http://www.fleen.com/archives/2005/12/22/thinking-about-print/ the webcomics blog about webcomics Sat, 11 Feb 2012 04:24:30 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.2.1 http://www.fleen.com/archives/2005/12/22/thinking-about-print/comment-page-1/#comment-123 Fleen » Legibility II: Line Tue, 03 Jan 2006 20:35:38 +0000 http://www.fleen.com/?p=49#comment-123 [...] If the line is overly sketchy, disconnected, or too light, it causes a sort of cognitive dissonance. Something deep down in our brains (probably something to do with hunting antelope on the open veldt) keys in on breaks from regular patterns. Sketchy, incomplete lines make your brain stop and go, “Wha?” If that’s what you wanted to accomplish within your story structure, great. Check out Alex Robinson’s Tricked for a good example of this; no, it’s not a webcomic. Read it anyway. But if the line isn’t intended to convey that “Wha?” moment, it just makes things tough on the eyes. Also to keep in mind: if you ever intend to print, you may find that lots of little lines, lines that are overly fine, or lines that are less than fully black aren’t going to reproduce well on paper (or at least be more expensive). You can save yourself a lot of reformat work later by finding a good line now. Let’s take a gander at two of Shaenon Garrity’s Narbonic sample strips one from 2000 (it’s the first strip from the second week “The Job Interview”), and one from 2005 (the first strip of “Battle for the Lost Diamond Mines of Brazil”). [...] [...] If the line is overly sketchy, disconnected, or too light, it causes a sort of cognitive dissonance. Something deep down in our brains (probably something to do with hunting antelope on the open veldt) keys in on breaks from regular patterns. Sketchy, incomplete lines make your brain stop and go, “Wha?” If that’s what you wanted to accomplish within your story structure, great. Check out Alex Robinson’s Tricked for a good example of this; no, it’s not a webcomic. Read it anyway. But if the line isn’t intended to convey that “Wha?” moment, it just makes things tough on the eyes. Also to keep in mind: if you ever intend to print, you may find that lots of little lines, lines that are overly fine, or lines that are less than fully black aren’t going to reproduce well on paper (or at least be more expensive). You can save yourself a lot of reformat work later by finding a good line now. Let’s take a gander at two of Shaenon Garrity’s Narbonic sample strips one from 2000 (it’s the first strip from the second week “The Job Interview”), and one from 2005 (the first strip of “Battle for the Lost Diamond Mines of Brazil”). [...]

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