VIDEO- Nothing is better than reading a comic that lets the reader deeper still into a fighters backstory and history and this comic did just that. I was rabidly turning the pages (despite the page mis-order) eager to learn more. I love seeing what new abilities Jules pulls out of his clown hat and peeking into the harsh beginnings of what made him the ghoul he is today. Not to mention harkening back to his previous encounters with old opponents. It's just super cool! Your clown has become such a favorite character of mine, I'm both eager to battle him, but frightened too!

ROB- I dug the humor and general WTFery the universe had in his arsenal, but I'll echo the sentiments of the previous commentators in that this is kinda surprising considering you had a month to work on this. Stilll, the universe looks promising. Hope to see more of him.

  Video               -

                 Yeah, you totally need to go a little thinner sometimes. I think you are slowly getting better line quality, but stuff so far away like those clouds shouldn't have such heavy lines, and don't just drop a heavy line for the outline, think about how you want to emphasize form and space and stuff.

                 Also, give us some background love dude. You're drawing in a city, there are so many incredible details to work with in a city. If you go into google streetview for like 5 minutes, and click into any random city street around the world it'll blow your mind how unique and interesting they are.

                 And be more imaginative with your colours, you're so literal! "Concrete is gray, bricks are red, trees are green" Think more about the mood you want to create, not what colours everything would be in real life. You did it a little during the night time scenes, don't be afraid to think of colour like that all the time.


Rob              -

            Humor might be subjective, but so is beauty, and just like it wouldn't be cool to protect yourself from someone saying "This is ugly" during a crit, you also shouldn't be protecting yourself from peeps saying "It's not funny" by undermining their opinion. Random humor is difficult to do well, because even though alot of humor is based on subverting expectations, random humor usually just comes off as lazy. In horror it would be like the easy jump scare. It also doesn't help that you used pineapples, which are like one of the most overused "random" things ever. They're right up there with monkeys and cheese as stuff that's so played out it's basically not random anymore. Writing humor is super difficult, so don't be discouraged, just keep trying!

           I don't really know if there's much for me to crit art-wise, cause it seems like you just knocked that stuff out p quickly, so I dunno if it'd be super helpful to break it down. Like everyone else, I also really don't think you should be using textures like that, it's really jarring. If you find yourself with the desire to drop a texture down, instead try loading it up as a reference and drawing it out by hand. You'll learn more and it won't stick out as much. If you REALLY wanna use textures, you need to put alot more work into making it look intentional and nice. Like check out the link Angie posted; I immediately thought of that anime when Bom was talking about kitschpunk. You could also look at stuff like Gumball, because they put an enormous amount of effort into making their photo backgrounds work aesthetically.

I also found rob's comic lazy and quick looking, and unfunny. the super soft blur isn't working for me on the cover page. pls pls put more time in next time, you had almost a month! I can see where there's some fun elements being attempted but this really has a long way to go.

I had trouble warming up to video's too, but much more solid. work on speech bubbles! both placement and looks. there were a couple points where I wasn't sure which bubble was supposed to be first. this looks like it could have used more time as well. your very first panel, an establishing shot, isn't establishing much. at first glance I didn't even realize he was supposed to be giant size in a city.

and both of you- work on your lines!

video: I am so glad Andy Heller makes an appearance I don't see a pages mixup maybe it was fixed by now? Or maybe I am daft. I liked it, I am totally into dark things at the moment

Robbbbbbb that was very random sene of humour. Kinda reminds me of Dr Slump, but well, I did not laugh. ;_; Also I love the first panel on p6. EYESSSS.

Yeah, it's totally fine to use gaudy textures, you just have to be careful with how you use them! When used effectively they can look really awesome like the link in Jong's post. here are some more examples that may be helpful

http://www.zerochan.net/752463#full
http://www.zerochan.net/566340#full
http://www.zerochan.net/97262#full

One of the most important things to remember with texture is to make sure you are using hi res ones. Things like the brick wall obviously weren't meant to be repeated and would have benefited from a higher quality texture being used.

@Video320: I'm digging a lot of your poses but they remain inconsistent and you're having a lot of issues with perspective in your composition and overall weak composition (ex. page 3 panels 1,2). Despite having some anatomical knowledge, your action scenes fall flat. A lot of that is how you're using page and panel sequencing (ex. page 5 panel 7, page 6 panel 1)- In this example, the action drags on too long, and it mostly has to do with the choice of doing a camera rotation which makes it feel like an out-of-place bullet time sequence. A better choice would have been a zoom-back while depicting Jules being knocked back into furniture. Your more effective pages are pages 7 and 9- better pacing and better use of panels to instill a sense of drama.

@Rob: Angie and I are having an off-site debate on what you're trying to accomplish with those textures. I was of the opinion that you were going for some kind of "kitschpunk" look a la Kanye West's "Bound 2" music video or the first season of Jojo's Bizarre Adventures. That is until Angie showed me what effective kitschpunk look really looks like http://gallery.minitokyo.net/download/426588 - furthermore I have no idea if that was what you were going for. Mr. Universe remains lack luster despite the character's potential and its mostly due to lazy art and bad choices in texture. Some highlights were the humorous writing. That's about it.

