OK, Larathen, #1 - don't fill your word balloons so much; it made for an awful read with all those fonts too... #2 - your anthro stuff looks pretty good, but your humans just look awful!
Mamoru, good show; not your best (your first page had me wishing the rest of the comic was in color) but that had a lot of good flow. One thing that really bugged me, though, was the lack of backgrounds...while there were lots of action lines around to fill in the white space, some more backgrounds would really have given your panels more dimension.
*reading through previous comments* Ai yi yi. A select few could really use a moment to pull the stick out of their asses. BUT... I ain't one to judge.
Anyways-
Larathen: Nice work on this one, dude... though the constantly changing fonts were giving me a head. Pick one and stick with it, man. Personally, I recommend a simple condensed font like Zud Juice... that way you can fit more into your bubbles without making your letters tiny. Also, I noticed a lot of solid grey backgrounds in your panels. Like I said... I ain't one to judge--I'm the very LAST person to be critting on this subject, but don't be afraid to put backgrounds into your panels. Even simplified ones. The solid grey just made everything look really flat and boring. Apart from that, I really enjoyed your half of the comic. Nice storywriting. The expressions are great, and I liked the interaction between the characters. :> Keep it up.
Mamoru- I hate to sound like a kissass, but you're my freakin' hero. I like the intro with Seel and Mr. Squishington, and what few coloured pages you had were good. Shame you couldn't finish them all. Unfinished pages do not a high score make. :< The different expressions on Larathen's shirt made me lawlify. The first panel on page three looks a little awkward to me... I dunno, it must be the way Mize's hair falls or something, cause it looks llike Larathen just put his fist straight through his face. Just something that kind of threw me off. Little nuances aside, I really enjoyed your half of the battle... I just wish I could have seen the rest. XD
Both of these battles were awesome. Larathen, you're improving. Awesome. But those fonts, and the colour of the font was kinda... blech. D:
Mamoru, I've never really read any of your other battles or anything, but I love your style. Keep up the good work. :]
It looks like they worked it out but dude Phill... Please please please don't bring this to people's battles, notes, IM, and PMs are there for a reason. Drama makes me cry.
Anyways on topic
Larathen-duuuuuuuuuuuude I'm going to find your house, get into your computer, and delete those fonts you use. Go to http://blambot.com/ they have some great comic book fonts that won't look horribly out of place. You also have a problem with text not fitting in the bubbles, you should type out all the text first and then add the word bubbles so this doesn't happen. I took typography classes and learned about the importance of text, it's part of the composition, treat it well. In comics they normally don't have the fonts change for each character unless they're evil, a robot, or speak in a specific dialect they're trying to get across. Now I still don't agree with making the fonts all different colors but if you want to stick with that, try to stay with one font so the viewer won't be confused by all these crazy ass fonts.
This was your best fight yet though, you had much more control on the pacing. You also took more risks with the camera and perspective, which is good. You're still having problems with the structure of people's heads and necks which was mentioned already. http://drawsketch.about.com/library/weekly/aa121202a.htm this is a very basic tutorial on drawing the human head. Pick a character like Mize or Zaffe and fill a page of nothing but head sketches of that one character, show different angles, try and set some guidelines so the head will always come out consistant. I think the problem with the necks is they're extremely wide
I saw you did speedlines this time around, gotta be careful with Photoshop and speedlines http://project-apollo.net/howto/speedlines.html is a quick and easy tutorial for doing speedlines that look more professional than using the line tool. Keep at it, you're improving with every fight, take what people have said about this fight and use it for your next fight.
Mamoru-The first page was awesome, while it would have been great to see the whole thing in color I knew what's been going on so I didn't hold it against you in my scores. I would actually like to see you do more stuff like this. Painter seemed kind of like a crutch, sure the colors were pretty and all but we missed out on seeing any linework most of the time. In the future I would like to see you focus more on doing linework than anything. Try and make your lines more solid, while the sketchy look can work to an extent, I would like to see you vary your line widths much more. As a fellow animator I know it's hard to not want to make all the lines active and sketchy. The sketchy lines look gorgeous for the really active fight scenes, but it's just not very effective for still shots and closeups.
So yeah, keep at it dude. I know you weren't able to make this your best but I would love to see more black and white battles from you Mamoru. Just tighten up your linework and make those inks more dynamic.
Phill... you are taking this whole \"leader\" thing WAY out of hand.... and WAY too seriously..... like holy crap.. your CHARACTER, not YOU, leads his CHARACTER, not him as an ARTIST... in a FICTIONAL \"gang\".
Once again man..... we dont need anymore drama in Void, and if you KEEP insisting on bringing it, we will insist that you take it somewhere else.
Damn comment box did something funny to me...
MIZE! I'VE BEEN LISTNING TO YOUR OPINIONS YOU JACKASS!! IT'S JUST THAT I'VE BEEN GETTING THE SAME SHIT DRILLED INTO ME OVER AND OVER AGAIN! AND IF YOU'RE NOT GOING TO LISTEN TO ME, THEN MAYBE YOU SHOULDN'T BE IN MY GROUP ANYMORE!
I think the last two pages I uploaded didnt made it. cest la vie. Ill try my best next time to put em all at the same time.
And indeed, this is much of an improvement on your side after reading your battle. Keep fighting, and before you know it, you will be one of the hard hitters here in void.
Yeah, I been trying my hardest lately for these comics, and still trying to get my faces right @____@
But each step is an improvement so blah.
Mamo, I already gave my comments to you in the chat, you always rock the fuckin boat out of the water. Its gonna be interesting to continue on from where this leaves off, and for what you have in stored .-.
Phil: Ill listen to you when you finally listen to us members. As my leader I would prefer that you take your role importantly and respect our opinions. otherwise it would fall on deaf ears....dont you think?
You didn't listen to us about our opinion about your deathmatch, I would still push my limit as an artist. How about that?
I think this was pretty close overall...
Larathen: You're getting alot better dude, but we seriously need to work on head and neck anatomy, right now it looks like there chins are attached to there throats. But, I give you props for actually completing yoru fight to the fullest.
Mize: Dude... I know you're working on the animation project and all, but I think you bit off way more than you could chew once again. Just once I'd like for you to just take one project at a time, I know you can do battles by the boatload here, but try to find a time where you can actually make a comic that'll wow us like your last few fights! Also, as your leader I order you to manage your time better! ... please?
Well, I gave you both even scores, but I gave the slight edge to mize on this one. But only by a point or so.
daaaaamn you two, that was AWESOME.
the scores were almost exactly the same o_O;
larathen - best fight i've seen from you YET! that was fuckin' sweeeet. of course there is still plenty of room for improvement, which will hopefully start to show as you continue to battle.
mamoru- \"hey hey seel-neesaaaan~!\" oh god X3 that little squishington. kajhfskjahfvakbfe.
OKAY ANYWAY. mamoru, if this whole thing was in colour i think you woulda completely won me over. hmmmm....dunno what else to say really.
both fights completely rocked me. like i said, scores were just about even (creativity score was the same, because both of you did the story, so you got equal votes there). mamoru got slightly higher quality, and larathen got slightly higher entertainment. but like i said, in the end, the votes were about even.
very awesome you two. Larathen, your are is still inconsistant, and the text never always fits in the bubble (maybe handwriting it would help?) but, i did like this one better than your other battles.
Mamoru, I really liked the first page. Wish the rest looked like that, and I'm bummed it ended abruptly, but great art none-the-less!
awesome job you two
Oh god. I saw this and snorted in pure disbelief!
Are you continuing from the Fatal Four-Way or will this be different?
It could be the ultimate porn battle. :|
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