And the winner is…

1. Situatii din Blogosfera » Concursul de caricaturi? O gluma proasta Says:
   March 4th, 2008 at 9:42 am

   […] acesta de la mizerabila organizare si prezentare oferita de Cristi Manafu, a fost feedback-ul oferit totusi in final, pe blogul lor (dar neaparat in engleza :)) de Tudor si mai ales […]

1. cristi Says:
   December 4th, 2007 at 6:26 am

   Hi, Eugen and Tudor,

   Yes, cheers for the winner ;). While I intend to write more about the way this competition has been organized, I was wondering if you can give us all some brief feedback with your impressions, the areas we should improve and the way you chose the winner. For me, this kind of feedback was the only reason why I got into the competition.

   While I'm also a Pidjin fan, I'd be more than happy if you could also share with us some insights about the Romanian online cartoons, especially in the blogosphere: where we are, what’s missing, what are the next steps…

   Best Regards,
   Cristi

2. theTudor Says:
   December 4th, 2007 at 12:00 pm

   I did not judge the art, runners up were:
   number 20 & 12 & 11 & 5. (unsorted)

   I wanted to choose 3 and Eugen was supposed to choose 3 himself, and we were supposed to make a final assessment afterwards. In the end we just loved the one by Ionut. It was a unanimous decision.

   We were unanimous and we stood victorious, with Ionut at our side! Repent !

3. cristi Says:
   December 4th, 2007 at 12:10 pm

   my questions were completely different but …never mind

4. theTudor Says:
   December 4th, 2007 at 12:39 pm

   I'll try to address your "oh so difficult, really" question.

   i seem to have been scooping for depth and meaningfulness

   my impressions: radu nr 11,12 had a lot of heart, had a minor deficiency in the punchline department, and i think he is improving. i recommend that he reads Story by Robert McKee. It helped us. (and we still hope we'll improve ourselves also)

   Ionut was so good in rhythm, structure, and punchline that it was scary. Had i not read some of his blog posts, i might have had the chance to hope(in an evil way)that he was just lucky.

   In the others i appreciated opinions on life, the touch of human, life experience, recognizable situations "yea, man, that with the garbage is like what i think about life and failing at small tasks" Quirkiness. Meaningful points. That’s waht i was going for.

   Also the runners up i posted in the previous post, were my selection, we can only speculate what Eugen liked (i know he loves a good pun or two)

   Let’s see if he writes

5. Eugen Erhan Says:
   December 4th, 2007 at 1:39 pm

   my appologies for the delay, but momentarily i cannot answer (work related lack of life), however i will post a lengthy answer in the evening.

   Thanks to everyone for participating, and please check back in the evening or tomorrow morning.

   cheers&love,
   eugen

6. cerber Says:
   December 4th, 2007 at 6:12 pm

   Wow! I'm glad Tudor liked my drawings… although the DIY was a bit off subject, it was still fun to do…

   Kudos to the winner…

7. Eugen Says:
   December 4th, 2007 at 11:35 pm

   As promised, here’s a roundup of my thoughts about the NetCamp Cartoon Contest.

   First off, neither Tudor or I are authorities in this field, we're just working very hard to become so. If you do disagree with some of the following ideas, well, you may be right.

   We wanted laughs. Our goal was to find a comic that can make us giggle, or hopefully dislocate a jaw bone laughing. Drawing skills were not relevant here.

   Here’s my top 3

   #1. Cartoon 3 - Ionut
   #2. Cartoon 6 - Cristi
   #3. Cartoon 12 - Radu

   Here are some general impressions.

   Using puns is not bad, but you have to make sure that the idea of the strip does not feel "built around" the pun. This causes the comic to feel gratuitious, i.e. harder to accept, harder to laugh at.

   On Pid'Jin for instance, we do use a lot of puns, but we try very hard to make the episode work even if you remove the pun. It’s not easy, and sometimes we fail at it ourselves, but it’s still a good principle to have.

   Using references is great. Jokes about specific people, blogs etc. always arouse a bigger interest. It’s a very predictable recipe for success. Equally, for failure: when you talk about known things, people will have their own standard - maybe their opinion is different, maybe they already heard a similar joke, or a better one, on the same subject.

   There is no failproof recipe for writing good comics. One of the few things you CAN use is Scott Adam’s (Dilbert creator) humor-verification-tool.

   After you finished your strip, check if it can be described as:
   - cruel
   - cute (makes you go "awwww")
   - clever (gives you an insight)
   - recognizable (you've been there)
   - bizzare
   - naughty

   A funny comic usually needs to have at least 2 of the above. It sounds easy, but it’s not. In these past few years, this trick helped us stop from posting episodes too soon, and return to the drawing board.

   The only bad thing i saw in many entries was a feeling of 'unfinished', i.e. many had a very good idea behind, but that idea was not developed into what it could have been.

   The good thing is that there were many, different ideas, delivered on such short notice.

   Congratulations to all.

8. cristi Says:
   December 5th, 2007 at 4:57 am

   Thanks guys, that’s what I was looking for

   IMHO, what saved the day from this awfully organized competition was your feedback here, and especially the more realistic and decent view of the whole picture offered by Eugen (no offense, Tudor :)). I wrote more on the subject on my blog, in case you know Romanian

   And no, I'm not sad I didn't win :)). In fact, I said from start my skills in this domain are none, I live in Vancouver/Canada anyway (so a ticket to NetCamp would have been wasted on me :)) and I'm rather surprised (and honored) I appeared however in Eugen’s list.

   I'm rather surprised (and sad) you completely forgot Nic. I don't know him, but his talent and his cartoons speak for themselves. For me, he should have been the winner. …But what do I know? ;))

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