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Consumers Digest Feedback and Suggestions
11 years ago
General
Some of you have already given us some valuable feedback, which is awesome, but now we'd like to open the forum up to everybody: Tells us what you thought!
If you bought the magazine: Did you like it? Did you hate it? Were you somewhere in between or all over the place? What were your minor quibbles and major problems and what are your ideas to make it better? Did we do anything you want to see us do again?
If you didn't buy it: Why? Was it the price or content or artist selection or something else entirely? Do you want to see something else? Did our advertising campaign annoy you? Is there something about us that just rubs you the wrong way?
And of course, possibly most important, what do you want to see next?
We want to be your production company, because you know what you want better than we do. But we can't give you what you want if you don't give us some direction. No matter how crazy, unique, or cost-inefficient your suggestions are, let us hear 'em all! Whatever your opinion of us now is, we guarantee you that tomorrow we'll be better. We'd better be. If not, well, you only have yourself to blame for not leaving a comment!
If you bought the magazine: Did you like it? Did you hate it? Were you somewhere in between or all over the place? What were your minor quibbles and major problems and what are your ideas to make it better? Did we do anything you want to see us do again?
If you didn't buy it: Why? Was it the price or content or artist selection or something else entirely? Do you want to see something else? Did our advertising campaign annoy you? Is there something about us that just rubs you the wrong way?
And of course, possibly most important, what do you want to see next?
We want to be your production company, because you know what you want better than we do. But we can't give you what you want if you don't give us some direction. No matter how crazy, unique, or cost-inefficient your suggestions are, let us hear 'em all! Whatever your opinion of us now is, we guarantee you that tomorrow we'll be better. We'd better be. If not, well, you only have yourself to blame for not leaving a comment!
It's a great idea, though X3 I suppose I'd like to see more...focused topics? So it's easier for people to pick and choose what they'd like to see.
1) Gimmicks. Everyone submitting to the publication seemed extremely aware of the fact that they would be entering into a veritable menagerie of vore artists, and as such everyone was intent on incorporating some gimmick to make sure their piece was stand-out. That's great and all, but in the case of a few of these it ultimately made the vore piece unappealing. Immediately at the fore of my mind are the pieces by Stank (in both Mild and Spicy) and the Mild work by TacoKurt. With Stank's pieces there were words. That's expected in comics, and the literate have no real issue here. But there were many, many words. Too many. It's important to set the scene, I get that, but when you literally have so much text in the frames of a comic that it is actively crowding the picture then you have gone too far. I understand that "strong story" is a good hook for a comic, but with respect to fetish art, specifically vore, forcing most of the predatory action out-of-frame is sort of a miss. Maybe others disagree with me, but it seems prudent to get more of a belly in a shot that seems to just almost contain one. As for TacoKurt, I was just utterly blueballed, for lack of a more-apt term. It was an excellent strip, and the ending was funny, but it failed to be suitably fetishy, which is a big weak point for a fetish magazine submission. It behooves an artist to remember that the fetish is generally integral to a fetish piece. Gloom's splash page captured this well, and honestly was the best work I've ever seen him do. Diorexity's piece DID manage to focus appropriately on vore, but it failed terribly in another area, which would be...
2) Composition. I have seen Diorexity's work, I can tell they have plenty of talent. Their submission to the publication displayed absolutely none of that. And having it be the first piece in the Mild edition essentially shoved the nadir of the magazine right into the waiting eyes of anyone curious enough to glance in. My expectations were immediately lowered by this, which is good because later pieces were better, but still not what I'd hoped for. More comic pages than I care to name had a particulate spray of panels from all sides, making them ultimately crowded and unwieldy. I would honestly have preferred 100 unique splash pages to the novice panelwork I saw on display. Hell, more splash art would have at least broken the monotony of all these truncated half-storylines.
3) Literature formatting. Wall-of-text. I know you guys are trying to conserve pages, but some people are farsighted, (it's me, I'm farsighted) and that blizzard of stark black characters on a field of dead white gave me a headache like you wouldn't believe. break those pages up somehow! Insert a little sketch or something, or even just divide them into columns on the pages the way most professional magazines tend to do. Please. Anything.
