Addendum: I know and love that comic, but it doesn't go against what I've said ^^;

Lol, I think not knowing what I'm talking about is the issue.. I know that my backgrounds lack quality but it's not because I see them as not requiring as much detail. In my opinion it's the opposite, they require more care and detail, but I believe it's more mathematical fir backgrounds as opposed to characters. For example: the way amazingDavid draws a human opposes to what a human looks like in Adventure Time. Devoid of nose, a uniform structure, etc. We still accept both Flint and Finn as human. But there are some creative liberties that aren't usually made with the background when dealing with terrestrial objects. Strategies and lessons for learning to draw living beings vs inanimate surroundings are sometimes similar, but not identical, and contrast in many ways too. This is why there are some artists who make amazing backgrounds and machines but aren't too great with people, and visa versa. To me both take from different natures of art so I don't feel they should be seen as the same. Nor am I saying that either is superior to the other. They, together, make up the sum in equal portions. I think that we are saying the same thing, but the semantics is throwing us for a loop. XD

So Pyras, reading what you've written I decided to look back at the comics you've done so far and I think this mentality is what has been hindering you.  Even if you don't agree with me, I urge you to try if even for one comic to think about the background in detail.  I have to say I don't understand what you're saying to be honest.  You say if three artists draw the same building differently according to their styles while keeping general rules about physics and perspective in mind.  How is that different from drawing people?  I don't want to get into another tired argument about style and what it means, but generally even if you're applying your style your characters are still subject to the 'rules of physics, structure (etc.)'.  Whether it's a cartoon or something realistic, they still have weight, they still walk on the ground, they have anatomy, their clothes still have wrinkles, etc. etc.  Just as buildings have different designs, and angles and structures.  So I don't understand what exception you're making.

http://entervoid.com/view.php?id=2540&side=1&iid=1
This is puzzlething's comic.  I think it highlights this philosphy very well.

Since then I actually bout this video on dynamic anatomy and that's why I'm taking a break to practice.
And My backgrounds do need improvement, I've been trying to practive with thumbnails for these scenes and looking at videos and pictures for refs.

I guess it depends on your approach. To me, the only time that backgrounds and settings enter the same realm as characters is through symbolism, personification, and personal artistic style. Nova's artist, Angela's artist and Ghost Revolver's artist all will draw the same building in different ways, but, all three would keep to the rules of physics and structure that makes up their comic world and artistic style, and generally. The same rules of texture, structure, perspective, etc., would apply to all artists. This would not be the case for the way thy draw characters and even humans es evident by their contrasting styles.

It really helps to check out tutorials on perspective. And as you are drawing, don't make up buildings, just google "school" or "hospital" or "factory" and copy what you see.

Well to be more specific, your foliage and shrubbery is alright.  It looks like foliage, it acts like foliage and there's no mistaking it and that's what you've given us so far in the two battles you've done.  I say you can always push it and go for more detail and variety but as it stands, it's fine.  In fact you do a better job of it in the Boris battle than here.  The buildings though are another story.  

Now I don't think we need to be so strict as to say the outline of a city shouldn't be used from time to time but then you have the closeups of buildings.  Yeah, some buildings have a very utilitarian approach and are quite simple but a city is made up of buildings from different generations and different architectural design ideas in place.  So my advice to you is to take points of reference and work off some of those.  You don't have to be exact as long as you get the practice in and have a feel for the variety of shapes that go into a building.

 I'm going to go against what Pyras has said, that backgrounds are different from people in a lot of ways.  Early on when I joined Void I got advice from Puzzlething, who is crazy when it comes to detailing backgrounds (look him up), and that is that backgrounds should get the same if not more detail than characters do.  Backgrounds are conceptually not that different than people when it comes to anatomy and composition and detail.  He said this, "Backgrounds are made of the same shapes as people. Your character is just a funny shaped tree wearing rocks and leaves ."  Now I'm not an expert and am mostly regurgitating advice here, but these are things I always keep in the back of my mind.

Yeah; backgrounds are different from people in a lot of ways. There's no effective tutorial on anything other than perspective, which only helps with buildings and such. Everything else you really need to learn from observation and reference. I didn't come up with that dance dojo from scratch, I had to look at some ballet, dance and karate rooms first.

Something you need to practice.

William: I actually think that Bursting's really good with backgrounds, definitely better than me.. but I'm looking at the Vs. Boris match now that I think about it XD


I see now what you mean in page 7(5/9.. should I stop doing this? XD), and I feel embarrassed for never noticing it until it was pointed out XD Which page in the Kars comic are you talking about? I want to avoid this in the future.

Burstinghands, it seems you have a lot of experience drawing people because you have some great poses and facial expressions on your characters.  But everything else needs some work and by that I mean backgrounds.  The grey tones are nice but I think you need something a little darker to make figures stick out a little more.  The backgrounds need a great deal more detail and I think you should look to references of random buildings in the city and work off those details.  

