Karma's Charmas

Karma's Charmas
« on: Dec 13, 2012, 10:45 PM »
Hello! I've been wanting to join EnterVOID for a very long time but only recently rediscovered it. Needless to say, I want to get my first character right before I even consider sending him in to see about getting him approved. For the moment, I only have a ref sheet but tomorrow I will post some sketches of him in motion to show off some of his powers and body language.
Until then though, I would be grateful if people would take a look at his design and the first draft of his bio and tell me what they think~!




He goes by Nice Nick, or just Nice or Nick. He's fairly off kilter but it has to do with his power, which involves being able to see into a world based around this one but still quite different. When he looks into the other world, mundane objects and people are replaced by more fantastic ones and, should he wish it, more terrifying ones. He can manipulate the appearance of the other world and often uses this to entertain himself since he finds it more exciting than the real one, even if he knows none of it is actually there, making him something of an illusionist. He can manipulate all of the senses there, including other people's senses should he touch him with his hands and let them see what he sees for some time.

He is also very flexible and his hands are quite strong, allowing him to prop himself up on them should he want to be up higher or hang onto something. Considering the strange condition of his hands, he believes he may be from the imaginary world itself. Unfortunately, he has spent so much time in it, he remembers very little of his real life, having drifted through life in something of a daze that often leaves people thinking he may simply be out of his mind. He does remember his family to an extent and how much he disliked dealing with school and rude people. One of his most recent memories of his family is of them sending him away, likely to wherever he picked up his jacket from.

Personality-wise, he's actually fairly nice to people, living up to his name by being generally friendly and for the most part generous. He is excitable to the point of hyperactivity at times but spends most of his time looking so relaxed he nearly appears tired. However, despite his dreamy and easy going nature, he is actually a bit of a brat. He still holds on to the very childish notion of "I want it so I should have it", which gets him into trouble when he decides he wants things other people have or wants to do things with people who want nothing to do with him. He either doesn't understand or just doesn't care when other people don't want to play his games or see his world, which makes him just a bit dangerous.

Essentially, he isn't crazy, but rather an imaginative and spoiled boy who never quite grew up.
« Last Edit: Dec 14, 2012, 12:18 AM by KarmaCharma »

Re: Karma's Charmas
« Reply #1 on: Dec 13, 2012, 11:58 PM »
this design would be so much stronger without that mess of chest belts.

Re: Karma's Charmas
« Reply #2 on: Dec 14, 2012, 12:03 AM »
Looks good! A nit pick for me I would say that the belts around his chest do seem a little random and out of place design wise. I'd look into making them match with the rest of the outfit, or remove them all together, other than that looks good! Just resize the image to a more reasonable size for the post and all you need are those intro pages!

Re: Karma's Charmas
« Reply #3 on: Dec 14, 2012, 12:20 AM »
Now that I looked at it, the straps were pretty silly. I felt like the top was a little plain and added them but I think with him altogether, it doesn't look bad without anything breaking up the stripes. I also changed the back to have it lace up like a medical garment. Seems more practical now.
Thanks for the input~

Re: Karma's Charmas
« Reply #4 on: Dec 14, 2012, 12:11 PM »
I didn't get to see the chest-belts version, but I really like this design--cute, clean, and colorful, as I like it! There are a lot of creative possibilities for Nick's comics, so I'm looking forward to seeing the intro pages. :)

Re: Karma's Charmas
« Reply #5 on: Dec 14, 2012, 08:19 PM »
I'm working on my intro pages and I'm trying to make sure to include all of the basic things that one should know about him (personality, what the "other world" is  like, how he moves) but it's still going to be fairly simple. This is a WIP of the first page, which I'm only posting unfinished because perspective is far from my friend and I'd like to see if anybody notices any glaringly obvious things I need to fix.

Just a note, the blue sketchy bits that aren't outlined are backgrounds of the imaginary world. I want to make sure it's obviously different from the real one to avoid confusion so it will be outlined differently than the rest of the comic, either colored lines or pencil-drawn looking.
Somewhat unrelated, I'm drawing in SAI. Does anyone know a good, free program that I can letter with?

