Occams Meataxe wrote:This is another reason - besides the fact that I like the clean standard look - that I'm not a great fan of the shaded version of Goblins. Thunt keep slipping further behind with the simpler comic. What the shading adds to the story and overall enjoyment is marginal and costs many, many hours to each comic. He gets worn out and further behind.
At the end, this poster says 'the best is the enemy of the good'. In any small business you have to be able to say 'it's good enough'. In software coders love to work and work and add details and functionality. The product lead has to be able to strip it down to what is 'good enough'. Goblins is a business for Thunt. Yes it's putatively free, but it's paid for his house and ongoing continues to pay him. While it's reasonable to say "It's free", in reality that's only a small part of the story.
I've long thought about the fact that a lot of webcomic artists and just artists in general as they become more familiar with their craft also become faster. I suspect Thunt has to a degree too. The problem is, Thunt keeps trying to add features, he makes his art more detailed, he adds the shading. These things don't improve the story, they do improve the look but they don't add as much 'value' to the readers as another page. Frankly the story is great but it drags, it progresses far too slow.
What BF gave him was a forced schedule, they acted as the product manager. He still found ways not to keep it. What he should have been doing was stripping out the extraneous 'features' and focusing on the core product. I say this as someone who has contracted with many artists for business, and manged teams of coders and salespeople.
It's totally reasonable to want to add more complexity, but not until your skills have allowed you to maintain consistency and deliverables as promised. Then you can over deliver in terms of features. But any business has to focus on reliability and 'good enough' core product.
Occams Meataxe wrote:I have to echo the "Tempts Fate" concerns. If people pay you for something and you keep blowing it off eventually they will stop paying you. Yes, he does a great comic. But when something's promised and consistently not delivered it reduces a person's credibility.
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Looking at indie comic artists, webcomic artists and writers who make a living at their art the one common denominator is consistency. Maybe not everything is perfect, but the quality is good enough, and it arrives at predictable intervals. Oh, maybe the schedule slips when the colorist has a sudden cardiac event (Girl Genius) or the artist gouges his drawing hand (Questionable Content) or gets a diagnosis of metastatic cancer (Ian Banks). But those are exceptional events, interruptions to the routine. It's the consistent delivery of a good enough product that gives one a chance at sustained success.
Summary:
1) Best is the enemy of good
2) Consistency is very important if you want to make a living at this
3) When you promise something, deliver even if there's no binding, notarized contract. Otherwise people will lose interest.
It is a bit of a strawman to say 'the comic is free'. It is more accurate to say 'The comic is Thunt's livelihood'. It is also accurate to say that Thunt keeps
a) Adding complexity to comic art, rather than use his increasing skills to turn out a more reliable comic with a faster turnaround
b) Takes money for things which distract from the core product of the comic and delay it further
c) Doesn't always deliver on promises made for money taken
If the comic is Thunt's livelihood, he should be focusing on how to deliver it reliably. Period. That's only good business. If he makes money by selling comic books, he should be trying to turn out more pages in a reliable way. Where he's made a lot of his money are essentially pledge drives though, these don't depend on reliability and they are a short cut from the discipline of running a business that depends on good will of your community. What's great is Thunt has that good will. It's clear though he's also beginning to lose some trust by this thread and the responses.
I'm in the same boat as many others. I enjoy the comic, I enjoy the community, I admire Thunt as a webcomic artist. My trust though is diminished. I'm still sitting and looking at the Kickstarter and wondering if I should join in, and I would have a couple years ago no problem. Now, it just seems to be a distraction from the comic, and the comic itself has been too irregular. It needs that regularity and frankly I'd love it to be faster so some of these stories can really progress more, and I won't need to wait years for them to progress in a meaningful way.