Spiffy Chaps - Webcomic

indian_boy

Hey guys.
I hope this isn't against forum rules or anything, but i just wanted to post a link to a site that 2 friends and I just got up yesterday.

www.spiffychaps.com

Its a little webcomic that we've wanted to do since 'forever' and we even have lots of old comics that will be transported here over the next week or so.

The site was designed entirely by one man, over the course of 4 weeks.
The comics, which will have daily updates, are done by all three of us, and as such, the style of humour varies etc.

The jokes are meant to by satirical, sarcastic, punny, vulgar.... anything that's possible. We have a few fans from our old blog-site, but then again, humour is all about taste.
Hope you guys like what we have so far, and keep checking out our comics as they come about.

Let us know what you think either through the 'contact us' window, or just drop a line here if you wish.

Cheers

MoP

That looks very similar to Cyanide & Happiness.

While it's cool that you've got a webcomic going, and you've obviously put a fair amount of time and effort into it, most webcomics don't tend to work very well unless they're really original or unique somehow. There are tons of rip-offs of popular comics out there, and as far as I know none of them are as good as the originals.

Couldn't you at least try to find a character drawing style and method of humour that hasn't been in use in an existing webcomic for years?

Edit: Like Wondermark!

killingpeople

Animate the comics like the header! And the text bubbles roll-overs or something, that'd be sweet. Those guys drinking joe are dope-to-the-ness... too much? Meh.

I think it looks cool. I think the second strip, SDH or whatever it was, drove the selective hearing disorder too much, when it's introduced, it seemed too contrived, like, "Your selective hearing disorder, where you hear what you want to hear, is too much for me to handle, which is to say I am annoyed by it! Hrumph-malarky-bars!" eh? But whatavar.

Oh, and navagation was lame, I guess there are only two entries so far, but a next and back, first and last links would be swell. Cheerro.

Joseph Silverman

http://www.spiffychaps.com/comics/2009-01-11-New-Home.jpg

i don't get it, please explain the joke.

killingpeople

He doubted it got worse, and so it got worse.

Mark Dygert

killingpeople wrote: »

Animate the comics like the header! And the text bubbles roll-overs or something, that'd be sweet. Those guys drinking joe are dope-to-the-ness... too much? Meh.

I agree, why not use those guys to do a comic? I don't mean to be a kill joy but get someone who can draw to do the drawing. There are enough funny people who can't draw, trying to draw webcomics already. You don't need to copy their handicap. If they can't draw, they should write jokes and let someone who can draw, do the job properly... A proper draftsman has no limitations on what they can draw and all kinds of jokes are possible.

As for this strip I also don't get it, or I think I get it and its not exactly funny. Did their house explode, did the one guy light them both on fire? Is the whole argument rendered null by a nuke? Did they suddenly realize they moved to the sun and upon realizing it, they burst into flames? The mixing of styles and lack of color isn't helping the last panel.

Wells

this isn't exactly a new gag - i'm surprised anyone is having trouble with it. Things got worse. The end.

I agree about the header - they're much more charming than the characters in the comic. Though, all three of them having a monocle kind of kills it. One should have a monocle, the others can have glasses, or a mustache. So many other ways to make them spiffy.

Good luck on your endeavor

rooster

hmm yes use those guys at the top, but mix em up like sectaurs says. maybe a cigarette holder on one?. mutton chops?. and give them some saucers for their tea, what kind of ruffians are they??

indian_boy

so we got a new comic on Spiffy Chaps
[let me know what you guys think]

crits like u guys provide helps us - too many ppl just saying 'gj' cuz we're their friends.

@MoP: cyanide and happiness is usually considered the creator of that style, but i guess its just 'stick men' isnt it? we're still experimenting with styles, so expect a variety as the site matures. Our inspiration was the creator of the "Rejected" cartoons. The artist's name slips my mind. But yea, expect a variety of styles.

