For those from SomethingAwful or YWiB
Well, I figured I might as well get this over with since I got yet another surge of visitors yesterday from SomethingAwful.com and the fact that they link my comic with being one of the worst out there, and that pretty soon it's going to be reviewed on "Your Webcomic is Bad and You should Feel Bad about it."
I'd been wondering whether or not I should do this for awhile, mostly because the people who are dead-set in their opinions aren't going to be swayed by anything I have to say on the matter, but I figured I might as well try, anyway. For those unfamiliar with this, Lightbringer has been posted on SA.com's forums before as an example of one of the worst webcomics out there and people frequently post about how detestible I am for it. Well, I'm doing a preemptive strike and responding right here to it, since I really don't want to shill out $10 to join a forum JUST to respond to crticisms. I'd really wanted to avoid this, since frankly I feel that if someone has a problem with someone else's work, they should just confront them about it and tell how they feel. Sure, most of the time they won't listen, but other times they will, like I have when people have criticized me on various things about Lightbringer.
-First, yeah - my art sucks. I've made no secret of this. While throughout various times in the comic I've talked about how I liked how a panel came out or thought something looked awesome... well, of course I would. I'm still new to comicing even after a year and I'm always trying to find ways to improve, so when I think something turned out pretty well, I'm going to be proud of it. That doesn't mean it truly is anything to be proud of, but there you go.
-Secondly - me calling myself a published author when I did it through self-publishing. Yeah, it's not really the same thing, but honestly I didn't truly understand the difference until recently. And only now am I starting to realize all the flaws my books contained and I'm trying to improve upon that in my future writings.
-Next - the trade paperback thing. Yeah, that was really stupid of me. I actually thought I could go back, revise the comic pages with a little better artwork and rewrites, and sell the thing, but honestly my artwork sucks too much for that to work out and I sincerely doubt any such option would work in the conceivable future.
-This one's a doozie. For the regular readers, remember how I had originally planned for Issue 8 to be about White Death and then suddenly it changed into a focus about Hannah? Well, while half of that was to try to respond to a criticism I had been given about how the characters in Lightbringer didn't seem to have any real personality, the other half was because of White Death's backstory.
When I first came up with her, the idea was, in a nutshell, that she was an actress who was raped on stage in front of thousands of people who didn't realize she was being raped. I patted myself on the back for the ingenuity of having such a traumatic backstory for a character... but then I found out about Girl-Wonder.org. And I became a feminist, realizing the plight of female characters in comics. And I posted my idea about White Death and they told me it was a bad idea. And the more people I told about it, the more people told me it was a bad idea, so I realized they were right and I pulled the story.
But then those on SomethingAwful.com found that post and decided to link to it, using it as an example of what a terrible person I was, even drawing the scorn of one person in particular who shall remain nameless even though I have made every attempt to earn their respect. What they failed to do was to point out that in the very same thread they posted to on Girl-Wonder.org's forums, I had posted how bad of an idea I realized it was and asked for advice on how to change it, which the fine people there did and thus I shall be doing the revised story later down the line. I recognize I'm still not perfect in all the details when it comes to treating female characters with respect, something that I'll be pointing out when we get to Issue 10, but I am conscious of it and I am trying to change.
-Something more recent that was posted critiquing me was how I referred to the art I purchased at FallCon was "Fanart." That was most definitely an error on my part, something that someone pointed out to me and I subsequently changed, upon which they suggested I call it Giftart or Guest Art. I know that those who I had gotten the artwork from weren't fans, I just honestly thought that most of those terms were interchangeable.
At the moment, that's all I can think of. I know I really shouldn't care about what other people think of me, but it's important to me that people don't think I'm an awful person even if they don't think my comic's any good. Thanks for your time.
I'd been wondering whether or not I should do this for awhile, mostly because the people who are dead-set in their opinions aren't going to be swayed by anything I have to say on the matter, but I figured I might as well try, anyway. For those unfamiliar with this, Lightbringer has been posted on SA.com's forums before as an example of one of the worst webcomics out there and people frequently post about how detestible I am for it. Well, I'm doing a preemptive strike and responding right here to it, since I really don't want to shill out $10 to join a forum JUST to respond to crticisms. I'd really wanted to avoid this, since frankly I feel that if someone has a problem with someone else's work, they should just confront them about it and tell how they feel. Sure, most of the time they won't listen, but other times they will, like I have when people have criticized me on various things about Lightbringer.
-First, yeah - my art sucks. I've made no secret of this. While throughout various times in the comic I've talked about how I liked how a panel came out or thought something looked awesome... well, of course I would. I'm still new to comicing even after a year and I'm always trying to find ways to improve, so when I think something turned out pretty well, I'm going to be proud of it. That doesn't mean it truly is anything to be proud of, but there you go.
-Secondly - me calling myself a published author when I did it through self-publishing. Yeah, it's not really the same thing, but honestly I didn't truly understand the difference until recently. And only now am I starting to realize all the flaws my books contained and I'm trying to improve upon that in my future writings.
-Next - the trade paperback thing. Yeah, that was really stupid of me. I actually thought I could go back, revise the comic pages with a little better artwork and rewrites, and sell the thing, but honestly my artwork sucks too much for that to work out and I sincerely doubt any such option would work in the conceivable future.
-This one's a doozie. For the regular readers, remember how I had originally planned for Issue 8 to be about White Death and then suddenly it changed into a focus about Hannah? Well, while half of that was to try to respond to a criticism I had been given about how the characters in Lightbringer didn't seem to have any real personality, the other half was because of White Death's backstory.
When I first came up with her, the idea was, in a nutshell, that she was an actress who was raped on stage in front of thousands of people who didn't realize she was being raped. I patted myself on the back for the ingenuity of having such a traumatic backstory for a character... but then I found out about Girl-Wonder.org. And I became a feminist, realizing the plight of female characters in comics. And I posted my idea about White Death and they told me it was a bad idea. And the more people I told about it, the more people told me it was a bad idea, so I realized they were right and I pulled the story.
But then those on SomethingAwful.com found that post and decided to link to it, using it as an example of what a terrible person I was, even drawing the scorn of one person in particular who shall remain nameless even though I have made every attempt to earn their respect. What they failed to do was to point out that in the very same thread they posted to on Girl-Wonder.org's forums, I had posted how bad of an idea I realized it was and asked for advice on how to change it, which the fine people there did and thus I shall be doing the revised story later down the line. I recognize I'm still not perfect in all the details when it comes to treating female characters with respect, something that I'll be pointing out when we get to Issue 10, but I am conscious of it and I am trying to change.
-Something more recent that was posted critiquing me was how I referred to the art I purchased at FallCon was "Fanart." That was most definitely an error on my part, something that someone pointed out to me and I subsequently changed, upon which they suggested I call it Giftart or Guest Art. I know that those who I had gotten the artwork from weren't fans, I just honestly thought that most of those terms were interchangeable.
At the moment, that's all I can think of. I know I really shouldn't care about what other people think of me, but it's important to me that people don't think I'm an awful person even if they don't think my comic's any good. Thanks for your time.
posted by Lewis Lovhaug at 9:29 AM
21 comments
