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Special thanks to Ongwk733, for having had the patience to answer while drifting away from LL, and for having shared his awesome works with us.

However, he is to be considered inactive, so please don't disturb him with technical issues. You may ask about them on this entry instead. ?

I remember stumbling upon Tammie's adventures blog. It was absolutely delightful!

Thank you for giving it a spotlight, Tirloque. Even though the author isn't posting anymore, it is wonderful to be able to read his stories. ?

2 hours ago, Tirloque said:

Notification workaround :

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@Agent Tex

@Alter Native

@Bravo267

@Crw

@DarthCoder

@Demonlord991

@Devianna

@djregs

@donttouchmethere

@Jayomms

@Kyne Strom-Hearth

@longhjac

@poisonblast

@Skyrimshaw

@SnakeFromSilver

@TheSexyBoy

@Tmaxz

 

 

Special thanks to Ongwk733, for having had the patience to answer while drifting away from LL, and for having shared his awesome works with us.

However, he is to be considered inactive, so please don't disturb him with technical issues. You may ask about them on this entry instead. ?

 Your alive....

This was the best blog on LL.

Oh wow never saw this one before

As I was using the clickable menu, I realized that giving the direct link to Imgur on some entries, while indeed quickening the access, also kinda prevented to react on the entries after the read. And, even though he won't be regularly on LL, it's something rewarding for an author ; so I'm not sure this was the best choice.

Added a poll to hear your thoughts on the matter. Changed those back to LL meanwhile. ?

7 hours ago, Agent Tex said:

Oh wow never saw this one before

You're in for a treat then.

8 hours ago, SpyVsPie said:

This was the best blog on LL.

It used to be the funniest one. Although there is one equally funny, and possibly more varied. But who knows where his blog would be, if he had continued Winter's night ?

Interestingly enough, while some of his best entries are rather independent mini-arcs spread over a few entries, Winter's night more continous storyline made him explore more varied themes. So hed probably had kind of the reflections you went through a few months ago. Yet, I'm not sure he wanted to go where Winter's night would've ultimately led. I guess we'll never know.

Still, we've got spies lurking around in the shadows ! Hadn't seen you in a while.

11 hours ago, Jayomms said:

 Your alive....

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Actually Ongwk mentioned having started graphic design studies, and then having found a job towards the end of his blog. Yet, even though his reaction was understandably very delayed, ee's alive and well despite the pandemic ; and that's a heartwarming thought.

11 hours ago, Devianna said:

I remember stumbling upon Tammie's adventures blog. It was absolutely delightful!

Thank you for giving it a spotlight, Tirloque. Even though the author isn't posting anymore, it is wonderful to be able to read his stories. ?

It was a first class story blog without a doubt. And the best thing is that even though it can require some workarounds, all the images are still there, even after all this time.

Thanks for the good words, everyone.

Thanks for this write up of one of the best blogs here on Loverslab. 

One thing that always stood out for me about this story was the bubbles comic style that gives the screenshots enough space to shine.

3 hours ago, Alter Native said:

Thanks for this write up of one of the best blogs here on Loverslab. 

One thing that always stood out for me about this story was the bubbles comic style that gives the screenshots enough space to shine.

You're welcome, Alter.

Actually, it may look like writing bubbleless comics leaves more of the image untouched... but if you do use really big fonts, and do cover the whole shot but the characters, it becomes quite the contrary.

I realized this as in fact I somewhat struggled to find screens not covered too much to be reconstructed into textless ones. The lesson from that is that bubbleless comics do offer you the possibility to cover less of the image, but that if you don't watch out for your dialogues to be just as concise as those of a regular comic, then the screen coverage could get to proportions similar if not superior.

Yet, what I also didn't realize is how advanced Ongwk's screenarchery was. The colors, the crispiness of the foreground, the lighting (specially after the first third), the poses, the expressions (including very first class eyes directions), the textures, the natural implementation of the DoF.... It's more than just good, and was reaching towards excellency at the end of the blog. If you look at the screen below, even without any text you could something bad appeared in the far, in the direction they are looking at.

Really impressive, even humor and staging put aside.

1 hour ago, Tirloque said:

You're welcome, Alter.

Actually, it may look like writing bubbleless comics leaves more of the image untouched... but if you do use really big fonts, and do cover the whole shot but the characters, it becomes quite the contrary.

I realized this as in fact I somewhat struggled to find screens not covered too much to be reconstructed into textless ones. The lesson from that is that bubbleless comics do offer you the possibility to cover less of the image, but that if you don't watch out for your dialogues to be just as concise as those of a regular comic, then the screen coverage could get to proportions similar if not superior.

Yes and no. 

I agree with what you just said, but my main point is, that they disturb the image, not that they cover too much.

The right image is actually a perfect example of this where your eyes get draw to the white bubbles on a dark background. Despite their being a naked women on the image, my eyes are drawn to the bright bubbles and thus disturbing the image.

On the left side we have the opposite effect due to her white dress. (Which is just the case for this image with this dress in particular), but generally, due to the lack of white the text blends better into the image, which gives the image more room.

