Oh yeah, another thing I'd put on the plus side:

Currently, I can only get feedback on the story, and a lot of the art, once it's completely finalized and presented to you guys in the animation. At that point, it's really too late to change anything.

If you got it daily, I could channel that feedback into positive adjustments to later days' work on that episode, and to the final animated version of the episode. There would inevitably be differences between daily and animated versions anyway, because I always change a few lines around, cut stuff, extend stuff, etc in the course of editing the movie version. This way though I'd also have user feedback to help me out when I'm doing that.

"What daily comics are you comparing it against?"

None. I've yet to encounter a non-comedy webcomic that held my interest.

"I'd have liked to get by with the "nice buildups" :) I've been ... is rather telling in that regard, I think."

I phrased it poorly. The daily news/art updates are fine... but I still don't think emulating the more regular content updates of traditional webcomics is the answer. A* is unique - you should emphasise that aspect.

"Now, you say that a daily would be "watering down" the experience of watching the animated version. I will concede that that could be the case for some people, although I don't know; it might heighten the anticipation. There are plenty of comics adapted closely to movies, for instance, and the fans get excited about seeing them "come to life," as it were."

I know what you're talking about - seeing Watchmen as a nearly panel-for-panel adaptation made me warm and tignly inside. However, I don't think that analogy fits. This is more akin to releasing each scene of a movie as soon as its done.

"Oh yeah, something else I thought of yesterday in regards to this (you see I knew you'd be skeptical :P): with your clever editing and a bit of effort, you could work up the dailies into your own movies and have them beat my episodes to the web. ;)"

I'll probably be avoiding the dailies like the plague if you wind up using them. Spacing things out like that would just kill the experience for me.

"Currently, I can only get feedback on the story, and a lot of the art, once it's completely finalized and presented to you guys in the animation. At that point, it's really too late to change anything."

So far, everything's been fine. I don't think I could comment on pieces of an episode, out of context of the finished product.




Maybe a better approach might be making a little "teaser trailer" for the episode when you're halfway done or so. Nothing too spoiler-y, but enough to generate interest. Hm... let me make a little mockup. Humor me.

While it's true that the dailies would be sort of like traditional webcomics, they would still be different: multiple updates per day except for just one, and cinematic format images; I've seen a daily or two that did the first once in a while, but it's far from the norm, and I don't know of any that are in cinematic image format--and of course there aren't any quite in my weird lasso style. So I think a lot of A*'s unique qualities would still come across, even when viewing the dailies.

Good point about this not quite being the same as a movie adaptation. I don't think it's quite like releasing each scene of a movie as it's done, though, because it isn't moving or talking... I guess it would be like releasing a nearly exact comic adaptation of each scene as its done which, I grant you, would be odd. However, we're talking about an indie movie that anticipates very little circulation unless it does something extra to attract its hoped-for audience.

Hm actually it isn't like a movie though, more like a TV show. Which do release teasers like you're talking about. I made teaser trailers for episode 1, actually! They're quite time-consuming to do, though, and, again, they're a medium that doesn't have a readily available outlet for me to use to bring in outside attention. I could release them here on this site, but that wouldn't help gather an outside audience.

"So far, everything's been fine."

^ Hah, you're forgetting how you pointed out that I skipped too quickly past Vero taking off his helmet in episode 3. ;D That wouldn't have been caught in the dailies, though... I will inevitably make errors at some point, but it wasn't really plain old errors I was talking about getting feedback on, for the most part; what I need is regular steady feedback on how the story is progressing, and it doesn't even have to be intentional feedback; comments people make can almost always tell me something about what they'd like to see.

You don't dig daily comics anyway (EDIT: or wait, you said you don't follow non-comedy strips--but I think it would be fine to compare it against comedy strips--that is most of the competition/audience after all), and you're very much into video, so I can see that this is a tough sell... I value your opinion, so instead of just implementing this immediately, I'm going to rally up some of my local peeps tonight who follow A*--several are also big print and web comic readers--and see what they think about this debate.

"While it's true that the dailies would be sort of like traditional webcomics, they would still be different: multiple updates per day except for just one, and cinematic format images; I've seen a daily or two that did the first once in a while, but it's far from the norm, and I don't know of any that are in cinematic image format--and of course there aren't any quite in my weird lasso style. So I think a lot of A*'s unique qualities would still come across, even when viewing the dailies."

A*'s best unique quality (in my opinion, anyway), is seeing it in motion. Your art style is great, but it doesn't really shine unless its animated.


"Hm actually it isn't like a movie though, more like a TV show. Which do release teasers like you're talking about. I made teaser trailers for episode 1, actually! They're quite time-consuming to do, though, and, again, they're a medium that doesn't have a readily available outlet for me to use to bring in outside attention. I could release them here on this site, but that wouldn't help gather an outside audience."

