Bristled

Click thumbnails to view the artist's full-sized image

I have a few random points to bring up this week from a good example. Bristled isn't at the level of Get Medieval or Vexxarr yet, but it shows promise for a young comic. So far it's updated steadily (if not exactly on a schedule) with decent art and writing. So what is done right...

First, link from everywhere. I didn't find Bristled by scanning another webcomics list, or checking the new entries on a site like Belfry.com. Nor was it linked from another webcomic or suggested to me someone. I stumbled upon a couple pages uploaded to an art site and followed the links back.

You never know where someone will look, make sure anywhere you have a presence links back to your website. For this website, a large portion of the visitors follow links from various LiveJournal sites. About 6% of them reported various forums I'm a member of as their source. Much of that traffic is probably contributed by link-trolling bots, but they're still places you can be (and are) found from.

Moving on to the artwork, there are a number of features that deserve comment. The human brain is very good at picking out patterns, that's why making identical copies via the magic of Ctrl+C Ctrl+V looks so terrible. But it also means that people will notice slightly different images, such as the second through forth frames here (or there's the recycling between strips that I commented on with FyI).

Identifying highlights and shadows is not a complex artistic skill (it isn't perfectly straight forward, but once you have the 'core of the shadow' concept, that's the extent of the basics). Actually implementing it does take some time, but the ending effect provides an impressive rounding effect. Plain old line drawings are open to several small incremental improvements. If you can pull one off, by all means do so. Artwork has to support where the writing is weak (and vice versa).

And finally, Bristled has updated consistently. I've pulled this issue up several times before, but why not add another reason to the list: updates keep the concepts in your (the writer/artist) minds. How many webcomics can you find dead with "Just on more week" or "Almost back" on their final news post? Stories only stay alive as long as someone is telling them.