Review Request for Wootlabs

[diceknight]

Hello there. I'm requesting a review for my new webcomic, Wootlabs. While the comic is still young, I believe there's enough there to both set the tone of the comic, and serve as an example to critique upon. I'm very interested in knowing what I could be doing better, and ways that I could improve the comic for future installations. Just so any potential reviewers know what they're getting into, here's a small synopsis:

Penny Colt, also known as the supervillain Square Woot, is trying to juggle the demands of being a mad scientist with the demands of being a mother. Her small 'family' includes the first robot she ever built, a lizard monstrosity she grew in a DNA tank, a super intelligent penguin, and the family pet; a ten-foot mechanical horror known as Catbot 9000.

The Wootlabs comic is done in a strip format, with the intention of being humorous. Once someone is familiar with the basic cast, it's hopefully enjoyable on a comic by comic basis. It's not a long form comic book nor does it follow through with a full story; but instead is meant to be enjoyed for a few laughs throughout the week.

Wootlabs is very much in its early stages, with fourteen strips currently available. I plan to switch to a format of an update every Monday very soon. A review would really help me in planning things for the future. Giving me an idea of what I'm doing right and what I'm doing wrong would be really appreciated, and help me make it a better comic.

[diceknight]

Thought I'd toss this a bump. Wootlabs is a little over a month old now. I've begun a secondary project involving the comic's primary characters in a more story driven counterpart. Where Wootlabs is the reliable weekly joke comic, the new project will be something closer representing a comic book or manga. Any feedback would definitely be helpful in going forward, especially now that I have a second project in the works that I can apply constructive feedback to from the get-go.

[diceknight]

Dawned on me that I don't have a link to the comic since changing my signature.

http://wootlabs.thewebcomic.com

Still looking for a review for some feedback. I've been working a lot on my other comic, but Wootlabs and it are closely connected and I'm in need of some advice/critique.

[blankd]

I'll review it, but there seems to only be 22 pages- do you feel such an amount is a good indicator for a full review or would you be fine with a more informal one? The only difference is length and that I'll post the comments in this thread rather than make a new one.

[diceknight]

Informal is fine with me. I've been trying for a while now to get some element of feedback on it, but haven't been able to so far. The only people that have talked to me about it are my friends, and while I know they're well intentioned, I also know that their feedback isn't entirely unbiased. I'm fairly new to the world of webcomics so I've been having a hard time gauging if I'm even going in the right direction, or if I'm just kinda digging a lame hole in the ground. >.>

[blankd]

I rather like the limited color palette but I think some of your lines still come off as shaky (and because they're graphic lines the shakiness sticks out more). There is also some stiffness/art errors that will remedy themselves over time and practice, but one thing I noticed is that everyone seems to look "straight on" and that can limit your humor.

I also think that some of the way the text is handled is both good and bad, CatBot's text seems to suit it quite well and I'm unsure if the recent font change is going to be permanent or not. I remember spying something that looked like Comic Sans with the penguin.

The SFX actually stand out for being kind of dull to look at, I'm not sure how you'd like to tackle making them better but I think you can manage it, just don't use static/vanilla font.

As for the jokes themselves, some of them were pleasant and some of them were a miss,\; most of the jokes I liked were with CatBot and Woot. I think the weakest character/humor element you have is actually the penguin.

Anyway hope that helps, if you have any inquiries or need more specific details, don't hesistate to ask.

[diceknight]

I rather like the limited color palette but I think some of your lines still come off as shaky (and because they're graphic lines the shakiness sticks out more). There is also some stiffness/art errors that will remedy themselves over time and practice, but one thing I noticed is that everyone seems to look "straight on" and that can limit your humor.

I also think that some of the way the text is handled is both good and bad, CatBot's text seems to suit it quite well and I'm unsure if the recent font change is going to be permanent or not. I remember spying something that looked like Comic Sans with the penguin.

The SFX actually stand out for being kind of dull to look at, I'm not sure how you'd like to tackle making them better but I think you can manage it, just don't use static/vanilla font.

As for the jokes themselves, some of them were pleasant and some of them were a miss,\; most of the jokes I liked were with CatBot and Woot. I think the weakest character/humor element you have is actually the penguin.

Anyway hope that helps, if you have any inquiries or need more specific details, don't hesistate to ask.

Thanks for the review, I definitely appreciate the feedback. I did have a few questions, though. You mentioned the text, but not necessarily what way was better. Text has been something that I've really been struggling with, for finding a happy medium with. I'm content with Catbot's speech bubbles, but everyone else's I've bounced back and forth on. My current thought is that what's working best for me is the font I'm using in TMBH, my other comic. http://tmbh.thewebcomic.com I think it emulates a hand-drawn style well enough while being clean to read. I tried for a few comics with my own lettering, and it ended up pretty sloppy.

