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Huntresses Attack Monsters --in 2-D!

Legendary Sidekick

The HAM'ster
Moderator
Is my web comic ready to go live? Not even close. But so what? Go ahead and check out my site from its extremely humble beginning. There are no ads. I won't make a penny from you visiting, but so what? I think if I'm being watched it'll be hard for me to slack off. I got the DISQUS comment thing to work today, so feel free to leave a comment at the end of the (only) comic page or blog post.

It's called Huntresses Attack Monsters —in 2-D!, or ham2d.com for short (and with a dot com).
 

Legendary Sidekick

The HAM'ster
Moderator
For those curious enough to watch a web comic site being built from scratch, I added a character profile page. It's just young Baldy and Addy for now, but the long-term plan is to (1) have all important characters in order of appearance, (2) limit the profile text to a ~300px-tall box, and (3) link to the page where that character first appeared.

The home page will eventually look more like a table of contents, and I'll likely add some unique art so that first page jumps out at the viewer. That's probably the step that comes before telling my friends I have a website. I'm keeping it quiet, but since some MS members know of Baldy and Addy, I thought I'd let you guys watch me fumble through the early stages.
 

Legendary Sidekick

The HAM'ster
Moderator
The barbarian schoolgirls face the first grueling test (click "A Rigorous Assessment") in the arena! And... I took down the blog while I screw around with the site. I had to face the fact that mobile-friendly tools are a must, and not-fancy headings look and function better. The text heading also updates automatically, and I came up with a pretty cool way to select comics as the series grows.

It'll look a lot cooler when I have more than 2 strips. Hopefully I can keep up a pace of one per week. It's not as awesome as three per week, but a Friday update might be doable with a day job and family.

I don't know if anyone is looking at the site yet (not much to see, so I don't blame you), but just knowing someone MIGHT be looking is giving me the incentive to keep moving. I come up with scenes way faster than I can draw them. If I ever figure out how to make a respectable income doing this, I'm not worried about running out of material.
 

Legendary Sidekick

The HAM'ster
Moderator
I hope to update the comic tomorrow. The art for Addy and Baldy is done.

In addition to this week's comic, I did a ton of art for the homepage and changed the color scheme of the site. I also adjusted the homepage for the phone-friendly version. It was a ton of artwork. I'm pretty happy with the art for tomorrow's strip, since I drew the characters multiple times and found the body and head proportions match in every drawing. I'm surprised that I'm getting consistent this quickly, since the style of both characters is completely new—especially Baldhart as a skinny teenager.

Click my sig or here to check it out.
 

Legendary Sidekick

The HAM'ster
Moderator
Somewhat ironically, my last panel uses my original background art: a greenish smudged chalkboard for "Barbarian Schoolgirls." The happy accident was me not making up my mind about what to call the site. I like "Huntresses Attack Monsters —in 2D!" as the main title. Eventually, the story will be separated into chapters/seasons/things (since I can only fit so many episode names on the side of the screen), and "Barbarian Schoolgirls" will be the first chapter/season/thing.

I couldn't resist the animated blood (it's wine-red ink on white background with a 90% opaque medium red overlay) for the title page, so now I'm glad I went with HAM2D. Barbarianschoolgirls.com is a long name anyway.
 

Legendary Sidekick

The HAM'ster
Moderator
Thanks! I'm very happy with the feedback so far, and not just feedback on MS. I think this week's update is a bit ambitious... I'll need to keep the number of frames under ten if I'm to keep this going with a day job. Still, I'm not complaining. The nice thing about the site design is that you just scroll down. So if I draw a lot, it doesn't affect the shape of the comic.

I posted a blog which sort of shows frame #7. Hopefully, I didn't accidentally publish the half-updated comic. (Checks.) Phew... I actually did that with my second strip. I can "save" a partial update, but once I hit "publish," it's online. The blog is published separately, so I can publish the blog without showing half a strip. I realize there are sites that can schedule a comic update, but I like the tool I'm using since I have more control over the look, including the phone-friendly image size/layout.
 

Devor

Fiery Keeper of the Hat
Moderator
I think your comic has top tier potential, Legendary. I wouldn't say it if I didn't mean it. Keep it up.

And, let me know when I can buy my daughter a Huntresses Attack onesie.
 

Legendary Sidekick

The HAM'ster
Moderator
Hey all, updated the story. After consulting Tony, I decided to try putting ads in. Just check out the site for now. If you find the ads jarring, please let me know.

But mostly, I hope you enjoy what you see.
 
