Did anyone else get the insane idea to submit a comic to this website (www.zudacomics.com), like I did?
They're gonna make you constrain your comic to 800x600 pixels and 8 frames. It's insanity, I think. There are several reasons why Nadya won't fit into that- partly because the first eight pages of the comic were semi-abysmal, and I can't really launch into the recent eight pages without things not making any sort of sense.
Do you all think this site is "worth" going through hell to submit to it? I certainly don't think I'll be trying any longer. I feel like I'll just give up. Someone needs to come up with an idea better than Drunkduck, and -that's- not likely to happen for another billion years. (Okay, maybe 130 years. :P)
Your thoughts?
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Zuda Comics?
So they force you to make a comic in that exact format?
I wouldn't do it. One of the reasons I chose DD is that there's no limitations to the layout of your comic, both the pages and the overal view of the HTML. So I wouldn't go to some site where you have to do exactly as told. Where's the artistic freedom in that?
Yup - the idea, I think, is that each page will be the right dimensions for web viewing and the right shape for print when placed one on top of the other (i.e. two on a page). It's a pain if your comic is already started, but it is very logical when you think about it.
For me, though, the main reason not to submit is that - despite nominally leaving the copyright with you - you actually have to sign away any material rights to your own creation. It will suit some, I'm sure, but it's not what was expected from a venture that was trailed as offering "creator-owned" terms.
but it is very logical when you think about it.I'd say that it's outdated thinking. Seriously, it's not 1997 any longer… Displays have gotten bigger and people don't mind vertical scroll. Not at all. lol!
Sure, keep it in the no wider than 800, since a lot of viewings in South America and South East Asia, India and Pakistan use smaller displays, and people don't like to scroll horizontally. But vertical scroll is NO trouble.
Man, back in uni a few years ago I built up a massive site as part of a post grad course. Hand coded the entire thing, made it fully accessible, validated it to all the latest web standards… And made no page bigger than 800 x 600 (smaller actually, taking into account browser buttons, tool bars and start menus). And it worked fine, but the problem was that you can't fit much content into that space, and when you're actually viewing the content, you WANT to scroll down because you want to see more of it. Actually, clicking to get a new page of content (that really should be on the current page) is almost as bad as horizontal scroll. lol!
-I want NEW content on a new page, not stuff that really all should have been together on the last one. :(
Besides, that artificial and silly limitation handicaps how creative you can be with panel structure and splash pages.
Other than that just remember to read the fine print on ANY venture!
You're totally right. I probably should have read more of the fine print instead of wanting to launch at the chance of grabbing Nadya more fame…
that artificial and silly limitation handicaps how creative you can be with panel structure and splash pages.
I'm gonna have to agree with you whole-heartedly, OZ. I felt constrained by that and the 8 "panel" limit. I don't think they're heading in the right direction. No one can beat Drunk Duck as of now, I think.
I have a few projects that I'm working on to submit to Zuda, but nothing that I don't mind sharing control over, I wouldn't submit one of the comics I'm presently updating, as they are more of a labor of love than anything, I couldn't bear having an editor tell me I couldn't use a joke or that the story should go in this or that direction on Children at Play.
Have you guys looked through the first round of submissions yet? I think it shows Zuda for exactly what it is. It's really well produced content that shows almost no knowledge about how sucessful webcomics work. The art is all fantastic, but where webcomics shine, even the most beautifully drawn ones, is in unique and gripping storytelling and fresh dynamic writing. Most of these entries strike me as a "I'll draw something pretty, but unoriginal" approach, a "figure out a story later" approach. The reason I've been able to get my co-workers, who are very much not "comicbook" people into webcomics is because webcomics are so completely different and are often so original and honest that even people who aren't fans of the medium realize when they're reading something of high quality.
Art draws you into a webcomic, but writing keeps you reading it.
Hopefully there'll be better entries as the site progresses, but so far it really looks like they were thinking "webcomics? thats just like print comics…only online? right?"
I haven't really looked into ZudaComics too much, but I know that if I was going to bother submitting anything to them, it would be something entirely separate from any projects that I'm working on now. I have no real interest in giving away the rights to any of my current stories, but I suppose it might be worth a shot to come up with some throw-away deal that I don't mind selling.
