i love the drawing style for polly and her strange water world. are there any buildings actually on land? there are docks, i guess, but most of the buildings seem to be boats. towering, three and four story, sprawling victorian boats (or whatever the time period might be, i’m no expert).
beneath young polly pringle’s dull, proper, rule-abiding schoolgirl surface lurks a bold, clever, sword-fighting pirate.
and it doesn’t take much to scratch the surface.
a few threats to harm her good reputation and her friends.
and her pirate self leaps onto the page without ado.
a swash-buckling good ride.
on the critique side… i gotta wonder if ted has trouble drawing hands and feet, because the characters are a bit short-changed on those items.
but there is a panel or two with very. detailed. gnarly. old. sailor. hands…
so maybe it’s about artistic shorthand (um, pun intended, i guess) and not lack of skill.
i can relate to that.
artistic shorthand, that is.
(well, i can relate to lack of skill, too… but that’s another story)
i’ve been thinking about what it takes to keep a webcomic going regularly, and how much time it probably takes for those that post more than once a week. my time on the computer is kinda limited. no, no, no–not by a straitjacket! well, not exactly. but there are… restrictions.
so how will i find time to keep such a thing going? as a reader, it’s really hard to wait when you get hooked on a webcomic and then the author doesn’t post regularly.
>turns a half-hearted frown in the direction of caroline curtis<
>the frown morphs to hopeful, puppy-dog eyes<
after all, we’ve all got real lives to live outside the Net. well, most of us do. so… one of the things i’d probably do is pick a style that i can draw quickly. not heavy on the details. not too busy in the layouts. because, hey! (imho) it’s all about the story, anyway. as long as the art is good enough to get the story across, you can survive if it’s a great story.
not that i want to do sucky art.
uh-uh.
but i’m not one of those artists that’s super picky about certain details. at least not with a webcomic. i want a rollickin’ good story, that’s all. artistic shorthand is a-okay.
anyway, back to the polly review. ted naifeh is a GOOD artist, for sure. didn’t mean to imply otherwise. just noticed that the hands and feet were sketchy. the story is great, characters interesting, i loved looking at the details on the ship buildings and even the spirals he used in the wave foam.
conclusion? a pleasure for the eyes and the imagination.
is there more on the way, ted?
coming to a library near me?
what are you waiting for?
go read it already!
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