Review Swap (Comics Only)

[powerplantanimations]

btw when I mentioned the medievial pics, a professional artist jumped up wanting to them so we'll be posting them here

[jwabeasley]

They style of art I had in mind was medieval marginalia style, like this:

You can find an article on marginalia here:

The Strange and Grotesque Doodles in the Margins of Medieval Books

As a rule they're not too hard to make if you have access to the same tools. And they don't even have to be good to fit in! A little linework and a parchment texture would get you 90% of the way.

Well if she isn't neurodivergent but I'm supposed to feel like she is, that's just fine!

As to your tomboy friends, it might be worth thinking not just that your sister used violence and was good at sports, but how and when she uses that violence and how she feels about those activities, or would describe them to herself and to others. The differences can be quite subtle as the actions on the surface can seem similar! Very few -almost no- men would give a nipple twist to another man in front of his girlfriend no matter what he said. A man would face jail time doing that to a woman.

I'm glad it isn't a GL but it sure looks like it's trending that way with that full page "Fufie's gay" notebook page. You see how I would make that assumption, right?

My contest entry can be found here, if you're interested:

Read Distractions | Tapas Web Community

[powerplantanimations]

Oh yeah! Fufie's the protagonist of book 2 so we wanted to get people hyped for that and you're right about the violence bit!!! Will keep that in mind.

[powerplantanimations]

Read the first arc of your comic!

Okay so, it's clear you're going down the doomer/blackpill stuff with terminally online people having reality and dreams blended together (again like you said before).

I have to see how it develops, so far it's like... on one hand I'm vibing a little bit with the concept, since demons do work llike that... on the other this is a tricky subject to deal with.

And my brain doesn't know what to make of the tone?

Especially with the current era we're living in with with male mental health being a month. The Bible verse you chose makes me wonder if these types of guys are to be demonized or they can be saved? Or if you're critiquing the mindset in general or society? (Going to be talking about the Church a lot, but my spirit has to since you brought up the quote at the beginning)

Unsure if this is strictly satire or if you're planning on doing something serious.

My opinions might change, but one thing that I REALLY disliked was the note in episode 10. "Disclaimer: the author doesn't encourage or condone self-harm. If you are feeling depressed or suicidal seek help". Okay so, there's a lot to unpack here with this one statement. Where do I begin:

First, the fact you even need to put something like that shows that you aren't confident in the messaging of the story so you have to blatantly say it. I get you're handling a serious topic, but y'know looking back at Free Falling, Carbunkle managed to find a way to make it uncomfortable while keeping a comedic tone brilliantly. I'd probably use his story as reference?

Second, the worst thing a neurotypical person could possibly do is tell someone (specifically of a neurodivergent) to "oh if you're suicidal seek help". You know on one hand they aren't wrong? But on the other, they wouldn't be in that state if they haven't seeked help. Here's why this one simple thing bothers me: mold. Texas has it a bunch. 75% of people aren't affected by it, but 25% of it is, causing suicidal thoughts, crashouts, and behavior your showing in your story. Schools and organizations like the Catholic Church will ignore the other 25% in favor of the 75% just so they won't be at risk of shutting it down. So many kids were offing themselves at my school because teachers with insecurities amplified because the neurotypical teachers wanted to save their pay checks. These teachers were ignoring a family member of mine simply because they knew their chains would get shut down.

Same with the Church. Their buildings are old and they don't take that stuff seriously. And the SCARY thing is that this number will keep growing. Soon it'll be 30%. Then 40%. And then it'll be a problem that the neurotypicals will need to deal with. And if you can't take it then tough y'know. You're supposed to suffer for God.

This might seem like something unrelated, but I assure you that this is in topic since people will be in what's called a "mold hold": they can't escape the place they live in or the environment. OCD makes them dwell on stuff so it makes them difficult to get out of deadly situations.

And there's barely doctors who can help (the ones who can are small af and are STILL trying to get the government to take them seriously) and the doctors that they do go to will tell them to continue looking at porn while the Church will say stay away from it but then certain bodies can't handle psychological stress. One will tell you one end, the other will tell you another end.

Either way, both sides could lead to insane crashouts. The people at the Church will tell the neurodivergents to go see a therapist, but finding a good therapist in a certain area can be a needle in a haystack.

I keep bringing the Church up because of the Bible verse. Fun fact: Elijah suffered from manic depression and was incredibly suicidal. He'd be over the moon one moment, and then he'd suffer and ask God to kill him because everything seemed hopeless despite having God on his side. He can heal people like Jesus, but can't heal himself for whatever reason. God still saw the beauty in Elijah and had him hanging on.

