# What do you think of my idea?



## zrxyz (Nov 10, 2010)

It's the year 2033. Furries landed on earth (obviously as aliens) in 2012, and are now a normal part of society. However, they are in general smarter, stronger, overall better than humans.
William, a *very* smart {human} 13 year old, gets offered to go to college right away, despite his age. What he doesn't know, however, is that it is an all furry college.

If anyone likes the idea, I'll publish it as a webcomic. I've already started char designs and all.

Tell me what you think .


----------



## Smelge (Nov 10, 2010)

This sounds like a terrible idea, but it's late, so I shall just say it's a terrible idea for now, and explain why tomorrow morning.


----------



## Taralack (Nov 10, 2010)

So it's Furthia High.


----------



## zrxyz (Nov 10, 2010)

Toraneko said:


> So it's Furthia High.


 No, I actually know how to draw.


----------



## GingerM (Nov 10, 2010)

Sounds interesting; I look forward to seeing what comes of it!


----------



## OfficerBadger (Nov 10, 2010)

1.A story concept means nothing, it depends on how you write it. Some  may be harder to make into a good story than others. Yours is one of  them.
2.Extremely humanoid aliens that have no explanation as to why they look  like that and aren't from Doctor Who make me rage. You'd better have a  damn good reason why they have human like bodies and secondary  characteristics and heads of animals found on Earth.
3.Why are they better than humans? If this is a 'pro furry' or a in  general 'humans suck' story I swear to all that is good you will get  such a mouthful.
4.If he's so smart, why did he not bother to look up the college or take a tour?
5.Thirteen and so smart he's going to college. I'm sure mom and dad  thought it would be a great environment for him to grow up in. I mean,  smart kids mature faster don't they?(Hint:The opposite is true.)
6.I hope you don't mean publish in the sense of finding a publisher  actually market it to the general public. You'd be so  horribly misguided.
7.Yeah, Furthia High did it first.


----------



## Taralack (Nov 10, 2010)

zrxyz said:


> No, I actually know how to draw.


 
I'm talking purely on basis of the outline you've given mate. :V 

Plus, you haven't even linked any of your artwork. There is nothing for me to judge. Though they fact that you can say that makes me think otherwise...


----------



## Kit H. Ruppell (Nov 10, 2010)

I think you should make it into a total ripoff of District Nine


----------



## zrxyz (Nov 10, 2010)

OfficerBadger said:


> 1.A story concept means nothing, it depends on how you write it. Some  may be harder to make into a good story than others. Yours is one of  them.
> 2.Extremely humanoid aliens that have no explanation as to why they look  like that and aren't from Doctor Who make me rage. You'd better have a  damn good reason why they have human like bodies and secondary  characteristics and heads of animals found on Earth.
> 3.Why are they better than humans? If this is a 'pro furry' or a in  general 'humans suck' story I swear to all that is good you will get  such a mouthful.
> 4.If he's so smart, why did he not bother to look up the college or take a tour?
> ...


1. Umm... thanks for the advice...?
2. Basically, the aliens came first, and initially had two different evolutionary chains, that eventually merges. That didn't happen on earth because it is a much younger society.
3. Again, they are a much older and more developed society.
4....
Okay, got me there >.<. I'll find a reason by the end of the night.
5. The Future:
Age is no longer considered for independence from parents. It's based on many factors, primarily intelligence.
6. No, I didn't mean that.
7. I really don't care at this point, as I am reading it right now, and I _hate_ it, from the actual art to the characters.

But yes, they got the *basic* idea before me.

*Also, I'm going for more of a manga thing.


----------



## OfficerBadger (Nov 10, 2010)

zrxyz said:


> 1. Umm... thanks for the advice...?
> 2.  Basically, the aliens came first, and initially had two different  evolutionary chains, that eventually merges. That didn't happen on earth  because it is a much younger society.
> 3. Again, they are a much older and more developed society.
> 4....
> ...



