Tuesday, September 18, 2007

Achewood!

www.achewood.com

Intended audience:

People with a slightly demented sense of humor. Achewood is a webcomic featuring Calvin and Hobbes style talking stuffed animals, but with more swearing. (Very reductive, but also the quickest way to explain it) Probably skews to a slightly younger audience, as some of the pop culture references that come up every once and a while are definitely aimed at the 20-30 year old demographic. Over time, Chris Onstad (Author/Artist) has developed an extremely unique and hilarious comic voice.

Usefulness of Content: Well, the site is very funny, and every comic from the last six years is archived. You can spend some serious time reading through these things, though they don't add much utility in the traditional sense. Oddly enough, the most "useful" material might come from the character blogs. Onstad also writes faux-blogs for the strips cast of characters, and cooking tips/recipes seem to come up quite often. So, if you enjoy laughter and need to learn how to cook, Achewood may be for you.

Consistency of Design: Very consistent, with a few exceptions that I will explain. The front page of the site is dominated, naturally, by the strip itself. It's placed on a white background just under a green banner add for the site's store (another neat thing about achewood- it only advertises itself!). Just above the banner is a darker green navigation bar, with links to shop, strip archives, discussion boards, etc. Below the strip is more green, and links to the various blogs and interviews with Chris Onstad written by various publications.

The white/green theme is carried over to the rest of the site, as well as Onstad's blog. The only major variations that occur happen in the context of the character blogs: each one has a unique layout and color scheme, suited to the character's own distinct voice and personality. So while it does break up the uniform look established by the rest of the site, it also adds a unique spin to each individual blog. I think it works!

Ease of Navigation: Besides the already mentioned navigation bar at the top of the site, Achewood also features several helpful ways of searching through the strip archives. Go to the archive itself and you'll be presented with several ways of ordering the strips (found to the left on your browser): by most viewed, highest rated (readers can rate strips from a scale of 1-5), and most commented on. The bottom of the front page also features a pull down scroll bar that allows you to jump to a particular story arc, and a search bar that lets you find a particular strip from a line of dialogue. All of this is very helpful in navigating the site.

This, by the way, is my favorite:

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