Panel 5 - Grag and Tony from Real Life.
Well…that’s just a difference of opinion about people’s ability to learn and develop skills vs relying on “raw talent”. If he took it seriously enough, he can learn to improve it, just like every other cartoonist has. Look at the first PA. Look at the first VG Cats. Their authors made it a point to not just remind us that “practice makes permanent”. They did something, whatever it was, to perfect their craft.
It’s just not professional looking. And there doesn’t seem to be any point in it looking that way - it doesn’t really complement any of the gags, and I can easily imagine them working better if presented in different way - so I can’t pretend that that’s just the “style”.
He likes the attention from his fans, is all.
Anyway, I’ll admit that giving up is overly drastic - I’d rather he does what everyone else did and improve his art. He could make money off of it, like PA is, if he brought it up to a professional standard.
Grag?
:smack:
Greg
No. I can’t draw, which is why I’d never say that not being able to draw means you don’t respect comics.
However, I am working on a graphic novel, right now, with a talented artist. And it IS online, I just don’t feel like having it reviewed by the board, yet, especially in the thick of this thread 
.
I don’t think it is a matter of opinion: you made an absolute statement: that anyone can draw at a professional level if they practice enough. This is, to me, an astonishing claim, and one that I’d like to see some evidence for.
But he has improved. Look at the first strip again, and look at the latest. Tell me you don’t see improvement there.
Actually, my understanding is that artistic skills degrade fairly rapidly if not exercised regularly, but that’s besides the point.
Again, you have no evidence to think that Weir doesn’t try just as hard, and simply doesn’t have the talent.
:rolleyes: Right, and if it were so easy for him to raise his work to a “professional standard,” he’d have even more fans, wouldn’t he? So why doesn’t he do that?
Do you have any idea how hard it is to support yourself doing webcomics? Jesus Christ, man, most webcartoonists could make more money dumpster diving for aluminum cans than they do off their comics. And most of them would love nothing more than to quit their crappy day jobs and draw cartoons for a living. But they don’t. You know why? Because it’s fucking hard as hell to do it, that’s why! It takes years and years of practice - way more than the four that Casey and Andy has been posting - and even then, there’s absolutely no guarantee that you’ll succeed. Like most artistic careers, it’s a low-paying, unrewarding, hugely difficult career path, and the vast majority of people who attempt it, fail. Seriously: show your posts to that incredibly talented artist you’ve hooked up with for your webcomic, and ask him what he thinks. I’m virtually certain he’s going to rupture himself laughing at your assumptions about what being an artist entails.
That said, and I mean this sincerely, I hope you decide to share your webcomic with the boards some day. As you may have picked up on, I’m very keen on webcomics in general, and I’m always interested to see something new. I promise not to savage it just because we’ve had disagreements on the boards.
Rob Liefeld’s BEEN a pro for over 20 years, and still doesn’t draw at a professional level. Or even a good amateur level.
(But he clearly loves comics like few others, so I have a hard time begrudging him the opportunity to work in it. Still doesn’t mean I like his work.)
Andy draws in another different style :
Even allowing for that, the underlying drawing style looks different to me. (If you want to come back and assert that this is an illusion, I posit that the distinction between Weir actually drawing a different style and Weir creating a convincing illusion of having done so is equivalent to arguing about whether the Iliad and the Odyssey were written by Homer or some other guy with the same name).