decompressed-author
Decompressed Author
I make a webcomic called Decompressed and sometimes I say various words too.
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I don't usually blog much, but this had me thinking a lot when someone sent me it, and I'm hoping it'll be seen by webcomickers and by at least a few people who want that old sense of community you could get in webcomics from the aughts and early 10s.
I have a decently strong community of people who wanted to find others who were interested in the webcomic I was making, without the webcomic itself being super-popular. Weirdly enough, it's by taking the strangest possible approach to publishing my webcomic: By primarily publishing it and its supporting materials Discord-first, anyone who wanted to see the latest pieces would be suddenly aware of the discussion channels elsewhere, and then, by that process, be able to participate in them.
It takes some doing, and it's a little chaotic to publish that way. But if you have a good hook, it works, and by the end of it, you can have a fun little community that like to chat with each other purely on the merits of them all liking your work. If you want to bring back the sense of community from forums and such, I pretty strongly recommend that.
Besides that, though, the people in this thread are completely correct. The algorithm-driven, feed-focused ecosystem has destroyed that moment in time. Not just for webcomics, the internet at large was also affected, but it feels like it affected webcomics in an especially visible way. Feels as though by the time the current generation of webcomic creators reached mental and artistic maturity, the ecosystem that had shaped it had been annihilated by venture capitalism and cynical hustle-culture. It's unfair.
Maybe a market crash will clean this all up someday. Or maybe this era's algorithm-driven feeds of webcomics with names like "I (The Assassin) Was Reincarnated As The Noble And Also I Can Unlock Every Skill?!" and "Twenty Girlfriends Per Hour" is essentially equivalent to the older era of equally cynical gamer-couch webcomics and megaman-and-sonic-edit sprite comics. Maybe there's some hidden community to them I'm unfamiliar with, all hosted exclusively on apps with names like "Chatimo Fandoms".
I smell a lot of money involved, though. More than is needed for a webcomic creator to pay rent, and more than is good for any community to be influenced by. Yet I don't see many rich webcomic artists. More money, yet poorer artists? It can't be a better situation for a community.
In your view/experience. is the rate of "incompleteness" among webcomics more or less the nature of online personal projects as a whole? Or is there something specific to webcomics like laboriousness, audience expectations, relative medium infancy or whatnot?
well for one thing webcomics has changed significantly in the last ten years. it used to have a much lower barrier for entry, just get a smackjeeves account or set up a website with a wordpress plugin. starting a webcomic when i started my webcomic vs starting a webcomic now are totally different experiences.
so i can only speak to people who started their webcomics roughly ten years ago. and roughly ten years ago a lot of us were a whole lot younger with a lot more time and energy to spend on a comic for free. this part is probably still somewhat true for new artists.
but then you get older. your ideas change. your skill develops and the old stuff isn't as good. or you don't have as much time, you got a day job. unless you're one of like five people on earth your webcomic is not paying your rent. you need to make money. your shoulder hurts. you're 30 now. you're struggling to make updates on time between whatever else makes you happy and what else you need to do to live. you wrote this story when you were 21, you don't relate to it anymore, you have different ideas, you've grown up, your audience has noticeably dropped off from the peak, social media managing is hard, you have to go to work, you're so tired, all the time.
it's a lot of things.
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Fanart. Cin, from a webcomic called Vegabond. I don't know how many people are currently reading it, but I think it should be a higher number than that one.
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Rethinking Decompressed Spaces
I’m not very good at environments, and I’d like to get much better. But I’m even worse at isometric ones, and while I’d love to get better at environments in general, I don’t think I want to develop that type in particular. With that in mind, now that a second Decompressed will be releasing soon, I've now got an opportunity to try out new styles. I've also got an opportunity to cut costs on time, effort, and skill.
Now that I know a bit more about what I can do, I can shift my methods to produce better backgrounds with better composition and better demands on my time. Sierra and Lucasarts games have always been a clear and present influence over the genre I'm working with, but through some study of their techniques, and infusing it with some study of common stick-animation environmental techniques, I'm getting a better handle on things. The isometric look is decent for a highly gamified story about houses, but there's a reason it's a poor fit for others.