Although, the fact that they make you have eight panels per page is pretty ridiculous at any rate - as long as each page is the same size, I really don't see why they should force you to put a specific number of panels on them. Like OO said, that's pretty severely limiting in terms of storytelling and page layout. Sometimes, pages just don't call for that many panels, or maybe they call for more than that (although in my opinion, eight panels on a standard-size comic page seems pretty high, especially if it's every page). o_O I hadn't heard about that before, at any rate.
Ah well. I doubt I'll ever submit anything to them anyway.
Edit: Huh. I just looked at some of the submissions and they don't seem to be stuck at eight panels per page, although they are still stuck in that little rectangular box (which, also, ewww, it crushes up the text really badly and makes it very hard to read without zooming in and scrolling all over the place - what a terrible idea for a viewer, unless I'm doing something wrong with it). Did you mean eight pages? Because I think that's just the submission sample size.
Yeah… I couldn't read those submissions. I don't like the format, WAAAAY too small, and horizontal pages feel weird to me. I like a page I can scroll down. The "viewer" makes it 100 times worse, turns it into a slideshow, like a presentation put together for your boss or something, instead of a real website.
I dunno; it feels like they are really putting up all sorts of barriers against creativity. It's amazing that comic creators can overcome the ridiculous formatting and come up with any type of decent story at all. I wouldn't consider them "webcomics" at all (which to me, should be the product of creativity unrestrained). Just a company saying "Draw stuff for us and do it like this!"
Not saying it is necessarily bad. I mean, it's like a poster contest or something with it's set regulations and exclusive nature. (Draw it this way specifically for this purpose.) And it's nice when creative and talented people participate in things like that. – It just isn't "webcomics."
I assume Zuda wants the odd format so the webcomics cannot compete with their print work.
I hate the flash interface. But I'm old school, I'm thinking in terms of print.
It is a great way to keep the content locked away. The only way to get the comic is screen capture it. And with the zoom feature, it would take multiple captures and some photoshop chopping to assemble a high res image for each page.
Nothing in the first 8 comics look interesting. Nice art but no storylines that I want to follow.
After reading the comments of the other DD posters. I cannot see any throwaway submissions being successful. I think if you don't put your passion into your comic, it won't be long term successful.
The comics submitted so far seem to have the fault, they don't have any soul. "I'm going to submit a strip that I think would be profitable, but it's not something I love, I don't trust them with something I love."
Who wants to risk a story they love to do, being taken over by a big corporation. That's like selling your kids into slavery.
well, i cant read any of the comics at work. the flash interface is blocked.
i also think the horrizontal format is dumb. i did reformat 8 of my comics to fit their size restrictions and found it really hard to make it work. the problem with horrizontal formatting is that it's unnatural to me because most of the stuff i read (magazines, comics, books, word and PDF docs, etc) are vertical. almost everything is vertical. after seeing the contracts i decided to not submit my comic. there's a section in the contract which allows DC to stop you from useing your characters or comics for a few years after they are published on the site. i think it was up to 4-5 years. this was in case they decide to try and make a movie out of your comic and needed time to work out a contract. not working on my comic for 5 years would just kill it dead.
I CBA'ed to go check out the 8 Zuda submissions.What's CBA mean?
of the 12 listed,
3 are a vertigo themed comics
1 is a storyless slice of life comic
1 was a western, with a werewolf sheriff
5 were of the superhero genre
Boring…….
The DD stuff may be inconsistent, but it had diversity and heart.
Hopefully David Flora's "Tales of the Revenant" entry will be heads up above this pale mess.
The pluses outweigh any negatives in my opinion and experience in drawing comics for over 13 years now and I've seen it all come and go and come again.
Well as far as the "rights" thing goes and signing things away, you're not really selling it whole hog, you're included in being the creator, and royalties on just about anything. If DC starts selling your comic as a scented fart, you get paid. Plus they pay you 250 a page if you get the contract, that's nothing to sneeze at, AND you'd suddenly find yourself with real inside connections at DC, Time Warner… People ARE going to take you more seriously if you have those affiliations. Hell you might be able to land big gigs outside the industry just by having those things as credits– and it's a hell of a resume thing to have in your belt. I think it's all how you work it as your own business man, if that makes sense?
