WCCA Reactions IV: A New Hopeful Questing Voyage Home For Peace
"Christ, he's still on that?"
And now for the gripes! Please do not read any of the below as an attack on the WCCAs. You can be a fan of democracy and still think another candidate should have won the vote.
7. Gary Tyrell has some good observations (but don't read the comments section-- seriously, you'll live longer). He notes that A Lesson Is Learned has been on hiatus for a lot of the year and only has a handful of 2006 strips; you can say the same about Copper. I've voiced concerns before about giving awards to small fragments of work, but Lesson and Copper are both episodic, so for me, that consideration doesn't really apply. And they are beautiful. Still, I think Between Two Worlds and Dresden Codak are more on their game this year.
8. It's Thin Slice, not Scott Kurtz, who deserves the award for "Outstanding Web Design." (Check the credits at the bottom of Scott's page.) And it's Thin Slice who could really use it. A new design company is always hungry for recognition from any relatively neutral third parties.
But it's the committee, not the winners, who is responsible for making corrections like that. There are almost always typos and glitches in the nomination phase, though. I expect they'll correct it when Thin Slice wins.
9. Because it has to win, right? Those other nominees... The Curious Adventures of Aldus Maycombe? You're kidding, right? It's got a few nice design ideas that might look good on smaller monitors, but Janine Harper needs to learn to design for hi-res, and nobody looks that good when the monitor is constantly chopping their artwork in half. (Scroll-click-scroll-click-scroll-click-scroll-click...)
Alpha Shade's a tossup-- I love that facing-page interface, not so crazy about the jumble on its homepage.
Last year I was prepared to give the nod to Kris Straub for the relatively clean Starslip Crisis design and the Flash linkbox Kris designed for the whole Blank Label crew. This year, SsC is the only strip still using that linkbox, and the linkbox doesn't include Kris' other project, Halfpixel, even though the latter strip's cited as a Blank Label project in a recent press release.
I guess Starslip Crisis' design is still okay, but it was sure a whole lot better before Kris added 8 billion sponsorship buttons and a big red Halfpixel ad. I'm not saying Kris doesn't have the right to make money off his strip-- hey, Penny and Aggie has lots of ads, too-- but it's silly to pretend that page design doesn't pay a price.
Bottom line, most webcomics' webpages are pretty ugly. If you want to support yourself with advertising, beef your traffic up with cross-linking, and build stickiness with a blog, ugliness is almost required. Even professional graphic designers struggle to balance design and commerce, and Thin Slice's design options would have been fewer if PvP couldn't afford to run fewer ads. I'd like to see more attention given to the websites which eschew such compromises altogether. They are out there.
Once more, for the record: I like these three strips, it's their webpage design that leaves me cold.
10. I second Gary's sentiment that xkcd is the non-nomination of the year. Yeah, I know it's not always a single-panel comic, but that's its default setting, and I'd seriously consider it for Outstanding Comic. Hopefully, it was not hampered by the fact that it is also a contender for Outstandingly Difficult To Spell.
Tomorrow: Are these cats dogs?
And now for the gripes! Please do not read any of the below as an attack on the WCCAs. You can be a fan of democracy and still think another candidate should have won the vote.
7. Gary Tyrell has some good observations (but don't read the comments section-- seriously, you'll live longer). He notes that A Lesson Is Learned has been on hiatus for a lot of the year and only has a handful of 2006 strips; you can say the same about Copper. I've voiced concerns before about giving awards to small fragments of work, but Lesson and Copper are both episodic, so for me, that consideration doesn't really apply. And they are beautiful. Still, I think Between Two Worlds and Dresden Codak are more on their game this year.
8. It's Thin Slice, not Scott Kurtz, who deserves the award for "Outstanding Web Design." (Check the credits at the bottom of Scott's page.) And it's Thin Slice who could really use it. A new design company is always hungry for recognition from any relatively neutral third parties.
But it's the committee, not the winners, who is responsible for making corrections like that. There are almost always typos and glitches in the nomination phase, though. I expect they'll correct it when Thin Slice wins.
9. Because it has to win, right? Those other nominees... The Curious Adventures of Aldus Maycombe? You're kidding, right? It's got a few nice design ideas that might look good on smaller monitors, but Janine Harper needs to learn to design for hi-res, and nobody looks that good when the monitor is constantly chopping their artwork in half. (Scroll-click-scroll-click-scroll-click-scroll-click...)
Alpha Shade's a tossup-- I love that facing-page interface, not so crazy about the jumble on its homepage.
Last year I was prepared to give the nod to Kris Straub for the relatively clean Starslip Crisis design and the Flash linkbox Kris designed for the whole Blank Label crew. This year, SsC is the only strip still using that linkbox, and the linkbox doesn't include Kris' other project, Halfpixel, even though the latter strip's cited as a Blank Label project in a recent press release.
