What exactly makes comic art good? That’s pretty much in the eyes of the beholder so to speak. Art is very subjective, it all depends on what the reader likes.
Zorphbert and Fred uses a clean writing / font style, excellent perspectives and non-linear lines. You know exactly what the frame is, who is in it and what the events are that are taking place. The underlying principal of looking at comic art is whether or not you can understand the vision in which the artist is trying to portray in their scene to the audience.
Subjective or not there is always going to be some standards and considerations based on the genre of the comic itself. With Zorphbert and Fred you know the comic is ‘cartoony’ in feel so you’re expecting the quality to have a solid base in that genre to work from. In that case Dawn really does a great job in making the art work for the reader and story.
What exactly is it about the genre that compels us to read the comic? In the example of No Need For Bushido; The reader has no choice but to acknowledge the craftsmanship that Alex Kolesar and Joe Kovell put into their work. The art itself draws you into the story by working exactly in the genre that it is.
Let’s change the thought for a second. Art being subjective is a very loose term indeed, saying art is truly subjective means that there is not a ‘base’ in which to actually judge from. There is, that which is the experience of reading all of the previous incarnations of art that came before it viewed by the reader.
Most of our past experiences of viewing comic art came from watching cartoons on the television and reading the sunday newspaper funnies, then after that, print comics.
It’s pretty safe to say that what we like in comic art is derived by their environment more so then by whether the art is actually good or not by a trained professional who studied.
So where does that leave us when trying to judge good art? This question is what we really need to be asking. Do we understand the comic art by someone who has the experience in the field or by the majority?
Consensus is the key. What the majority feels about the comic art. A single individual in the comic art community can be jaded by inbred thoughts from predecessors to what could be considered good or not. What do you think, as an individual believe to be the break-through art that is best overall in its genre? Would it be the break-through non-defined in a specific genre visuals or the ones that the general populace will acknowledge and be familiar with?
When we base a judgment on the consensus then we can conjecture that it would be what the majority of viewers considers to be good our own personal viewpoints would then be withheld for the majority. There-in lies the problem which comes back to haunt the entirety of using consensus to judge the quality of the comic art. Art will still be in your eyes what you personally like, not the consensus.
So what kind of conclusion can we really come to when trying to decide if the art of a comic is good?
Through our individual experiences and backgrounds by our own perceptions and viewpoints to what we by ourselves view to be good. Your own subjective view.
So where do we draw the exact line on what would be good or not? These are the guidelines to which I recommend using that can be drawn from the consensus of thinking of what good art is.
Is the art clean enough to be able to understand what the shapes and objects in the scene are?
Does the art denote depth, perspective and lighting to work with the scene either with b&w with shading or color?
Do characters faces denote the emotions and feeling of the scene to match the dialogue?
Are objects and characters proportionate?
Is the art *too busy* with a multitude of extra art that really doesn’t need to be there to carry the scene?
Does the color or black & white blend well and fit together?
Does it look like the artist put an effort in their work, if it looks cut and paste or not.
- Philip M. Hofer (Frumph)
There are some beautifully inked comics out there that I follow where every frame is almost gallery quality, but personally I prefer to read a comic (web based or otherwise) with a simpler, cleaner style.
I think that art is subjective, but it is very apparent when it’s too busy, cut & pasted, disproportionate (not stylistically), etc., and most opinions would be similar on what is and isn’t good art based on things like these.
My main concern when considering art in webcomics is whether or not the art *fits* the comic. I think a comic like Cyanide and Happiness, though they are just stick figures, has an art style that fits the subject matter and humor, much more than “comic-book characters” drawn exceptionally well would. Similarly, I think a comic like Shadowgirls wouldn’t work well at all with stick figures. So, the art in Cyanide and Happiness isn’t *better* than the art in Shadowgirls, but it is more appropriate for their comic. Same can be said for many comics where the art isn’t fine-tuned and polished. I always use the example of The Far Side, by Gary Larson. Pretty much any art style other than his pudgy, doofus-looking line-drawn characters would only take away from the comic.
I think there are several (if not a lot of) webcomics that try to survive on art alone, and while they’re pretty to look at, I don’t keep an interest much in those. That’s just me, though. I like the whole package.
