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VanHeist — Bomango 66: Terms and Conditions
#hams #bomango #bomangowebcomic
Published: 2017-11-06 16:13:42 +0000 UTC; Views: 42147; Favourites: 416; Downloads: 138
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previous: next:story gallery: vanheist.deviantart.com/galler…
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So...let's get to the obvious bit right away:
For the first 65 pages of this comic, I've been going with mostly gray tones and a very limited color palette with occasional highlights and colored details (like characters' eyes, atmospheric details, etc). The primary reason for this simple color scheme was to make less work for myself in ensuring consistent updates; gray tones are simpler, faster, and the little colored highlights added some accented detail that was pretty cool.
But as some of the previous pages wedged in more color detail little by little, it was getting frustrating for me to keep ladling on various shades of gray to characters and scenes that I knew were more colorful than I was making them, and I realized that whatever time I was saving by skipping a few extra steps was negligible at best.
So there's nothing about this particular page that magically activated the Wonderful World of Color...I just decided it was time to get back in the groove.
But what do YOU, the viewers at home, think?
Oh, and WELCOME, all you new viewers and watchers and patrons, to what I believe is the first active post since the Imgur/dA front page wave of hits! You surprised the daylights out of me and startled me with a barrage of messages, but welcome!
And enjoy the return of color! (I hope)
- van
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New comic gallery here: vanheist.deviantart.com/galler…
For more art (and larger versions of the comic pages) check me out on Patreon! www.patreon.com/VanHeist
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Comments: 142
I think having it happen after Gogo's introduction works quite well.
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Do I like the color? Heck yes
Do I understand that you might need to return to B&W for speed and efficiency one day? Also yes
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Personally I think the gradual grayscale to colour works really well, in a way, when you look at it from Andy's perspective. As another commenter put it, it's like Andy's perception of his world has grown more vibrant. The lack of colour seemed to reflect his lack of interest in the world around him and how dull he thought his time here was going to be. And then Gogo drops into his life... and her spontaneity and her antics immediately bring colour and vibrance to the world around him.
It may not have been what you were going for, but honestly? I think it's a really nice touch
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Wait, hold up. What happened to Gogo's face? When did that happen?
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I get the feeling from the last few pages of Gogo's interactions with Andy, is that she's REALLY testing the water's of Andy's trust or ability to tolerate her, with her veiled threats, abrupt physical jostling, and sudden closeness on the point of becoming uncomfortable.
That to me seems like an indication of some time of "relationship or social issues" that may or may not stem from some type of abandonment. In a sense, she's testing Andy to see if he's going to put the effort to get to know her and put up with her, cause from what we can see from what we glimpse of Gogo's past, it doesn't look good, and made her NOT wear her heart on her sleeve.
So, she's testing Andy to see if such interaction is worth it, whether they have the stones to keep up with her and thus make it worthwhile.
Am I wrong?
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That's a very insightful read
Whether or not Gogo means to explore a connection or friendship with Andy (based on Pablo's recommendation), I think this is how Gogo has learned to operate with people in general; get close, intimidate, strong-arm, and get a feel for how they react when on their heels.
It's not an especially likeable social persona, but it's the behavior of someone who's been through some hardheaded experiences with people and has come away more chippier for it
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Okay, finally time to get this off my chest.
I stumbled onto this comic about a week or so ago, and I have to say that I'm very impressed. Hell, I've even been going through something of an addiction to it that's been more or less plaguing my brain for all the time I've known about it, especially with regards to Gogo herself (probably petty jealousy that I didn't come up with a character as neat as her first).
I do have one complaint, and please don't hate me for saying this, but I don't really like the concept of Gogojira. I mean, if it's here to stay, fine. I'll live, and I know it's to give mystery to what Gogo really is, but given the fact she's strong enough on her own and already has something of a tragic backstory with all the bad people she's met in her life (provided Caspian and the Luxtos are still canon, that is), having a potentially world-ending kaiju form just seems like overkill.
But that's just me. More power to those that dig it. Either way, it really surprises and excites me to see a Deviantart comic taken this seriously and with such passion. I'm very much looking forward to what happens next.
*looks at Gogo hammering around in my brain*
There! I sang your praises to your creator! Now will you please go away?!
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As a quick aside, the recent surge of viewers and new readers has left all kinds of messages that are surprisingly easy to miss...yeesh
Anyway, thanks for reading! I'm glad you enjoy (most of) it!
