LiA 66 - The Monkey Business

[Bear]

http://www.lifeinaggro.com/Archives/lia20110902.png

Pie and I enjoyed this one quite a bit, and I'm pretty happy with the way it turned out. Though we thought the joke was pretty funny to us, we were surprised we weren't able to get featured with this one, which made me really question our formatting. As the "reception" thread shows, I'm not without my own worries and doubts, but I think that it's good to be able to question and experiment to see how well things fit together.

In the end, this comic made me decide that we should try breaking long form (5 rows, 9-13 panels) in favor of a "mid-form" (2 rows, 4-6 panels) to try experimenting with more frequent updates. Our goal is to keep the comics self-contained, but perhaps create mini-arcs to flesh out stories, as if we took this weeks comic and split the first 2-rows from the bottom 3 and posted them separately.

My reasoning for that is so we can see if the jokes, when separated, have more of an impact and stand out more. Also, if we were to do 3 a week in incriments, it would give us more of a reason to continue the story of Momohime's clothes or even the story of the monkey in other smaller comics, whereas now we would just have put the whole theme to bed. We figured that if we thought the experiment didn't work well, we could always return to long form.

Even with the color flatting I thought that visually the balance and look came out looking nice, and we experimented with overall line coloring to give the comic a more soft and warm look to it, which I'm happy with the result of. It makes it nice not having any straight black line work for the foreground because it helps the balloons, action lines and frame lines stand out more.

Anyways, hope you all enjoyed. Let us know if you have any comments! =)

[RollCasket]

Well not like you can't still bring the monkey back in a later comic. I think I commented on this comic in the reception thread though I don't remember what I said other than "yay Muramasa" basically lol. Though I do find it funny as a whole, unlike some of the other longer ones this one does feel almost like two comics.

Like you said if you cut after the first two rows you could post the other as another part. Heck, with one like that you could even have brought it in after another comic or two. Then maybe again later he'd be hitting on some girl while wearing HIS clothes. Which you can still do, like at the end of some comic, in the last panel have the monkey pullin some other girl away, which you can stop at there cause we can assume what will happen. OH, and THEN after that, or maybe after one more monkey appearance, he leads someone on but then they take all of the monkey's stuff once people are expecting it.

This is also in line with what I was talkin about sometime back with recurring characters and such. You can even take simple side characters and use them again in other ways, or the same ways with different effects lol.

[Bear]

Yeah, Pie had a good idea on how to continue this strip and we just finished the script for it, so you can expect more Muramasa on Wednesday. Overall, Pie and I are excited by the change and we're eager to experiment with things. The long form gave a very definitive closure after each one, but having smaller updated like this is really opening up possibilities in how we can make continuations like you said Roll.

We will be relying on everyone's feedback to let us know how they like the experimentation, so make sure to let your voices be heard. =)

[RollCasket]

...hmmm...I tried to let my voice be heard but all I got were weird looks from people =( guess I just have to rely on this text thing...

Sorry, that was bad, my only excuse is that I'm bored at work and posting on my iPhone =P In any case, I think I like recurring jokes/characters/themes more than most, which is why I always suggest it, lol. I mean come on, pockchop was funny =P