As far as what I'd like to see next goes, I ultimately appreciated Sefra's work, the splash art from ndnode and Gloom, and TacoKurt's comic (yes, in spite of the blueballing) more than anything else in terms of composition. As for storylines or gimmicking? I've seen better. Honestly, I think I'd just want LESS of those. It's damn-near impossible to tell a decent story in an 8-pages-or-less comic. Shyguy got the closest to doing this properly by not actually telling a story at all. Kudos to him for that one.
I understand fully that most of these criticisms are of the contributors and not the magazine itself, but it must be understood, in turn, that the contributors ARE this magazine. I feel that the entire community can do better than this, and that's what I'd like to see from you (and from us).
Give it three more issues Stank. I'm pretty confident the negative feedback will lower significantly by then. Even if the idea is 'for others to shine', drop in some single page stuff like gloom.
Kid Cobalt is license-free, perfectly horizontally-kerned, and compact enough to fit into a bubble without wasting space. It'd conserve a lot of room in your panels~ Its only real flaw is horizontal kerning, but that's easily fixed by manually moving the lines of text closer together.
The literature formatting is a bit of a surprise, so we are glad it was brought up. Presentation like that for text is not uncommon, and we thought our file sizes were large enough to be zoomed in on without significant quality loss (yes, that is a nearsighted issue and not a farsighted issue). Do you have suggestions to correct it beyond inserting images, which some writers may feel distracts from their work? Column division and larger breaks between paragraphs will certainly be used from now on, in addition to initials on chapter breaks, but do you believe there is a font size or color that could also be applied to correct the issue?
We have also learned that mags flourish with simple content. While it's not like we didn't know that before, we were not truly aware of the density present most of our contributions until the magazine was put together and we saw it all side-by-side. Unfortunately the splash pages were also grouped together, when they should have been used to break up flow, so that too will be corrected. In the future we will definitely use more splashes and shorter/simpler stories. We are proud of some of the longer and more ambitious material, although clearly some of it did not pan out as we had planned.
Speaking for Stank's work in particular, while he would be the first to tell you he is not making excuses for his content, he wishes to explain that this was a situation where ambition caused him to lose sight of the audience. He was attempting to establish a world and develop what were to be reoccurring characters, and all of this culminated in the marginalization of the content most audiences wanted to see. The merits and quality of his work aside, he let what should have been the main purpose of his work slip away. He will not be working with us on Consumers Digest again.
I'm very grateful for your consideration on this one. As for font size, it's pretty much correct. As you've mentioned, it can be zoomed-in, which makes the issue primarily one of block-formatting. As for color, I know that some periodicals tend to use an almost-imperceptibly blue tint to their black text. I think this has to do with vision, but I'm not sure what or how. I'M NOT A DOCTOR, CAPTAIN.
Unfortunately the splash pages were also grouped together, when they should have been used to break up flow, so that too will be corrected. In the future we will definitely use more splashes and shorter/simpler stories. We are proud of some of the longer and more ambitious material, although clearly some of it did not pan out as we had planned.
Couldn't have said it better, myself. I believe you're making wise choices, here.
Speaking for Stank's work in particular, while he would be the first to tell you he is not making excuses for his content, he wishes to explain that this was a situation where ambition caused him to lose sight of the audience. He was attempting to establish a world and develop what were to be reoccurring characters, and all of this culminated in the marginalization of the content most audiences wanted to see.
This is accurate to a fault, but really...
The merits and quality of his work aside, he let what should have been the main purpose of his work slip away. He will not be working with us on Consumers Digest again.
... this is completely unnecessary. And I know you're the one writing it, Stank, and not Roco. I know it's not Roco because neither of you are expelling anyone else from the publication, despite numerous offenses identical to or far worse than Stank's ambition overtaking his focus. Seriously, man, you can't auto-crucify over this. Don't beat yourself up over one small slip, and don't let your ambition peter out just because the launch wasn't what you expected. You still have more than enough potential and talent to drive this onward. Give yourself a little credit.
