I understand that we all love comics and have some sort of creative flow that dwells within us that we feel compelled to express through the awesome art form of comic books.What I don't get is some of the stuff posted up in here as well as other sites that doesn't stem from original creativity.The video game and rehashed stories from other media sources(movies,TV,etc.,i.e.; reused pictures from those sources instead of original artwork) that people consider worthy story or even art material!It drives me nuts!!I do understand for younger people that it is basically a gateway into the digital art media and is good solely for that reason,but really people?I personally don't consider that good story telling or even worthy of something to look at.Explore and widen your scope into your favorite media type by all means.Creativity is what we as writers,artists,color artist or whatever you consider yourself thrive off of and are inspired by.Tap into that and experiment outside of something other than already reused material,please!It's not "cute","fun" or really even "creative" for that matter.

Sorry,rant done.Let the hate mail begin.I opened myself up for it.

The spriters are a subgroup that're just into each other. There's not much crossover between our comic creating and viewing worlds here.
We leave them alone in peace to get on with their own stuff :)

seanb47
What I don't get is some of the stuff posted up in here as well as other sites that doesn't stem from original creativity. Creativity is what we as writers,artists,color artist or whatever you consider yourself thrive off of and are inspired by.Tap into that and experiment outside of something other than already reused material,please!It's not "cute","fun" or really even "creative" for that matter.

I think you have to bear in mind that the creators here (and elsewhere on the web) represent a broad base of different ages, skill levels, stages of development and aspirations.

Personally, I agree with you. If I had an idea for, say, a Harry Potter story (God forbid!) I'd much rather change the names, places and details to such an extent that it was no longer recognisable as such. Why put out something as "fan fiction" which you can never acquire any rights to, when you can have your own creation? BUT ...

Did I write Batman stories as a kid? Sure. My first attempt at a novel (aged eight!) was a blatant rip-off of Prince Caspian, character for character, plot point for plot point! My second (which I wrote at eleven!) owed more than a little to Enid Blyton. The comics I made as a kid were spoofs of Star Trek or generic super hero stories. We didn't have sprites (yes, it was that long ago!) but I do remember trying to concoct a comic story using letraset figures.

So ... if someone wants to make a Sonic the Hedgehog comic or write a slice of Xena/Gabriel slash fiction, should it bother us? If they want to try their hand at sprites or photo-comics because they don't trust their artistic skills enough to draw free-hand, is that a big issue for the rest of us? I don't see why. Let them start learning their craft somewhere. Those genuinely without imagination will eventually fall by the wayside (or grow up to be Dan Brown!) while one or two will develop their artistic and/or writing skills over time and may even create something of real merit one day.

I don't see that the creators of fan fiction or sprite comics are doing anything I didn't do as a kid. The only difference is that, thanks to the internet, these guys are doing their "growing up" in full view of the public. In some ways, that can be a good thing. Having somewhere like DD where you can pick up tips, advice, encouragement and (hopefully constructive!) criticism is something I would have been very grateful for when I was writing my first stories.

Hell, it's something I still appreciate now!

Yeah. In a way they'll eventually improve what they've got going, or it'll phizzle out into something else. ^^ I personally don't like them, given they seem to focus within the same bases to use (or characters, whathaveyou), but you never know. A new concept might hit up at some point and they'll take it in spades to work on. I'd support that. :)

When I was 14, I had a comic that's a blatant ripoff of Yuyu Hakusho. The concept of a fighting tournament with different people pulling off different types of moves seemed to appeal to me alot. So I made one. It was called "Magical Warrior".

Here's a reference to it in my comic BK (Guy in mid panel's char design was influenced by Yusuke in Yuyu Hakusho)
http://www.drunkduck.com/BK_Shadow_Nemesis/index.php?p=149963

From Yuyu Hakusho ripoff, it evolved little by little into a more original storyline. Mara-Nina was a minor antagonist in that story but later I just developed a story around her then it evolved into something called "Brood Knight".


Anyway, if you wanna get creativity to come out, the best way to do it is to find a way to slip into a trance... then let it all come to you. :)

You all have valid points and by all means I implore the idea of creativity through the start of such means.I understand it for the younger generation because when I was between the ages of 8-12 use to watch GI JOE,Transformers,Robotech after school in the '80's and be inspired myself to try and draw or imitate those same characters until I discovered comics at 11 or so.
Maybe that I'm older it just gets under my skin to see it plastered every where.Lol!Seems like there is sooooo much of it! O_o
I don't want to come across as the grumpy middle aged guy that discriminates against it at all.I guess that I don't understand the fascination the "sprite(?)" style(I didn't even know it had a name for it),personally.But that's just me.