Coatl, yes you did rush this but it was entertaining though short.  But there are anatomy issues and while this is a point that is harped on, it gets really bad like when you draw Arena.  The most consistency is on your own character and the way I see it, you could stand to brush up drawing females for a bit.  Also don't leave the backgrounds half cocked.

Pyras, again, rushed you said so it's hard to pinpoint what to point out that you don't already know but I will say this, you like to use some really confusing panel layouts from time to time.  This seems to happen when you have a lot of small panels bunched up and you don't quite seem to know how to arrange them to let the eye follow them naturally.  In this case I'm talking about page 7, though under your heading it's 5/9.  The order of those panels is confusing at the top and it reminds me of the confusion of panels you had during the Kars comic on that one page.  This isn't an all the time thing but as this is the second time I've caught it, Id just say be more careful about it and be mindful of how the eye flows.  The eye wants to go zigzag for comics that go left to right and when you try to go up and down like that with a column of panels right next to it, it gets confusing.

thanks

I will not be changing Arena's hand-written/drawn text bubbles though XD

First time voting in a while!

@Bursting
I liked the gray tones a lot. Your art was pretty consistent and I liked that. The lettering in page 1 (especially with that word popping out of the box) leaves room for improvement. Spacing is your friend here. That's my biggest grief to be honest, otherwise I lied yours a lot

@Coatl
I had a good laugh at your part. Though your inks were pretty chunky and the manga-screentone fills had some bits of unwanted white. There was also a lack of backgrounds when there could have been some (after the fantasy sequence). It's an entertaining read, the art just needs to be a liiiiitle better.

@Pyras, I really like the simple use of red, blue and yellow. That was really cool! I didn't like that you used different fonts for each character. It's really hard to pull off well. Story with good enough dialogue (and yours did!) don't need differentiators between who is speaking. I REALLY liked that you kept the background throughout most of the comic. Inks were nice tones looked good and all in all it was well written with a cute little ending.

Very nice comics!

For the record, I love the humor in your comics, Coatl. And your art looks great when you apply yourself; it complements your writing.

same here, I've disappointed people twice already.

Thanks for the critiques, y'all.

I don't need many because I know exactly what is wrong with my comic, as I wasn't able to even finish it outside of the basic lines and some fills.

Hopefully my next comic will return to my standard quality.. Lucky if I can get a step further..!

Hmm, interesting battle! I liked Yui's the best; I feel it had the easiest flow yet still enough quality and effort in the drawings.

I enjoyed all of them though! One thing for all of you: studying lettering like amazingdavid said will benefit your comics like crazy. You all made some strange font choices and words that looked as if they were going to burst from their balloons at any moment. That stuff really takes readers out of the moment and flow of your story; it's kind of like if you were to spend millions building the most beautiful home ever but not bothering to grow any grass in the front lawn. It almost just erases the hours of effort you put into your work!

Burst: Like I said before, I like yours best! I like the cute little interactions between all the characters. I also like the shading in your style. However, there are a lot of things contributing to almost a "dreamlike" feel here, which isn't so good when it's just a little story of people running around in the park. The first thing is I can't really tell where they are; it doesn't look like the park (or whatever) has any features except for pine trees? I think you would've benefited from a playground or a picnic table in the background to really make the setting concrete. Also, whats up with the panel of just sound effect on the third page? When it's just same font as the dialog warped on top of a gradient, that doesn't give the reader the feeling of "WHUD." You should really play around with some different fonts at least, or even some hand-drawn sound effects if you have the time! And like david said, some black shading and contrast wouldn't kill ya! :-)

Coatl: Yours genuinely made me laugh, especially "I have no idea what that is but I will also participate!" very silly. I also like where your drawing style is going. However, I think your use of screentones really distracted from what was going on; I think your art would really benefit from hand-drawn effects instead of falling back on tones.

Pyran: I love your lightning! It seems like a little thing but it just really appealed to me. The first few pages you totally OD'd me on speed lines though. I would've like to see less speed lines and more backgrounds! Many of the pages after that little battle had way too much text and way too little flow for me though; I actually didn't want to read many of the text chunks. Especially the first page into; even if you had just done some little doodles to illustrate the back-story... I would've drawn out the back-story or not have included it at all, because honestly it's just not that necessary in this battle.

Sorry I echoed a lot of things others had already said, I hope I was a little helpful anyways?

