Open question: Seasons in Freebird

[layla]

I have a dilemma about Freebird.

Since the comic runs concurrently on the Internet and in the paper, I'm conflicted about how to deal with seasonal change. Obviously, it's noticeable to readers in Fairbanks when the characters in the comic are in a completely different season than the real world -- when it's winter outside but summer for them. I got several questions last winter from local readers about that. Internet people, I imagine, don't really care; I've never paid that much attention to whether or not webcomics are accurately reflecting the season outside, especially since Internet readers (and authors) live all over the world, so one person's winter is another person's summer...

From an internal-consistency perspective, though, it's better to let the seasons progress as they normally would for the characters' storylines. At the rate of a page a week, it'll probably take them a year or two to make it to early winter. When the comics are collected into book form, or read as a batch in the archives, it'll read better if time passes for them at a consistent rate.

In order to reflect the outside seasons in the internal world of the comic, it'll mean basically abandoning a consistent internal timeline, since the characters probably will experience several summers and winters while not actually aging. This isn't necessarily a bad thing -- it'll mean I can do annual "special" comics for holidays, such as Christmas and Halloween; it'll mean I can react to real-world events and incorporate commentary on them into the comic. Even if I try to stick to a consistent timeline, there will probably be at least *some* of that sort of thing anyway, that will only be noticeable on an extended re-read. ("Hey, weren't they in a Bush presidency and now they're in a Hilary Clinton presidency!") Do people even notice or care? By necessity, they *have* to be a little bit disconnected from the real-world timeline or it just wouldn't work to do a weekly strip with ongoing storylines that takes place in our world.

I would be interested to see people's thoughts on this. If you were reading through the archives, would it bother you that they seemed to hit Christmas about every fifty strips or so without actually aging? Conversely, if you were reading a comic in the paper and it was Christmastime, yet the characters were obviously stuck in July, would *that* bother you? And more to the point, which would bother you MORE?

Comments

Representing Time and other information

[pamola.livejournal.com]

Well I'll stop lurking and say something on display of information. I've enjoyed Scott McCloud's books on how to create comics. Over in the information display world is Edward Tufte (http://www.edwardtufte.com/tufte/), who advocates concise easy to read graphics to impart information. Check out his rants against Powerpoint on the website. In Visualizing Information(http://www.edwardtufte.com/tufte/books_visex), he took a fairly incoherent film clip on Storm formation (see cover) and added three keys to help understand the graphics. One of which I think you could use in a comic to place time. Note with the Thunderstorm, you have a graphic of the storm as it forms with bar showing the time frame elaspe in the display above. If season is important and you don't want to show it constantly in your illustrations, perhaps you should have a little graphic showing the year and you are here symbol.

Your original question was would it bother me either way, which the answer is no. My response is how could you deal with the difference in local reading and comic season. I've enjoyed the work you've put into Kismet and enjoy your livejournal postcards from AK.

Re: Representing Time and other information

[laylalawlor.livejournal.com]

Welcome out of lurker-hood! And thank you for the comments on the comics *and* on the Alaska posts. (Which reminds me -- I have some new pictures from this weekend to put up!)

I've heard of Edward Tufte but cannot for the life of me figure out where. Probably ran across him in one of my design classes, I imagine. Anyway, that's an interesting idea, but possibly the opposite of what I want to do -- because the problem is more that the seasons are TOO specific. It's not that the reader has trouble figuring out what season it's supposed to be in the comic; it's that the seasons are obviously different between the real world and the comic, unless I deliberately change that (in which case, the comic season would proceed at a highly accelerated pace).

Most importantly, though, I like hearing that it wouldn't matter to you as a reader -- that you'd be OK either way.

Re: Representing Time and other information

[pamola.livejournal.com]

Tufte is primarily a design person, working in particular on representation of data. He also had a portion in the Columbia space shuttle report, where he pointed out why engineers should not be allowed at presentation software. He has a fair portion of that discussion on his website. He also does a fair number of lectures around the country, which you get a copy of his book, have a day long lecture about presentation of information and a fairly witty speaker.

Re: Representing Time and other information

[laylalawlor.livejournal.com]

Okay, so having already replied, I was reading another reply to this question that suggested more or less the same thing (the "You Are Here" graphic) and it suddenly clicked that I think I'd misunderstood the nature of your suggestion. Actually that *is* a good idea if I were to go with the idea of keeping "comic time" consistent and not tied to "real world time". Therefore, even if it's January in real life, the comic has a little "July 21st" graphic ... hmm. Food for thought.

Re: Representing Time and other information

[pamola.livejournal.com]

So the problem you have as a comic artist is that maybe you don't want to reveal the length of the story arc or the discrete date. I could see that as an interesting design element in the comic. On Modern Times you have the comic Anywhere(http://www.moderntales.com/comics/anywherebuthere.php) but here in which the comic strip time frame is set out as part of the title.

Re: Representing Time and other information

[laylalawlor.livejournal.com]

Yyyyyeah ... kinda. I guess the crux of the problem is that I'm torn between having the world of the comic directly reflect what's happening in the real world (that is, if there's snow on the ground in the real world and I show an outdoors scene in the comic, there should be snow on the ground) or letting the storylines in the comic dictate what time of year it should be.