Peace,Live long & prosper,may the force be with you,etc....

yeah there seems to be a definate line between doing this stuff for respect of the genre and as an art, and for just masterbation. or at least we like to think there's a line, i mean hell, why do this shit if yer not enjoying it in the first place?
and yer definatly right, there is ALOT of self-indulgent shit out there that serves to be nothing more than that, hang around for a few years and you'll learn to ignore it! :D but really most of us are there at one point or another anyways, which i know people have said here already, but i think it bears repeating. specially with all the free sites out there like here and Deviant Art where there's no restriction to what you can do. there's no criteria to meet so really there's not alotta reason to believe most of the material being released'll be good. maby i'll be wrong though and something'll turn it around. until then, just love what ya do and find other people who also love doing it and ya wont even notice anymore. maby people'll start admiring what YOU do and YOU can help set a new standard.

I agree with the points that the less creative comics are quite often just a learning phase. You need to practice layouts, pacing, dialogue... the works. Hell, I did Garfield comics as a little kid. GARFIELD.

The problem lies in when someone has developed the talents -- layout, design, etc -- but then uses them for yet another video game rehash. If you're going to take an existing bunch of characters but then do stuff you'd never seen in the original... create your own characters.

I think the key is to develop writing and storytelling skills FIRST, artistic skills SECOND. If you can write but can't draw, you'll eventually learn to draw just by practice. It will mean rough going initially and you won't see much in the way of traffic, but if you don't give up it will provide drive.

It doesn't quite work the other way around though; if you can draw but can't write, you can quite often get away with the lowest common denominator and get lots of attention and then fool yourself into thinking you what you're doing isn't anything beyond self-indulgent shit, as Pit_Face put it.

The worst offenders are comics which don't demonstrate artistic or writing skills but still find their niche because their comic is essentially a collection of references that their audience understands.

PIT_FACE
yeah there seems to be a definate line between doing this stuff for respect of the genre and as an art, and for just masterbation.

To quote Woody Allen: "Hey, don't knock masturbation; it's sex with someone I love!"

seanb47
I don't want to come across as the grumpy middle aged guy

No problem. There are a lot more of us grumpy middle-aged guys here at DD than you might at first suspect!

smkinoshita
The worst offenders are comics which don't demonstrate artistic or writing skills but still find their niche because their comic is essentially a collection of references that their audience understands.

Yeah, there are a lot of those around. But, if you want to swim in the webcomic pool, you just have to accept that the most popular comics aren't necessarily going to be the best. It's a bit like complaining that unimaginative films like American Pie make more money than some intelligent indie film that no one's ever heard of. Ultimately, you just have to become philosophical about it, or you can become very bitter!

Hey now, spriters or people who reuse original art and people who are practicing comic-craft by copying something panel for panel... they're not the same as people who make original stories using copyrighted characters. Don't lump them together.

Of course I'd be the one to emphasize that, considering my comics are basically fan fiction of a sort. But the modern idea of "use your own characters" is an anomalous phenomenon in the vast history of human storytelling, precipitated by one subtype of a cancer of humanity called lawyers.

Do you think all the adventures of Hercules was written/told/sung by one writer/bard? Do you think one Norseman told another "You can't make up any stories about Odin I got first dibs." Do you think Malory wrote any original stories about original characters in Le Morte D'Arthur?

The law of "I made this character who is basically an older-than-dirt trope but with a different name and face, but anyways he's mine forever and even after I die, he'll be owned by whoever I sold him to" is not the way human storytelling evolved. It doesn't take any skill or originality to make up a new name and a new appearance; get that out of your head.

This may seem at odds with my usual position of "All superheroes must get old and die NAO. I want new characters!" And it is. It's just that the superhero genre carries things to an unhealthy extreme. Because of lawyers.

DAJB
If I had an idea for, say, a Harry Potter story (God forbid!) I'd much rather change the names, places and details to such an extent that it was no longer recognisable as such. Why put out something as "fan fiction" which you can never acquire any rights to, when you can have your own creation? BUT ...

Isn't that basically called a rip-off?? I bet I do it all the time but to consciously do it is pretty pathetic. I would rather someone be upfront about it and just do a fan comic to get readers than stoop to that.

