Reviews:Chickweed Adventures

From Homestar Runner Fanstuff Wiki

Jump to: navigation, search

THIS IS BOX'S REVIEW?

Ack, first time doing a review, please let this be how it goes! And I know I don't have any fanstuff up: it makes me look like a hypocrite, argh, but hope ya don't disregard me because of that.

I haven't read many of the sprite comics here but I really like your main storyline: I was racking my brain for why but then I remembered I don't need to analyse everything like at school, WHOO. In any case, it's really interesting! And I actually lol'd quite a bit at comic 6, maybe I just really like fourth-wall-breaking jokes.
Your layout and speech bubbles are also really neat, which is definitely a good thing. The coloured borders are clean and effective! I'll be honest, that's a lot more than I can say for some of the other comics here, hahaha.

Now, for the non-season strips. Minor things first: I need to mention that I'm dumb and I looked at the description going "not pertaining to one season what?", so it'd be great if you said they were 'random strips' or something like that! Secondly, I'd suggest moving these to their own section, e.g "Chickweed_Adventures/extra/[insert comic number here]", because it'll be really difficult to add more the way you've done it. And you typo'd 'comic' in the first strip, as well as forgetting a bit of punctuation in the last panel, so make sure you fix that!

The most important thing is that you don't always need to use six panels. The first comic is where this stands out most to me: if the dialogue in panel 3 was squished into panel 2, and panel 4's into panel 5, the punchline would arrive a lot faster. Speed is deathly important in comedy, and each panel represents an approximate 'pause' in time, so the more panels you have, the slower (and less effective) the joke is!
Don't take this as absolute law, though: the first three panels in comic 2 are a perfect example of where this doesn't apply. I think it has to do with the fact Stinkoman's doing a monologue. I guess when two people are conversing, that whole shift between 'pauses' would be like an awkward silence, so you gotta avoid that!

Another thing is that you seem to regularly throw multiple jokes into one comic: this works fine in the main storyline, where there's a plot to break up the humour, but with these non-season strips it just gets confusing! I'm thinking of comic 2, where they run into that Everythingenemy, and comic 4, where Chickweed does his DYNAMIC ENTRY. Because the dialogue in the first panels are setting up the joke at the end, only one joke is expected. Try to keep it that way, so it's straightforward to people like me!

Okay I was definitely not intending to write a freakin' essay for you, but I guess it just turned out that way. I've never been good at keeping my mouth shut, ahaha. I hope this isn't too tedious to read, and that it helps you for your future comics! - livesinabox.

Thanks so much! I've definitely started to notice that the six panel thing is something I'm doing without much of a reason. I can definitely see how panels 2 and 3 should be one panel, but that was my first cpmic (sic) after all. Since I use Paint, the text isn't easily editable if I go back and notice a typo. But I agree with your idea about the random comics; I don't think I'll move strips 1-4 to a new subspace, but in the future I'll probably do something similar to what you suggested. And don't worry about the length, the way you spaced it made it easy to read. Thanks again! --— Super Martyo boing! 21:52, 15 April 2010 (UTC)
Hehe, I'm glad all that helped. Dang, I remember I was going to mention how that first comic was a first comic (cpmic), but apparently I forgot. Looking forward to more comics! - livesinabox.