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Legendary Sidekick

The HAM'ster
Moderator
Two things I found jarring:
1) Addison was too small in frames 1, 4 and 5. Surprisingly, I kept enough of the original line/color layers intact that I was able to fix this. Why it's tricky: I'm not sure if anyone noticed, but the clouds actually move from frame to frame (in "Look Both Ways" and "Random Encounter"). I also made the scenery darken. Fortunately, I was able to make the fix without having to worry about the clouds, since Addison only overlaps the ground. I don't care if the shadork heights are a little off from how they were last week, and I don't mind Baldy's exaggerated height in the close-up (purple) frame... but that play-by-play of the first few attacks bugged me. I thought it was because I zoomed back too far, then after uploading I realized Addy was 2/3 the height she should be! For some reason, the dodge size was fine. If it wasn't, I'd be screwed. The dodge overlaps the hammer swing, and I merged those layers

2) The ads. I pulled them. The point is to make the site phone-friendly, and the ads that are pinned to the screen don't show up on the phone, so I could only see them on the blog page. And what I saw was this huge lady in lingerie getting between my blog post and the discussion space. Yeah, earning money from people visiting (and of course clicking the ad) is nice, but I'm also going to approach agents with this site in the hopes of finding illustration work. I think I need to consider that the site is advertising me, what I can do, and it's not the site itself that will generate income. It's my skill. The ads will likely turn agents away. Whether they'll respond to me at all isn't a given, but I'd rather they don't want me because the art didn't do it for them, not because the ad bothered them...

...or because the art on the ad screams, "THIS is how the pros draw... not THAT =>"



If anyone has different thoughts about ads, let me know.
 

Devor

Fiery Keeper of the Hat
Moderator
2) The ads. I pulled them. The point is to make the site phone-friendly, and the ads that are pinned to the screen don't show up on the phone, so I could only see them on the blog page. And what I saw was this huge lady in lingerie getting between my blog post and the discussion space. Yeah, earning money from people visiting (and of course clicking the ad) is nice, but I'm also going to approach agents with this site in the hopes of finding illustration work. I think I need to consider that the site is advertising me, what I can do, and it's not the site itself that will generate income. It's my skill. The ads will likely turn agents away. Whether they'll respond to me at all isn't a given, but I'd rather they don't want me because the art didn't do it for them, not because the ad bothered them...

...or because the art on the ad screams, "THIS is how the pros draw... not THAT =>"



If anyone has different thoughts about ads, let me know.

I didn't see the ads in question.

Keep up the posting regularly for about 4-6 months, and then look for sponsorships.
 

Legendary Sidekick

The HAM'ster
Moderator
I think they were up for less than 12 hours. I really couldn't stand the ads. Either they made no sense because you'd scroll past them, or they were unshakable stalkers if I pinned them to the screen. On the phone, it was like comic, comic, comic, ha ha, okay, next, comic, comic, lady in lingerie? What the hell?

I appreciate advice about the sponsorships. Thanks!
 

Nimue

Auror
Excellent! I did have a thought, though--it might be a good idea to have a link on the webpage to just the latest installment. Most webcomics have this option. As you have it set up, all of the images take a while to load, especially on my phone or in bad wi-fi. As the comic gets longer, scrolling through to get to the latest page will become more and more of an inconvenience. Not sure what the best solution is to that, though.
 

Legendary Sidekick

The HAM'ster
Moderator
How do you go to the story on your phone? I always use the "Read Their Story" image, mostly because I'm compelled to turn my phone sideways and it's easier to read text that way.

Eventually, there will be a new page. I'll likely have more than 12 episodes but less than 20. I'll try to have an episode that works as a page-ender/chapter-ender/season-ender rather than commit to a number. (I can't even commit to a number of frames!)

For now, I'll set up the image to go to the latest episode. (I just did!) When I have more than one page, I'll have submenus under story. Not sure what I'll call them, but basically "current page," "start from the beginning" and an "archive" where you can select all pages.
 

Devor

Fiery Keeper of the Hat
Moderator
Most of the web comics I've seen have every strip on its own page. But I don't have a smartphone so I couldn't tell you if it's worth it to run a different format.
 
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Legendary Sidekick

The HAM'ster
Moderator
I'll address my reason for the format in the article. Short version: phone-friendly.

Of course, if Nimue has loading issues, it's not as phone-friendly as I want it to be. I'm eventually going to need a page where you can select chapters. Maybe I can start that next update, so when you go to the latest story, it's just the one story. At the bottom of the page, you then have the option to go to chapter one (and any other chapter when more than one exists).

For the full version of the site, I'll eventually add some kind of chapter selection to the left. Maybe just prev/next so the reader isn't overwhelmed with buttons. (5 chapters would be okay. 20 would be a mess.)



I was going to end chapter 1 after episode 13 or so. Should I end it sooner? Every 5? Every 10? Any thoughts on that? (If I break it up at five, I might say "page" or "part" or something instead of "chapter." Or just episodes 1-5, 6-10...)
 

Legendary Sidekick

The HAM'ster
Moderator
I gave it some thought this morning. Given that this week is the first I heard of image-loading issues, I think 10 strips would be too long.

I thought of a decent page ender, or maybe it's page starter. I'll likely be consistent about having about 5 strips a page, or anywhere from 3-7 since I'd rather change pages around story instead of an exact number.

I'm definitely not worried about running out of material since I'm going to push my planned-for-11/13 strip to 11/20 and have a little scene this Friday that leads to the now-pushed-to-next-Friday strip while serving another purpose.
 
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