The reviews must flow.



Children at Play

Children at Play is a mixed bag for me.

It's sometimes hilarious ("pantsed" - LOL), other times, not so much.

I like the characters, which is a big plus, as that can be a b i itch to pull off in a humor strip.

The art is also WAY hit and miss. The styles mix and flux with really no discernible purpose. I like the the sketchy style. I like the bold, graphic style. The other styles are okay. But I really don't care for the way all the different styles mingle. It upsets the balance of foreground & background, & often makes the storytelling hard to follow.

Over all, I think I like CAP. It's funny more often than it isn't. Sure, the art can be a stumbling block, but the characterization is very well done, so I can often overlook the art issues.

3 outta 5.

Later,
Chip

Hey what a great birthday present for me!

Just as an FYI, the art is usually dependant on how much time I have to spend working on C@P (granted it's been "none" lately). If I had my way every strip would be in the "bold graphic art style" I totally agree that the fact that it isn't is a major detriment.

Thanks!

Children at Play as a comic strip knows its strengths and its audience and plays to both.

The writing is good, and often very character-centric instead of gag-centric. Pacing is well-done. The characters speak naturally. The characters are very distinctive and usually have their own voice, which is one really strong point.

This is a comic that you can Reeeeeealy tell when the work went into the art, and when it didn't. Sometimes the characters are wonderfully stylized (though largely lacking in shadows, which I think hurts the style a bit and makes it seem flat) and the word bubbles sort of match it, giving the words plenty of room without dominating the panels. If it all looked like that I don't think I'd be able to say enough good things about the art. But a lot of the time, the look deteriorates. And it's not just the look of the characters, but everything. Sometimes there's hand-lettering that's really difficult to read, some word bubbles have edges that run into the text, and the backgrounds can be spotty, just as a few examples.

The comic is a humorous one, though... and I know I'm going to sound silly when I say this, but I can't think of a better way to describe it - it's a lot of guy humor. It's really not going to be for everyone. I can read the strips and I understand why it's supposed to be funny, but it rarely struck me as *actually* funny. I'm just not the right demographic for this. However, I know people who would find these sorts of jokes hilarious (and have recommended this comic to a couple of them). You have your fart jokes, your sex jokes, your violence jokes (a LOT of those), your alcohol jokes, etc. You have female characters who, for the most part, appear only as props, not people. And of course, you have your rampant randomness. (Nazi-zombies?)

It's worth taking the time to check out. You'll know fairly quickly if the humor style isn't for you, but if it is, the writing stays strong and the arcs are short and easy to get into, enjoy and move on from.

why do people say "not so much" now all the time?

that and "i know, right?"

ugh. drives me up the wall.

anyway, onto the matter at hand. children at play.

loves it.

firstly, the art. it's different more than anything else, which i really like. i love the approach the artist takes, with the sketchy drawing and coloring.

as far as the writing, i have to say that what's clever about it is not the humor so much as the timing. the pacing is absolutely brilliant, and that's what drives the comic. plus it can run on stopgap gag updates and storyline updates alike.

i think children at play is either a 3.5/5 or a 4/5... i can tell that it's the type of comic that would depend on my mood.

Sometimes "not so much" works well to express one's intent, other times, not so much.

Ya know, right?

Wow, thanks for the really encouraging critiques guys.

@Carastrofee: I think that being a "guy humor" comic makes me a minority in webcomics. Even most "college kids sitting around" comics tend to be more gamer oriented than mine is, and the few other "guy humor" comics base their jokes more around shock value and meanness and I think that gets old pretty quick (see TNTcomics.) I'd like to think that C@P doesn't come off as too mysoganistic. Almost all the characters in the C@P universe are kind of idiotic, so I don't think I'm really singling out women as being idiotic. I do have more positive female characters waiting in the wings, I just haven't been able to fully introduce them yet. It'll be better when I do. It'll be more clear then that not ALL women are idiots, just the one's Ryan dates are. Becky was supposed to me a major player and a positive female character but for a while I had to keep the use of her character to a minimum because of real world repurcussions.

