Gabe's Wired interview
 

In both Wired magazine and on the Penny Arcade homepage, Gabe had some slightly unflattering (if mostly true) thoughts about sprite comics, at one point calling them a puppet show that stole the puppets.
One or two offensive lines aside, I had to agree with most of what he said, but I was curious what others might've thought.

see, 8-bit theater is kindof an exeption. Look at one page of it, and then another of some other sprite comic. Notice the difference? it's art. :)

But even Brian admitted in that same Wired article that if he could do it all over again he'd get an artist to illustrate the story, like Gabe and Tycho did.

But you kinda have to agree with all of Gabe's very valid points, most sprite comics are made by people with great ideas (8-Bit, The Villain, etc,) with little to no artistic ability.

But maybe other popular sprite comicers can take Brian's example and sell merchandise with 'newly' drawn characters without risking lawsuit.

Is there any way someone can get a copy of that article up here, or a link or something? I'd like to see it.

Thanks for the link, man.

Anyway, I don't see anything mean to sprite comic writers in there at all. Only the obvious fact that if you use sprites, its probably because you can't draw, and there isn't any problem with that. Alot of comic book writers hire artists to pencil in their work, so how about using capcom instead of that weird joe guy who always hangs around the coffee shop? That large corporation is a cheaper artist, and while it is limiting, it does get your work off the ground.

If you read Gabe's recent post, he points out how that was a misunderstanding.

It seems no more offensive to say people use sprites because they can't draw than to say that Gabe works with Tycho because Gabe can't write.

The bit about puppets was kind of stupid, though.

Exactly.

Brian can't draw -- I mean really -- but I do think he has an artist's aesthetic sensibilities. He has an excellent understanding of visual storytelling techniques, he just can't actually draw the characters and objects and settings used to express them. It seems kind of like being a director who can't act but knows what good acting is and how to coax it out of his performers. I think this is what separates him from most sprite comics.

I do have to note -- despite my general distaste for ever saying anything complimentary about anybody for any reason -- that Clevinger's mix of sprites, photography, and Photoshoppery is at least as pretty as anything Penny Arcade has done. It's interesting that sprites aren't really used for anything aside from the characters, which rather sets the strip apart visually.

I always thought that what seperated Brian from most sprite comics is that Brian is a carbon-based humanoid life form, while most sprite comics are digitized images posted on websites.

Brian has done something a bit different. Sure, he may not have the artistic ability to create visual characters, but at least he goes to work making sure that comic looks just the way he would like it too. Clevinger's work is proof enough that sprite comics aren't for the lazy, that to make one good you have to put a little work into the display, go into photoshop a little, play around until you get something that fits perfectly. In that sense, though the characters weren't his creation, most of the art is still technically his, and its very good for photoshop.

Its good to have a butt-kissing rant every once and a while.

Of course, when you look back at the first comic, you see how far the background work has gone.

And I still find nothing really offensive in that article.