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 Link And FriendsInterview by muddasheep, January 07th 2004, 15:44:56 | |||
| Once again I chose webcomic authors as the victims of my annoying questions! This time it's a sprite comic called "Link And Friends". There are people out there who hate those kind of comics. But "Link And Friends" is not just another sprite comic. Just give it a try!
Now let's start with the interview. Have fun! Hey Charybdis and Wolfenhex! Thanks for your time! Charybdis: Hello, Mr. Lehner. Wolfenhex: Hey. Before I start bugging you with my questions it'd be nice if you could introduce yourselves. Charybdis: I'm Charybdis. I live an enigmatic life of seclusion. It's not as interesting as it sounds. Wolfenhex: I'm Wolfenhex, and that's all I'm being paid to say. How would you describe Link and Friends? Charybdis: It's a philosophical metaphor. Well, no. It's just fun, and a scenario that I think a lot of people have wondered about at some time. Wolfenhex: It's a story that puts a couple of great works of Shigeru Miyamoto against each other. Why do you like comics? Charybdis: They're short and sweet, highly portable, stylized, easy to decipher, and just amusing in their own way. Wolfenhex: They're a cartoon ... but without sound and animation. When and why did you decide to do a comic? Charybdis: I think we had been reading and talking about some sprite comics for a while, and said we wanted to do that. Wolfenhex: Yeah, it looked like fun, and didn't happen to see any Mario comics around at the time. Why did you choose the sprite style? Charybdis: 8-bit sprites have a certain character to them that's lost in the updated sprites. And we wanted the story to take place in the worlds of older, well-known (and very vague and odd) games. Wolfenhex: We love video games too much to not use sprites. How do you make your sprites? Charybdis: I don't think we've really "made" any. We use only ones that are captured from the games. Wolfenhex: If Nintendo is reading this, we paused the game and looked at the image very carefully on a HDTV. For everyone else, we extracted them from the games, and fixed the coloring. How did you feel when your page went online? Charybdis: Worried that no one would visit, but very happy that we had started something. Wolfenhex: Worried that we had too few comics for anyone to really enjoy it. How did you manage to get more visits? Charybdis: I put a link to the website in my AOL profile, then trolled chat rooms saying odd, offhanded things to people, so that they would be sure to look at my profile and go to the website, and maybe stay to read the comic. Wolfenhex: Advertised on other web sites like Top Web Comics and Bob and George. Some of our visitors even put our banner in their forum signatures on other sites (real shock when we first saw that). How many visits do you have each day? Charybdis: An ass-load. Wolfenhex: The average last month (December 2003) was 26,569 visits a day. Have you had any traffic problems? Charybdis: Yes. Especially with the chat room. Although that was more of an issue of the chat room using too much bandwidth because of its design. That was interesting to cause the website to go down by having 4 people chat in the room for about a half hour. We have had more serious traffic problems because of the forum, though. Wolfenhex: Yes. Wish we had the money to move to a dedicated server to help prevent a lot of problems we've had due to excessive traffic. Do you think web comics have more potential than normal comic books? Charybdis: That depends on what you mean by potential. I think the potential for audience and artistic freedom is much greater in a web comic, but potential for profit is significantly less. Wolfenhex: Yes, but only because most normal comics are restricted due to publishers rules, so you won't really find a comic that breaks all these rules and is truly unique. With web comics, you really have true freedom to do and say whatever you want without someone saying "sorry, you can't do that, make a new one." Is the industry too less interested in web comics in your opinion? Charybdis: When has it ever paid much attention to them? I can think of just one comic that has been successful in the offline comic industry as well as the webcomic one. Wolfenhex: Yes, it seems they're only interested in putting regular comics online to advertise and sell them offline. What kind of people are your readers? Charybdis: Children and young teenagers are the ones I mostly hear from. Wolfenhex: A majority of them seem to range from age 10 to 15. There are plenty of more adult readers too, but they seem to want to keep to themselves. Do you receive many donations? Charybdis: Hell no. Wolfenhex: If I total them all up, we've only received ... hmm... umm... ah... 1. Some people say that readers prefer regular updated web comics. Do you agree? Charybdis: I think our readers would agree. Wolfenhex: It seems everyone wants us to update on a regular schedule, but what many people don't understand is that it takes a lot more then every [set amount] of days to actually come up with a good strip. What do you think is important when making webcomics? Charybdis: Consistency of plot and standards for art and humor is what I place a lot of importance on. I won't really go into how some webcomics lack that, but I think it makes a big difference in quality of the comic to keep it going in one direction. I think it's also important to have an idea and characters that stand out significantly, just because of the large amount of webcomics there are out there to compete with for popularity. Wolfenhex: Originality, try to come up with something new instead of the same stuff you can find on over 50% of the other sites. What's the point in even making a comic if you're just gonna copy someone else? Try to give something for everyone, many of our comics have two or more jokes in them in-case someone doesn't get one of them. What do you plan for the future of Link and friends? Charybdis: Surprises. Wolfenhex: The entire world ends, everyone lives happily ever after. Anything else you want to add? Charybdis: ... Wolfenhex: Eat Taco Bell! Ok, that just paid for the next month of hosting. Thanks again for the interview! It's been a pleasure! Charybdis: Thank you! Wolfenhex: Ditto. |     Links:
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| How readers rate this Interview: 9.12/10 (8 votes) | |||
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