Annotated 17-11
Oak’f here had a storyline we never picked up; named for Georgia O’Keeffe (and originally named “Jor’ja”), she was outlined as “an elder who always wanted to be a painter in a society which views art as a doomed attempt to improve upon nature,” so you can probably guess what that scroll is that she’s holding tensely and then rolling back up once Naror’Nj makes his appearance. Her seeming condemnation of human painting is a front, masking her curiosity.
Phil didn’t quite buy the idea that wood elves wouldn’t have art. In retrospect, I partly agree: that hall they’re standing in is definitely art. But rich architectural imagination doesn’t mean they have to appreciate 2-D representation via paints. There are and have been Terran cultures that likewise haven’t seen the point.
*TENSE, RESTRAINED SIGH*… Okay, you guys tell me if the use of off-panel voices in this scene and the scene with Kon’Kr’s mob seem especially confusing or off-putting. This would be neither the first nor the second nor the third time Phil and I argued over whether or not we should ever, ever employ a device I considered simply a part of the comics vocabulary.
It took a couple reads to firmly establish who’s saying what.
I get what the panel is trying to convey, but it was a bit confusing at first.
In this case, a little. Not really established in my mind who GD is speaking to.
I’m not sure what Phil’s issue would be with this. I actually like the ‘off panel’ voices, as it gives a chance to see how a person not involved in the conversation is reacting to it.
I think it was pretty clear, Gravedust starts speaking in the first panel and it’s obvious who he’s speaking to, which means the back and forth in the next panel pretty obvious, to me at least. Not sure if I had issues the first time around.
I was a little confused initially by it in 17-9; at first I thought “Those humans look… different” was supposed to be Kon’kr’s internal thoughts, but on closer examination I realized that wasn’t the case. In this strip, I don’t think it’s confusing at all. Obviously I’m wrong, because two previous commenters have stated that they *were* confused by it, but I fail to see why. It’s clearly a continuation of the conversation from the previous panel, so we already know who the speakers are.
Doesn’t confuse me in the slightest.
On the other hand, your use of th’ alternate spellings for characters like Bandit has always, since the beginning of Faans, totally failed to convey the intended ‘voice’ to me.
That’s never been a problem for me.
I’ve always preferred, when text is broken up and no one pictured is speaking, to either get a bubble filled or outlined with the speaker’s “color” or a stylized typeface to make it easier to keep track of who is speaking – or, more game-like, with an attached portrait or emoji-caricature of the speaker’s face.
For me, this isn’t a question of “whether”, but “how”. In my opinion, comics are a visual medium, and should take full advantage of that fact – where a novel has to rely on narration or established phrasing, or on the reader to mentally keep track of who was speaking, whenever quotes are presented with no leading or trailing narration whatsoever in a dialogue and the speaker’s words carry all the emotion.
But I suppose there’s such a thing as the character of a work, and every one is a little different. This methodology doesn’t translate well to darker, grittier, more stylized works, where even the style of the text balloon contributes to the comic’s character. YMMV, as they say.
Seemed fairly clear and flowing to me. First panel establishes a conversation between three persons. Second rather easily identifies speakers as Gravedust and Oak’fas it leads into the third as Syr’nj offshoots a branch to acknowledge her father.
+1. I actually prefer the off panel speakers, it sends much more efficient and it gives the sense that Naror’Nj is just kind of glowering at them silently as they speak.
I don’t find these panels, nor the past pages you linked to, confusing at all — with the exception of Chapter 4. Those jump cuts in that chapter were quite confusing (as discussed then), though that may be due to the art as much as anything. Likewise, your use of ellipses and other conventions seem quite normal. But I admit that every reader may be interpreting these conventions differently, especially when it comes to punctuation. There are many punctuation habits that have become widespread that I simply find maddening because I was taught they are plainly incorrect (for example, the rampant use of semicolons where colons or perhaps commas are appropriate), but to other readers they may simply feel natural. Conversely, Phil’s “inner voice” obviously interpreted ellipses differently than you or I.
I actually enjoyed it. The only difference I maybe would have made is maybe sometimes giving some help knowing who is saying what (colors, different outlines, or something) but this page was pretty easy to figure out who was saying what.
I didn’t find it confusing.