In bw visual novels this is less of a problem due to the bw nature. In "normal" comics, that happen to be super bright anyway with lots of colors fighting for your attention, this effect is less pronounced. 

But in Skyrim with a realistic style, lots dark and brown colors etc. they hinder the image too much imo. 

(Also for me personally, I don't want to "ruin" a screenshot that I spend hours working on with custom locations etc..., but that's just me. Also my screenshots are typically super dark due to writing a vampire story...)

There are definitely blogs here where the comic bubble style fits much better to.

11 hours ago, Tirloque said:

Actually Ongwk mentioned having started graphic design studies, and then having found a job towards the end of his blog. Yet, even though his reaction was understandably very delayed, ee's alive and well despite the pandemic ; and that's a heartwarming thought.

Comments are good so I voted for that.  I'm remembered him saying that. I was referring to you actually. 

1 hour ago, Alter Native said:

 

Yes and no. 

I agree with what you just said, but my main point is, that they disturb the image, not that they cover too much.

The right image is actually a perfect example of this where your eyes get draw to the white bubbles on a dark background. Despite their being a naked women on the image, my eyes are drawn to the bright bubbles and thus disturbing the image.

On the left side we have the opposite effect due to her white dress. (Which is just the case for this image with this dress in particular), but generally, due to the lack of white the text blends better into the image, which gives the image more room.

 

In bw visual novels this is less of a problem due to the bw nature. In "normal" comics, that happen to be super bright anyway with lots of colors fighting for your attention, this effect is less pronounced. 

But in Skyrim with a realistic style, lots dark and brown colors etc. they hinder the image too much imo. 

(Also for me personally, I don't want to "ruin" a screenshot that I spend hours working on with custom locations etc..., but that's just me. Also my screenshots are typically super dark due to writing a vampire story...)

 

There are definitely blogs here where the comic bubble style fits much better to.

Well, nothing forces someone to use FFFFFF white for her/his bubbles ; yet that is (strangely to me) indeed the most popular choice. I agree on the eye-attracting contrast too bright bubbles do generate, and that was a good example of that.

2 minutes ago, Jayomms said:

Comments are good so I voted for that.  I'm remembered him saying that. I was referring to you actually. 

Well, I am known as a slow publisher, am I not ?

I agree though, it's good to see our community members active and well during those troubled times. I sometimes regret not having news of past community members (such as Wanobi, the Croatians) but those are the limits of virtual friendship I guess.

I guess I never really stopped to think about the effect my bubbles might have on the sort of people who are easily distracted by bright and/or shiny objects ?

19 minutes ago, Tirloque said:

Well, nothing forces someone to use FFFFFF white for her/his bubbles ; yet that is (strangely to me) indeed the most popular choice. I agree on the eye-attracting contrast too bright bubbles do generate, and that was a good example of that.

Well, I am known as a slow publisher, am I not ?

Using something other than #FFFFFF just causes problems in other scenes, where the image is indeed very bright and lets say a dark grey would disturb the image too much. 

So going semi transparent seems like a good option to me, or, as done in this story, skipping the frame and bubble background all together and just write text.

40 minutes ago, SpyVsPie said:

I guess I never really stopped to think about the effect my bubbles might have on the sort of people who are easily distracted by bright and/or shiny objects ?

Actually I did mention in the past that some of your backgrounds seemed dark, but they weren't that dark. Could it be that in fact your bubbles felt bright relatively to the rest of the image ?

Anyway, for my part that's the reason why on images with a dark colors dominance I rather use black bubbles. But even without going that far, one could just choose a dimmer white for darker image's bubbles. That's just a matter of interest towards eye ergonomics in fact ; though clearly not a major point.

Most professional comics also use white that being said, but they do use the white of the panel's border, which is also frequently the one of the page. Hence there is plenty of that same white on one board, and so the eye is a bit less drawn to it : 

It's still intended for them to pop-out though, so that the reader doesn't searches where the dialogues are ; and also for the contrast with the text to be maximized for easy readability.

21 minutes ago, Alter Native said:

Using something other than #FFFFFF just causes problems in other scenes, where the image is indeed very bright and lets say a dark grey would disturb the image too much. 

So going semi transparent seems like a good option to me, or, as done in this story, skipping the frame and bubble background all together and just write text.

I don't know if my works should be taken in consideration, but I do in fact never use #FFFFFF. It's true one does not want a bubble with too little contrast, but there are quantities of whites (or blacks) one could use depending on the overall brightness of the image.

That is not FFFFFF for example. Still is contrasted enough to be easily readable :

But blacks are the best choice for dark scenes for me :

There you have near to minimum eye attraction, while still having great readability, and minimum image coverage.

I have tried translucent bubbles, but that considerably reduces the readability of the text beyond a certain level of transparency (which happens to be the one where it stops intruding the image). So, while a certain degree of transparency does help to reduce eye attraction, it's not a good choice to go for visibly transparent bubbles/captions to me. 

6 minutes ago, Tirloque said:

Actually I did mention in the past that some of your backgrounds seemed dark, but there weren't. Could it be that in fact your bubbles felt bright relatively to the rest of the image ?

