Little Nemo + Mistlands comic reactions

A selection of people's thoughts-

Little Nemo;

I didn't get too much attention/feedback about this - but about as much as much as I do for any art I do that doesn't have a big fandom. Sam's comment about Maurice Sendak made me look it up and apparently he was very inspired by Little Nemo in Slumberland (which makes sense!)


Mistlands Parallax;
On tapastic, a comic hosting site where I post it

It's nice when people ask how it's done! I explained it briefly, linked to where I got the code, etc. The last comment is pretty sweet too - and I think it speaks to the fact that this is a one time thing, specifically for this part of the story in order to enhance this bit and make something cool and interesting rather than what the entire comic is made of? I suspect if the entire thing was like this people might get bored of it, especially in the posting format it's in (a page or two a week). 

Tumblr (where I host the comic as well):

ari (walkingnorth) has two very popular webcomics (I think I talked about Always Human on here a while ago?) and her reblogging this got me quite a few notes! the 'immersive fantasy webcomic experience" is a very nice comment too!! Having friendships with other webcomic creators is a really great to get things out there (and learn from them!)

Twitter:

 Instagram:

I find in general people are more likely to comment on instagram? I'm also not 100% sure if some of these people didn't go to the site itself, as the post is a screenrecord of me scrolling through it - maybe some of them just watched the video?

Patreon:

I also gained a handful of followers/subscribers on tumblr and tapastic. Overall, I got way more comments on all these sites than I ever do with normal Mistlands pages or any other art most of the time! I'm very happy with that (and grateful to all my friends and followers!)

Parallax

I finished the mistlands parallax page! It's here. I may look at making the images a bit smaller - though I think I've made them as small as I can without losing quality (there are white pixels showing on the edges) I may yet add some more fae peeking out from behind corners, but it needs to go up on patreon on Thursday and public on Monday, and I need to work on other things. I can add them at any time if I want.


I also just got a new phone, and tested it on mobile too: 

It's obviously not quite right dimension wise, but it works!

Scrollpath on the nemo comic

After testing it with a few people I decided it would probably work a lot better on a scrollpath, so I got the demo from here and tried to figure it out (it took a while because there was a stray bracket for some reason) - but eventually got there! I had to get rid of my viewport height sizing, so it might not work so well on bigger screens, but I think this is better.

Once I got it working with the straight lines, I tried out the arcs, because I thought that'd be smoother - it took a lot of entering different numbers to get the arc to go in the right place.

zoomed out so i can see the whole path better

the final is here, and the older version is here

Tested little nemo with Kez - they tried to scroll down at first so that's something to fix maybe. They thought it was very cool and liked when it went into the falling bit

Sam also tried to scroll sideways, half way down the mushrooms

-so it definitely needs a scrollpath, I think

Mistlands parallax update

I've been slowly working on this. 

The idea is for it to be a transition between these two pages:

Which I would have liked to have had a little more 'walking time' in between, but it would've meant a whole extra spread, because the one on the right is a spread and I wanted to keep it like that. It's also in a part of the story which is more fast paced and I didn't want a bunch of extra stuff in there. - But, the parallax works really well for a bit of walking through the forest, a transition from the darker part to the bright Seelie Court, and as something that's a little nonlinear (because faerie forests are confusing) and also I can hide things behind other things (like faeries watching them from behind trees)

Here's the individual layers:

I'm also hosting these on my website because the files are too big for tumblr or dropbox, and end up pixellated. When I do the final I'll make the files as small as I can while keeping the quality, because they take a long time to load at the moment,...

Little Nemo in Slumberland - adapting for web.

First I very roughly sketched out the layout (the vertical bits would be connected, I just didn't have the room in my sketchbook)

Then I plotted it out in photoshop, using the images from the original comic and artboards the dimensions of the screen to I can see what the image in the viewport would be. Ideally when putting it online, I'll tie the scaling to the viewport size so it's always about the same no matter the device.