I read a lot of differently created webcomics online, even those that are just crude pencil sketches (like mine), but more often it’s the stick figures like Cyanide and Happiness that draw me in. The simplicity. I love goofy characters and anthro characters too, like Housepets! There’s also giving voice to pets only in their world, like Mows does.
But seeing as how I slack off on my art form about 90% of the time (that 10% is usually a moment of artistic clarity as a fluke), I tend not to be too judgmental about other people’s art. Sure the “pros” have an excellent presentation and vision, and I admire that much. But, I don’t do this as my source of income and therefore don’t work too hard on it. That, and I can’t draw.
I don’t try to survive on the art alone. I survive on me being odd.
More a nice way of putting I don’t like it and can see how it can be interpreted as artistic in a classic sense of the word and not based on the comic arts, dependent on the style of the art for whatever mood the scenes are in, being that its all eclectic now anyways.
On the other hand you get something like Yu+Me which deliberately changes art styles to fit the different settings it moves into.
“Are objects and characters proportionate?”
Thus why I refer to my work as Hack..haha
Remember, comics are not art (meaning paintings, drawings, etc.) and it´s not literature…it´s a combination of both things. Art + Literature= Comics.
So, to make a good comic, you must depend on art…and words.
Oh Frumph, you are into slippery slidey territory when you try to define What Art Is. That’s the oldest stupidest question after Does God Exist?
Is the art clean? What about scratchy, bloppy, scribbly artwork? Some of which has appeared in venerable New Yorker magazine pages?
Regarding depth, perspective and lighting : what about flat 2-d images?
emotions and feeling to match the dialogue? therein is the crux of communicating with images. I’ll agree with you on this one point.
objects and characters proportionate? Irrelevant if your aim is to communicate emotion or story line.
*too busy* – you mean like Where’s Waldo? Or R. Crumb? or Rube Goldberg? Or even ( my favorite) Winsor McCay?
color or black & white blend well and fit together? huh? by what standards?
demonstrated effort? Like early Trudeau, or maybe Jules Feiffer spare sketches? How do you judge effort? I suspect you mean a professional finished look? but comics evolve and what starts as quite sketchy may become beautifully rendered when drawn hundreds of times. to judge as good or bad when still in the development period is to condemn a potentially great cartoon.
What I don’t see in your list is nix of the tired cliche either in text or image, sometimes known as the Garfield Syndrome. Also simply un-funny comics bite. Of course that’s subjective too. What about the endless look-alike Manga Manga Manga? That would be Speed Racer Syndrome.
In sum, I believe that denoting comics as Good or Bad is folly. The brilliance of ComicPress is that any goofball who wants to draw can find his/her audience. I’m regularly addicted to reading some cartoon and when they get that much of my attention I link them on my ComicPress site. Other cartoonist referrals have led me to some of my favorite artists. And if you want a REAL thrill, here’s a True False quiz to find out if you are a Fine Artist or an Illustrator. http://www.cynxing.com/Gallery/PopQuiz.html
Great subject! I think the art itself has to function as a medium for delivery – if you’re trying to convey emotion then you need a high level of skill to convey anything more subtle than ‘ANGRY’ and happy. If you’re drawing a gag comic then it probably doesn’t matter if you have two beautifully rendered people talking about the internet, or two stick figures.
The follow on question is – can a webcomic ever be ‘art’ in the classical sense?:
http://sketchcountry.com/2009/12/the-post-post-post-modernist/
I’m not sure i quite follow what this means
But I really [appreciate] the work and effort that some art like red moon rising does “where it’s taken with the true emphasis of classical interpretation of what art is.”
Maybe you could clear up exactly what it is you mean here? Do you mean that the look of RMR is more ‘classical’ art style, as opposed to cartoon, or what?
I personally like kukuburi, shadowgirls and xylia where the colors are solid, the lineart is clean and the colors blend smooth. But I really [appreciate] the work and effort that some art like red moon rising does where it’s taken with the true emphasis of classical interpretation of what art is.
I hear that… I LOVE Yu+Me, but I have a lot of trouble following it beyond the dream sequence, waaayyy back when the comic first started. =[ All the experimentalism makes my head spin. I mean, it’s awesome n’ all, but I think it detracts attention from the actual story a wee bit. At least for me. ^^;;