As far as the "format" of 800x600 goes, if you talk to them, I think they actually MEAN that it has to be that proportional shape of page size. When you hit "full screen" on the flash player, the images are much larger and more detailed. Zuda actually asks for a higher resolution final file— they just mean that proportional landscape size is all. So IF someone with a 800x600 size screen were to hit "full screen" there would be no scrolling.
submissions must be 800x600 but if you're chosen you need to supply larger images
from their site
Each Zuda Comics Submission Screen must be: RGB (RGB refers to the color profile of a digital file)
.JPG (.JPG refers to the file format)
800 pixels wide by 600 pixels high (this refers to the dimensions of the file)
72 dpi (DPI means dots per inch and refers to the resolution of the image)
One final note  if your comic is selected for publication you'll need to be able to provided in a larger format. For Zuda Comics, a larger format means 2750 pixels by 2063 pixels.
Hey I read thru the 17 pages of Bayou. I'm surprised an art style like that got the first win. Actually seems to me to be the easiest way to create a "unique" style: take your charcoal and bristol board, don't bother erasing any stray lines, and just put CG to it.
Of course it's a bit more work than that, but it's not complicated. Not saying it's not a good comic.
Edit:
Leprenomicon… The premise sounded fun so I read thru it… but neither the art nor the writing seemed very engaging for me. Basically it felt like old comic book art and writing that really doesn't take full advantage of its premise. There is neither whimsy nor satire to it.
Dead In The Now… Hey, Corey Lewis. I know him from Impromanga. He wasn't a nice person, but then no one there was, back then. We were all just a bunch of holier-than-thou kids who could draw well and knew it. I can definitely see his old style in this new evolved stylized art of his. And the old pros and cons of his old style still apply here: Very stylized, very fast, very ghetto, but also risks being only high on empty calories. I know his old stuff, so I can tell you it's a definite risk not an illusion. But he's grown up just like everyone else so now there may be substance behind his work.
The Dead Seas… Very excellent Western manga style art. Like a lot of what you'd find in Image/Top Cow/whatever-it's-called. But the story is average. You can tell it's not gonna get any better even thru just an 8 page intro. I'm tired of excellent artists wasting their time on scripts designed to impress 12-year-olds. If you're gonna learn from manga, learn one thing: Manga is popular because adults read manga too.
Raining Cats & Dogs… Sex And The City with a dash of fantasy. How much of a dash we don't know. I've seen better writing from DD webcomics in this genre. The art's okay.
High Moon… My favorite entry so far. No complaints about the wood-engraving type art and faded coloring; everything fits this comic. The writing is a bit disjointed and rushed but you can't expect too much from an 8-page teaser; for example if this wasn't a teaser he would not have had to squeeze in the obligatory fight-werewolf splash page. There are complaints about "Yeah we've seen this before." But there's the thing about Westerns: It's never about something you've never seen before. It's about telling a good old atmospheric story the way only a Western can. When an author chooses a Western, you know he's volunteering to take on the twice-telling of a good story. If he sucks, he won't be forgiven.
Battlefield Babysitter… Like Sky High + The Incredibles + Saturday cartoon style. The good thing about this one is the writing. Chapter 2 will decide if the engaging writing of chapter 1 is a fluke.
I'll read all of them slowly I guess.
I really liked the user interface. The one drawback about it is you HAVE to use the full screen option, otherwise some of the comics on there are unreadable (at least on my browser).
I thought Bayou had a very intriguing premise. The first few pages did enough to draw me into the story and I will certainly keep reading it. The rest of the stuff was kind of hit-and-miss, but isn't that the case with webcomics (also print comics, movies, TV shows, any medium you care to name) in general?
The rest of the stuff was kind of hit-and-miss, but isn't that the case with webcomics (also print comics, movies, TV shows, any medium you care to name) in general?Not when it's 10 entries sifted by DC editors from (I guess) hundreds of submitted entries, with the prize being having a print contract with DC paying $250 per page.
And if I don't like what I see, not only do I get to criticize the entry, I get to criticize DC.
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