1.How it is written is more important than the story concept in almost all cases. This is an important thing to grasp.
2.Wait what? Explain that better please, did the aliens develop on earth or on their home planet, then come to earth?
3.Just don't get into 'being human sucks, these wonderful beautiful supernatural smart beings are so much better'. Don't.
5.But intelligence is not maturity. He may be smart but he is not mature  enough to handle many things in life. Just something to consider.
6.Yay.
7.Eh, I don't care for it but you will get people saying this considering Furthia High is prominent in furry fandom.


Wait- manga? Why would you do this?


Now here are suggestions:
1.Stalk this writing forum:http://writingforums.org/index.php
2.Ideas and scenes seem awesome and wonderful now. They won't later.  Especially if you are a younger person(includes up to early  twenty-whatevers) Just believe me, having something in the think tank for a while is not a bad thing.  In fact, it's a theme in many good comics it seems.(then you have others that start up for fun yet turn out awesome. But they did stop and think about everything before continuing.) I believe the author of _The Meek_ has had the idea brewing for several years(might have been twelve, I'm not sure). It shows how well thought out and how skillfully  it is handled and frankly I expect a really thought provoking and complicated plot ahead. Basically, what I'm saying is have the idea fermenting  for a while, get the story done first, and don't jump right into making  pages unless they're drafts, especially if you're not able to keep art at a quality and have  it continuous. So many have fallen that way.
3.Stalk this art forum:http://conceptart.org/forums/
4.Comics, graphic novels, visual stories. Doesn't matter what you call  them, they all do the same thing. Use pictures to communicate a story to  the reader. So that means you draw the panel, put in the dialogue  bubbles, draw another where it'll fit, write the dialogue. Something to that effect. Heh, no. What separates a good comic  from the mediocre, is knowing how to substitute diction with panel  layout and art.
-Know the dimensions of the pages that will best fit the story.  Lackadaisy, for example, consists of large pages with mostly smaller panels set up to be read horizontally.  This is ideal for the story, which is character interaction driven and  of course fits the comedic aspects. Panels can fluctuate between large and small and are set up in a  way to read the subtle changes within a scene or a character's  expression and this effectively leads the reader to infer without  dialogue or leads them to those comedic aspects. A slice of life or  detective story would have panels and a page sizes different to suit the  story's needs. Oh yes, and knowing how to set panels up to be the most effective and understandable is so incredibly important. This explains it so much better:http://community.livejournal.com/the_meek/14081.html#cutid1
-Talking heads are boring.
-Stylistic elements and themes that fit the subject. These help in  telling the story. If I were to do a heavy political allegory about East  Berlin I would incorporate graphical elements of propaganda posters  like those of Dmitri Moor. It helps give a sort of reoccurring theme  with the comic, or something to make it stand out. This isn't something that is absolutely necessary, but it is something to think about. Movies do this all the time. Anyway take this for example: If you have a story about a  Russian immigrant smuggling his cat into America aboard a ship(don't  ask) then what kind of visual clues are you going to give to the story?  Is the ship going to be bright and clean? Will this give the reader the  best idea about the poor immigrant peasants, leaving their homes with  nothing but he clothes on their backs in a desperate attempt to get a new life? No, you're not going  to paint the ship to look like a candy store. A primarily brown and dull blue  color scheme would fit better. Add texture to the background to give it a  mottled dirty feeling, and you've already given the comic atmospheric  elements. Because you can't do that with word choice and spoken sounds like you  can in writing(See:Fall of the House of Usher) you have to rely on stylistic elements to hint at what you're doing. Heck, you might even lighten the colors where ever the  white cat is in some sort of symbolic meaning that the cat is the only  thing the immigrant has left. I don't know, there is plenty you could  do visually to hint and let the reader infer. And this is what concept artists are good at, giving a mood to a scene using values and colors, ect. Remember moods can always change depending on the scene.
*Think about these things and don't jump without thinking how you will best tell this story.
*
I'm really tired. If this doesn't make sense, I apologize.
Also, I have to ask, where is the conflict in all this?


----------



## RockTheFur (Nov 10, 2010)

Like a once wise ManBear told me-
NewFags. Idea taken by other people.