There's not a lot that I can show off immediately, but so far progress is going well. Have a small sampler at least.
Whatever way things develop, Decompressed's new story will need to feel more cramped, more condensed, more thoughtful. This gives me space to annotate the environment, as well as a lack of space to emphasize the clutter and run-down nature of the locale. It may not be the technique I finally go with, but it's worth exploring.
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Decompressed Will Return
During the post-Nukeops hiatus and vacationposting on my Discord, I’ve been working on future content for Decompressed. The sequel series, Galaxy’s Greatest Detective, needs to have a lot more consistent characterization and substantial pre-production work. It’s got to be a mystery, after all, and that means much of it should be known ahead of time. But I can’t show something like that! I should leave that to be discovered naturally.
This isn’t just about writing more of the plot ahead though. I’ve also been producing animation and art tests, and working with my artist team to make more background characters. I think I should maybe make a habit of posting samplers.
All designs are only tests and concepts, and are subject to change, of course.
You hear “Galaxy’s Greatest Detective”, you probably expect a hardboiled, noirish, monologuing type of guy should hit center-stage, limelight and all. Debtor No. 406857, a private investigator given the codename “Rogers” by his generous Security Chief, would rather not after all these many years, but it’s not his choice. His voice will narrate this story, and guide the investigation through more intuitive, less thoughtful spaces.
Something like this needs witty but brief monologue. That means I need to explore more ways of writing if I’m going to avoid making him a one-note joke. He also needs to have some ideological fire burning in there. Writing Nukeops showed me how much people appreciate that, and I don’t intend to have Rogers succumb to the middle-school nihilism of certain noir investigator caricatures. Like Red Dwarf or the Captain, he’s got a certain current feeling in his gut, refined into an ideology primed for grim elaboration.
Enough of that, though, more funny images.
Debtor No. 438106, a young forensic technician weighed down by more tasks than she’s supposed to take on, has been bequeathed the nickname “Friz” by a generous Security Chief. For various reasons, she finds herself Rogers’ partner on this unique case, and directs the investigation in its less intuitive and more thoughtful spaces.
Friz has been doing detective work since early childhood, as soon as she could speak, becoming the star of plenty of fiction serials. But a five-year-old Pet Detective pulling all-nighters to find lost cats and a fifteen-year-old cryptid-disproving detective have grown into a twenty-something burnout case. Her childhood dream of becoming the galaxy’s greatest detective is dim and distant now. Friz’s inner struggles are embodied by her Detective Aspects, mental voices of the four types of talent a true detective should have. The Aspects are also the sleeve I can wear a clear inspiration on, and the release valve for certain inevitable types of posting in my #commands channel.
That’s all for now. Hopefully I can keep up some development posts as I continue revving up the engine. See you all soon.
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When I was stalling out on original Decompressed, I partially crafted this segment for a fight that was going to occur. I rather liked it. I sadly can’t really achieve these results in a reasonable timeframe for new Decompressed, but I still think fondly about this type of work.
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Collaboration with a friend of mine. She did the static art, I added motion and VFX. A redesign of Priscilla from Dark Souls, in something more royal, with some experimental VFX inspired more by other magic types in the canon. I’m unhappy with the hair, which is really hard to animate, and thus wound up being static.
Wish I could credit my friend by name, but she refuses to put art online herself, so credit goes to her without links.
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Overwatch Uprising is good update. Here’s a Trooper to liberate your dashboard. Null Sector did nothing wrong.
Tried a different style. I’m starting to feel better about sprite animation than I did before. Pixels still make me nervous.
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Small Biped. They are fresh off the assembly line.
Been playing lots of NieR:Automata. It’s a phenomenal game and I am phenomenally bad at it. Made this while thinking of a very good friend.
Might animate walk cycles and stuff for this later.
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I see you.
Someone requested an animation of an eldritch-style eye opening in space, for something they were making in Space Station 13. So I made this in about thirty minutes.
I’m trying to get more into real spritework instead of the silly nonsense I usually work with. It’s a little strange.
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Warmup animations. Going to get back into animating Decompressed.
Maybe I’ll find a good use for these someday.
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