The process in which I bought them was also very smooth, and it took roughly 5 minutes to get it paid for and downloaded.
I think my biggest issue was the content itself. It was very unspecific in the previews, which is fine, but there was a lot of filler, at least to me. Really though it comes down to preference, and while I should have loved the magazines in concept, they left me pretty bored for 95% of it. Perhaps consider getting more iconic characters? I mean, you would think that a magazine with such big artists in it would contribute some use of their IP's, but maybe that is too much of a legal issue.
In any case, I will stick around for the next one, but I won't bring myself up as high as I did before.
A few things I'd suggest:
For at least the Spicy: you could include at the top of each new story/comic (and on the table or contents) a set of color markers and a key. So "This story/comic includes: Digestion, Fatality, etc.
I realize the intent is to offer a wide variety of content, but as others have mentioned or implied; while that gives 'something for everyone' it might only give someone one thing anyway. I'd offer the suggestion of mostly focusing/organizing the content. Maybe instead of a mild and spicy magazine, make both issues adult. Or just combine everything and organize/mark the content carefully. To be honest I don't think anyone will be ordering that isn't an adult anyway; and even if they were, the market is probably small. Instead one version could be an oral vore only, the other could be alternative vore. Every now and then you save a particular type of content to go into an extra/special themed issue (transform focused, tail focused, hard focused) and test how well it sells: At the least you will have a rarer themed vore content collection that interested parties could pick up down the road knowing its exactly what interests them. You might not know if issue #3 will have what you like, but if you see a themed issue that states exactly what you like, you'll probably pick that up even if it is long after the initial release. So the either one main vore comic or two main vore comics, and occasionally an extra that focuses on a particular theme that content has been collected for over rime.
You have a lot of great artists that are a part of this, but I'd say typography and publishing/layout skills are a different focus from typical art and to eventually get a professional looking magazine, you might seek out someone who has experience with professional magazine layouts. For example, the intro 'swallowtail presents. . .' has the text laying really close to the boarder, it needs some 'padding'.
As the above; for branding too, you guys have done very well under a short time frame, but again that is a speciality. I'm personally a stickler that logos should be super simple, clean, vectorized, and limited in color/effects. Maybe just something to consider down the road.
The website and functionality is again well done for the time frame the varied skill sets. But a visual revamp from someone who has career in web development/design would again bring everything up a notch on the professional scale. But all that can come later down the pipeline.
This is a really good idea. Just want to comment on it to draw particular attention to it.
With the amount of snakes in the first issue; if snake-themed pieces were saved briefly there could be a full themed "Sexy Serpent" edition relatively quickly. If a themed issue was extremely well received they'd know to keep gather more content for that theme to make another installment of that special edition; "Sexy Serpent Edition Vol II" etc.
Other special editions that could be a possibility, the theme could be anything, not just rare vore types:
Female Preds
Male Preds
Feral Edition
Feline Forays
Murine Madness (rodents)
Foxy Edition
Prep/cooking Edition
Bondage + Vore
Hypnosis + Vore
Your idea of tags and organizing Spicy's layout based on content is a good one, and we will look into it. The big concern is that it spoils the content of the story in advance, however that may be worth the risk.
We will certainly look into hiring on more professional quality work in the future. All of your concerns, from typography to layout to graphic design to web design, are ones we share. When we will be able to properly address them we can not say, but they are among the many things on our 'to do' list.
One thing that worried me in regards to this was a description I noticed that the mild was safe for kids. I think that's a dangerous approach for a fetish magazine really. It's still going to feel sexual even if clean. Keep it all adult in that sense at least. A slipup with content being included that is directly sexual and a parent finding a fetish mag that is 'safe' for minors might be an accident waiting to happen. I don't have any legal background but I'd encourage you to remove that wording at least .