Nergal

DAJB
If I had an idea for, say, a Harry Potter story (God forbid!) I'd much rather change the names, places and details to such an extent that it was no longer recognisable as such. Why put out something as "fan fiction" which you can never acquire any rights to, when you can have your own creation? BUT ...

Isn't that basically called a rip-off??

It depends on the amount you change, obviously.

If you stay with the idea of a boy wizard who, together with two friends in an island-based wizard's boarding school, have lots of adventures while trying to defeat an all-powerful evil wizard then, yes, it's a rip-off. If you take it a step further and say, hey, my characters will be goblins and their "school" will be an orphanage hidden beneath a gargage bin then, no, it's not. All inspiration is sparked by something.

To stay with the Harry Potter example, as I'm sure you know, Rowling herself has been accused of ripping off her basic idea from another writer's story.

Of course I'd be the one to emphasize that, considering my comics are basically fan fiction of a sort. But the modern idea of "use your own characters" is an anomalous phenomenon in the vast history of human storytelling, precipitated by one subtype of a cancer of humanity called lawyers.

Do you think all the adventures of Hercules was written/told/sung by one writer/bard?

The reason why I suggest creating original characters isn't for copyright reasons, but... well, let's just look at the Punisher. He's been a misunderstood good-guy, a dark grim revenge character, a soldier of God, a made man, a stitched-together corpse, and a dark anti-hero in an even bleaker series.

If the character is owned by one person, at least the vision stands a chance at being more coherent. If you're gonna tell a story that others are going to be able to create derived works from, then you lay down some bloody ground rules first and anyone who wants to break 'em can go make their own bloody characters. Heck, even if you just give them a different first or last name. "Walter Hercules -- you know, the guy from the Disney version."

smkinoshita

Of course I'd be the one to emphasize that, considering my comics are basically fan fiction of a sort. But the modern idea of "use your own characters" is an anomalous phenomenon in the vast history of human storytelling, precipitated by one subtype of a cancer of humanity called lawyers.

Do you think all the adventures of Hercules was written/told/sung by one writer/bard?

The reason why I suggest creating original characters isn't for copyright reasons, but... well, let's just look at the Punisher. He's been a misunderstood good-guy, a dark grim revenge character, a soldier of God, a made man, a stitched-together corpse, and a dark anti-hero in an even bleaker series.

If the character is owned by one person, at least the vision stands a chance at being more coherent. If you're gonna tell a story that others are going to be able to create derived works from, then you lay down some bloody ground rules first and anyone who wants to break 'em can go make their own bloody characters. Heck, even if you just give them a different first or last name. "Walter Hercules -- you know, the guy from the Disney version."

As I recall Greek drama required a historical or mythological base to begin with and they couldn't come up with something new. It was the law, or so some say. Original characters are not par for the course in most of human creativity. That said, characters in Greek drama did change story to story even under the same author. I don't have a problem with that so long as each work is strong on its own.

However, I have to agree with you at the half way mark and say that if someone reuses a character they should have some distinguishable factor added. Batman gets divided into two main bodies: campy Batman and Dark Batman.

This leads to a good deal of WTFs among Batman fans who watch the movies and see a different Batman every time. It would help if we could talk about batman in terms of who directed or wrote it. Or even say "Batman 1.3 story" when discussing this noble character. They do that with Dungeons and Dragons I think.

Another example of this would be the new X-men movie where they say "okay, we screwed it all up so lets start over as if none of the other movies ever happened, ever will happen, or are anything other than a bad dream."

This, my friend, is called bad writing. Bad writing takes many forms, but this one is particularly annoying.

Historically, works of fiction are indeed affected more by the signs of the times (of the author) rather than by the established characters that the author is writing about. The author often is using the characters as the mouthpieces of his own story, borrowing legitimacy from the weight of well-known mythology.

For example, look at the evolution of Arthurian mythos, from its Celtic roots full of "pagan" symbolism, to Chretien de Troyes' novelization of early French chivalry, to a succession of Arthurian authors like Thomas Malory who further realized the role of Christianity in knighthood through the solidification of the Holy Grail quest.

They are works which "befuddle the reader" because they certain don't try to keep character consistency, even changing significant events such as who actually achieves the HG quest, and adding other characters, villains, and subplots willy-nilly. Yet, today they're considered classics which advanced the evolution of modern literature.

Ofc, I'm not trying to say that superhero comics are classics. Well, about 0.000001% of them are.