There are certain things I know I'm bad at, forcing characters to face front being one of them. I'm still fairly uncomfortable drawing anyone from the side, but I've been slowly trying to break that habit. Mosst of the time when I try it, the characters just look boring to me.

Wootlabs for me is partially a training ground. I wanted to use it as a starting point to getting comfortable drawing again, before diving into other things. The TMBH comic is more or less going to be the "story" of these characters, while Wootlabs is a casual joke-of-the-week. Because of their relationship to each other I was eventually planning on shifting the focus of Wootlabs so that Wendy and Woot show up less, and Catbot, Rusty, and Pengi show up more. Stuff like Woot's relationship to Riot Girl fits better in a structured story, while Catbot silliness tends to lean towards casual reading.

Pengi is a character that I think I haven't given fair time to; mostly I've been using him because of what he brings out in Catbot, but there's other angles with him I eventually want to explore.

Thanks again for the feedback.

[blankd]

@About text

I'm actually not sure how you want to handle it either. I think the default text in TMBH is fine but you may want to keep a more constant track of the text size (you can resize it appropriately for emotive purposes but for normal talking it shouldn't jump around in size). For internal monologues it's also tidier to not have the thought boxes be of varying size (based on what I saw in TMBH).

Also on the last page the newspaper text kind of blended into the BG, if you use the effect in the future it might be more effective to use a text color that stands out a bit more.

[diceknight]

@About text

I'm actually not sure how you want to handle it either. I think the default text in TMBH is fine but you may want to keep a more constant track of the text size (you can resize it appropriately for emotive purposes but for normal talking it shouldn't jump around in since). For internal monologues it's also tidier to not have the thought boxes be of varying size (based on what I saw in TMBH).

Also on the last page the newspaper text kind of blended into the BG, if you use the effect in the future it might be more effective to use a text color that stands out a bit more.

I'll keep that in mind, especially the part about the internal monologues. That's something I didn't know had much effect, so I had a natural tendency to resize them depending on what was in them. In general I know I need to work on my layouts and my backgrounds, since there's room for tons of improvement in both. >.>

[diceknight]

I thought I'd give this a bump, since it's been a while. Blankd was nice enough to give me a mini-review, and I've tried to keep some of those things in mind over the past few months. Wootlabs now much more closely fits a continuing story, while still trying to maintain a joke-a-day type status. I've been trying to get more creative with my use of character angles, though I know one of my biggest weak points remains backgrounds, which I just can't seem to get my head around. (Planning to work on this quite a bit during the slow winter season at work.)

If anyone does review, one thing I'd be really curious about is if the reader gets a decent impression of some of the under-represented characters. Wendy and Pengi in particular have very small roles so far; which I do plan to expand on at some point, but I'm a little worried that they feel like dead weight so far, as it were. I'm also curious about how Penny and Amy's budding romance is received; though while I don't plan for the story to be romance heavy or visually striking with romance scenes, their connection is going to be one of the core reasons the group eventually goes from villain to hero. (Which has been a longterm goal in the comic since I started it in May.)

So if anyone has some spare time to take a look and possibly do a review, I'd much appreciate it. Thanks kindly!

[Darmanarya]

Personally i find there is a underdevelopment of their world. I currently am working on fixing this too. All i am getting out of your world is a city with heroes and villains. Personally i would love to find out more about the world they are in and where they fit.

[diceknight]

Personally i find there is a underdevelopment of their world. I currently am working on fixing this too. All i am getting out of your world is a city with heroes and villains. Personally i would love to find out more about the world they are in and where they fit.

I hear you. When I first started the comic I was going to keep it vauge, but the more I did it the more I realized there's a need for an established setting. I have locations in mind, like a mountain range outside of town where Riot lives, but I haven't really established anything yet.

I was planning on revamping the website in late January, maybe a city map would be a good section to put up?

[Darmanarya]

If you can figure out the code please share it, and yes i would really think that will be a boost.
As a fair warning it may encourage fanfic

[diceknight]

What the heck, bumping this. Approaching the one year anniversary of the thread. XD

[diceknight]

Been a year since I've bumped this. The comic's two years old now, and I think it's at a point where my tone and style is pretty set in its ways. (Though I'm trying to make consistent, if slow improvements.) Any thoughts on it would be really helpful, if anyone has the time for a review.

http://wootlabs.thewebcomic.com