Re: Karma's Charmas
« Reply #6 on: Dec 14, 2012, 08:47 PM »
GIMP. There's a tutorial on void on how to letter and make word bubbles in GIMP on void, which you can see right here. http://entervoid.com/index.php?topic=9938.0

Go to blambot.com and grab some free fonts, or check out the Void University section of the forums for other links to fonts and whatnot.

Watch your speed lines. Panels three and two don't really give as much a sense of swinging and movement that the lower panels do.

Re: Karma's Charmas
« Reply #7 on: Dec 14, 2012, 09:45 PM »
I like his face, he has good expressions =)


Re: Karma's Charmas
« Reply #8 on: Dec 15, 2012, 05:48 PM »
I'm still getting used to those speedlines. I went ahead and nixed them in the third panel for the most part, just left a couple and then tried to get a bit of a motion blur look for the background.
And thanks, I love drawing expressions so I'm glad his look alright. c:
Okay, hopefully my last post on here until I finish all of the pages but here is the first page.

My main concerns with it are the lettering and the imaginary world's background/items. Are his thoughts too wordy? And does the lineless water-colory look work alright for distinguishing the imaginary from the real?
And just a note, his regular speech is less well spoken than his thoughts are, which should be easy enough to tell in the next two pages.

Re: Karma's Charmas
« Reply #9 on: Dec 15, 2012, 05:57 PM »
Oh, my reply didn't post before.... I must have forgotten to hit send. Anyway, now you've posted again I guess I can comment on the updated version.

Firstly, I really like this character. The imaginary world thing is interesting and I'm looking forward to learning more about how it all works in his intro pages!

As for the new page, I like the idea of drawing the imaginary world in a different way but I don't think it works quite the way you've done it here. It looks a little like you've just left those sections unfinished without the outlines. I think you need to push it that bit further to really distinguish the two worlds from each other.

Also, the perspective in the last panel is bugging me. Nick seems to be on a different perspective to the background and it makes the swingset look tiny (I know it'd be smaller because it's further away, but they still look too small.) Might want to rework that.

But keep going! I'm excited to see this character get in!

Re: Karma's Charmas
« Reply #10 on: Dec 15, 2012, 07:44 PM »
Shoot, you're right. I'll redraw the swings.
But before I keep going, I want to figure out how to make the imaginary world look good and still different. If anybody could take a glance a couple more ideas for it here?

Thick brushstrokes with watercolor coloring.
Offset coloring (could get a bit disorienting though I think)
Colored outlines (Might not be so bright with different colors)
And it doesn't show well with just backgrounds but the things in his world tend to look extra stylized. (I just picked the unicorn because it was easy to stylize. His whole world isn't that girly, pfft.)

Re: Karma's Charmas
« Reply #11 on: Dec 16, 2012, 08:27 AM »
I like the coloured lines thing personally as it's the only thing that I think would really make the separate world thing stand out. Perhaps you could try a mixture of all 3? Thicker coloured lines with offset colouring? Just try stuff out. Keep pushing it and I think you'll find something right soon enough!

Re: Karma's Charmas
« Reply #12 on: Dec 31, 2012, 01:03 PM »
mybe the imaginary world could have a different background scheme? Or add fog? You can have normal characters (but maybe slightly more realistic/unrealistic/even more cartoonified), or just change the background to a unique color. For example, your normal life could have whatever colors, but every time he hits the imaginary world, everything seems to have a red tint to show it's not the same place. Or maybe in the imaginary world everything is monochrome.
just browsing here and there

Re: Karma's Charmas
« Reply #13 on: Jan 01, 2013, 05:18 PM »
When I saw him I immediately thought of http://entervoid.com/index.php?action=character%3bid=1700

I'd love to see you two work together in the future.

Re: Karma's Charmas
« Reply #14 on: Jan 27, 2013, 09:21 PM »
:o I hadn't seen that character before! I hope nobody thinks they're too similar in theme. :< Anyway, my tablet broke but I got a new one and took a while to get back into the swing of things, but I finally finished the other pages~


Just a short example of him using his abilities on someone. Not terribly exciting but I hope it got across how it works and a bit of his personality.
So does it look ready for submitting or are there any glaring errors that need fixed?

