeki no Soma and I'm dying for Haikyuu!! to come back!

I would like to learn how to make and upload GIFs in my comic... although that might be a bad idea because knowing me I would work too hard at it and just go straight into animation and forget to comic hahaha

[NickRowler]

What inspires me....I dunno. I grew up with newspaper comics and so I was sort of interested in that. I guess at one point I got into Naruto and got really into character development and world building.

My current obsession right now are dolls and toy collecting...though I doubt anything like this will come up in my comics.

When it comes to dealing with the webcomic life...well I'm not dealing with it well. I've been in a bad mood which makes it impossible for me to draw and I have no idea how to break this depression cycle,

[BahamutAXIOM]

That's great, thank you! Is there a better way to link it here on the forums by the way?

That's great, you should like NameLess Fools then! (Shameless plug). I love character relations and I think I find influence from sitcoms too somehow, lol.

Actually, I didn't have much of an issue back when I started, but only lately, as my work gets more detailed. trying to optimize ON websites gives me an error saying the gif file can't be read.

[BahamutAXIOM]

Read the first episode of BioHazard, it looks interesting. I'll definitely read it later when I have more time.

I'm not heavy into anime anymore really, but I understand. I still watch it though. Select anime.

If you have Photoshop, or even Clip Studio (now that it has animation), it isn't that hard to do actually.

[spooktacularprize]

Yeah, you can link by pressing the hyperlink button (the one that looks like a chain?) on the pop-up menu and typing the url of your comic into the form!

That also sounds odd; not too big a file but the gif literally can't be read? Hmm.

[glennsong]

Hey @BahamutAXIOM!

I've done a bunch with GIFs and I wrote this blog post on my site about optimizing GIFs for use on the web/Tapastic: http://www.mortalcoilcomic.com/gif-compression-techniques/

For Tapastic though they have a 2mb file size limit. I cut my large comic pages up into individual frames and stacked them vertically. For the GIFs there's a couple ways to compress them. I used GIMP because it has a built in optimization feature in one of the menus (there's more about it in my blog post). You can also adjust the palette to reduce the file size. My comic is usually 2-4 colors since it's high contrast so I can get away with that, but it's sometimes not enough. For a quick way to optimize there's also EZGif.com, but they only accept files up to 5mb (last I remember anyway).

For my comic: one page was a full page animated GIF (insanity, right?) and I literally showed a few frames of the full page on Tapastic and linked back to the full thing on my own site since it compressed from 43mb to 12mb.

[BahamutAXIOM]

I see. I will get to reading that, thanks!

[BahamutAXIOM]

I edited the original post. Cool, thanks!