A very reasonable and articulate complaint, too. Given that "Gogojira" is something of a slow-burning element to the ongoing story, I can't really attempt to justify or defend the concept with a whole lot of clarity for now, but I hear your point.
Anyway, thanks again! I hope you've gotten a kick out of what's here, and that you'll enjoy what's to come
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Well I certainly didn't expect this page to be full colored! I'm not a pretty big fan of changing the style so suddenly, maybe after the transition between two chapters, or a bigger part of the story? I don't know I do think it's kinda random lol.
HOWEVER! I do think the colors looks really nice! Though I do feel like the shading was stronger in the whole grey version? I do think the contrast is not as strong as before? I don't mind much, since there is still still enough to give shape to the characters, but I think it would be a point to work a little more in futur pages.
Outside of that, this page, and comic overall is a pleasure to read! It's dynamique, things are happening like all the time, and it's pleasure to discover a little more about them! I discovered your gallery recently, read I think most of your comics, and I wanna read even more! So thank you, and congratulations for creating this serie, and making it grow that much!
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I think... The issue that I have with colour... Is that it often requires more shading to get the same impact as grayscale. That colour on gray contrast is gonna take you a lot more work to accomplish, either through impact/dynamics lines or through a fuckload more shading.
For example, this page feels rather "flat" to me, brights don't stand out much from each other and there aren't very strong darks either. Panel 2 is pretty epic tho tbh
But yeh, especially the panels where they are standing on... "nothing" like 1, 3 and the last one iiiiiit's pretty meh. The faded backgrounds in 4 and 7 are pretty well perfect to me... To ME! TO MEEEEEEeeeeeeeeeeee!
I guess what I'm saying is that highlights are great and they're harder to implement in a more saturated environment.
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I was wondering what you'd think, given previous commentary
Those are good points you bring up. I didn't quite expect the transition to full color to be seamless, and it isn't, not yet anyway. Figuring out how to gin up a better sense of depth and clarity will take some trial and error as I go forward, I think.
The limited palette I used prior to this is a good potential foundation, though, at least in determining how to proceed with using color in a smart way. Simply applying the characters' color palette might work here and there, but knowing when to enhance or deplete that will probably have a greater effect.
Thanks!
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Another one to sate my addiction
Oh no it didn't work THE CRAVINGS ARE BACK
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So this is a tough love screed/rant for VanHeist regarding artwork and Bomango.
DA is about graphic image arts. Graphical arts creators come to DA to participate in that community as well as to display their efforts. Great. However, the DA artist community appears to self-select toward stand-alone piece art and high manual effort investment in each piece. Its what graphic artists do, after all. I suggest there is a tension between what may initially draw an graphic artist to DA, the focus on graphic image
arts, and the characteristics of a successful story-teller. The former tend to meticulous image or other art perfection and skills for that achievement. The results can be very powerful – visit any art museum.
A story-teller is in a completely different game – transporting his/her audience elsewhere, elsewhen or into an interior of the human condition, or
all three simultaneously in a theater of the mind with which no physical art can compete. Oh, and since the dawn of language as well. Cave-front, tribal campfire optional. It is quite simple. Just begin with the chant “It was a dark and stormy night...” and we are gone. Wait? What? What happens next? Perhaps the story-teller uses song to set the stage with only three words - “Some enchanted evening,...” Evening? Enchantment? A love story! Oh! Oh! What happens next?
A comics story-teller uses, of course, comics art as a visual aid in conveying a story to an audience remote in space and time, beyond the range of a campfire voice. Assuming a Creator wants an audience for the stories, comics have to be published with sufficient frequency to maintain audience engagement. Pause too long and the audience drifts away from the campfire. It is no rocket science that the repeating art production cycle is inputs limited – art handwork and writing inputs are limited person-hour resources. For a sole practitioner who has a day job, highly limited. Pragmatically, as “art”, comics are different – art production investment has to be sized to the available limited inputs, published, and the next started. Beat, beat, beat.
Your history in Creator’s comments from Legacy and now a re-emergence of some comment patterns about your art suggests you think of yourself as a graphic artist who happens to tell stories. You can spiral around the details of this, that and the other of your art technique and the relative effort levels thereof. Fellow DA and other artists chime in with technical comment and critique.