I guess Starslip Crisis' design is still okay, but it was sure a whole lot better before Kris added 8 billion sponsorship buttons and a big red Halfpixel ad. I'm not saying Kris doesn't have the right to make money off his strip-- hey, Penny and Aggie has lots of ads, too-- but it's silly to pretend that page design doesn't pay a price.
Bottom line, most webcomics' webpages are pretty ugly. If you want to support yourself with advertising, beef your traffic up with cross-linking, and build stickiness with a blog, ugliness is almost required. Even professional graphic designers struggle to balance design and commerce, and Thin Slice's design options would have been fewer if PvP couldn't afford to run fewer ads. I'd like to see more attention given to the websites which eschew such compromises altogether. They are out there.
Once more, for the record: I like these three strips, it's their webpage design that leaves me cold.
10. I second Gary's sentiment that xkcd is the non-nomination of the year. Yeah, I know it's not always a single-panel comic, but that's its default setting, and I'd seriously consider it for Outstanding Comic. Hopefully, it was not hampered by the fact that it is also a contender for Outstandingly Difficult To Spell.
Tomorrow: Are these cats dogs?
| This post brought to you by... Do you need a new home? If you are moving, consider purchasing a modular home! With many different styles to choose from, you will be sure to find a modular home to fit your wants and needs. Whether you want a log cabin modular home or a one story ranch, prefabricated houses are built with you needs in mind! Sign online today browse the best in modular homes! |
Labels: Webcomics
Posted at
11:20 AM
5 Comments:
I'd like to see more attention given to the websites which eschew such compromises altogether. They are out there.
Freefall has been running for years without ads, and with few graphics apart from the strip itself. (In fact you have to dig hard to find the author's name, which is taking modestly a bit far.) But personally I like the approach of Gunnerkrigg Court and some of the Keenspot strips, with the comic up top and the other stuff below the digital centerfold. Blog / news sections and links to other webcomics make the site feel more human to me, created and run by a living individual person and part of a community.
" Even professional graphic designers struggle to balance design and commerce..."
Y'know, no one ever mentions it, but I think the Evil Inc Web site is a pretty good example of a well-balanced content/commerce site.
The hardest part to come to terms with was putting the title logo under the comic. I don't know of anyone else who does that. But it's crucial if I want people to see the newest blog topic.
Those are the two main content "hooks" on the page: The comic and the blog. They have to appear without scrolling. The general site navigation is right over the comic, and every month or so, I post a guide in the blog to all of the site features.
And from there on down, every key piece of real estate goes to ads. There's an ad at the very top, an ad over the blog, ads directly to the upper right of the blog, ads further down to the left of the blog, and ads right under the shoutbox.
That's not even mentioning the promos for my own books and merchandise. :)
Goal One is delivering the best entertainment possible to the readers and give them plenty of reason to spend a little time on the site.
Goal Two is to use the results of Goal One to generate good places for advertisers to promote their goods and services.
Meet both goals and you can move quickly towards sustaining yourself with your cartooning. In that respect, I gotta tell you, my site does a heck of a job.
It would be easy to design a site that is beautiful but accomplishes nothing. Designing a site that fills multiple goals well? That's real design.
Something about form following function. :)
When you see a WCCA nomination that doesn't belong or seems completely out of the blue (e.g. Aldus Maycombe for website design), it's likely the result of the massive Comic Genesis voting-block effect. Voter participation was low this year, apparently, meaning that a dedicated group of circle-jerkers could conceivably vote in whatever they pleased - and so they did.
Granted, the WCCAs aren't even taken seriously by many comic-creators, but looking at what made it this year (and what didn't), it really cheapens nominees' experiences and reflects poorly on the webcomic community, if some of these comics, websites, writing styles, etc. are considered "the best".
I think this effect is far more pronounced in the least talked-about categories. I can roll off a few candidates for Outstanding Comic without even taking a minute, but I really have to mull to think of my own nominees for "Outstanding Website Design."
I think this is also true at other awards ceremonies. "Best Minicomic?" "Best Cinematography?" There's a much smaller circle of people who hold strong opinions about such things, so naturally they're more influential.
But this isn't always a bad thing, honestly. I'd rather you not vote for some strip you've vaguely heard of if you don't care about the category, and this is one case where my wishes and reality tend to coincide. If not for the attention of a small group of dedicated fans, a lot of excellent material might have gone overlooked.
Sometimes that system works and sometimes it doesn't. Unfortunately, I haven't encountered an award system yet about which I could say anything better.
Perry Bible Fellowship. That should have won or at least been nominated for the website award.
Post a Comment
<< Home