You're absolutely right, this be the lowest quality work I've submitted. If I had another week it woulda had backgrounds, shading, the works. But, lesson learned.

oops Burst it was Philip C, Kuro, and Pong who gave me good lettering advice not Squidman...

okay...here we goooooo

Burst: Still making quality work I see that you said you did his before your Amaloo battle so obviously you didnt get to apply any of the critique to ths battle. Your work suffers from a lack of contrast, I think your lines are strong but they are being obscured because they are either too light, too thin, or not consistent enough. I'm not sure what your technique is but it looks like you are scanning pencils then trying to digitally ink some areas. A darker stronger line would benefit you greatly.  Either use a different tool (brush, nibs, faeber castell with brush tip, etc.) so your scans are better, or I would develop a different way to tone your work. (or just have greater variety of tones...ie. 10% ,30%, and 60% grey) You draw action really well, but you tend to do something I did a lot when I started...Unecessary perspective shots. I dont know if youre in art school or not but I was taught...To make something more exciting put it in perspective. so I made every one of my shots tilted or worms or birds eye view. I think it actually destroys the quality of pages when EVERY shot is in intense perspective. pick and choose. staid solid front shots can be active too. they give the reader a chance to rest there eyes and mind. Your lettering needs lots of work. Void has some excellent letterers, I got some great advice from Kuro, King Pong, and Squidman on lettering. but some easy things that you missed out on were centering the type in the bubble...and making sure the text boxes and bubbles were large enough to accomodate the text. Storywise this still falls into traditional Voidness and doesnt inspire much. You seem to have a great handle on creating action packed stories Id like to see you go crazy with your character...20 page action scenes!!! I thought as a first/second battle this was a solid entry I hope to see more from you on Void Im definitely going to follow your work.

Coatl: OVerall this felt extremely rushed and empty. The artwork seemed to suffer from rushedness it wasnt clean, the lines were shakey, the story wasnt very interesting. Your backgrounds need to be reevaluated, as in they need to exist, besides just putting in a halftone pattern. Your expression on the charaters were pretty good, but overall this needed so much work and like was mentioned 7 weeks...if you had to you could have devoted 1 week to each page to make sure it is solid.

Pyras: I will start by saying your entry was definitely the sronges of he three the story was more solidly plotted and theart more consistent. however thi is much lower in quality than some of your earlier battles.  I will actually say the anatomy is better, but there are practically no backgrounds. Backgrounds are IMPORTANT. IF not more important than the figures sometimes. Scenery gives viewers context for how to judge spacial references, distance, mood, tone, etc. and you are essentially only giving us SPEED LINES!!! so everything is going fast. You draw excellent action I wish I could create action as well as you its something I struggle with. I would like to see you give as much attention to creating a setting as you do to drawing action. your typography is much better than when you started. and I appreciate the "Story Up Until Now" this keeps me in check with your character without having to do crazy back story checking...Great work

Good job you three I look forward to reading more of your comics

I will and since you're winning i will include you guys in future BB's

I really wanna see what you originally had cooked up! Even if you don't BB it at least put it up on devART.

We really did, I might still upload the original comic if I finish it, but you know what. I actually liked both of your plots that I will not mind losing at all to either of you. And I even had some inspiration for for a beyond battle. I just want to finish some stuff outside Void, first.

Yui, your art is great, wish there were backgrounds though, and have to work on the story; it's very cut and dry and the punch line lands a little flat. Other than that it is beautiful work.

Sonny- Umm good attempt at the story but wish the punch line would have embarrassed him a little more, then I think it would have been a more compelling story; but overall good attempt.

Arena- Good action sequences, need some contrast in the work and the dialog works though. Gave you the nod

ahaha!

Coatl, even though that wasn't your original idea it was still hilarious. I really dig your humor

The hilarious part is that we had 7 weeks to not fuck up XD

hahaha, so we all messed up? wow

So an hour or so before the deadline I'm submitting all my pages.. and forget to submit the last 2. -_____- I JUST NOW noticed.

EPIC FAIL.

well I submitted my thing. Don't care about the results by this point. I'm taking a break to hone skills. (which is much needed)

You know a great way to avoid defaulting is to submit each page as you've finished them, that way you're not pressured by the last minute method of getting them all in. I've found it far less stressful and pressuring.

I sure hope not but life has not allowed me to work on this comic as much as I'd wanted. I guess we'll see come midnight.

Not make it as in defaulting?

haha; I might not make it this time XD

Oh well it worked out for more than me then

Yay, lots of battles lately : D

OMG THANK YOU SO MUCH! I really am like rushing since I have a fam trip as well.

*evil laughter*

But seriously. My family surprised me with a last-minute vacation trip, so I'm out of commission for a week, with needed days to finish the comic taken from me.

Much apologies for this lengthy delay

I dunno, I had great difficulty with the character designs and I abandoned the original story, so I'm not gonna say anything other than, expect it to be just a non-violent story.

I'm very sexcited for this

Looking good, good luck XD

Newbie battle!

shoot, gotta get going then.

Neat

HEY! You guys got it going! Good luck you three!

This is relevant to my interests.