New web comic help

[Azure Fox]

I'm thinking about making my own web comic, but I've met the most commin problem... .. .  I DONT KNOW WHAT THE HELL TO DO IT ON.  I NEEEEEED IDEAS.  I have the skills, resources and tools.  I just have writers block if any body has any ideas it would really help me.




                         "Burning fires burning lives on the long distant roads Through the lost mountains endless so far away from home"
                                - ZP Theart

[Fuyudenki]

Hire a writer?

Alternatively, hire yourself out as an artist.

[stiletto]

How strange to see someone making a topic like that in this section of the forum as opposed to another. (Hey Jig, you're getting more popular it seems!)

And offering yourself as an artist is one solution. Telling you ideas won't really help you an incredible amount though. Why not drawing up whatever comes to mind. Start with some gag a days or something, maybe you'll see a few characters and longer ideas develop from it.

[Jigsaw Forte]

(this should probably be in another forum, but what the hell)

If you don't have the ideas, I doubt you really have the other resources, and if this is a veiled method of asking for me to give you some ideas, I don't feel like writing other people's random webcomics. Copyright issues aside, I've got my hands full writing my own as is. 

For general ideas, though, there's always TVTropes, which basically has almost every story idea, clichè, plot, and character type listed in there, with examples. If that doesn't get you started, I don't know what else to tell you.

[stiletto]

Pfft, writing for Last Resort is easy. All you you is think up the craziest thing ever, shout it out, and spent 15 minutes thinking about how it can be worked to line up with the plot. TVTropes has got nothing on you hun. 

[Jigsaw Forte]

Pfft, writing for Last Resort is easy. All you you is think up the craziest thing ever, shout it out, and spent 15 minutes thinking about how it can be worked to line up with the plot. TVTropes has got nothing on you hun. 

Shhhh! You wanna give away my whole creative process?!

[Azure Fox]

Thanks and sorry i posted in the wrong place.  I'll try and be more self sufficient.




                    "For victory we ride, Fury of the Storm!"
                            - ZP Theart

[Brunhidden]

its probably not my place to speak but i second the suggestion of 'get a writer' however for a comic artist the most common and least aggravating form is to get a 'muse'

unlike a writer a muse works with you to stimulate you to get your own ideas, instead of just handing you a script and saying 'trust me, itll be funny' which often ends in a conflict of interests.

quite often instead of a single source an artist will find inspiration from several, such as the witty banter of some of their weirder friends sparking silly ideas, or just making fun of things that irk you such as bad movies and stupid people you've encountered.

also, knowing people who read is better then knowing people who write, just fyi




and to jig and still, you should have figured out this was popular when people started dropping reffrences of this comic in the DMFA comic threads- like reffering to the amazon with read eyes as "my first impression was 'dead inside'"

[Fuyudenki]

If I ever get my comic up and running and get a spot in Halfmoon Theater, linking to the TvTropes wiki will be forbidden.  The site itself is perfectly fine, but the way it devours time like it does?  Bad.

Hey Azure Fox, why don't you post some examples of your artwork in the Tower?  Just start a thread with an informative title.(Darkmoon's made a sticky with tread naming guidelines, I believe.)  Maybe some of the feedback will give you ideas.

[Tapewolf]

If I ever get my comic up and running and get a spot in Halfmoon Theater, linking to the TvTropes wiki will be forbidden.  The site itself is perfectly fine, but the way it devours time like it does?  Bad.

I'm a little narked that I can't seem to find the 'rebuilt as a cyborg' theme.  But I digress...

As you say, the best thing for AF to do would be to post some examples here or in the Tower or somesuch.

If you don't have the ideas, I doubt you really have the other resources

Perhaps.  I spent about 4 years writing a game engine basically from scratch, and although the engine itself was solid enough, I failed to come up with a decent storyline 

[GabrielsThoughts]

you could always parody someone else's work.  or write fanfiction to get some creative juices flowing. 

[Sofox]

I know this feeling well, many people do.

You have the urge to create something, but suddenly are stalled because you don't know what.

This is usually because you're more passionate about creating something in a medium then what you want to convey or express in that medium. I'm of the opinion that all art is a way of communicating, so if you're all built up about making something communicates, but not about what you want to say, naturally you're going to get lost.

Come up with something you want to say, something you want to express to other people, something you'd like them to experience, and go for it.

[Jigsaw Forte]

If you don't have the ideas, I doubt you really have the other resources

Perhaps.  I spent about 4 years writing a game engine basically from scratch, and although the engine itself was solid enough, I failed to come up with a decent storyline 

But if you didn't have a general storyline, how do you know the engine is complete / does what you want it to do? What if you want to add some awesome powerup/skill into the game? (etc, etc...)

I sorta feel that with games (and webcomics) a general sense of plot is at least useful to making sure the rest fits in. In my case, I did the story first and structured the rest of the details (the page style, the rating, etc.) around that.

[Tapewolf]

But if you didn't have a general storyline, how do you know the engine is complete / does what you want it to do? What if you want to add some awesome powerup/skill into the game? (etc, etc...)

Because it was script-driven, and therefore extensible.  I had a reasonably well-thought-out world in which the game was set, but no antagonist or actual proper storyline to take place within that world.

