This July will mark five years that I’ve been doing Of Noobs and Men. Looking back, I know I’ve grown a lot as an artist and I think there’s a lot that could be learned from examining my early mistakes. In that spirit I thought I might critique some of my old strips and show where I went wrong. Today I’ll start with my tenth strip.

Thanks, Sony!

First published September 24th, 2007

As you can see right off the bat, there are way too many words. A wall of text greets you in the first panel, a sight no reader would find inviting. Thankfully the thought bubbles are properly positioned, one can read them simply from top to bottom of each panel. The bubbles themselves are horrendous though. They barely encompass the words and are far too busy at the edges. When we get to the third panel there aren’t even any connective mini clouds to attach one thought to the next and lead the reader through the thought process. There is also a lack of external border on the thought bubbles. This can make it difficult to ascertain where a bubble ends and the drawing begins. It is especially obvious in the third panel where the cloud blends in with Jonny Storm’s shirt emblem.

Next there is the awful font choice, which might in fact be Arial. These original comics were done using Gimp, a program I do not have installed anymore so I couldn’t check what font I used. Arial is too plain a font to use. Though it’s better than something like comic sans, it doesn’t win that fight by much. Some comics can pull off using lower and uppercase mixed and I certainly experimented with it early on, but in the end I feel that using purely uppercase is easier to read. Plus, it has a more classic comic strippy feel to it.

The panel borders are basically non-existant. I’ve included the original version of the strip to show how I essentially used miniscule black lines to show the gaps between panels. A lack of separation messes with the timing of a strip and looks amateurish and sloppy.

Now, to the actual joke. I thought at the time that using Jonny Storm’s Human Torch abilities to express my frustration at the release of the Dual Shock 3 was exceedingly clever. Instead it comes across as trying to jam too much into one strip, which confuses the reader. This comic could’ve stood to lose several sentences and star a regular man or woman.

The art in the strip is very obviously from early in my drawing career. The thing is, I can’t hold it too much at fault. Well, the rendering of the man, at least. I had just begun drawing again the summer before posting this comic after giving up on art six years earlier. So, even though the eyes are irregular and the linework is very wobbly and all the same width and his mouth is way too low on his head, I was still learning the basics of cartooning. Everyone has to start somewhere and I had started three months earlier. What I can’t forgive is the sheer laziness of not drawing in a background and just finding a picture on the internet of a Best Buy interior. I’m ashamed to admit I did it quite a few times early on. It was a bad habit that I’m happy to have broken, much like a lot of these poor cartooning practices.

Below is what I would do to fix the strip, based on my years of experience.

Please learn from my mistakes and keep comic strips beautiful.