Meh, I'm probably squarely in the Penny Arcade camp, and without shame. It's not that I can't do anything else. I can. I will. But for this project, that's what felt right and what came naturally. It's also easy to make a judgement on a finished product based on four strips without knowing what those four strips could evolve into and what permutations could occur in the future. It's a natural thing in the lifespan of an ongoing webcomic.
Point is, I didn't actually go for anything particularly outre because that wouldn't be what I was comfortable putting out every week. It's a gaming site, and frankly, my submission reflects that. Maybe once I'd found my feet, but I had very little time, stumbling across the contest as late as I did, so I can't say I had a fully envisioned scenario laid out for the characters.
Incidentally, in the past couple of years since the art style made its most recent evolution into the current iteration, Penny Arcade totally rocks. Not that it didn't before, but it's an entirely complete product now, with a level of acuity and finesse that most of its competitors don't have. That's why they're as successful as they are.
What I'm getting at with that particular thread is that PA's art (and webcomic art in general) DOES make a difference to me. Granted, XKCD gets away with it for aesthetic reasons that you can actually connect to the writing, as does 8-bit Theatre, Cyanide and Happiness, Dinosaur Comics, et al. A Softer World, again, is artistic in a wholly unique way. Hyperbolic though it may sound, there's a certain kind of compositional genius at work in ASW.
However, I have to be honest -- though I adore good writing, I'm throwing my lot in with the good writing attached to pretty artwork. Why? Well, there's a lot of popular webcomics that DON'T have amazing artwork as standard. I'm eager to see a lot more that do.
Webcomics I like for artistic reasons:
Penny Arcade
Three Panel Soul (and previously, MacHall)
Clone Army
Even MegaTokyo (though I haven't read it for a long time now, despite following it from its inception... it really started to annoy me. Stylistically, I can't really fault how it's progressed)
Multiplex
Dreamland Chronicles
and so on.
All of this said, I'm fully aware that my stuff will probably get passed over as 'unoriginal', and that's cool. That's the direction I'm going, and if that's the case I won't feel hard done by, because it's a completely legitimate judgement. I dislike Ctrl-Alt-Del on the same basis, after all
(that's not completely true... I find the artwork incredibly bland)
Anyway, that's my tuppence on the whole art vs. writing issue.
By the by, Tootmania, really like that style. Think it fits the format very nicely. The punchline isn't amazing, but it's not completely necessary, since the observation is completely valid, funny or no.
Isjusterin, that tea comic is amazing and made my day, if only because that could so be me (although, I hasten to add, I am a dude).
/rant