Creating any sort of dividing line is always difficult, because crossover audiences are a tangled ball of desires. There is no clear separation, and the more divisive you get the more crossover readers you lose. A magazine that focuses on containment and reforming, for example, would be great for a small audience, but offer nothing for a lot of others. Dividing then not by specific content, but by age range, reassures all cross-over audiences can be sated (although that is not a guarantee and it depends on the contributions we get). The only types of vore that would not be featured in 'Mild' are those that involve nudity, really, unless you can find curse-word vore somewhere. The fact that most alternative vore (foodplay for example) appeared in Spicy is a coincidence, not a design choice.
This is a major topic of discussion, so we are very seriously considering other options, however at the moment we realize that there are audiences that don't want to see 'adult' or 'extreme' content. That's a very real and very relevant portion of the community, and ignoring their demands under the assumption that 'we're all adults' is a dangerous one. 'Adult' as a classifier for content doesn't mean 'all adults' are the audience, instead it means the audience has to BE adult to understand it. If you're an adult you don't have to like 'adult' content. Not all adults enjoy seeing extreme or difficult content, and there is no reason to deny that audience if the 'Mild' book continues to sell as well as it has.
As far as other feedback goes, I did wanna mention something about the advertising campaign. I was lucky enough to stumble upon it when you guys first started advertising for the magazine, so I've known about it for a while. However, if I hadn't stumbled upon it back then, there would've been a chance that I wouldn't have known about your efforts because I actually didn't see it advertised that much! :3 I saw maybe one or two people upload previews, and then maybe another two or three mention it in their journals or on their twitter. Aside from that, I didn't see much. So, actually, I'd like to see more advertising in the future. I mean, I don't want, like, someone constantly reminding us about it on a daily basis, but I would like more updates. I wouldn't be surprised if there are tons of people that don't know about the magazines yet because there wasn't a whole lot of advertising.
Quality: The general quality varied significantly between the artists, from impressive to downright disappointing. Given how small the community is, and the fact that most of us -are- amateurs, this is to be expected, at least for now. I know for my own submission, I spent an unprecedented amount of time trying to put lipstick on a pig. Learned a lot about upping the production quality, but the lines are not something I'm proud of. I think there was a lot of that in these issues of the magazine, and not just from me.
Professionalism: I've told Stank some of the things already, but you guys need to work on your communication a bit. My own experience wasn't too bad, but if you have contact with possible contributors, you need to keep them in the loop, even if it's to tell them their services will not be required. I suggest creating a few modifiable e-mail lists: Contributors, Candidates, and Administrators (the third, assuming you eventually pull someone more than Stank and Roco into leadership positions; might be a while before that happens, though). When something changes, send a mass e-mail to the appropriate mailing lists. Whenever something is finalized for a candidate, let that candidate know immediately. The thing I gave you slack on above (small community to choose contributors from) is something I have to criticize here. You don't have many e-mails to send. I know there's a crunch time near the end—there always is—but your first priority is community, so you don't want to estrange your contributors with a lack of communication. ALL THAT SAID, I had a decent time corresponding and doing business with you. Though I have Stank on instant messenger stuff, he wasn't around much at all during that time, so I had to do e-mail correspondence just like every other contributor, and the replies were relatively timely and never put me out. Just...during production, try to check at least once a day.
Diversity: As others said, the diversity was a bit lacking. For the first issue, you gathered everyone who comes to mind, and since we all have our niches, it makes sense that those people would all share relatively similar tastes. I'm glad you're making an open call for contributors right now because it will help expand your contact base, and thus will likely expand the diversity of the content. The lack here wasn't exactly your fault, but it is something to keep in mind for next time.
Overall, the experience was fine for me, and though a lot of the material wasn't my taste, I attribute that to the fact that my tastes are pretty narrow.
Favorite contributors were Stank, TacoKurt, LapSeph, and MageTorment, all for entertainment value over fetish material. I like it when things make me laugh.