Now to be serious. If you rip off (even accidentally) something else in THE LEAST BIT, people will start to get pissed off at you. This seems like it's taking a chunk out of FH, although I would consider before even thinking of an idea like this-
1- Drawing continuously until you improve beyond expectations
2- Be known in the community
3- Plan for a while before bringing up your idea to the internet, and always check for the least bit of plagiarism.


----------



## Stratelier (Nov 11, 2010)

I think Badger pretty much nails all the points.  Let's see if I can think of anything to add:

1 - What do you mean, the furries have "integrated" into human society?  What's the Earth's planetary population and ratio of human / furry?  Even after twenty years, unless they're breeding like rabbits and actively depopulating the human society, I'd wager they're an obvious minority, if not extremely so.  Which leads into my next point . . .

2 - Twenty years?  I seriously doubt that humans at large will have accepted another sentient, civilized, species living alongside them.  How long did it take African Americans to become "integrated" into modern society?  Well, depending on how you define the term, you might even say it still hasn't happened.  There's still plenty of inter-racial bias and hatred at large to go around, and that's all just within one species.  Adding legitimately separate species to the mix would only make it worse, and no amount of governmental mandates regarding inter-species relations will result in a massive sea change of human cultural views.  People, not unlike animals, have a tendency to self-segregate into discrete populations and refuse to be fully homogenized.

3 - Speaking of inter-species relations, I really hope you aren't planning on any inter-species romance.  That . . . never works out.

4 - Mary Sue furries.  Okay, so they're "really" just some Sufficiently Advanced Aliens that tripped over our planet on one of their space travels.  But is there any particular reason they *should* be universally "stronger, faster, smarter" than humans?  If it's just because you're writing a story by-furries, for-furries, you probably won't find much of an audience outside of your gray matter upstairs, let alone any hopes of brick and mortar publication.

5 - Speaking of brick and mortar, that depends heavily on your artistic skill level.  If you're not even commissionable, you're sure as heck not fit for print.


----------



## Tycho (Nov 11, 2010)

zrxyz said:


> No, I actually know how to draw.


 
Because Furthia High would have been AWESOME if only it had great artwork.  Yeah, right.  A turd is a turd no matter how much you polish it.


----------



## Lapdog (Nov 11, 2010)

Sounds like something you would find in the bottom of a gay guys anus. :V

But seriously, I think that would be 'O.K' but I wouldn't personally read it.


----------



## Smelge (Nov 11, 2010)

OK, time for a bit more thought.

Why would one kid be brought in to a school of furries. It makes no actual sense. The whole high school idea is done to death, and I swear, if there's another highschool comic where 90% of the cast are actually gay, I'm going to haul off and smack someone.

The whole person in amongst people who are different thing has been done to death. Highschool dramas have been done to death. Alien furries as a way to handwave the whole furry thing ha been mostly done to death. You need to come up with something smart, original and engaging. And I suspect that this is not the way to go about it.

For starters, the whole human amongst furries thing has the Furthia High connotations. On the ground level, the premise is pretty similar. Good art won't save it. Good art is nothing without good concept and story behind it.

I suggest heading away and rethinking. Get a concept that will work. As I already said, you need originality, intelligent writing and a story that encourages readers back.


----------



## Stratelier (Nov 12, 2010)

Tycho said:


> A turd is a turd no matter how much you polish it.


At least Mythbusters proved that a polished turd can look pretty like marble ... despite the smell.



			
				Smelge said:
			
		

> Why would one [human] kid be brought in to a school of furries? It makes no actual sense.


^ Hey, good point.  If this is an all-furry college, chances are pretty good that one of their *requirements* for admission is -- bluntly put -- "No Humans Allowed".

But at least OP's story is described as written from a human POV.  If it was told from a furry POV, you'd be edging onto Mighty Whitey territory, i.e. furries came, saw, ... con-furred.

Sorry about the pun.  Zrxyz, just so we're clear, this isn't raping your comic idea -- this is _deconstruction_.