And it kinda has me worried where you're taking this story. Maybe someone suicidal is reading your story, but with that one note it's like "oh okay so you might not end up saying anything to help me be heard". Usually you need experience when talking about the topic; but here the internet lingo seems like you're going off of what you've seen on the internet which is a third thing and that's why I'm bringing all of this stuff because it could end up perpetuating how the Church, comprised of old fashioned cultures like Mexicans, Filipinos, Brazillians, Indians, Nigerians believe (I dunno if you're christian too, but that's why using bible quotes like that is a slippery slope).

Just keep these notes in mind. Again they might seem unrelated but the point of ALLLLLL this is to just show you how incredibly complicated this suicidal discussion has become and the various causes that could lead to doomer behavior.

[kyupol]

Appreciate the feedback ️

The whole "if you're sucidal, seek help" thing? I put that there because in the past, I have made a comic that featured a cult that used super soldiers to do mass shootings in order to get the excuse to suppress free speech and take away guns. It had this whole new world order, illuminati type theme to it. And I remember there was a thread somewhere online dissing me that I'm supporting school shootings and such. So... In case I'm accused of encouraging suicide and the whole doomer mindset, my defense is right there.

And by "seek help" it could mean:
- ask the help of God
- ask the help of a trusted buddy to listen to you
- ask the help of your priest, rabbi, imam, guru, hypnotherapist, witch doctor, etc. depending on what you believe in.

And yes I am Christian. But your typical church will flag me as a heretic for talking about "new age" and "eastern spirituality" concepts.

[powerplantanimations]

That's not heretical at all. A lot of Catholic writers do that. It seems like you're listening but not really (especially you going into what seek help means, but ignoring my Church spiel about why they can't just do that).

I won't be doing your other arcs if you don't mind. Going to be focusing on the others.

[kyupol]

I understand why the church can't do that in North America. Lots of legalities. Supposedly not their territory at least according to a Filipino catholic priest I asked about the subject matter. Because I was trying to turn him into a therapist. Something I was able to do a lot in the Philippines. Priests took the role of the therapist over there.

It's ok if you won't continue from wherever you stopped reading. Totally understand.

[powerplantanimations]

Aight so read yours!!! Love the artstyle!!!! You should totally post this on Newgrounds if you haven't! Got a Hot Topicy vibe.

One thing I'll point out is the typos and how every character talks like one another. Like when making a story, give each character a distinct voice. It goes a long way to distinct them from one another!

Like the old lady speaks like the younger characters with her swearing (not a prude, but something to keep in mind).

That's pretty much it though lol

[Red_Dog]

Thanks for the review. I'm super glad you like the art because I've always been a little self conscious about my drawing skills. Hot Topicy wasn't what I intended when I was drawing it, but I don't mind the comparison at all.
I have indeed posted this on Newgrounds by the way:

Knife Teeth Comic Series

I thought I got all the typos fixed, but shows what I know I guess. I think I tend to go a little blank in the head when proof reading.
As the the character's "voices" I have been trying to improve on that and I hope I have.

Thanks again for the review and once again I'm so very glad that you like the artstyle.

[powerplantanimations]

Np bud!!! Thanks for sharing it! And yeah smart move!!!!!

I can see this becoming a Newgrounds cartoon!!!

[Red_Dog]

That's one of the best complements I've gotten for this comic. Thank you.

[powerplantanimations]

Np! Will check out your other arcs after I get through @jwabeasley and then @justincarbunkle's!!!

[powerplantanimations]

Aight read through your first chapter!! I love it a lot! The you nailed. Love the larva just casually sucking soul energy and the bit about it happening "eventually". Like casual nuisances that suck your soul out.

This comes off as a fairy tale that you made with your daughters in mind which is really neat!!! It's one of those projects that I wish I had more to say rn, but you need to complete it to see where it's going.

Looks like we have about the same amount of numbers regarding webcomics (93k to 383 subs to 4.8 likes with TSFI), you (81.2k to 398 subs to 4.3 likes) and you nailed the cover for branding (especially with a genre as lucrative as romance fantasy being there).

You honestly seem to be doing similar things to me so it's like... difficult to give advice.

Okay, I guess my only advice would be potentially thinking about expanding the story into genres that Tapas REALLY cares about. Like how before Alternative Happy Ending ended up giving us 300 (like 25 weeks) in like... a short amount of time whereas it took us YEARS for TSFI to get 300 subs (that one took 5 years). You can continue this one for your general audience, but the other can be used (like a GL Everwood) for the majority of people who enter the site and they'll feed into each other. You're almost to 100k though, so that's when Tapas REALLY starts treating you more seriously (according to what Kate Holden from Errant told me).