@ifelldownthestairs: Do I say that alot? Or are you making a general observation? It's really nice to hear the positive reviews especially in regards to pacing and characterization, because these are the two elements I've worked hardest on. When I first started on C@P I wanted to do in-jokes, but I knew if I did, no one would get them, so instead of giving up on them, or just doing them anyway and alienating readers, I worked really hard on developing the characters slowly and strongly enough so that the reader would be in on the in-jokes. Plus, by it's very nature, an in-joke is initially not a joke at all, but rather something woven into a conversation and overtime it becomes an in-joke. So if my pacing was off, or my dialogue wasn't natural, I would fail there too.

Honestly, I felt pretty sure critiques would be more scatheing than they have been so far. I hope you guys aren't being nice to preserve my feelings. Because, deep down, I'm really a big jerk. Is there anything specifically you guys like or don't like? Sometimes I have a hard time figuring out which jokes hit and which miss(especially when it comes to running jokes), or which plot elements people find most promising, or which characters people most enjoy reading about. Sometimes you're in the middle of a comic and you're like "man I don't know... is this working? Do people get this?" or "Man, I thought this character was going to be funny, but now...am I just misusing him? am I over saturating him? maybe I should phase him out..."

I kinda figured it was coming. :) The strip doesn't come off as mysoganistic, and I hope my review didn't make it sound that way. It wasn't that women in general are painted negatively, just a general lack of them outside the context of individual gags I was commenting on.

As for what's working and not, I'd be a poor one to ask. Though I will say, I found some of the Natisms really amusing.

cs3ink
Ya know, right?

I know, right?

Sorry... couldn't resist.

So, I have something to confess... I didn't read the entire comic as is my usual custom. *Hangs head in shame* It's not because I didn't like the comic, though. You've just got so many strips, if I wanted to read the entire thing I'd have been up all night. So I started at the beginning and read about every fifth one, and I think I got a pretty good feel for the strip, and tried to leave as many comments as possible. So, without further ado...

Art:

The art in Children at play is hard to describe. As others before me have put it, it's quite inconsistent at times. I can see how adhering to an updating schedule could cause you to spend less time on some pages and more time on others, but after getting a taste of the whole bold graphic art style, I just wish more pages could be done that way, because it's hands-down the best art style you've got going for you. Not that the usual style is terrible, but it pales in comparison to the very professional-looking flash-style art.

Although, starting at the beginning and reading through, I have to say that the art has improved in leaps and bounds. I'm not quite sure how many years ago you started this, but it's so much better looking than your oldest strips that if you showed them to me side by side, I probably wouldn't be able to tell that they were by the same artist.

One thing in particular I found lacking at times (And I'm sure you've heard this before) is your backgrounds. Sometimes they're done pretty well, but other times they're so minimalistic that you can't really tell where the characters are supposed to be. I've noticed this getting a lot better as the comic went on, though. A lot of the backgrounds (Particularly in their apartment) seem to be templates that the artist just adds the characters to. Not that there's anything wrong with this, but sometimes it makes them seem a little static.

As far as character art goes, from a design standpoint they're done really well. All the characters are very different in appearance (As the artist based the characters on people he knows in real life) and they each have their own certain look. One thing that did seem a little odd, though, was that while the characters were colored in some of the strips, in some other ones they weren't, even when the background was colored, which made things look a little strange. This is another issue of consistency and the amount of time that kingofsnake has to work on these.

To tell you the truth, I think the biggest thing that could help Children at Play at this point would just be to find that consistency of style. If the quality of art varies this widely from strip to strip, most people will probably think that this is just a side project, something that the artist really doesn't put too much thought into, when really I can tell that you do. Even if it isn't that pretty computer style, as long as you can keep the art consistent, i think it'll improve the comic tenfold.