 

Anyway, for my part that's the reason why on images with a dark colors dominance I rather use black bubbles. But even without going that far, one could just choose a dimmer white for darker image's bubbles. That's just a matter of interest towards eye ergonomics in fact ; though clearly not a major point.

 

Most professional comics also use white that being said, but they do use the white of the panel's border, which is also frequently the one of the page. Hence there is plenty of that same white on one board, and so the eye is a bit less drawn to it : 

It's still intended for them to pop-out though, so that the reader doesn't searches where the dialogues are.

 

Everything I did before the Stranger story looks like complete shit, in a year I will probably say the same about stuff I'm doing now. 

I'd love to do a proper comic layout with frames and all that but honestly I don't really have the patience for it. My particular brand of obsessiveness leans towards outfits and in game stuff like that. When I'm actually making stories I just kind of get a burst of creativity and I just want to get the story out and written ASAP. I do like the way the bubbles draw the eye though like you said, not to mention white well it's tradition!

39 minutes ago, SpyVsPie said:

 

Everything I did before the Stranger story looks like complete shit, in a year I will probably say the same about stuff I'm doing now. 

 

I'd love to do a proper comic layout with frames and all that but honestly I don't really have the patience for it. My particular brand of obsessiveness leans towards outfits and in game stuff like that. When I'm actually making stories I just kind of get a burst of creativity and I just want to get the story out and written ASAP. I do like the way the bubbles draw the eye though like you said, not to mention white well it's tradition!

 

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Everyone has her/his style, and the little things he/she specializes into. Your mash-ups are among those, as well as a special care for textures. And even without that, the content itself (humor, sexiness, staging/dialogues) is so good, that it's largely alright if you do the bubbles as you mention "as fast as possible". 

That being said, it's a whole new world to build your comics not as images, but as pages/boards. You can think and choose which elements you will favor, and which ones your will reduce ; you can work on the sequence, you can create backgrounds independent of the panels, or on the contrary choose to merge your page into a unique whole where the eye will be guided by your style. You can stage your visuals in fact. And that can include breaking the tradition, if you want to.

That being said, It's yet another layer of work/time consuming domain, and that while doing comics (bubbleless or not) is already one more layer than the usual. So for us volunteers, to do it or not translates directly into publishing frequency. Advantages and drawbacks.

Oh snap this was one of my favorites.  Shamefully, I don't and haven't really kept up with many blogs here, but Tammie's Adventures is one of the few that I did keep an eye on.  It's one of those cases where, normally I wouldn't be into the titillation aspect of it (barely legal teen types isn't usually my bag), but the combination of the comedy and the characters made them all the more enticing.  It helps that Ongwk733 had some God-tier restraint when it came to how often and when he did nudes - gave the characters time to really shine, then bam, hits you with the good stuff.  Never a lot, just enough to keep it interesting.  All of that speaks to his skill both in writing and the visual medium.

A shame Ongwk733 drifted away, but... well, I'm one to talk.  I know how that happens all too well.

?

7 hours ago, Jexsam said:

Oh snap this was one of my favorites.  Shamefully, I don't and haven't really kept up with many blogs here, but Tammie's Adventures is one of the few that I did keep an eye on.  It's one of those cases where, normally I wouldn't be into the titillation aspect of it (barely legal teen types isn't usually my bag), but the combination of the comedy and the characters made them all the more enticing.  It helps that Ongwk733 had some God-tier restraint when it came to how often and when he did nudes - gave the characters time to really shine, then bam, hits you with the good stuff.  Never a lot, just enough to keep it interesting.  All of that speaks to his skill both in writing and the visual medium.

 

A shame Ongwk733 drifted away, but... well, I'm one to talk.  I know how that happens all too well.

Hey Jexsam, nice (or n i c e should I say ^^) seeing you around ! Hope you're doing fine !

Well the erotic parts were limited either to an ending screen, either to a humorous element. And so, combining that to softcore fanservice shots, he effectively kept within the borders of an ecchi humorous anime. He also wrote the dialogues just as if in an anime.  

As for ending one's work, we are volunteers, there are limits to what real life will allow us before it calls us to do something else. Yet, some real gems can be achieved in that period of time, and Tammie's (and others') Adventures is definitely one of those.

4 hours ago, Deso561PL said:

?

Glad you liked. ?

Yea, good old times. 

It was a very interesting and very funny read. And I guess it won't hurt to re-read it once again! 

Thank you for the reminder, and for your hard work Triloque ^_^ you bring order to our chaotic( in creative way) community ^_^

3 hours ago, Crw said:

Yea, good old times. 

It was a very interesting and very funny read. And I guess it won't hurt to re-read it once again! 

Thank you for the reminder, and for your hard work Triloque ^_^ you bring order to our chaotic( in creative way) community ^_^

His entries' format is rather studied, and most of them can be read rather quickly. As Jexsam said, the good parts hit fast.

As for bringing order, that's my specialty :

Tammie's returns !

1 hour ago, Delzaron said:

Tammie's returns !

That's probably not for tomorrow. Yet, the whole of Tammie's adventures is still accessible, and completely worth the rediscovery even in 2020.