I have a question for you:  Which came first in your mind, this story idea, or reading Furthia High?  Me, I could probably take this story concept and run with it a good Nano's length and it would be legitimately uninfringing upon a comic that I've never seen, read, or know anything about (besides the name).  You could still cite it as a "Follow the leader" story compared to FH, but if I were just writing it for my own personal interest I wouldn't care.  Though I'd probably be a bit more cynical in my presentation of human/furry relations ... say:  If your MC is a Token Human among an all-furry atmosphere, doesn't this make him the number one target for discrimination and harassment?  Obviously not every furry in the college would be happy to hear there's a human among the student body, and this carves out an immediate line defining who your support characters and who your antagonists are.

Part of the reason I don't buy the whole "furries integrated into human society" is that it's inconsistent in your portrayal of humans.  On one hand, saying that humans will have accepted furries living among them 20 years from first contact (when in Real Life racial conflicts trace back centuries, if not _millenia_ because we humans can't stand living with certain other humans) paints a very idealistic and positive view of human society.  ON THE OTHER HAND, saying that these furries are "smarter, faster, stronger" and all-around *better* than humans paints humans in a somewhat negative light, and it's only a few steps removed from Humans Are Bastards.  These two inferences I draw from your concept just don't mesh with each other, they need more time to pickle out.


----------



## Smelge (Nov 12, 2010)

And why would there even be a furry only school? Why would they come to Earth, integrate, then have single species schools?


----------



## Stratelier (Nov 12, 2010)

Smelge said:


> And why would there even be a furry only school? Why would they come to Earth, integrate, then have single species schools?


 
More importantly, how could the MC *NOT* know ahead of time that he's going to wind up at an all-furry campus?  The slightest amount of research into his target school -- a single visit to a college fair, looking up its website on the Net, or even a pamphlet flyer -- will reveal with every photo that the student body is entirely furry.

Seriously, your prodigy can't _be_ a prodigy if he winds up enrolled in some school that he knows nothing about beyond its name.

Another question you need to consider:  You say from the outset these aliens are "furry".  I'm going to be positive here and guess that this label is just for sake of expedience in the forum discussions, and their actual, in-universe species name is something else.  Heck, I'm willing to propose that they treat the word "furry" *like people treat the word "Ni****"* -- if spoken by the wrong people (i.e. humans) it becomes an _extremely_ offensive racial slur.

Now, speaking of race and species I should also ask:  What do these furry aliens LOOK like?


100pts if they all look like the same kind of animal as each other.  E.g. are they all cats, all dogs, all the same what-have-you?

50pts if they have some variation of animal types, but only between closely related morphologies.  E.g. sure you can have your mix of cats, lions, tigers, possible wolves and foxes, but you're still sticking strictly to this branch of the genetic family tree and not throwing in anything that's too off-base.

Only 10pts if they're a mixture of all _mammals_, meaning the addition of primates, marsupials, hooved and horned creatures, etc.  The differences between individuals are starting to outweigh their similarities by this point, which will make the reader wonder how exactly can they be a single species that gets along so well with each other.

No points if they a mixture of all _animals_ and include such things as avian, reptilian, aquatic, possibly even insectoid furries.

Minus 100 points if they're just arbitrary mixtures of arbitrary beastes with no respect for logic.  Winged-humanoid-dragon--foxes and ambiguously cat-gryphon-wolf-sparkle-hybrid ... _things_.

I'm assigning point values here to give you an idea of how many viewers will be able to accept your furry aliens as a premise.  If these furries are a singular _species_, they will probably all have a singular _appearance_.  On the other hand, if you're going for option #2 where their appearance varies within a close range of "species", you could suggest that it's because they have a more diverse gene pool than humans, and their apparent "species" is really just their equivalent for race.  This could lead to inter-racial conflicts within the furry species itself, where certain groups clash against certain other groups (example: "cats" versus "dogs") because they're different.  Then you'd have an argument that humans can use against them, that these otherwise Mary-Sue furries aren't all that much better than humans, when they can get along with humans just fine but can't entirely get along _with each other_.

