Should I reinvent or refine TFR, or start a new comic?
By Outlandish on January 30th, 2010Posted In: News
I’ve just added a new search feature to the site. If you want to search for a particular page or blog post it should help. Also it allows me to use Google ads without pasting them all over the main screen. So feel free to use it and so on.
Now to something more interesting. I’ve been toying with the idea of reinventing or reinvigorating TFR for a while. I’m not sure if I want to reinvigorate TFR or else do a new comic or game project called Legends from the Void, which might be described as a futuristic cyberpunk Diskworld-ish story with elements of Star Wars (when it was good) and special agents, spies, hackers, battles with huge fleets, on so on. But the thing is that TFR already has a lot of devoted readers who’d like to see more. Besides that, I don’t see why I can’t take all the ideas from the Legends story and fold them into TFR to make it more exciting. Personally, I can see how all those things could add to TFR. Interestingly, the hero in Legends is very much like Brin Thade so it wouldn’t be hard to add that element into TFR.
One of the biggest things to me is that Gilrec needs to be reworked into more of a hero, a bumbling but somewhat courageous hero. He should be more like Bertie Wooster who had a lot of wit and gumption but was always messing everything up, seemingly beyond hope, and then Jeeves would come in and save the day. That was actually in my dream. I was trying to type it out in the dream while I was watching the story unfold like a movie before me. Funny that. So I’ve added a little poll. Please don’t feel constrained by that, however. Feel free to comment to this post with your thoughts.
I may as well tell you I’ve caught the game designers bug and have really, REALLY wanted to make some little games or experiences. Or interactive comics. The problem is that it’s all a bit overwhelming, what with my disability. So I’ve been thinking doing a comic may be more therapeutic, not to mention simpler. However it’s still possible to do more interactive things with the comic. How about having a poll on what action Gilrec or the hero should take next? I don’t know, just throwing out ideas. It would be possible to use Flash to make the comic more dynamic. But then maybe not. I’d like something that’ll work on the iPad and Flash doesn’t work. So give me your ideas. I’m starting to feel the need to do some epic sci-fi story-telling 
I’m especially interested in how to make online comics more interactive? Who’s done this well? How did they do it? How can it be done without using Flash?
Don’t think of it as “reinventing”; rather, think of Gilrec maturing, or, in the words of the Bluesmen, “mileage”.
Your current format is excellent. You got lost a bit with the screwy engagement thing but the strip’s central theme is galactic. Keep it up. The Jeeves theme is clear enough. You just need to reconverge on that path.
The first thing your new Gilrec should do is put some distance with his worthless former classmate. More adventures are definitely in order. Even if he screws up periodically, he’s a serious guy and a solid hero. Clearly there he has enough charisma to act as a gravitational center to his friends and his Butler. And his followers in the blogosphere. Don’t forget his followers.
You’ve worked hard thus far and your work really shows it. That’s why we all come back to check in. Keep going.
A few thoughts and suggestions…
I liked the way Gilrec started out wanting nothing more than a dull, safe life, but was pushed into an adventure by chance and misjudgement. I also like the way he was coming to terms with this and starting to rise to the challenge. Possibly, in a web-comic format, this process just needed to happen a bit faster. A gradual character development is fine for a novel, where the reader can absorb a huge amount of event, dialogue and description very quickly. In a webcomic, especially one that doesn’t update daily, a great deal of mood and atmosphere (and sense of place) can be conveyed in a few pictures, but you can only give the readers a very little in the way of event and dialogue (and so character development) each page.
Perhaps Gilrec should remain essentially the same character, but the pace of his development should be forced a bit to suit the medium? Apart from that I think the only problem was with the flashback structure and possibly with the story occasionally being less taught and focussed than it might have been. TFR was – is – funny, very well drawn, with entertaining and engaging characters; even the villains.
Interactivity… well, I’ve already mentioned City of Reality (cityofreality.com), but that used a lot of… well, I assume it was Flash
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Ctrl+Alt+Del (www.cad-comic.com) had an interactive adventure as an experiment, with some episodes offering a choice of what the hero should do in the next, and readers emailing in with their choice as the message title. It was engaging and fun, but must have been an awful lot of work plotting all the choices that were never made!
Goblins (goblins.keenspot.com) has an intermittent donations drive where a non-canon character faces a number of challenges, and the level of donations received by the time of each challenge determines how successfully he overcomes them. It seems to do very well… but that might depend a lot on the readership size
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I’m not aware of any others
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Good comments
Thanks! Yes, I do like Gilrec’s character, but as you say, have him grow and mature a bit faster. Pacing is a really important factor in webcomics. It’s not like a manga where you’ve got whole volumes dedicated to one fight or event. As for interactivity, I’m not sure. Thanks for mentioning some things to check out. I’ve thought of the possibility of Flash but I’m not sure. In some ways it’d be cool to do issues in a choose your own adventure format and then let the reader go back and read through again, making different choices, and getting a different experience. That would be interesting if done right. I’m also interested in the possibility of a comic mixed with elements of a visual novel, where both text and images, prose and graphics combine, and using some motion graphics to do some of the scenes giving a bit of an animation feel, without actually animating.