I then drew over it with the flow, and bits I need to redraw. The dream section will take up the full screen, and the start and end still in the panels - to emphasise the normal world/dream world. Having the dream world part image instead of divided into panels means redrawing some of the middle section, also 'widening' the panels.


I then redrew the panels: (with as much tracing and copy/pasting as possible)

and also added the text in PS - I may remove the narration text in the final? it's kind of not needed.

I then saved the artboards as one big image, and put it into a site. I wasn't sure initially whether I'd put them into separate boxes - which could possibly mean I could get it to scroll to those points? But I decided one big image is simpler for now to test out the scale. I used vh and vw on the dimensions to lock it to the viewport so it fills the screen right no matter the screen size or zoom (though it may not work for vertical/mobile screens)
I checked the widths of the sections in the dream part, so it read well.

I then did the lines for the first section and again tested it in brackets.


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I'm not sure about having the narration go to the top here - it's out of line with the first two, but I can't have it below because that's where the dream section starts and it would break that flow. it also makes more sense to be read before you read the panel. maybe i could put the other narration on top? or remove it?

 This section I spaced out horizontally a lot more than the original - considering he walks for a while between then. I could have probably spaced it out more, but i didn't want to draw too much extra.... In any case, this gives it more 'time' than the original comic, which goes straight into the next panel

For the falling section - because the screen is horizontal it doesn't quite have the same falling effect as the tall panels in the original, although of course the scrolling does that. It emphasises more the chaos, which I think is just as important

at the end the white space takes over, representing him waking up from the dream and it goes back to the normal panel for the end

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I also put this online! http://layaart.tumblr.com/littlenemo it doesn't work very well when I tried to look at it on my ipad but I kind of knew it wouldn't. If I end up editing the way it's structured in the code I'll make sure it works for mobile too.

-testing out a new parallax thing, more simple and uses the entire screen.

-I made a simple version of a possible transition page for my comic. I've found that putting the 'sketch' straight into the parallax is easier to get things to line up than the way I did with my other parallax test initially.

-and now seeing if I can upload this into a tumblr  custom page to host it, as I want to do because I hope to use this as an actual page in my comic. I couldn't get the parallax to work, but eventually realised because I had the javascript links after the place where it calls for it. The page is here! and still a work in progress at this point

some good links to help with code stuff I came across on tumblr:
http://watercolourfey.tumblr.com/private/172822747982/tumblr_o8u8dnqUQe1ujcqse


https://www.pitiya.com/add-custom-css-javascript-code-to-tumblr-blog.html

https://www.templatemonster.com/blog/integrate-static-html-wordpress/

First showing

I showed people a bunch of examples and watched their reactions, what they like, and talked to them about it.

The examples I brought up on the screen were my parallax test (with the original comic on another tab behind it), a To Be Continued infinite canvas page, Lights' Skin&Earth Instagram map, Margot's Room and a character twitter account. (will refer to as: parallax, TBC, S&E, MR, twitter)

Some things I noticed:

