This is Merlism in action.
(From The Book of Merlism, by Daniel Merlin Goodbrey)
The Book came to a close yesterday. I have to say I enjoyed it thoroughly through its run. Updating once every day for a month, this comic provided daily excerpts from the Book of Merlism. As Merl puts it, “The first webcomics-based religion.” Which, coming from Merl, doesn’t surprise me much. That webcomics-pioneering rascal.
I think I’ve made my stance on infinite canvas clear before, but I’ll go again. Infinite Canvas for Infinite Canvas’ sake is Infinitely Unappealing. Webcomics are an art form, and as such, their boundaries deserve to and need to be pushed from time to time. But that should never be the purpose. The purpose first and foremost should always be the story, no matter what medium it is. Webcomics, Film, it doesn’t matter. Story comes first. That and I just hate scrolling right.
However, there is one variety of infinite canvas that I have found myself to enjoy every instance of. And that is when the Tarquin Engine is involved. That’s good stuff. Clicking around and zooming around, seeing one panel at a time yet still having that panel be juxtaposed with the rest.
So Merl, the Tarquin guy, pulls it off well again. Daily updated worked for what he was working on, in tandem with limiting the span of the updates. Merlism could’ve gotten very stale very quick if it went on indefinitely. But deciding to do daily updates for a set amount of time worked well.
My only complaint is that if you miss a day (which I didn’t really, but that’s not the point), it’s awfully hard to catch up. The newest installment is always highlighted in red, but it’s pretty difficult to know which ones are the ones you missed. But now that it’s finished, anyone can just pick up and read through it. This project, on the whole, was quite well done.
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In other news, to all those participating in NaNoWriMo, I wanna give a big word of “Good Luck!”
And to all those participating in NaDruWriNi, I’ll see you this Friday.
November 2nd, 2005 at 9:31 am
I gotta agree, that Tarquin Engine is pretty good stuff. If I felt like I wanted to go learn some Flash basics I’d have started using it a while ago.
But I couldn’t be arsed to learn new internet stuff. Gimme a HTML table tag and a star to sail ‘er by, and I’m done.
November 2nd, 2005 at 6:46 pm
No problems with the Tarquin engine. It’s kinda fun navigating those comics.
Now if only that could be used in an ongoing story.
Hmm.