Also you can totally get away with splitting your panels in half. For example, I see that in Shining Flame you have two panels on top and 3 on the bottom. Once you reach around the number we're both at, you can totally start splitting them. Not once a week, but Wednesdays you release the first two and Saturdays the other three. That might sound blasphemous, but Tapas really appreciates a consistent two week upload like this. TSFI we released episodes in full, but then because we were stamped on script time and all that, we figured we just do this and it worked a little TOO well

We were allowed to work on other projects and it gives both of us breaks.

That's how we're continuing things with TSFI and Dream Goddess.

My brain has a little bit of a producer mentality, so just giving you a share of that lol. Artists usually hate this side of me like "Ewwww marketing I just draw to draw for I AM ARTIST"; but indisutry people ask me for advice which is neat.

HONESTLY it feels really awesome to hear advice from you!!!!! Again, thanks so much for the medievil suggestion!! I am curious how you've been advertising yourself currently outside of forums :0

[jwabeasley]

Thanks for checking it out! I hope you'll continue with the rest of the chapters, too, when you have time.

My only issue with being a romance fantasy is that Etherwood isn't smut, and a lot of RF readers are just looking for that emotional porn. That's why I moved it to the general fantasy category.

I agree, if I was doing a GL or BL comic, it would probably more popular. It would also be more popular if I drew Veronica with a huge rack and revealing clothes and frequently made innuendo jokes. Alas, for personal reasons, among them that Veronica is based on my two oldest daughters and they are the true primary audience for Etherwood, and that young children are frequently in my art space and so I cannot draw anything R rated, I'll have to do without! My editor also rejects anything I do that even hints at innuendo. But believe me, I see the money I'm leaving on the table this way.

The 2-uploads a week idea is an interesting one. Being a solo and part-time operation, 2 pages a week isn't sustainable for me, but I'll see what I can do. Do you think there would be more success if I did a 12 week hiatus followed by 12 weeks of 2 panels a week? It's worth considering, anyway. I don't think I'll split the pages, though. A frequent criticism of my early pages was a lack of layout creativity, and having half the space would make creative paneling a lot harder.

On the other hand, I have been working on short joke chapters, which I expect to be more marketable than story pages and I could post them 2x/week (potentially), without causing a production problem.

I hadn't considered 100k to be the threshold for Tapas to take us seriously. I've been feeling snubbed since I made it to the top of the RF community comics category several times (I even occasionally outranked Punderworld) but was still passed over for staff picks by comics with less than 10% of my stats and much lower quality. But 100k seems achievable this upcoming year! My current goal is 400 subscribers, which is close. Stay in touch, I'd be interested to see if anything changes for us once we're past the 100k milestone.

What's your production crew like? I admit I haven't done much collaboration before but you seem to have a team that work well together.

[powerplantanimations]

Ohhh it's like an Earthbound situation where Itoi made the games for his daughter (ending it around 3 when she was growing up).

SO WHAT WE DID for the posting every week is that after every arc, we waited 5 weeks which is poison for people starting out, but people loved TSFI so much they stuck around... and we kept doing that until it was too much. (Of course, we just posted random stuff to make the hiatus berable like screenshots or early character designs).

I think okay regarding the 2 panels a week.... so it's like feng shui

What we did was full comics. Like 20 panels a week or something crazy (which was obviously intensive). Then we did 10 (still intensive). Then we decided to do half-and-half and that was easy for Burd. The thing is though, these comics were scroll heavy to begin with. What probably gets people going is that they just scroll through without thinking. What I mean to say is that it'd be best to EASE people in. I think if you took a 12 week of hiatus followed by 2 panels a week, it'd be best if you did do two times a week imo (people will be like "Oh it's fine because we get dat dopamine hit"), but again y'know... I took a LONGER hiatus than that and my comic is somehow thriving more than before (made it to the top 100 multiple times with TSFI). So you COULD get away with it. Of course, TSFI's entire appeal is that it's just one big rabbit hole where it starts off as a stick figure harem and now it's a political thriller. I remember someone on stream starting with the current comic and then jumping to the current episode and he was just... confused. Like 10 to 100

I did bonus pages in between my story pages and people started dropping off because of it when I first began. When people binge read, they get annoyed when something interrupts that flow. Maybe think about doing special months? Like April fools. You can also do simple stuff like show off your page developments or character designs or whatever to make the hiatus more digestible. Or use those joke chapters.