@KP: haha that's the plan. at the moment we're keeping it simple, and will upgrade as we move on - exam time has arrived, but we do want to keep this commitment going. the navigation will be fixed, probably after exams or something. thanks for the pointers about the comic btw. we've removed the old ones, and might upload a huge dump of oldies later, when we've been up for a while.

@SupRore: bascially, they jinxed themselves, went from 'nice house, and pretty colours' to 'shitty sketchy drawings set on fire'. KP hit it on the head, pretty much.

@Vig: the style is still under experimentation. Those 3 will definately be used, but rarely. As for the 'quality.' We do intend on upping it, but in all honesty, we're just 3 12th graders tryna get the world some more stuff to laugh about. We want to do daily updates, with maybe one off day, and maintain school and jobs at the same time. We'll do our best to get things boosted in quality for sure though.

@Sectaurs: thanks for the luck! and yea, the header shall be modified. passed the message on to our main designer, and it should change after exams - that'd be around the 1st of Feb.

@rooster: likewise, they will be changed around once exams end around feb 1st

thanks for the crits and all guys
it truly does help us out.

just as a note, we will be switchin the style around over the next few weeks, and the next comic will employ a new style we have in the works. its simple, yet different.

as of now:
Hope you guys like the new comic

cheers!

Richard Kain

It looks like you guys know enough about Flash that you really could make this an animated comic. You don't need very much in the way of back-end to pull it off, either. You just need a way to automate the lip-syncing, so that it doesn't take too long. As long as you keep the jokes pretty simple (as they are now) it shouldn't take very long to animate these out.

I'd personally suggest using Papagayo. It's a program that makes spacing out lip-syncing pretty quick and painless. It doesn't fully rip lip-syncing for you, but it lets you drag-and-drop the words out. It also supports exporting to various text formats that would be easy to parse in Flash.

I'm all for more humor, so I fully encourage you to continue on this project. But I do have to agree with my contemporaries that your current effort is lacking in style. The animated dudes at the top have that style, and could work really well.

I well know that one of the biggest obstacles for the aspiring web artist is time. It takes a lot of time to do that many illustrations, especially if you want them to look really polished and clean. Asset recycling is the webcomic's best friend. Check out Kris Straub's work at www.starslip.com. That guy has gotten asset recycling down to an art. He keeps his art style "compartmentalized" so that he can recycle and reuse as much of it as possible.

indian_boy

@Richard: thanks for the tips and suggestions. we'll take em into serious consideration when doing the jump into animated comics - we might just do 'specials' like that. Thank you for the encouragement, and for the reference link


@ all: we currently are moving away from the old style, step by step. it is exam season here at the moment, but we're doing our best to slowly implement modular pieces for our characters to have them quick and easy, yet stylish in their own way. at the moment, we're trying some new head and body types, starting with this comic . Tonight's new comic will also implement these, and add new body types, and i believe the comic we have planned tomorrow, or possibly day after, will be more 'complete' in terms of the style we're aiming for.
each of the 3 of us are trying something a little different to keep it distinguishable.

the new comic is a one-panel one, just to see reactions to the style - of humour and art. so far, they seem okay -> good. the site got presented to the communications tech class today, and the teacher, as well as classmates, enjoyed it.

cheers guys. thanks for the support and critique etc
Spiffy Chaps - keepin' it spiffy

Jeremy Lindstrom

I tried the whole webcomic thing back in the day. I had a blast doing it. Good luck!

http://jeremylindstrom.com/hello-world/ <--games made me archive

kwakkie

Hmmm... for some reason the site repeatedly makes firefox crash. Even rebooting my pc won't fix it. I was able to see your site yesterday, liked the comics but as mentioned before, it reminds me too much of cyanide and happines. Curious to see the new direction Keep it up and good luck fellas!

ps: Im using firefox 3 with the latest upgrades, on windows XP

Microneezia

I was hoping for jokes that had something to do with uptight aristocracy types or something. Like poking fun at how people with loads of old money view the real world problems with a jaded muted cough or something. Spoken from their point of view in sincerity, but meant to be sarcastic in total, as the joke.

