Meet the Drawponies

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I imagine most of my viewers look at me as though I know everyone on the block by name and we have secret underground illuminati meeting wearing black robes lighting candles and hailing a portrait of Lauren Faust. Surprisingly that's not true. We managed to wire our cave with stock fluorescent lighting once it became obvious that several flames in an enclosed space and a lot of people breathing oxygen makes for a terrible combination.

On a more serious note my social life on Deviantart equivocates that of an old man sitting no his porch yelling at kids who wander onto his lawn. Much like any other craft you can only get better by looking ahead or taking risks that have a feasible chance of paying off. Maybe I should browse more pony comic artists and break their method down. I know a thing or two about making fan-made pony comics.

Starting us off I present "It Looked Good on Paper" from Drawponies. He gave me the idea come up with this series, and in the worst case scenario viewers find someone new for their watch list.

It Looked Good On Paper by theairevolution

Do you even generate lift, bro?

I think I'll begin with the storyboard. From all the comics I've read from Drawponies that focus on humour he often uses the standard rule of 3 a lot. Panel 1 sets the scene and the tone, panel 2 lets the observer pick up on a sort of tension, and panel 3 usually drops a simple pun. I imagine it's easier to draw 3 panels over 6 or 8... or 108. It can take a while to draw out a whole panel from scratch. I chose this comic on the basis that he deviates a little from the standard formula here, instead drawing out two separate narratives on Scootaloo and Rainbow Dash before playing off the pun.

The concept is something I never really considered. Scootaloo stealing Tank's helicopter harness in a last-ditch effort to fly; that's clever. Had I been tasked to edit this I would probably replace the skewed "CRASH" text with an image of Rainbow Dash entering the room asking what all the crashing and noise was all about. From there we can see a contrast in Rainbow's emotions and maybe it'll be a bit funnier. I don't know. Again, humour in general is a very subjective thing to handle, and there's a lot of variants and angles to this concept that haven't been covered and probably won't be mentioned. For instance this comic could stick to the 3-panel formula where the first two panels would remain unchanged. However, the third panel would feature Rainbow Dash's in shock/anger/hysteria as Scootaloo delivers her "I can explain" line. Drawponies just so happened to come off with a very minimalist approach approach that remains effective. So my only gripe with this comic is pretty much a nitpick.

Again, since each panel takes up a lot of time you have to be efficient with your time and space. Aesthetic means little to nothing when it comes to drawing comics so much as its function and tone does; his art style is something you would expect if your goal is to be clean and simple. Traces established poses of characters, and then everything gets easy from there. It works, it's straightforward; I've yet to see an objective complaint against it.

I was going to say something about wanting to see drawponies deviate from the standard 3-panel one-two-punchline a little, but he's already a step ahead of me in that regard. But I will be honest; I have no idea what "Adapting to Night" is supposed to be. Is it a comedy? Is it a horror? A sitcom? Romcom?! It's something alright; I'm not sure is there's any planning or focus to this comic series at all. Personally I've hit a huge bump making a transition between stand-alone comics and comic series, but I at least planned out the plotline. I've also made the huge mistake of giving zero focus to character development and transitioning from the middle to the endgame, but this seems subpar to his stand-alone works. Granted I will keep an eye on the comic series as it develops, but right now it's kind of firing blanks as far as I can tell.

Overall I think drawponies makes decent comics. Feel free to check out his dA profile, and let me know what you think about his work. Also, if you've enjoyed this critique let me know; I'll make more if you guys want more!
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Dragunique's avatar
I think Drawponies has had great stand-alone comics, but Adapting to Night never was my kinda stuff. Tried reading it but nah, not for me. I'm glad that there's still those stand-alone strips now and then. :)