Goblins Colour A Bad Move?

[Piratecat]

I prefer b&w. The color ones are much slower to load for some reason, and I actually like the style of the B&W comics more. Funny site!

 

[reveal]

I don't care whether it's B&W or Color. It's funny, the art is good, and I like the stories/characters. That's all that matters to me.

 

[ShadowDenizen]

First, let me say I love this comic.
It ranks up there with "Dementia of Magic", "Order of the Stick", and "Fuzzy Knights".

That said: I prefer the nuances of B+W over color in this case. (I'll still read and enjoy it either way, though.)

 

[BiggusGeekus]

I don't care whether it's B&W or Color. It's funny, the art is good, and I like the stories/characters. That's all that matters to me.

http://www.parentsbasementgames.com/smile/yeahthat.gif

 

[BigFreekinGoblinoid]

Well, the lettering was the most needed improvement. The color is great, but green backgrounds behind green goblins makes a rough contrast. Never heard of this strip before your post, so thanks, I got a few chuckles going. Will coloring take you much longer to produce the strip? Regular updates are the most important consideration IMO, but it would be neat to see that first devil scene in color! Some webcomics produce a longer color strip on the weekend only. It's nice to see the main characters in color ever once and again that way.

 

[Henry]

Hi, Thunt! Looks like the webcomic is coming along nicely, but I have one little complaint, based on something Piratecat said:

Your old comics (e.g. the very first one) weighed in at 164 Kilobytes as an image size.

The latest one weighed in at 1,243KB -- about TEN TIMES the image size, leading to ten times the download speed per panel. One suggestion, if you keep it color, is to reduce the dots per inch of the posted image, or revert to JPG if picture quality is an issue. I like the color, but it does take a LOT longer to load, probably because your other ones were greyscale and compressed, whereas the PNG files are much larger.

Something to think about?

Loving the comic, though!

 

[Thunt]

Hi, Thunt! Looks like the webcomic is coming along nicely, but I have one little complaint, based on something Piratecat said:

Your old comics (e.g. the very first one) weighed in at 164 Kilobytes as an image size.

The latest one weighed in at 1,243KB -- about TEN TIMES the image size, leading to ten times the download speed per panel. One suggestion, if you keep it color, is to reduce the dots per inch of the posted image, or revert to JPG if picture quality is an issue. I like the color, but it does take a LOT longer to load, probably because your other ones were greyscale and compressed, whereas the PNG files are much larger.

Something to think about?

Loving the comic, though!

Thanks.

I'll muck around with the format and see if I can make the file sizes smaller for the next update(s).

As for the green goblins against a green background... well, the forest is green and some of the goblins are green so I'm not sure what I can do except maybe consider that fact when I'm writing future updates. Maybe work on the positioning of the characters, etc.

Anyways, this poll has already taught me alot about what people think and Goblins is still growing in popularity. Thanks, everyone, any feedback you give me really helps me to shape the comic and increase it's quality as time goes by.

Oh, and not to worry, I don't plan on missing any updates. Colour or not.

Tarol Hunt (Thunt)

 

[Psychic Warrior]

While I do love colour comics more than B&W I have to agree with Henry that the load times for colour (as compared to B&W) are much slower. Keep the colour but make the file size smaller somehow. Keep up the good work - your comic is consistantly funny and is in the 'top 5' of my webcomic bookmarks list (you keep good company with Order of the Stick, Penny Arcade, Something Positive and Sinfest).

I think I'll name my next fighter NPC Thunt. I lvoe the sound of that. Thunt.

 

[jsewell]

Hi, Thunt! Looks like the webcomic is coming along nicely, but I have one little complaint, based on something Piratecat said:

Your old comics (e.g. the very first one) weighed in at 164 Kilobytes as an image size.

The latest one weighed in at 1,243KB -- about TEN TIMES the image size, leading to ten times the download speed per panel. One suggestion, if you keep it color, is to reduce the dots per inch of the posted image, or revert to JPG if picture quality is an issue. I like the color, but it does take a LOT longer to load, probably because your other ones were greyscale and compressed, whereas the PNG files are much larger.

Something to think about?

Loving the comic, though!

I agree that the comic is terribly slow in color. I had to wait several seconds for it to load, and I have a 10Mbps connection... I can't imagine the unluckly ones with dial-up. I think alot of this comes from your server. I disagree as to how to solve the problem. I grabbed a panel and did some quick work with photoshop. The panel I grabbed was 1.08MB. I made one change in photoshop; I changed the color mode from 'RGB' to 'Indexed' with 256 colors, and the image size was reduced to 424KB. If you use Fireworks, Image Ready, or a similar program, you could reduce the file size even more. Just index the colors you used to create the image - this is why the PNG format was designed. It won't affect whether or not one can see the image or not, just reduce the load time. I also saved the image as a JPG file. Although the file was only 235KB (medium compression), the wording was slightly blurry. The indexed PNG file looks identical to the original. That said, I like black and white comics better than color ones. If you do decide to keep it in color, also keep in mind a suggestion someone else made - don't put a green goblin in front of a green background. I haven't read the comic yet , so I'm only offering advice about the image itself.

 

[XCorvis]

I'm with Bihor - whichever way is faster. If it takes 10 times longer to do it one way as opposed to the other, you'll be less inclined to keep doing it.