[rabid_fox]

Anything other than another god-damned slice of life, "Oh, look, life sometimes can be a bit silly, but my cynical main character will highlight these foibles for you. What superiority complex?" comic.

Cause. God dammit.

[Darkmoon]

If I ever get my comic up and running and get a spot in Halfmoon Theater, linking to the TvTropes wiki will be forbidden.  The site itself is perfectly fine, but the way it devours time like it does?  Bad.

I'm a little narked that I can't seem to find the 'rebuilt as a cyborg' theme.  But I digress...

As you say, the best thing for AF to do would be to post some examples here or in the Tower or somesuch.

If you don't have the ideas, I doubt you really have the other resources

Perhaps.  I spent about 4 years writing a game engine basically from scratch, and although the engine itself was solid enough, I failed to come up with a decent storyline 

What kind of game engine...?

[Fuyudenki]

Anything other than another god-damned slice of life, "Oh, look, life sometimes can be a bit silly, but my cynical main character will highlight these foibles for you. What superiority complex?" comic.

Cause. God dammit.

Slice of Life on acid drawn really really cute would work.(Lucky Star for win!  I'm sad I finished it. )

Speaking of anime inspired by mind-altering substances, I really need to get my hands on some Excel Saga.

[Tapewolf]

Perhaps.  I spent about 4 years writing a game engine basically from scratch, and although the engine itself was solid enough, I failed to come up with a decent storyline 

What kind of game engine...?

A 2D side-scrolling one.  Truth be told one of the other reasons I gave up on it (10 years ago) was because performance was too poor in 640x480x16 mode, and 320x200x16 didn't give enough real-estate for the character, who was quite large (that's 16-bit colour, not 16 colours, by the way)

It didn't help that the DOS extender I was using at the time wouldn't operate in Windows 95 or later 

[Darkmoon]

Well suck.

[Jack McSlay]

I think a good idea to make up a story, is to create a character, which may be the protagonist, antagonist or even a support character and then ask:

1 - Who is he/she?
2 - What he/she does for a living?
3 - What he/she used to do before what he/she does now?
4 - What past facts on his/her life are most significative, either negative or positive?
5 - What future facts on his/her life will be most significative, either negative or positive?
6 - Who are his/her friends/family/love?

And then repeat the whole process for all characters you mentioned in step 6 recursively, until you have made up an universe and character roster good enough to base your story on. This doesn't give you a ready story but should make up a good enough foundation to base your comic's story on.

[Eibborn]

Interesting characters are necessary. If you throw the right characters together, the story may just start to write itself. Obviously, you'll have to do work, but potential plot lines tend to spring up if you can come up with good characters with problems that they need to solve.

[Darkmoon]

Seriously, though, I couldn't even imagine deciding to start a webcomic if you didn't have the ideas to back it up. That seems like the first thing you need. You can get the skills together (or, in my case, not and just fake it with sprites), but the story has to be there, first and foremost, before anything else should come together.

[Fragmaster01]

My style of story writing is a bit up the wall, so I won't bother going into too much detail, but here's how I start out:

Get an idea. Could be a person, could be a scene, could be a setting, whatever.
Flesh out that idea as much as possible. If its a person, explore their personality, with special focus on "why does this character act the way they do?" If its a scene, try and imagine what could have caused that scene. If its a setting, try to envision various problems with this setting, and the people who could be involved in such.
From whatever you started with, you'll eventually have to start filling in blanks about the other two, and you'll find(if you like the idea you started with a lot) that the other pieces fall into place rather well.
From there, let it run. Take the characters you've envisioned, a starting point, and a setting, and let your mind wander. If you keep the characters in mind, they'll make the plot simply by asking yourself "what would they do?"

In terms of webcomics, I've had that feeling, the "I have a story and I want to express it visually". Unfortunately, my art takes a ridiculous amount of time to do, and even with a simpler style(like Amber's DMFA cel-shading, it'd take a good 15+ hours on a page).

[Nelix]

Azure Fox, I recommend you follow Jack McSlay's method.
Although I'm assuming you have no idea of what to do it on and what the characters are like, so you could base the characters off yourself.

I've made Several different characters from using my personal traits/habits/personality making them goto some comical exterme. However one trait doesn't really make them a well-defined character, so it's best to think what kind of person is likely to do, for example: "Habour a undying love for canned fruit. Specifically canned pears."
The person clearly likes fruit so he could be into fitness and incredibly picky about what he eats assuming he eats anything else other than fruit.

With the example character, think of how other people are going to react to him such as his friends, will they try to help his obsession or laugh at him and dismiss his addiction as a personal quirk. What about other people, some may worship him as a Health Guru while others think he being pompous and requires a beating.
Then add how he reacts to all these people, then make sadistic aliens/Divine bears/Homicidal Clowns attack for a larger storyline other than what happends day to day, unless you think your target audience will be interested in a quirky webcomic that resembles a tv soap. 

[Azure Fox]

Not bad, not bad.  certainly more replies than I expected.  all this info has helped me.  I even came up with a few ideas.  and so far its coming along nicely I'll post a link to the site when it gets up and running.

[Darkmoon]

You can in your sig. Posting it here, or in a new thread, would constitute advertising.