This brings me to the Curse – the Curse of Great Writing. For the audience of a Cursed Creator, the story-telling, the writing, grossly dominates the other comics modalities (the “art” art, the text art) in what we care about. Consider these Legacy pieces:
http://vanheist.deviantart.com/art/superfast-jellyfish-169258340
http://vanheist.deviantart.com/art/Andrew-Fisher-the-Dragonslayer-173914183
http://vanheist.deviantart.com/art/righteous-indignation-174046749
http:/ /vanheist.deviantart.com/art/The-Winter-of-Discontent-501125969
http://vanheist.deviantart.com/art/scratch-comic-sticky-G-533407542
We do not care that there is no “art” in these pieces. We are invested in the characters as they come to life in our minds from stories past. We care that we get stories about the characters and their interaction. Full art is great, no doubt, but rough sketches, even just stick figures, are sufficient to trigger that theater of the mind great writing has constructed.
I have followed other comics having gorgeous graphic production investment but most have gone inactive or the Creator has explicitly posted that they can’t continue that level of effort. Those Creator’s choose to discontinue the story (a perfectly valid choice) rather than continue in a less time-intensive graphic style they can produce within their effort budget and day job. I follow others where the Creator clearly makes choices about how to invest limited art time in a given piece and to budget total production effort within their day life to achieve their publishing frequency goals. Their art can be very rough, sketchy and abbreviated compared to yours with many stylized production shortcuts but nonetheless they develop compelling character and story across 10+ years of consistently hitting their mark.
You, VanHeist, are Cursed. I suggest, at least for Bomango, you need to decide what you want to be when you grow up: a graphics artist endlessly fiddly and doubting about your art who happens to tell Bomango stories or a Bomango story-teller who happens to use comic art as a visual aid to transport us to islands of tropical childhood and a mid-West now haunted by a trans-dimensional fugitive with violent pursuit sure to
follow. Squeeee! So we hope. What happens next??
If the latter, I suggest you write yourself a Bomango Art Style and Production Guide that deliberately makes art tradeoffs to time-box the piece production budget well within your lifestyle and day job. For example, suppose a self-honest Guide results in very spare lineart
style with little shading. YOU STICK TO THE GUIDE to hit your publishing goal. Use labor-intensive effects only where it advances
the story, not for constant eye candy. For example, if color is labor-intensive, I see nothing in Bomango 65 or 66 where color
especially advances the story compared to greyscale. For example, in the earlier greyscale pieces, except for the night scenes where dark
shading efficiently indicates, well, nighttime, all the effort in the fantastic shading makes no difference in advancing the story. Am I saying you must or should drop the eye candy? NO. I am saying you need to be brutal about time-boxing production. In the Guide, rank the eye candy effects by labor intensity and (on average) drop, drop, drop until you can fit in your time-box every week. Publish and move on. Not perfect? Move on. Fellow artists whankering? They can go be perfect with their own OCs. Move on.
If the community wants more detail or shading or color, they can volunteer to do that if your time-box does not permit. Comics teams have that division of labor every day. My thesis is that most of your audience will accept whatever you produce, no matter how rough or plain or abbreviated to your eyes, because, you know, the Curse.
Decision hint: its the story-tellers who spawn industries, found nations and lift us up. Doubt it? Ask Stan Lee. For those of the U.S. persuasion, consider the impact of 272 words of sleight-of-hand story-telling whose anniversary we note 10 days hence.
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Not gonna lie, that was a lot to digest. But for a comment that includes "YOU ARE CURSED", it was pretty dang good
I think I've come to accept the idea that I'm a storytelling comic artist rather than just a graphic artist wondering at who he is, so that much is covered as far as self-identifying goes.
But excellent points all around.
It took me awhile to flip the color switch back to "ON" because I was indeed considering what was economical versus what I thought looked best. In truth, the amount of production time spent on gray tones and highlights turned out to be pretty close to what I estimated adding color would be.
As you indicated, the story doesn't NEED color, gray tones, or even finished art, for that matter. Ultimately, I could accomplish a lot of the same storytelling with a whole lot less, and that's sort of the question: how little can you do while still producing enjoyable work?
The baseline is that I'm a comic artist, so I'm not just writing words here. And scratch comics like the ones you linked to might capably accomplish visual storytelling, and for some, that might actually be enough--as would be plain lineart or the barest of black/white/gray tone detail.
I suppose it's a personal aesthetic regarding where I draw the line (so to speak) on what I feel is sufficient detail versus what's feasible in telling an ongoing story in a consistent way. I feel that this particular page is a good example of being able to accomplish that at the current rate, in addition to being faster than earlier pages as I become more used to the process while trying to push for improvements here and there.