I say this because, when I think of a sampler platter, I think of a dish of appetizers. I may enjoy some or all of the appetizers, but I might not, and I would feel cheated out of my money if I paid dinner price for a sampler platter and was only able to enjoy part of the platter. I'm not saying drop the price much, maybe $5 at most, but that might also help sell people on the idea, and thus make them more willing to buy the themed issue later on.
Had intended to actually try and submit something myself for it but I couldn't get anything decent to fit on just one page. x3
Likely just kind of reiterating what has been said already, but knowing just what i'm buying would be good. While i did understand that there would likely be some content i wouldn't care for (CV) , one thing i really wasn't expecting were stories. I don't have a problem with them and it might just be oversight on my end, but i wasn't really expecting them as i saw nothing about them, and they aren't a thing i tend to actively look for.
Everything else can pretty much be summed up with glitch's critique, as far as quality and overall focus on the vore itself is concerned.
We'll be sure to specify there is written content in the future. We included both featured writers in the advertisements, but unless you knew they were writers you probably weren't aware of what their content would be. While we believe both stories were of very high quality, we acknowledge some audiences just aren't interested, so we'll be sure to warn them in advance better with the next release.
I was planning on buying online, but there were two problems:
1: Shipping cost of $10 for physical copies
2: Shipping dates of whatever it was in which things would be sent out during specific times of the month (which I understand as I'm sure you don't want to make extras and have then stick around for too long)
Though as I've read through a few things above I might not buy at all. We shall see at a later date, IE, Anthrocon.
As for shipping dates, it's a good idea to better schedule those. Print on demand sounds loose, but I assure you we are prompt in our response. Physical orders from the first release were just sent out today. A 5-day turnaround, we believe, is respectable, considering we're not in a position yet to fully employ a shipping department.
If the Spicy version had its alternative content labeled, so that it still had other content but the oral vore that was present was be clearly displayed and easy to flip to, would you still be interested in buying it? Or is the presence of that other content you don't like clogging up the book a significant barrier for you?
I don't blame you for this but it looks more like you focused your attention around more popular artist rather that any one who could use a hand and is starting out. Its fine but a lot of people already know these artist and these artist turn out a bunch of art and now we have to pay to see more...which is fine but kindof against what you are proposed in your ads since these artist get a lot of attention and a lot of feed back. This may not be true in the magazine itself but advertisement wise, it looked like the popular were working with more popular to boost themselves and receive money through it.
Speaking of advertising, it seems the only advertising around was ether in the FA ads (which can be blocked by anti adware so you lose those people) or by artist who made the ads for their comics, or the book site itself. If the artist didn't have a teaser, they weren't advertised, which is bad. There should at least a selection of who is in the vore mag and who they are so we can be more hyped of who we are going to see, not who we think we will see.
Lastly, i think you should allow your artist more freedom and double team with them to use each other. These little teasers don't show much except some maw shots or bloated bellies. Its what you expect from a vore mag but not a story. If you let the artist explain the world, whether by comics or by written work, through their site first, not only is it advertisement of whats to come but it removes all the large wall of text and explaining. (if i'm understanding correctly)
And i'm trying to see if i could use the Mag as advertisement to show off a preview of a much larger comic/comic series. If you do this with more artist, your magazines would greatly increase. TV and other Magazines use this as a "Only see it here till the item is released" to increase traffic, it might help with you guys as well.
i do hope it goes more smoothly next issues.
Vore on the other hand can take everything from the Sex category and add about times 3 to that number with EACH thing you bring on. *BREATHS* Soft/Hard/Absorb/TF/Oral/Butt/Cock/Unbirth/Stomach/Tail/breast *BREATHS* Feet/head/Rump first, micro, same size, different size, Macro, Soul, blood, gore and so forth. Pant pant pant. *GASP!* Female/Male/Herm Prey Pred Both Willing Unwilling and um her gah derp oh and the race or species of the CHARACTER! *faints*
When looking at this book we have a lot of oral vore. We also have cock vore. There is one comic story that does a really odd transforming into a food item and eating that transformed person foody type of vore. [I sadly have not read the storys yet.]