But you mentioned a structure thing, because I noticed a bunch of panels without dialogue. In TSFI It's CRAZY dialogue heavy. Like every one is almost always talking, having something to say. Good dialogue is sorta hard to come by. I'd personally suggest you ease people in before doing that though (we did it two times a week, so the logic for people is that they're able to see content as soon as possible rather waiting one day). I guess we're able to get away with it because we're strictly a scroll format. People are already used to scrolling through the comic, so having less and less panels later on wouldn't annoy them.

People usually take their panels and put it in a scrolling format when they lay them out.

But yeah, the fact that you even made it that far shows that you're doing something right! You started in 2023, I started in 2021. So you're on the fast track compared to me!! ... But one thing that my brain learned during all this Tapas stuff is you don't really wanna rely on one project.

What you want is an ecosystem, because the banner feature below will get readers to feed into your other projects. But don't feel bad about getting snubbed! If you're still popular you're still on their radar; but again you could do a thing where you get feedback for the covers? Again, they want characters that fit with their others so maybe could be that?

Oh geez my production crew. So originally I met Burd on Discord. She's able to get stuff out like a WEEK. Really got lucky there She only missed two weeks one time but has been shockingly consistent. Eventually we found something easy for her like one week on, two weeks off, one week on again and then three weeks off. Now we have to be smart with what we have her draw to fit in this schedule. For example, five panels TSFI and five panels GL TSFI. And then when we need five more Dream Goddess Chronicles, that's the only thing we do and we ignore TSFI. Makes us think smart.

PANDA WHITE, is my co-partner. Met her since 2018. She's my sister from a Japanese mister lmaoooo. Our relationship is that she understands the gay side of Tapas and the market while my brain understands the traditional side. We've rebranded to PANDA/BLACK and PANDA/WHITE. She helped with Dream Goddess Chronicles and GL. We share the same brain cell. She does have autism, so she can't work, but I just do the leg work for her and try to make things digestible for her.

It was difficult for me to get help, especially without money and no art talents (I've been studying for medical so that will change and paying Burd through any animation checks I get from Icecolo), but y'know it really is who you know now. Like an artist (who's my long-distance girlfriend) owns a private server where people will just... casually work with you since they know if you know her then you're probably a real one .

We have a new member, Cosmic Hiroshi for example doing those medievil pages:

I'd recommend collabs!! Probably explore online and get to know people. But the thing about stories is there like seeds. You need to be careful with the ones you plant and take care of and not just scatter seeds all over the place.

If you have a new project you want to commit to, it has to be REALLY good. At least if you think of doing another project.

Btw what kinda editor you have? :0

[powerplantanimations]

The "Mark's purpose is to motivate everyone else towards happiness" and "Your boredom means God hates him" is the most hard-hitting truthful line my spirit's unironically heard. Hate how real that is

Read the second arc of free falling!! Seems like you're catching your stride with the humor and political undertones! It's like edgy, but it isn't that senseless nihilistic edgy.

You can tell it's written by someone who's got their shit together which is rare in a lot of media nowadays.

[justincarbunkle]

Lol thank you. I don’t.. but thanks anyway. : )

I’m glad it’s not coming off as too nihilistic. The premise and the characters values certainly lean toward nihilism, but I don’t want the series to promote or glorify that philosophy.

[Humbug]

I'll say that at first your work didn't really grab me, I love drawing visual storytellling and I try to practice show don't tell as much as possible. So seing all that exposition was off putting at first. But after thinking about it, I see it's more of a picture book than a comic, something similar to Brian Froud's Book of Pressed Fairies. (That's the only book I've read with a similar structure to compare with) That actually changed how I viewed the writing.

Overall? It's cute, and quite charming. Some people have already gone into the themes that's similar to my impressions so I don't really have anything new to add here.

There have been a couple of mentions about Yu'Chri's episodes lacking drawings, I think the main issue that it's just plain text. A nice visual interest could work like making the entries look like parchment with cursive handwriting or a computer screen (because I have no idea if the logs are handwritten or typed by Yu'Chris'.) More polished diagrams to go with the entries or like the one about the cake, a little handwritten note by Coco for a cake recipe could add character. Some little contrasts to Coco's diary entries.

Hope you like my little thoughts.

[powerplantanimations]

Yeaaah we're getting on the Yu'Chri stuff as soon as possible lmaooo

The thing is that the pages might end up releasing after Book 1 finishes, so it might end up being New Game +.

But we did get an artist for it which is nice (and he's going all out).

And yeah, the overload exposition we'll need to keep watch for in future books because jwabeasley also thought it was going to be a lore building book.

Btw, what's your comic so I can have a look at it? :0

[powerplantanimations]

Btw was wondering what you guys think of the old English is it potentially too much? @jwabeasley

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