Video-your story was interesting but I think you probably should have just done this in black and white and really worked on refining your lineart. While the coloring itself is very nice, the rough lineart really hurts the presentation. That second page top panel really could have been awesome with some more love and care put into those buildings.

Rob-The expressions were fun and I like the interaction between the characters. But that brick wall texture hurts my soul and really brings the comic down for me. If you're going to be lazy, I get not wanting to draw ever brick, but bare minimum at least do a hand drawn version of the wall if you're going to copy/paste it so it at least looks more natural. Textures should look natural with the piece, but here they are taking over and hindering the visual quality of your pages.

Video: how crazy is it that you might get the chance to say Jules Saphir fought the Universe and won? Good stuff like last time (maybe a little too much like last time in some respects), and it's great to get a glimpse into Saphir's dark past. Keep it up!

Rob: I thought this was pretty freaking funny, but it's drawn way too lazily IMO. Would have much rather preferred a higher quality production, especially for 3 whole weeks. Keep on trucking~

aaahh!!! AAAHHH VIDEO! that was fantastic!!! so dark and atmospheric! Such a roller coaster of emotion!! I'm happy it feels like things are getting revealed and turning towards endgame but Im also afraid because I know that means Jules will die and we'l lose him! That last panel on page... er, I guess its supposed to be 8 lol- what an effect! and poor alive Jules crying his makeup off jfc- I'm sure theres stuff I could critique but I'll let other people do it I am having a lot of feels and just want to shower this comic with praise right now lol.
Rob- ok first of all DUDE THAT COVER. that is amazing. I almost wish you'd gone with a darker comic to match the cover but in a way, like video said, its almost complimentary that he want dark while you went light. like skulls said the background textures can be a bit distracting but i'd be lying if I said I didn't laugh a bit, even if the humor is random and pointless. "I am everything" is so far my favorite panel of all of Universe's comics. one thing I will say is that the art does sometimes feel a bit rushed and a little lazy- like, I KNOW you can draw, but you seem to take this route that with humour comics you can sort of fake the quality but i think you could bump that up and still have hilarious faces and strange humor. It sounds like i'm dumping on you I think here but I like how expressive and manic the art is and I think Universe is a cool character I would like to battle! I just feel like you wouldnt lose anything if you turned it up a bit.
good show everyone! I was not disappointed, you guys did great!

GODDAMMIT.
I done fucked up. I have no idea how I mixed up the pages like that. Sorry everyone.

Rob - that was wacky, I really enjoy when people show Jules in a comedic light. i'm kinda glad you didn't go "superdark". that way we have variation between our comics. that said, if you're gonna upload a dark version i'll be very interested to see that. It's pretty interesting how our cover look kinda similar.

Video - that was awesome. I think out of all of it, I really really love your cover page the best  xD
I am regretting running with my weird idea, instead of doing my super dark one, so then both of ours would have been super dark togeeether. But I'll still post the dark one, in a bit.

Skulls - Humor is subjective. I'll try for a different style when I do the darker one. Thankyou for such quick feedback  ^.^

Rob: I'm going to be honest, I'm feeling exactly the same thing I felt when you had the universe up for approval the very first time; this looks very lazy, the humor is too random nor is it even that funny and overall there wasn't much of a point to any of this. for three weeks, I'm really disappointed again, I feel like you really could have taken advantage of your story with your opponent. I can't say much more, other than don't use a pre-rendered brick pattern for the building behind them, that also looks pretty distracting from the rest of your pages.

video: This was more interesting to read overall. despite the page mix up, I say you put the 3 weeks to good use. I would suggest playing around with line variations; your characters can look a bit too thick due to the bold lines they're drawn in.  Be careful with flow from one panel to the next; I didn't understand what happened in page 3 of panels 1 and 2 and how they connected.

video: page 7 and 8 are out of order.  i dunno if that was an uploader thing but be careful with that.

Also uploaded     Video, I'm sorry it was difficult for youu! I'm sure it'll be awesome and I am super excited to see what you came up with     With mine, I had started it, but then the most random stupid idea popped into my head and I had to run with it, just cause my childish urges could not resist. Originally, my comic was going to be super dark (I still may post it later), but I turned out with something super silly and weird instead.

Uploaded. This was a tough one, wasn't quite sure what to do. Hopefully I interpreted The Universe right. I'm really excited to see your comic Rob.

^I want this.

My favorite clown taking on the universe. IS THERE NOTHING JULES CAN'T DO??

My thoughts exactly looking forward to this!

OH MY GOSH I WANT TO READ THIS

God, I love Jules. He's one of my favorite Void characters. I HOPE I DO HIM JUSTICE.  I WILL TRY. SO. HARD.

Jules Saphir vs The Universe, in which Jules must defeat Andy Heller's 7 evil ex-boyfriends in order to win her heart.

...or something like that. But I'm sure you guys will churn out something MUCH cooler =D Good luck!