thanks, yea I'm actually not bad at drawing backgrounds but think I gave myself too many pages to do....

One thing I do have a hard time with sometimes is combining people IN the backgrounds. Anyone have any ideas on how to do this better?

You should work on your BACKGROUNDS, your comic was pretty manly thought

J halton: Nice ink technique dude! some BGs were a too sparse and I would've liked to see more feathers flying around.
Especially in the panel that mentions the feathers flying but there's only like 3 feathers!
Quite a promising start, keep it up.

Bicentennial: Man, don't give up so quickly! you were just starting! you did a comic for sentai tourney, we know you can make them, pump out some BBs or some shit.

I think he was trying to display japanese characters and the site could not handle it.

Using foreign characters for sound effects on Void is not unheard of though. Mamoru uses them
in some of his comics. His can practically be taken as speed lines however.

oh ok. other than rgb vs cmyk though, web & print comics aren't spectacularly different style wise. plenty of web comics use halftone or standard print aspect ratio just because they were born out of standard print comics influence. typically, when people talk about traditional vs digital though (at least here), they mean doing everything by hand the traditional way vs using a computer to create the art. that's why it seemed odd to say that toning was traditional.

and the reason you probably can't get japanese text on this site is probably because, while plenty of people are greatly influenced by manga, it's an English language site. that's why it doesn't make sense to use japanese sound effects for english comics. no need to get all manga elitist by somehow thinking they have some special emotion that can't be obtained with using proper english, just because their language is different. the typographic effects you speak of can be applied to any alphabet to pretty much the same effect.

shit! speaking of the "wrong japanese characters" this site doesn't display them? whatever.....maybe it's in your "charset" in your HTML head....

When I say "not digital" I mean, Print being the final medium as opposed to web viewing. While I love the fact that web comics offer us the opportunity to produce (for free) millions of colors, and in print we're limited to the CMYK gamut unless we want to spend extra for some pantones, etc but really there's almost nothing I love more than the way a comic's pages feel crisp in your hand while you flip through them, no matter how cheap the paper is, and something about the ink they print manga on, when you open it and it hits you with that smell.....awesome. I'm sure a lot of you can agree, though I'm not sure if many of you have noticed. Most people wouldn't I'd assume.

I really love some of the stuff that's come out of new technology (go check out that "Robert" character in here, so shiny) but I guess I'm just old school. I'll be trying other stuff later, so calm down guys, haha.


Oh and the japanese sound effects.　日本語がちょっと話します、でも。じょうぞではありません。キキキキキキキキ：）
If you know how to read them, then they'll probably make sense, it's just onomatopoeia anyway, so who cares if it's the, quote "wrong" sound. You can "say" sound effects like anything. When we talk about punching somebody in the face we'll say it sounded like "Pow".....ask a european guy what it sounds like when he punches you in the face he might say it sounded like "Bash!".....whatever
And anyway, I was going for more of a typographic effect, there's lots of people who read manga and can't understand the sound effects, but they give it some kind of emotion by the way the type is set in the panel.

Again....another experiment, to get feedback on, thanks for it/ありがとうございました。 こんどは—がんばって！

because there's no call for it. to put the dialogue in one alphabet & then use another just for sound effects doesn't make sense. it would be like me making all of my captions sanskrit. if there's no reason to, there's no point. even now you guys are talking about proper usage, when it would have been a lot easier to sound out the damn syllables alphabetically the western way



i don't understand how toning would ever look not digital. the whole dot halftone process was developed entirely by mechanic means. even back in the day, when artists had to exacto knife tones & paste them in, they were still originally coming from a print shop. it wasn't like you had a room of little old ladies dabbing polka dots on sheets of film by hand all day in a sweat shop. the whole concept was born out of the idea that things like hatching didn't show up so great on the printing devices they were using back in the day. while there's no problem with still using them, there's no way they're ever going to look traditional unless you did every dot yourself.

jhalton: Alright, I didn't see what was wrong with the japanese sound effects, but what I DO see is that you completely used the wrong ones. I'm not sure if you're any versed in this sort of thing, but...

- The first one you used read as "kuruuu", or "kuru" in short, which is usually used for when things turn around, such as when people or creatures look around, turning their heads left and right. The proper SFX used seems to be "vuiiiiiiiin".

- The second one you used was "BA-----", which also doesn't make sense, because all it needs is the "n" character for it to read "BA-----------N"... and that's usually used for when characters make a dramatic appearance, like in JoJo. A proper SFX for collision of this type would be "ZUZU--------N".