If you’re worried about it being confusing there are several techniques I’ve seen to help. A different font or colour for each speaker would help it be obvious or even a caricature or symbol of who’s speaking attached to the speech bubble.
I’m a bit on both sides.
In this case I was not confused at all but realized immediately who was speaking, and likes the off-panel format.
On the page with Konk’Kr I misunderstood the speach bubbles and was a bit confused.
And from the comments here I ser others with exact opposite experiences.
It seems it’s no wonder you and Phil could keep discussing this, it can easily go either way.
I have to stop commenting using my phone. I keep messing up my spelling like this.
“Are you friends with humans?” “I have human friends.” is a perfect exchange.
FWIW, I wasn’t confused by the off panel discussion at all. It’s clearly a continuation of the conversation had in the last panel, and I appreciated Naror’Nj looking on in disapproval while it took place.
I was confused until Syr’s last line, which snapped things into place.
The first bit could be taken as either positive or negative, so it didn’t help to think ‘which part of the conversation could this most likely be attached to’, since…it could work for either.
Given the conversation on the previous panel, the first two bubbles are pretty clear to me to be Gravedust then Oak’f, and while on the first reading of the page now I wasn’t certain of the third bubble it became pretty clear that Oak’f’s bubble would have been asking Gravedust thus the third would have to be Gravedust. More or less seems clear, I just am tired from waking up as I read
Hmm. To me, the first bubble seems more to be Syr, because of the last line – that, to me, doesn’t seem to make any sense coming from anyone in this conversation but Syr.
See I read it as Gravedust continuing his point. Notably, because I don’t think Syr would invoke the gods at all.
Further thought – it’s a testament to the skill that you, Phil, Erica and John wield that the uses of potentially complicating techniques (like the off-panel discussion here or the smash-cuts discussed on the first linked page) result in confusion as rarely as they do.
Sometimes a character’s personality or speech patterns are enough, but Ive seen some comics employ colored dialog bubbles or even put chibi faces of the people speaking in the bubble.
I think off panel voices are fine if it is clear, or made clear, who the dialog belongs to.
I’ve often seen that off-panel voices are indicated by little faces, abbreviations of the speaker’s name, or color-coding the speech bubbles to keep them identifiable.
I, also, consider off-panel speakers an unobjectionable, unremarkable part of the comic-ing tool-set. I also felt basically no confusion over who was speaking here or there. Admittedly, some additional clues might reduce friction further. A teeny line of speech bubble going off panel from Gravy’s in the first panel to connect it to the one in the second panel, or something, some distortion of the bubble’s shape, or an em dash or something to indicate he’s continuing in the next one, since it is a natural assumption that a new speech bubble represents a new speaker. I understand where Phil might be coming from with the idea that some devices can take a reader out of the story, but ultimately I think things like pointer balloons or little faces on floating speech bubbles and other Scott McCloudish devices are quickly just picked up in the periphery of the reader’s awareness.
No confusion here.
I also think it makes perfect sense that a culture wouldn’t see the point of nature paintings. Especially when they’re surrounded by nature all day every day. Why would they want to look at an imperfect reproduction that only resembles the original when viewed from a certain angle?
I don’t think this means that the wood elves don’t have 2D art, though. The full body tattoos certainly count as such.
I find it interesting that Gravedust speaks of painting being an imitation of the work of the Gods (seems he’s read Plato!) and then repeats “Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.” Which is… exactly what Arkerra is. And created by an imitation God… and also a webcomic, arguably a modern form of painting…
I think I’m disappearing into my own omphalos here.
Didn’t bother me a bit. I can see it being clumsy if the context doesn’t adequately convey who is speaking. That isn’t the case here.
I think a thread got lost with Oak’f, because you describe her as “rolling back up” the scroll in panel 3, and that is independently what it looks like, but it’s never unrolled even partly; in panel 1 it’s completely rolled.
Late, but I was fine with it as well. Maybe due to reading comics since I was a little kid? *shrug*
As someone who reads a lot of comics… Yeah, that’s literally comic literacy there. Some peoples mileage might vary but if they read any amount of comics it will happen eventually. And should. It helps set up shots and sometimes even contrasts with dialogue and pictures that are very important to narratives. It also can be just nice to do, allowing you to have a page with silent individuals but keep a conversation you feel important going, as it is here.