Analysis of Web comic Paper 1

Analysis of Web comic ‘Noblesse’
A lot of people thought web comics to be very degraded, or low quality, art and popular among the minors. However this leads to a serious omission in judgment. Web comics are starting to come into spot light in South Korea as the major search engine sites are hiring artists to draw web comics with pays. ‘Noblesse’ is one of the most popular web comics that are being released in a major website in Korea called’ Naver’ (www.naver.com) and gaining more popularity as more series are released.

The fundamental system in South Korea for web comics, or webtoon, is well structured. Unlike many of the foreign country’s web comics that are posted on their own web sites, Korea’s large search engine web sites have their own sectors for maintaining and supervising webtoons. There is no limit to the art the artists wishes to pursue, some rated ‘r’ comics do exists and they require approval of Korean social security number or I-pin code to prove one is eligible to read. Artists get to choose the date they wish to turn in their work and be published on the web site when they contract. They are pays are increased for more views they get and they are evaluated by the viewers with rating scale of 1~10 (10 being the best). Those who get guaranteed hundred thousand views are paid real handsomely. Although some web comics lose its popularity because the author loses their passion and pursue only for good ratings. A lot views could be achieved because the popularity of the web comic and the popular search engine makes a great synergy, because of the easy access. The genre of web comics could have bloomed because of the well created infrastructure.

The web comic ‘Noblesse’ brings its concept and main themes from old cheesy fantasies. The biggest part of the story is based on what we call vampire, or in the story ‘nobles’. The ‘nobles’ are told to existed with mankind’s history and are born with extreme strength, speed, and powers. The lame old rivalry of werewolves and the vampires exist in the story, however the secret human society ‘Union’ which have high technology of manipulation and upgrading human body is something original in the story. The interesting thing of the story is that most of the enemy they fight against turns into ally as the story progresses. The whole series is based on one story line where all the episode from episode1~ 271( episode 271 is the latest one) is all one flow of a story.

Art work is one of the essential parts that contribute to the popularity of the web comic ‘Noblesse’. The basic cuts are done in the original Korean webtoon style cuts. The Korean web toon style cuts are done very similar to the Japanese manga, or comic book, except that it the cuts are done more very vertical orientated as the plain old comic books are based on horizontal lay outs. There is no actual set color scheme that runs throughout the whole series. The drawing style for the comic is done in Japanese manga style with full colors, not really amazing because most of the web comics published in major portal sites are done in full color unless the genre of the comic is comedy or about some questionable contents of the society. Many of the very specific details are well expressed thorough out the art. Minor details such as the windows on building in the background, little wrinkles on character face that show the feelings of the characters, and the light works that give the volume to the 2 dimensional characters.

The language uses in the art work ‘Noblesse’ is another point to watch for and adds to the fun of the story. The difficulty of the grammar and vocabulary is more of easy then hard. Some uses of slang and the Internet wordings such as abbreviations and emoticons are well used in the comic. The way the characters talk show many different ways of languages uses such as sarcasm, humor, and irony is used throughout the whole story. The length of the text in the comic differs for every episode, for example when an episode with a lot of descriptions and new terms the amount text tend to be much longer compared to an episode that is action orientated and the most of the cuts and scenes are covered with actions where picture speaks more than thousand words. Some quotes such as “This should be the difference of the eye level between you and me.” Is picked up by the viewers and become popularized and used often in many Korean internet communities. Not much of the ethos and logos is used throughout the work because the story is based on fiction and not much of logic and ethos have effect in unreal things.

One factor that contributes to the development, brainstorming, and the evaluation is the comments and forums. The author and the artist run their own mini blogs to get some feedbacks and ideas from the readers of the works. The comment system that is under the art work is one of the hottest debating places in the whole portal site. The people discuss about the overall evaluation of the episode that was uploaded giving feedbacks such as telling the author for the typo they made while he was typing and telling there are some weird drawings or calling out some wrong things done in the back ground. There are some people who tend to write bad of the work with evil intention, just degrading the artwork without a typical reasons, and some people who write complementary to the artists, cheering them up and thanking for always posting a high quality work every time. Some people write their own prediction of how the story will be continued in the episode that will be posted week later. Audience of the art tend to write a lot of comments when one of the known quotes of the comic is said in the episode they are reading, or in times when the writers ran out of ideas and posted a art work with short length.

Secondary material or parodies of the art work is another great thing to be considered when reading the ‘Noblesse’. Fan blogs are run by many people who are a great fan of the art work. Fans, or people who really love the ‘Noblesse’ express their love through talents they have such as drawing the main characters they like from the story, writing how they think the story will be continued on, and giving sources of basic back ground pictures that would fit the artist’s art style. All these secondary materials are posted on the fan blogs that is linked on the bottom of every episode. Forums in the fan blogs are another place where people like to express how they feel of the episode or the whole story and give tips for the changes the writer and the drawer can make. Forum gets average of five thousand posts per episode, and some are real good analysis of the work that authors really tend to take into concern when writing the story.

The web comic ‘Noblesse’ is a web comic that is gaining a lot of popularity in Korean portal site ‘Naver’ and includes many factors that contributes to it’s popularity.