So when making this book a person must ask them self how to publish it. The Mild and Spicy is a good method however...bringing-ing up the Vore Vs Sex thing that I just pointed out, can this book be made to find a happy medium to a fetish where a person might find them self's unable to find what they enjoy? Can the comic be more or less focus? What are people saying and what does the vore community enjoy the most? When asked about A fetish of vore people can name likely the best VORE of a type. By the way what about newer public enjoyed vore? Best wishes to the artiest that felt the need to back away from the fandom that had a female Pac-Man vore type character. Still it was a odd vore that some people enjoyed enough to commission that artist. Vore tends to grow into new things. it's crazy...
Quality of the Book: The quality is not PERFECT like a HQ TV. Its about the middle road. That being that even the text story has a rough outline around the text letters. The artwork will look a bit dotty. Even with the most flat picture done for the book the paper will have a canvas outline across the paper and one could see the small little bumps.
I'm horrible at expressing my self so let me be 1000% clear. Beyond the text being a bit "fuzzy" in the sense that a news paper printed well tends to be fizzy Im okay with the printed quality. I can tell its not a 1000% smooth print from something like glossy picture. This is my FIRST comic book furry related. My friend has like 50 at his place. [Which is about 45 mins away so....update on this to come later.]
My only other gripe of the book is the method used to bind it. I have one copy that is slightly off stapled. The insides of the comic are slightly above the cover on both my copy's. not a huge amount to be a problem but...since I work at a build product plant I could see someone having a rough/long day and becoming poor at quality control. Also the staple method causes one when flipping the pages across the comic, that the staple area will TUG away the remaining pages that you flip though. Makeing it a slight bit difficult to completely flip though and find what you want to look at.
Overall those are the two points I wanted to bring up. I'm happy that the artist get a cut of the money. I suck at commissioning art so I hope everyone got a buck or two off my double bought copys of both books and the PDF files. I think this can work for a few more rough copy's but a talk about focusing the fetishes somehow might be needed. Or to allow more than just a TON of oral. To any would be buyer reading this beware I didn't read the story's yet.
To the Swallowtail crew and any artiest, feel free to ask me questions if you have some. PS: Always have a fetish include list somewhere. Good idea?
- I know some people were hard on Stank's section, but honestly this vore porn studio idea is something I want to see happen.
- Most people created original ideas instead of recycling characters or designs they have (for free) else where. It wasn't all a circle jerk of famous faces and fursonas.
- It was a decent mix of genders without being too focused on females like so, SO many paid vore comics are.
The bad stuff:
- The paper the books were printed on wasn't great. I won't get too upset over this since, well, this is the first run of the magazine, you don't have the resources.
-The selection of artists were... a mixed bag overall, especially in the mild section. Again, you are just starting, but I really didn't want to see literal MSPaint art in a publication like this. This leads into...
- Please, in the future, don't allow fursonas to be in the comic. It's extremely distracting and just awkward as all hell to see them. This is also why I appreciated comics like Stank's or Shyguy's because they were original concepts with original characters and actual writing. I want more of THAT, not just goofy single page things where a person's fursona is eaten in a cheap gag. I seriously can get that for free everywhere.
- The stories had nothing to appeal to me. Even skimming through them nothing really stood out.
I am going to buy future Swallowtail books, but what I want to see is this:
- A bigger pool of skilled artists developing comics with characters and settings that are completely original and possibly on-going with plots.
- A slight price decrease because $40+shipping is kinda ridiculous.
- A possible distinction between oral vore collections and alt vore ones.
- Better stories, or maybe cut them all together.
- Better paper
- Less pin-ups
- A first person vore comic, where you are getting eaten
Artists I want back: Stank, Shyguy9, RubberSkunkToo, TacoKurt, Syndrome
I want this to succeed and I know it can be something great, so until then, I can't wait to see you get there.
(P.S. Please stick to a mostly anthro format. It's okay to have humans scattered here or there, but the web has too many anime girls eating dudes)