On why we are dead. . .

[windlion]

If you hadn't noticed, we haven't updated in a month. This isn't because we have shuffled off the mortal coil; nor is the comic completely dead. What happened is as follows: Nnie went on vacation, I couldn't update by myself, and the comic dropped for a week or two. Then Nnie got to thinking about something that I had brought up awhile ago-

Comments

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[lilyellowflower]

I look at stories and stuff that I wrote from back in high school and prior. They were amazing at the time that I wrote them, but I could do a much better job now with the same plot/character set. I'm not going to go back and re-write them all though. It shows me that a) I've always had the seeds of creativity b) what form those seeds grew into at different times in my life, reflecting who I was as a person when I wrote them, c) what mistakes I've made so that I have a steady reminder of what not to do again

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[horror_beloved]

Hey Angie! Thanks for taking the time to comment on this, and believe me, I agree with just about everything you've written, but part of the problem is we really didn't plan enough in the initial writing/storyboard/planning stages of Odin's Children, so rather then have a flowing story of dubious art and writing qualities, we've written ourselves into a bit of a rut that we don't want to be in. The revamp isn't necessarily scrapping everything we've started, but rather starting at a slightly new place on a slightly new angle and waiting until we have the time to really plan where we want things to be going. It's going to have to involve a lot more writing than we've previously been doing with the page-by-page basis

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[horror_beloved]

And yeah, if I was a reader, I'd probably be concerned/frustrated as well, and that's kind of the reaction expected... but luckily, I don't think the Odin's Children fanbase is large enough to guilt us out of trying a few new things here and there. Honestly, the story was moving too slowly even for us to stand, and those first few chapters really got us nowhere in terms of plot and even character development. If/when we're back on our feet, I'll make sure you're the first to know

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[lilyellowflower]

I here a lot of advice similar to lilyellowflower's whenever someone makes the difficult decision to redo all or part of their comic, and frankly, I find it rather irksome. What these people fail to take into account is that different people work differently; also different kinds of stories have different requirements in order to be workable, that thus-and-such popular comic has never been redrawn means exactly zip, especially since said popular comics are usually slice-of-life comedy with an open ended plot, if any plot exists at all

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[horror_beloved]

Hey! Thanks so much for understanding/respecting the decision. It's tough, because we realize there is no right or wrong answer, we simply know that right now the comic isn't where we want it to be, and yes- unlike a strip comic, there are only so many things we can do to force it back in the right direction short of starting fresh. Can't make any promises though... the reboot process is going slower than I wanted, and to be honest, it's a tough year- (one of us is graduating, the other working full time-) so excuses aside, we can't even promise a reboot that will be remotely timely. But if we get ourselves organize and have something to show, this'll be the place to check! And any input you have on the previous version of the comic, we'd love to hear! (There are things we can't physically change right now, ie, our slowly progressing drawing abilities, most of the character designs and elements) but feel free to critique anything you notice in terms of pacing, plot flow, visual narration- and any suggestions you might have for

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[lilyellowflower]

Alright, so I've done the promised re-read and here are my opinions:

1) We don't get much of a sense of what the world they live in is like. Obviously it's sometime in the future, but other than that... A huge expositional intro probably isn't necessary (and would more likely end up clunky anyway), but you might want to work on weaving in some interaction with the world to give it more definition; so far we've really only seen the airport, the school, various characters' homes, and a couple other mostly undefined locations.

2) When Epee mentioned to Cody that they'd been hanging out for almost a month, I was completely surprised; based on what I'd seen I'd thought that it was their first study group meeting. When you have to use a time-skip, be sure to make it clear at the point that it happens.

Other than that, well, you had some trouble with unclear order of speech bubbles on some of the pages, but you seem to have ironed out that problem in the more recent pages.