Re: Karma's Charmas
« Reply #15 on: Jan 27, 2013, 09:44 PM »
His ability is that he can take off his face to spook people?
I mean that's what I'm getting solely by the images. The text is waaay too small for me to read.

Re: Karma's Charmas
« Reply #16 on: Jan 27, 2013, 09:44 PM »
You have some rough paneling, but I think you're ready to submit. (Hopefully the pages are larger than that.)

Re: Karma's Charmas
« Reply #17 on: Jan 27, 2013, 09:47 PM »
I am hoping to improve on it. And I just shrank the images so they wouldn't stretch out the forum like it was mentioned they do earlier.

And oof, even with all three pages his power doesn't come across? I'll have to think about what I can do to fix that...

Re: Karma's Charmas
« Reply #18 on: Jan 27, 2013, 10:43 PM »
Nice to see new pages from you! I'm gonna have to agree though that the power really doesn't come across in these pages. There's very little difference between the "real" world and the "imaginary" one. You're REALLY gonna have to push it to make it  obvious which parts are imagined. I see you've used brighter colours here (I'm assuming that panel at the bottom of page 1 where it shifts to bright red is when he is going into the imaginary world?) but there's not enough of a colour scheme for it to be obvious that it's a different place, because you were already using pretty bright colours anyway. You might want to work out separate, distinct colour palettes for VOID and for the imaginary world, so it's obvious which is which.
« Last Edit: Jan 27, 2013, 10:45 PM by Becs »

Re: Karma's Charmas
« Reply #19 on: Jan 27, 2013, 11:26 PM »
I'm making the text and word bubbles bigger (which means changing some lines. Boy I need to learn to be less wordy) and also trying some different mixes of colors with the imaginary world.

Pinks, purples, and blues, which looks pretty otherworldly to me even if it's a bit girly looking.

A blue world, to give it sort of a sleepy look. I'd make important things just a lighter blue.

Inverted, which. Honestly looks a bit creepy to me, heh.
They all seem to make it pretty obvious when the world changes to the other one, but I would like an opinion on which one seems to work the best for the strange imagination world, if anybody's willing to give them.

Re: Karma's Charmas
« Reply #20 on: Jan 28, 2013, 06:21 AM »
Hullo! I think you've got a good start here, but yeah, colors ... Before you even get into the other world, I think the real world needs some help. You've got some pretty bright colors happening, especially that neon green grass. Look at photos for reference if you want to find a nice subtle color. Toning the real world back a little will definitely help differentiate between the real and imaginary world as well. As for the imaginary world, I think the blue is the best choice you have out of the three options right now ... but maybe try not going as dark? It's so deep it's pretty much purple, so maybe try a few blues?

Be careful of things like the panel where he's running away in your color palette options ... He's running to the left, then in the next panel they are running to the right. It's a bit awkward, just be aware of things like that in the future. Things should flow from panel to panel.

Besides your pages not being big enough to read, I don't see any glaring issues that would get your declined.

Re: Karma's Charmas
« Reply #21 on: Jan 28, 2013, 01:40 PM »
I went ahead and limited the imaginary world to all blues. In more detailed shots in the future I'll probably try to vary the hues of blue more but for this comic here's what I have, plus the size of the text and the turned down the saturation on the real world, which did improve it in my opinion. I'll got ahead and just pot the first page at full size this time so it's easier to see without clogging up the whole space.

Does it look any better?

Re: Karma's Charmas
« Reply #22 on: Jan 28, 2013, 05:28 PM »
Not to be nitpicky but it might help if your character shared the same tones as his imaginary world- or at least was given blue hued shadows and/or highlights

Re: Karma's Charmas
« Reply #23 on: Jan 28, 2013, 06:19 PM »
Hm, maybe if I tint the shadows and switch out his eye color?

It seems to work alright with the rest of his palette.

Re: Karma's Charmas
« Reply #24 on: Jan 28, 2013, 06:48 PM »
I come across better visually than through text. Here's what I mean:



I apologize for how rudimentary it looks. I'm at work and its toootally not calibrated for a tablet, but I hope this gives an idea to what I *think* you're trying to get across.

Then again I could be totally wrong.

 

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