Anthony Clark / Nedroid

Anthony Clark (better known by his pen name Nedroid) is the creator of the online webcomic also called Nedroid [2]. While it often covers many subjects, it's usually focused on the same recurring characters, usually Reginald the bird and Beartato the bear-potato. Most of the humour comes from subverting expectations, hypocrisy and lampooning popular culture.

Deadly Weapons - Uploaded on January 3rd 2012

Crime Lab - Uploaded on December 18th 2009

Baddayatwork - Uploaded on November 21st 2007

Help You Help Me - Published on May 5th 2010

Advice About Comics - Published February 1st 2011

The first thing that clearly stands out is the colour palette consisting entirely of blue hues. What's interesting is that this palette only really seems to pop up in the comics focusing on Nedroid's recurring characters. More recently some comics are done in full colour, but most are still done with the bluish hues. I believe that it's either because of a similar reason to the Simpsons having yellow skin (so viewers can recognize it easier), or for tonal reasons. There's a slight air of melancholy to some of the comics, either over something as simple as Reginald dropping his invisible swords, or his incredible 'willpower' allowing him to eat an entire sundae.

Like Bug Martini, Nedroid is quite simply illustrated too. It's a little more detailed, but usually sticks with its simple design. It might go more detailed for establishing shots (and quite rarely, for the entire comic), but usually it's kept quite simple. Considering how sporadically updated Nedroid is, I'd wager that this is purely a stylistic choice. Clark doesn't have a weekly schedule, and even says on his comics 'about' section that he only updates it when he thinks of something funny. It's possible he usually doesn't add much detail because he feels it's not entirely necessary for the joke.

Another thing I found interesting was the use of recurring characters. Their personalities allow you to add to the humour in a way. For example, in Help You Help Me we see Reginald struggling to not eat a sundae. If it was too one-off characters in the comic then it wouldn't be as funny. Because Reginald is built up to be a lazy, arrogant ass, it becomes funnier when he does something lazy or arrogant, and by extension funny when he does the opposite too.

I took what I learned from Nedroid and made a little four page comic about an astronaut.

Here are my colour tests from the first page. I was experimenting with sticking with a limited colour palette, to see what effect it would have. As my comic was more sci-fi themed with the joke centred around the 4th wall, I wanted colours that would add to the surreality of it, so I was thinking of choosing either the cyan, green or purple. Of the lot I think the purple communicated that meaning the best. Here's the full comic:

I'm still struggling to keep my work simple, but I'm pleased with the result. The alien is a very flat character, but I feel like I was able to show enough of the astronaut's personality over the four pages to add to the joke. I feel like I could have communicated the joke in fewer panels, but as a whole I think it works alright.