• Some people were mostly interested in the parallax and TBC. One person in particular commented on how they like the movement, and how you scroll to reveal more of the story, it's very dynamic. He was more interested in the dynamism of the main story as opposed to S&E and MR where you have to click around and discover things (he said that those were't particularly interesting to him). 
• Whereas some people absolutely loved S&E, thought it's very cool and kept saying "wow! wow!!" when I showed them how it led to other accounts/maps. Some people talked about how they love to explore extra things like worldbuilding through maps, or to find little extra nuggets of things when you explore something more.
• People's reactions when they scrolled the parallax and suddenly noticed the different layers, or when TBC suddenly changes scrolling angles was interesting (usually they exclaimed out loud)
• With the parallax (the original version, not just mine) and TBC, some people read it properly and some just scrolled back and forth exclaiming about how cool it was. 
• Therefore something like that needs to have very strong visual storytelling and not rely on the text. Also would probably suit shorter comics that you read in one go rather than long things? If you're not invested in the story you're unlikely to come back to it every update. For example, I think TBC is really cool but I haven't read past season one because I don't actually care about the characters or story, (and only read half the text of what I did read)
• Although I think there is also a point to be made that something that looks cool and is fun to play with and nothing else isn't necessarily a bad thing! It's just in terms of what kind of narrative/storytelling is intended
• I had an interesting conversation with Kezia about that - that there needs to be a mixture of good art, good format and good plot/characters to keep people interested in a comic. Doing fancy web things may bring in viewers but won't keep them if it doesn't work with the rest of the story
• We also talked about the concept of medium of storytelling being determined by necessity - some of the research I've been doing talks about [when adding things makes something other than a comic - if adding some sound effects or animation enhances it, surely it'd be better as a full animation?] but Kezia pointed out that people may not have the time/money/skills to do that, therefore they only add the little bits of it.
• Talked to someone who said what they liked about all the examples was the interactivity - and it really draws you into the story. We also talked a lot about how the different methods work for telling different types of stories. 
• also talked about the ambiguity of these comics and where they become games/animations/etc and how that's a good thing, and that in the end it doesn't matter what type of thing it is if it's an interesting & engaging story
• i think specifically in regards to interactivity in comics - it's something you don't necessarily expect going into it? whereas when you go into a game you expect to interact with it

Experimenting with social media storytelling?

I have my own webcomic, Mistlands. There are only two chapters so far (I'm working on ch03 but it's slowed down since I've started back at uni). When I started out I'd never made a comic before, and opted to go with what's essentially a print comic uploaded to the web - normal a4(ish) pages, static, etc. This is because it seemed easiest, and also I do want to print it someday when it's done. I think that's the reason a lot of webcomics are in page format - they want to have the option for printed editions. As a fan of webcomics, I'd like to buy physical copies after I've read them, as it's easier to read in book format all at once, and it's nice to support the creators in that way - I've only actually bought a few because they generally have very expensive shipping, as something that's generally published and distributed by the artists themselves.

I've been thinking about making social media accounts for some of the characters since the concept stage, but haven't properly yet - a month or so ago I made Talia an instagram account:

It's locked at the moment, and I've been posting various random photos and drawings (she's an artist/photographer). My idea is to fill it up with that sort of thing, which will all be set before the comic starts, and then when the end of chapter 3 goes public start to change things - because at in ch01 Talia gets kidnapped by a faery, who basically takes her to a place where she keeps artists, and enchants them to create forever, and the plot of the first three chapters is about rescuing her (among other things). When she gets back home she has a kind of artist's block/ptsd, where she can't create because nothing's as good as what she made there/it brings back bad memories, that kind of thing - and I want to show that in her social media, among other plot elements.

Unfortunately, I can't really test the effects/reactions of that for this paper since I haven't really drawn chapter three yet, so can't set that part in motion. I will launch the account soon, though?

I also want to make tumblr and/or twitter accounts for Esther and Leela, the other two main (human) characters, though I don't want to overdo it straight away. (actually, I have made Es a tumblr (password: esther), but have just reblogged a handful of things on it. I may write actual text posts for her, but have no specific plans at this point in time)

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Something else I was thinking I could do, is to make a couple of the pages in ch03 parallax, or infinite canvas. There's some scenes where they're walking through the forest, (also riding horses through the forest) which I think could be enhanced by using those things - I just don't know if that's something I'll be able to do in the time of this paper.

Parallax test

I downloaded the code from this tutorial by the person who made the Hobo Lobo of Hamelin - it was a little broken (and there's still some things that are) but I managed to figure it out. Here's a video of it working (somewhat):

Figuring out how to make the art for the different layers took a bit of work as well: 

And there are still things I would change probably, in terms of how it works in between the main frames that are pictured above