Other than that, not too much to say about the art... for the humor purposes, it does its job, and most people will probably care more about whether the comic is actually funny no matter what the art looks like, so it's really not that big a deal anyway. But for now, I think coloring in the characters is a good place to start.

2.5/5

Story/Characters/Humor-

So, the whole idea of this comic is...

There are these guys Ryan, Chuck, Nate, and Chip that are all roommates together in the same apartment. Naturally, they're the best of friends, but they have rather interesting ways of showing it, such as killing each other's monkeys or poisoning each other. Among their many acquaintances are Willard Scott the diabolical potted flower, whatever monkey happens to be living at their apartment at the time, a mysterious stranger known only as "Kung-fu Joe" and a vengeful Chiquita Banana. God, that thing's scary.

As you can tell the characters are diverse and more often than not pretty absurd, which is what makes it so funny half the time. Their daily activities include everything from trying to get laid to crashing frat houses to battling zombies. You know, everyday college stuff.

Now as you may guess, C@P is more of a gag strip than anything else, with (as previously stated) lots of guy humor. I really don't know if a woman would enjoy reading this one too much, even though there are a few certain times when the girls lay the smack down on the guys. At least the comic makes fun of the blatant misogyny of its characters, which usually makes for some pretty funny situations.

Now did I find it to be funny?

Yep.

Near the beginning the comic was pretty hit-and-miss, but by the end the jokes were pretty consistently funny, and I know that's a hard thing to do. There were a few ones that I found absolutely hilarious (Like the "Cell phone dance" strip), and more often than not each strip was funny enough to make me want to keep reading. One thing it has going for it is that there are story arcs, it isn't just a strip-to strip deal most of the time. Ryan's two stalker girlfriends made for some pretty interesting situations...

Also, every once in a while the artist puts in special sections such as "Who would win?" where they have imaginary contest pitting legendary heroes like the Goonies and Bruce Lee against each other, or "Nateisms"/"Ryanalogies" where we get to see the warped philosophies of our characters.

I agree with the guy who said it was more character-centric than most comics of this type, and that's one thing I like about it. C@P is funny, witty, and usually rude at its best, and although I haven't had much experience with reading "College life"-type strips, I did find it to be very entertaining.

4/5

So all-in-all a good read, and huge archives to boot, so there's enough here to keep you occupied for quite a while. If you're a fan of these types of comic strips, you definitely won't be disappointed. It's getting harder and harder to find strips as consistently funny as C@P, so if you got the time, check it out!

Thanks for all the comments! I spent most of this weekend going through my archives and reading them. I LOVE comments.

I agree that consistency is a pretty big issue, but C@P has always been the place where I let my art develop, which is why theres such a big difference in the quality of my art from page on to page 300. It's also why I went back and started re-doing old strips. I did alot of work to develop the characters over the course of the strip and alot of jokes you just won't get if you haven't started fromt he beginning. Its hard to convince people to read old strips if they don't already know they like the comic when the art is so terrible.

Oddly enough, I've met more female fans of my comic than male fans. I think it might be the whole "boys behaving badly" element. Us admitting we're idiots must appeal to them on some level.

I am pretty lucky that my cowriters are so good at writing in character. I could ask IRL Ryan to write down his opinions on anything from politics to pie, and he'd nail it in character.

Thanks for reading!

Art

I love the simplicity of your art and yet it seems to attract so much attention. It's very colourful and fun to look at. The characters are brilliantly done while the background is neglected(which is proving to be effective)

4.5/5

Writing

It's very witty and has me roaring with laughter quite alot. The speech isn't too long, which is a drag to read. It is just enough to carry a story line and be extremely funny.

5/5

overal

It's a great comic and I'll keep reading it

screw math 5/5

Wow! Thanks for the glowing praise! I wasn't expecting anyone else to review me!


Thanks again!