Thanks for the thoughtful comment!
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A few things here:
1.) If you want to convince someone you don't know to do something, patronizing them does not work. Terms like "decide what you want to be when you grow up" come across as insulting, add nothing to your point, and alienates the person you're trying to convince.
2.) If you want someone to read and remember what you have to say online, brevity is key. Essays need to be concise and to the point, and the essay you've written here contains points that are interesting to you but are of little interest to the rest of us. Next time try to summarize what you want to say in two to three paragraphs instead of eleven. Give your audience an elevator pitch first, then see if they're engaged.
3.) Always remember advice is free. Which means no-one is ever obliged to follow it. It's up to you to convince people that it's worth following. And the way this article is written makes it very uninteresting to follow your advice. It reads as an ego piece, something that's very important to you but not for your intended reader/s.
Just remember that both persuasion and giving advice are very much art forms in their own right and need to be honed just like everything else.
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Hfar, thank you for
your temperate and considered critique, ironies and assumptions
notwithstanding. I suggest using Page Down to whisk my posts away.
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In the future I hope I won't need to. That is up to you.
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Yeah... He almost lost me on the first half of the post but the second half finally got to some good points.
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So if he's not a pet then what? a brother? a friend? a companion?
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I think you subconsciously started adding a whole "Light Of My Life" thing.
Also, Andy's nose is gonna sting. Because the little 'bead' on top of a cap like that is typically made of metal.
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Lol, I'm so used to seeing these characters in colour anyway that I barely noticed you made the switch, it feels natural this way.
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Oh. I thought you were waiting for like, about right now, for Gogo to say her name and enter into Andy's life officially before the color kicked in. I thought it was an artistic choice AND I DIDN'T KNOW THAT WASN'T THE INTENTION UNTIL I READ YOUR COMMENT JUST NOW.
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I think this is fitting, how Gogo's introduction of pizzazz most extreme in the previous comic led to this explosion of color in this culminating scene of Andy greeting both Gogo and Pablo for the first time.
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Absolutely fantastic. I would sugest a little change os strip nº2. Just add over Andy "CRIT +9999 dmg" or something.
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Never insult Tiny Pablo. Pablo will kick your teeth in.
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"FOR NOW"
somewhere in the background horses whinny and a lone wolf howls
shivers are cutting a rug on Andy's spine
...
also he wonders if she's single
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Mmmhmmm! Noice indeed! Quite a delight to read so far, and a most interesting lead in for sure. I look forward to seeing more of what I'm fairly certain will be a twisty road ahead.
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If the colors aren't too much of a burden, go for them, I like my Bomango in technicolor
I suppose that the trick is to not overdo them to save energy and time
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So Pablo has been with Gogo since the beginning? No. Never a pet. But maybe a guide?
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A guide in The Way of the Hams?
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What we all need in our lives. Hams is the path of Wisdom.
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I think it actually works narratively, kinda. The B&W stuff was Prologue-shaped or something, and now we have the meat of the story.
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the accents only colour is a viable approach I've seen used to great effect before (Namesake Comic, EG) and you do it very well. On the other hand, you are so *good* with colour that more colour is always welcome. Whatever works best for you, I'm sure we'll all enjoy it either way.
There's also some (unintentionally) delightful symbolism in the advent of full-colour corresponding with Gogo's entrance into his life, you could totally pull off pretending it was deliberate.
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Well I can't pull it off NOW...
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You know, I am amazed it took this series this long for someone to use a hat as a weapon.
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Is Andy ever going to make the mistake of asking about the burnt looking part of her face?
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It's gotta come up eventually, right?
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will it lead to him hiding in a field of bones from a monster Gogo?
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I call Bull-Roar! You pulled a Plesantville, even if you didn't know it. The meeting (see full introduction) of the MCs and NOW we're back to full color? Yeah pull the other one. XD Great work, as always. Keep up the pace. *cracks zee whip* Lol.
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Damn that cap looks like it hurt. It even threw him down. I fear pablo more than gogo now.
Just look at him. He's like "say pet one more time, and I swear, I'll make you choke on that f**king cap"
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i love it. but i also want it to be whatever will make you happy, not burn you out, and produce more of gogoXbear lovings.
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Hey Imgur people, i'd highly recommend going back and viewing rob's older works including the original bomango. The continuity and story line is fuckin swiss cheese but it's awesome none the less if you start from the beginning. Here's the first post in the actual story line i could find.....
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