It would, however, help bring new people in. Individual episodes are relatively lengthy (not a complaint - I love their runtimes), but fragmented dailies would be just as hard, maybe even harder for a new fan to follow down the line. It might be a bit intimidating. A bitesized "look at this cool stuff" trailer (perhaps for the series in general, not just one episode) could serve as a good initiation.

Say I wanted to mention A* on a forum to some friends. It'd be much easier to give them an impression of the show through something like this, rather than some panels.


"Hah, you're forgetting how you pointed out that I skipped too quickly past Vero taking off his helmet in episode 3."

Nah, we just didn't *see* him putting it on. He could have done it really fast. It was a minor detail, really.


I think the main reason non-comedy webcomics haven't grabbed my attention (and why A* has), is the issue of pacing.

*Check url*

*read comic*

*real life*

*chuck url*

*no update yet? Meh.*

*real life*

*check url*

*I missed a few days/weeks/etc of comics?*

*browses back, reads*

*real life*

*check url*

*Who the heck is that guy? Was he someone important?"

*Goes back several issues.*

"Oh, right."

*Close browser*

There's just something much more memorable about animation.

Oh, and don't worry about me. Even if you do go ahead with this, you haven't lost my interest. I just may wind up waiting awhile for the finished product before delving into the forums. I'll keep on churning out my rants, remixes, and whatnot.

You're preaching to the choir about animation vs static comics, man--that's why I started A* in the first place! :D

Howsomever (which is not a word), what I've found is that I know a vast, vast group of static comic readers I could be plumbing, while I do not know of a group of episodic animation readers that I could be plumbing; and I think I could start to convert those comic readers, if I could just get their attention.

As for the art not holding up unless animated, I find that opinions vary. I've been getting some nice feedback in other places (deviantART, Drunk Duck, Newgrounds, ye olde MXO forums) on the static artwork I've been doing, and even on A* animation art that I've repackaged as static art--enough to make me think that it wouldn't be a huge turn-off in itself.

It's interesting you mention pacing, because most of the feedback I've got on the animation on Newgrounds and thewebcomiclist has been on the pacing--either that it's too slow, or that it's too fast and hard to follow (one of the first NG comments was that it would be better as a normal comic so they could flip through the scenes at their own speed ;). That's a whole 'nother topic, though.

I certainly agree with you that a cool reference trailer would be handy. It would be tough to hyperedit in Flash, though and--WHY LOOK there's an awesome YouTube reference trailer starschwar just whipped up! :D

Would you mind if I linked to that from oh say the episode 4 page, the about page, and the front page--oh and on YouTube of course? Because you seriously killed on that. I don't think I have your instincts for trailers/shorts, and I definitely couldn't do editing like that in Flash.

Back to the main subject, though, a reference trailer is still not going to have the outside distribution channels that I'm looking to get with a daily comic approach.

I'd be honored, but that's really just a rough draft... visible subtitles for inaudible dialogue, original music track clashing with my trailer music... I can spruce that up if you'd like...



Tell you what - give me some time and I'll whip up a trailer for the whole series.

Heh you're more than welcome to do whatcha like. I can't guarantee in advance that I'll like 'em all, but I certainly like that one. :)

The feedback I got from the local committee I assembled and forced to sit through the chapter 1 "daily" demo tonight was that it worked pretty well, ie that the story still comes across and the art doesn't stink too bad, and that there are pros to the "daily spoiler" thing that may well offset the spoilery cons. At this point--keeping in mind some good points raised--I'm inclined to give it a shot, which means I may start breaking things tomorrow. It will definitely have to include a slightly more elaborate little text blurb on the front page, explaining the unusual daily strip / monthly movie routine.

Well this thing reminds me of when Astar was only a site with a index list of images, and nobody knows what this image are.

Well was that index that keep my couriosity on, so i think a daily strip with lesser text or text not important for the understanding of what will going to happen, can be ok and keep couriosity about the motion-sounded-spoken version up, but of course you need more than two opinion to have a quite idea about this thing can work. (damn my english getting worser and worser....:) )

One of the guys I had look at the demo tonight voiced that as an option, but we talked about it a little more, because I'm not at all sure that a prolonged daily tease--sequenced pictures without text--would get and hold attention; I think it would be, well, frustrating. Anyway there are pictures that would be spoilers too, like images of Sig dying in episode 4, for instance, and I'd have to leave those out as well, as I did when I was drawing them--I didn't post any art touching on his weakened appearance--so I don't know that it would be all that different than what I've been doing so far anyway, which hasn't seemed as successful as I'd have liked.

Also, while there are lots of webcomic tracking sites I could use to get people over to the A* site if I had a daily comic going on, I don't think there are any tease tracking sites that I could use if I was just doing a sort of muted comic version of the eventual story--that isn't really what the existing tracking and listing services are for.