This kind of thing might go over really well now since everyone has lost their job? And goes with the whole spiffy chaps naming convention.

Right now I have no idea why you guys are so spiffy anyway.

Wells

yeah, the page flips out if you have flashblock for firefox. every time i try and allow the flash at the top, the page reloads, flash back to blocked. rinse, repeat

indian_boy

hey again!

thanks for the bug report there

i told our designer about it. we figured it was a plugin, and i guess sectaurs got it. we'll see what we can do to circumnavigate it
are u still able to see the comics / nav etc? is it just the banner missing? or the whole site?


@Microneezia : hehe those jokes are inbound. we have a few political / controversial style comics comming up, including wat youtube's doing atm and such. and now that we got a 'request' for it of sorts, we'll make it come sooner


as of now:

Spiffy Chaps' New Comic has adopted a _fully_ different style. hope u guys like the new one better!

lemme know what you guys think
and thanks a bunch for all the support

cheers!

Joseph Silverman

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comic_timing

Rhinokey

while i'm not all that hip on the art yet, its no big deal, go back and look at the first penny-arcade if you do one of these a week, or 2 a week eventualy the art will evolve, unless you just don't have "it" and in that case you aint goina push out a great style over nite.

indian_boy

Over time, we are going to be evolving the art style, and branching off into many - including animated for example. We want to maintain a 1-comic-per-day promise that we'd made to fans of our old wordpress blog. As such, 2 things are happening at once, but they're working at a good pace - or at least we think so.

We're still to see wat the next step in this evolutionary process is, but one things for sure:
we have a new update and also one from last night.

let us know what you think!
cheers

rooster

im still a little confused about the spiffy part.. it seems like the comic doesnt really do what it says on the tin. keep at it though, I'm sure you'll find a groove

ElysiumGX

In my personal opinion, it's not funny.

The art = terrible
The writing = terrible
The strip = terrible + terrible = terrible.

I enjoy comics that use a simplistic visual style, when the writing is exceptionally clever.
http://xkcd.com/

On the flip side, I enjoy well developed artistic style even if the strip must often be viewed within the context of popular events that appeal to a specific culture in order to be funny. Penny-Arcade, obviously.

And my favorite shows great artistic skill, mixed with clever writing, as a commentary on bigger issues in society such as sex, politics, drugs, religion, etc., and published on a daily basis.
http://www.sinfest.net/

With comics like Cyanide and Happiness, everyone wants to start a webcomic. I mean, I do. You really don't need any content. Just a few stick figures, and OMG I'M BLEEDING HARD!!!

So far, that's all you (three guys) have come up with. No timing, no punchlines, no commentary, no observational humor.

Spiffy Chaps is a good title for a comic. And when I saw the noble gentlemen on the title banner (who appear very similar to Little Gamers), I expected something good...and relevant. The strip entirely disappoints.

Since the title and banner image has had the most thought put into it. Use it, otherwise it's false advertisement. I expected to see a strip about privileged old-world noble gentlemen of the aristocracy discussing the matters of the modern technological world, with insightful yet comical writing "I say, old bean", and witty punchlines. But, I see another pointless web comic attempt, with as much tact as a school assignment.

Decide on your style, Research your conent and demographic. Then create the strip.

EarthQuake

yeah, this is pretty terrible. I dont know anything about writing comics, so this is really all i can say. I just dont find it funny at all.