But if you're going to say that these furry aliens fall into type 3 (all mammals) or type 4 (all animals), you can probably just throw your whole story down the ol' recycle bin because by this point they really aren't a single "species" anymore.  Bizarre Alien Biology be damned, it's the viewer's Willing Suspension Of Disbelief you'll be criticized on, and by this point you basically just have a sugar coating for the Furry Fandom itself.

And don't even think about type 5.  That's ... just ... wrong on so many levels.

And allow me to throw yet another idea at you.  I said early on that if this is an all-furry campus, chances are it's all-furry *by rule*.  There's a variation to that possibility:  Maybe he's an exchange student from another school?  That's not quite _as_ difficult to accept for a premise, and it means he might not literally be the _only_ human on campus then.

Likewise, maybe it's an all-furry campus by charter, and some governmental mandate is demanding that furry campuses allow humans to enroll.  (Equal opportunity and all that stuff, you know).  Again, I'm not sure the pro-furry furries will be happy to see their campuses "tainted" by human enrollment (conflict right out of the gate!  w00t!).  What if the humans have to be protected by some measure of armed police escort?  That's _precisely_ what happened during the U.S. Civil Rights Movement when federal law decreed that "white" schools must be able to accept "black" students in enrollment.


----------



## zrxyz (Nov 12, 2010)

Okay okay... I won't go through with it.
It was just one of many ideas I had for a manga. This was just the only one that had anything to do with furries, so I won't post any others.


----------



## Aeturnus (Nov 12, 2010)

If you first don't succeed, try again.


----------



## zrxyz (Nov 12, 2010)

Aeturnus said:


> If you first don't succeed, try again.


...
But I never really tried in the first place
...


----------



## Aeturnus (Nov 13, 2010)

And what, coming up with an idea doesn't count for anything?


----------



## Taralack (Nov 13, 2010)

/applauds stratadrake


----------



## zrxyz (Nov 13, 2010)

Aeturnus said:


> And what, coming up with an idea doesn't count for anything?


 Not if it was just something at the bottom of a big pile of ideas.

Stop posting already, I said I wasn't going through with it.


----------



## Willow (Nov 13, 2010)

zrxyz said:


> Not if it was just something at the bottom of a big pile of ideas.
> 
> Stop posting already, I said I wasn't going through with it.


 Eh, just because people say it's a bad idea doesn't mean you should scrap it all together. Unless it really was something impossible. 

I also came into this thread just to say your avatar <3


----------



## Aeturnus (Nov 13, 2010)

zrxyz said:


> Not if it was just something at the bottom of a big pile of ideas.
> 
> Stop posting already, I said I wasn't going through with it.


 
Let me ask you something: do you like the idea? If so, then what's stopping you from going through with it? So some people don't like it, so what? That's part of being an artist. What about the people who do like your idea?


----------



## Heliophobic (Nov 13, 2010)

Protagonist is a 13 year old.

Get out.


----------



## Willow (Nov 13, 2010)

Grycho said:


> Protagonist is a 13 year old.
> 
> Get out.


 ..lolwat?


----------



## Stratelier (Nov 15, 2010)

OP, I really side with Aeturnus here.  Sure, we've dredged up a bulk of questions and complaints without needing to hear very much beyond the premise, but if you really want to go through with it simply for your own sake, it's really your call, no one else makes it for you.

Some of my questions in particular are things that I wonder if you've actually thought about yourself.  Sometimes you can get a story idea into your head and it's a winner the first time; other times it needs time to get hammered out, criticized, deconstructed and reconstructed from the ground up before attempting to share it with anyone else.  I can't tell you how many story ideas I've had over the years that fall into the latter.

My 2007 Nano was a mix of both types; once I decided on my main character's name everything else flew out almost automatically.  Setting, Protagonists/antagonists, central conflict, plot point of no return....  and after three years of keeping that story in my head, you can ask me literally any question about the setting and I'll give you an answer.  (Including, so to speak, "rule 34" questions.) I've really thought over the details _that much_.  I'd like to make it a comic sometime, but that's work and I can't accomplish that during a Nano.


----------