- The third reads "guzuzuzuzu", and since i'm assuming this SFX is used for the machine shorting out after such a terrible collision, the proper one would be "bachi bachi".

And I'm also going to assume you've read JoJo and know the use of hiragana and katakana.

"I look back at some other comics that broke rules or pushed a lot of boundaries and nobody really cared at that time, which kinda makes this whole situation a bit unfair in a way."

Due to some recent problems in the past few months, we have become more strict to sticking to the rules. A few rotten apples spoil it for the rest of the class. Bicentennial man just got to be the first person I've seen since I've been a mod that's done a comic without the opponent's character in it and Toast dealt with it.

man....obvious joke is ObviOus guise.....

k, who's next?

I'm gonna get Jhalton out of the way before I rip into Bicentennial (If you're even here).


Jhalton: So far what you had was pretty good, the art was OK for me but it kinda looks like you lost the quality due to how many pages you had. If you can tell a story with a limited number of pages you'll get better with storytelling over time. Story was pretty good for the most part... until I reached the ending. I rarely give out 1's for anything dude, but honestly... I don't give a damn if you think the character is lame, don't turn a comic into a "I'm gonna say outright this character/artist is a fuckin' lame-o" comic! I see this all too often on both main page and forums and I've done it myself too. It's not cool in the least and I don't want to read that shit. Your general attitude as of late towards Bicentennial doesn't help either as I see this as you holding a meaningless grudge and wanting to stir up trouble.

BUT... I am glad that your first showing is a rather impressive one for a first battle and it wasn't exactly a "character a bumps into character b" comic, but let's keep it clean from now on and keep your opinions to yourself.




Bicentennial: *sigh...* Dude... I can honestly say that yes, it does suck that you were disqualified on your battle against Mikal seeing as how I look back at some other comics that broke rules or pushed a lot of boundaries and nobody really cared at that time, which kinda makes this whole situation a bit unfair in a way. But rules are rules, you were supposed to at least feature the character in your comic in some way or form, you knew you were breaking a rule and seeing this deliberate defaulting from you is just childish right now! But since your mind is made up and you want nothing to do with void anymore because of that, I won't be missing ya!



Pretty disappointed overall honestly.

I assumed the lame comment came from the fact that you had an inkling he'd be a 'no show'.

Otherwise you had better understand that if you can't think of anything for him to do, that's a failure on YOUR part, not his. And don't take the term 'battle' so literally, not every character here is a great 'fighter'.  

I enjoyed your comic though.  Page 6, the first panel was a pretty cool image (although the bottom panel was kind of sad in comparison)  The transition between 5 and 6 is a little strange. In page 5 he's on the ground and then suddenly he's not on the ground. I didn't really get he was on top of a building until the dialogue on page 7. A good shot of the building from a bird's eye view would have cleared it up nicely, as well as give that (OMG! I CAN SEE MY HOUSE FROM HERE!) feeling.

Thanks for all the feedback guise. Yea a lot of these techniques are just experiments, some of them failed but oh well. I just wanted to get them up there to analyze later. The whole point of using tones is to make it NOT look digital....so that's not working yet.

I'm glad you guys commented on the "boring" letters, I'm trying to do some non standard stuff with typography since I'm a graphic designer and it's what I "should" know best.... but it's a little hard blending typographic stuff with drawing so that'll need some rework too...keep an eye out. Maybe more negative space and less scene work like Ashley wood to get that effect next time.

Oh and actually he challenged me, then retracted it but I didn't know he had those other things so I rechallenged him.  Oh and come on, I did t hink the character was lame, when I was making the story I couldn't think of anything for him to use against my character. In the other stories people did it seems like they had the same problem, he had no weapons or anything. What's the point of battling if we can't talk shit it's all in good fun anyway.

Yea the thing with the wings is they're retractable, I think I need to revisit the character design so that's clear to people.


Thanks again for all your comments, keep em coming this is good stuff to know

I was really excited to see this because I had liked the concept of Crow.  It was a good length and the the wings are particularly interesting in their style but I feel like the wingspan is a little inconsistent at times.  Although I enjoy your style and I guess I don't need to repeat other people's points.  And though while deserving of it, the Kalaw comment at the end was sort of a cheap shot.  Killing him was fine since from what I've heard, it was once a common thing characters killing each other all the time without reprecussion on canonicity (since they'd be back to battle the next time anyways) but the 'lame' comment, a little too much.