Justin Meisse

Here is something I came up with real quick, hence the shitty art:


I also considered having him reveal his latest invention, the steam powered tea kettle.

indian_boy

thanks to all for the constructive crits / advice / suggestions.

as each post from you guys comes about, we get a better idea of what you guys are expecting.
currently, our comics are aimed - i suppose - at school goers. we hear the name 'spiffy chaps' get thrown about a lot in school, that too in a good light.

that market having been covered, we'll move on to a different one, and so on and so forth till we have a bit of 'everything.'

currently we're switching over to covering 'current' events and 'historical' events etc. and we'll soon move on to a further spiffi-ffication of the strips.

our 'subject matter' has taken a turn this week, starting with today's comic.

thanks, once again, for all the tips.
we're taking all ur comments seriously, and doing our best to get the changes to coincide with our own plans.

hopefully, over the next few weeks, Spiffy Chaps will appeal to more of you

cheers guys!

indian_boy

hey there guys

just postin another update here.

Spiffy Chaps has uploaded a new comic, as always, and along with that, we have uploaded _all_ our old comics from the wordpress beta site. You can check out the old ones through the archive, of course, all dated correctly etc.

The comedy is taking a different route for each strip this week, and once again, your feedback is truly appreciated.

cheers guys
and thanks for all the support so far!

Emil Mujanovic

Justin wins this thread! HAHAHA!

-caseyjones

Steve Schulze

You really don't need to be all that amazing to have a relatively successful web comic. There are plenty of worse ones out there than yours. You're pitching to a bunch of pretentious arty toffs here. I think you'll find if you were to take your comic in to the wilds you'd get a lot more positive feedback. Granted it'd be entirely made up of collections of awkward arrangements of acronyms, profanities and illegible drivel.

Keep at it mate. Everyone's gotta start somewhere

For what it's worth, I rather like the can-opener people.

Mark Dygert

Justin_Meisse wrote: »

Here is something I came up with real quick, hence the shitty art:


I also considered having him reveal his latest invention, the steam powered tea kettle.

Fixed...
[ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dG9yUJmiLwY[/ame]

Getting back on track...
I like the new style a lot better then the bowling ball sitting on a peg. Now that the style is working you guys should work on the acting, with a few simple edits you can punch up the humor a bit. Their performances are very stiff and wooden, which robs some of the humor and life from the characters.

So instead of this you can do something like this... in just about the same amount of time.

Jeremy Lindstrom

Here's a little lesson I learned from doing my own little webcomic for a few months, I can tell ya first off you can't and will not be able to please everyone, just do what you want to do for yourself that makes you happy and is fun for you.

You won't have thousands upon thousands of fans at the start, that takes time and patience and a good history of great back content. The market is so flooded with webcomics though, that you'll need to find something new and fresh to attract those visitors.


seriously, I wish you luck I really enjoyed doing mine as well, but we don't need a daily bump when you update too do we?

indian_boy

thanks to all you guys for the crits, suggestions, and support.

we're going to try and implement more of the things uve suggested, such as 'acting' etc.

@dekard: the 'daily bump' is over kill indeed. i was treating the site like a bit of a WiP, so i suppose i was looking for as many suggestions for the team as i could garner, and wanted to make sure that i knew what the boards felt about it.

the daily bump will stop
i guess its time to see what momentum we've garnered from the boards here, and i might do a weekly / bimonthly post just to get some more exposure, and some newer opinions etc

thank you all for the support.

before parting though, i'll just provide a link to the site to those who open page 2 before page 1

Spiffy Chaps

once again, thanks for the support guys.

indian_boy

hey guys
been a while since i last posted here, and i decided id wait till a 'good' reason

and i think we - the site - finally hit a nice milestone that i'd like to share:

http://www.spiffychaps.com/2009/03/01/think-different/

starting from the above comic ^, there seems to have been a sudden spike in our hits.
we must be doing something right, cuz the first week of march had surpassed the entire month of february.

we also have one of our first, semi-animated comic there.
finally, Spiffy Chaps recently teamed up with Fmylife, and them and us are going to collaborate in the near future

just felt like sharing with polycount!

cheers guys

hope you like the comics.

PS: do check out the february archives, if you wish.
and, of course, the latest can be found at www.spiffychaps.com itself.

Snowfly

Heh that's pretty good

Jeremy Lindstrom

Yup, you can do racist.