I’m not talking about motion comics, though. What i had in mind (possibly for Legends from the Void and not TFR) is more like an animatic with good art. It’s like moving storyboards. But not for everything, just key moments to give it a movie feel. I’m not explaining very well. Anyway, I won’t do anything crazy with TFR without experimenting with these ideas on another project.
Personally, I can see what you’re getting at, and a focus on a sort of ‘Jeeves-and-Wooster… in SPACE!’ story seems like a good idea. Gilrec does need to develop, but you’re heading in the right direction. Maybe he’ll even be able to stand up to his father someday
As for mixing in the stuff from your other idea… sounds great! Only you know which way the story is going right now, but if I had to recommend, I’d say: keep up the adventures and epic story. I’m sure we’d also love to see more of the sheep, or a certain butler robot’s past.
I’m for non-interactive comics– makes more sense to me that way.
And if nothing else, I’m glad Far Reaches will continue (hopefully). You (and your comic) ROCK!
Thanks!
You still live? Hope I remembered my name right.
I liked Gilrec, and other than standing up to his father and bride-to-be enough to escape to adventure, I don’t think he needs to change. He is a reluctant hero, the lazy gamer with the trick move. Danger happens around him and he’s just enough like us to be scared and vow to never get in such situations again, but just enough unlike us to bumble, luck, and trick his way through. Every so often he ought to be found trying to rest drinking umbrella drinks between adventures until the next hook drags him along. His father and his “wife” don’t respect him which makes him weak in their presence, but it is funny if, from them, he escapes to galactic changing adventure ever now and then without them ever realizing it, and with him still not even believing it himself.
Unfortunately, you had this treasure island arc going on that you never delivered on. I’m not the healthiest right now so I understand that excuse, but it seemed to me like you gave up. That has tainted the previous implied promise of a continued story. Even if you did a page a week for the next 3 months, I’m not confident you’d finish, which makes me reluctant to check back very often. Sorry man, I’m just telling you how it is. OTOH, if I ever found 3 months worth of Continued story I might stop by every update again. All I’m saying is it will take awhile to regain the same number of regular viewers you had.
So, I liked Gilrec, Bently, the Go Monochi guy/gal, and the crazy for adventure yellow haired dude. I liked the space stuff, the futuristic cityscapes, and the plot. I could have seen the wedding thing getting linked back into the treasure island arc, but you stopped. Unfortunately, the space stuff and cityscapes really do need color to pop, and that takes time. I could go with a more comic style of coloring instead of 3d. I think that might be an acceptable comprimise. But, if 3d excites YOU enough to do it, then just do it.
I’d be happy with a 1 a week color comic, or a twice a week b/w comic if you feel that advances the plot faster. What would bum me out is to see you drop the whole thing, reboot TFR boring me with mostly the same content at the expense of taking years to get to where you already were, or talking forever about all of the fancy ideas you have. Pick 1, and show us something consistent from it. Of course, I’d prefer for that 1 to be a continuation of TFR. With anything else, well, some of us might not like it, but then some new people will.
Now that I think of it, a rare color page to ‘set the mood’ would likely be good enough for cityscapes, wideangle planetscapes, space shots, new vehicle shot, the climax of Monchi descending ‘like unto a god’. (My fav scene.) Once the mood is set, then our imagination is good enough for many pages of black and white. It is a comprimise, but it sounds like you need some comprimises in order to get to consistency.
But as usual, I’m 1 opinion and you need to find what is both within your heart as well as within your ability to consistently put out and build a buffer.
Favorite characters from long running series don’t undergo change. We come back to them because they embody that bit of fun that makes them unique. It is only in a shorter story or near the end of a longer one that we see the character change. That is why I said to keep Gilrec the same, and to let him keep escaping.
Thanks for all your thoughts. I appreciate it. I am alive, although I’ve been unable to work on anything due to my health. I have other projects too that I want to work on but I am fond of TFR. Unfortunately, it would take at least a 100 pages to finish the full story arc and right now I’m not much capable of doing that. I might be able to write it in script form and see if I can’t make it completable, but with my health the way it is, I just can’t seem to even do a single page right now. I think in future I need to think in terms of smaller, doable, story arcs that I can tackle without giving out. But thanks for your thoughts. Sorry I had to bail out on it. I don’t want to but there it is. I can’t even do much of anything right now, so unfortunately that’s how it is. Thanks so much for reading and supporting it while I was able to do it.