You have some really nice things going on in the inks and you did a very nice job on the faces but I'm not a fan of using the patterns as a flat background. Toning is really hard to pull off well digitally, and while you succeeded with it in some panels, there were also panels like on the second page where it didn't work so well. Since your inks are really strong, I would really like to see you drop the toning and just focus on drawing your backgrounds and using the blacks in them as well. The action flowed nicely and you had some nice things going on in page 11 where the book is falling while the fighting is going on. I think on the next battle you should perhaps trim down the page count a little so you can get the inks to be as smooth and strong as they are in that last page. Pretty good for a first battle dude, keep on practicing

i'd recommend either trying to make the parts you do digitally a lot more subtle, or just go entirely one way or the other. the blend of the really nice brush strokes on the wings or nice hatching effects with the rather bland digital toning & computer letters didn't work for me. you want what you do digitally to enhance the art, not distract from it. the captions & the angular balloons don't quite work for me aesthetically either. and as far as the sound effects, it's fine to have kanji sound effects in a work that's translated from japan, but you shouldn't really put one aspect of your comics in a separate language unless there's really a call for it. here it felt rather unnecessary, & while i'm familiar with the practice, i have no idea what they say.
and while i'm glad you gave backgrounds a go (a lot of times it seems people with first time entries draw one in the first panel & then never again), i'd definitely recommend adding more detail to them. right now, a lot of the detail in your pages is very generic. the buildings are all boxes. the crowd of people running past kalaw in that one page are all the same height & even the same relative height he is (which going by his stats is 3 ft). while the backgrounds & background characters might not be that important, giving them a little extra love gives them depth & makes things feel more natural & real. so be wary of that in the future as well.


and i don't think bicentennial's been back or planning on coming back after getting all huffy about not following the rules, so everyone should probably just save their breath. devil's advocate though, you seemed to take him getting all flaky rather personally, jhalton; even prior to him defaulting on you. but he already had one default to his name, & two other battles going on before you challenged him; what were you really expecting out of him?

Pretty bold stuff, calling him lame and killing him in the end.

Oh, I see that's where those cool thumbnails came from then, nice work.

And yea, I did contact him before the battle to try to set up a storyline or something, no response.

Bicentennial man, I'll just say this, you're lucky that you have an anonymous screen name. If you want to work in comics or any commercial art industry (comics especially) DEADLINES are the most important thing in the world. If you can't make your deadlines then it doesn't matter what your art looks like. The second most important thing is reputation, because this is how you'll get hired for more jobs. If you can redeem yourself then by all means, keep at it and we'll be proud of you, but if you're not sure, I would just delete this screen name and try again with a new one. I guess that's the good thing about the internet, you can't do that in real life.



Anyhoo, Oh well, I guess it's not a real "battle" if nobody else throws a punch. I still had fun doing these, this is the first time I've actually completed a story with this many pages, and it feels really good to finish.

Also, I just wanna say that it's amazing that a site like this exists and gives us the opportunity to put our stuff out for people to see, I hope you all enjoy reading.

And bicentennial man, if all these defaults were because you were pissed one of your comics didn't go up, the mature thing would have been to contact jhalton to cancel so he could have a proper first opponent.

Past due means it was 3 am and Angie and Wei were asleep.

LOL Angie spare him, for he know not what he's done.

You have to give them time to actually post them,Halton. They aren't always up right after the deadline waiting.

what?! past due!?!?!? ONOEZ!!!

*awaits with poppin' corn ready for poppin' * >____>

cmoooooon Bic Man!

Halton, you're style provokes eagerness.

to: bicentennial man

I'm working on the crow vs. kalaw pages right now, I was hoping to see what you would do with this story and the other one before I really finalize what happens in mine. Sucks you couldn't get this up here so I'm gonna give you this ultimatum, just because my character is mindlessly evil:
—if you don't post anything in the next battle (or they don't approve it) i am going to KILL YOUR CHARACTER.—

It's a waste of time for us to spend time drawing pages in the rules of this board if the opponent isn't going to follow those rules. So in my story my character is going to kill yours. I haven't seen any actual storyline of yours, even tho you've had like 3 battles. If I win, Kalaw is dead

3 battles? You're making me wonder what the record is.

you dont have imagine you'll see soon concerned patron

*bicentennialman

It's weird to call people by their character's name >_>

Kalaw if you already finished both the battles you're in, I can't imagine they're of good quality.

I'm excited

To be honest I was actually wondering when Crow would make an appearance.  I look forward to this.

just wait and see...

OI IT'S CROW!!  GOOD LUCK DUDE.

GODDAMN BICEN UR A MANIAC!!!