Carvaggio, well I agree with what others have said about tightening up the dialogue and artwork. I would liked to have seen more of your lovely backgrounds.
Rabbit, I thought this was great XD I LOVE how that samurai looks in your style! Everybody else has covered the negative stuff, so mind if I just keep telling you how much I liked this comic? Man. It was great!
dear rabbit:
your comic was pretty ok but the way the panels flowed on some of the pages seemed awkward & anti-intuitive to me. sure you'd have a thick bar to try & herd the eye along but if you're really going to break common flow like that you should try to lead the eye with the action in the panels a little better. also? backgrounds!
caravaggio, your stories tend to be long winded. tightening your stories up some would help keep them interesting through out & give you less to stress about & draw later. a good way to get your art to shine. and while you might have been rushing on the art, there were a few points where the characters looked so similar i had to reread & try to use context clues to figure out which was which
-J
Caravaggio, I think you had've made the panels shaded like some were it woulda been nice and also, it needs to be much shorter. Maybe as a challenge or something, try doing a battle without much words at all so you can learn to not rely on all the boring text.
R2 I liked it. It was funny.
Dear Angie:
Yeah, I don't have any illusions about it: the backgrounds don't even approach \"acceptable.\" It was frustrating to submit this battle the way it was, especially because I've seen myself do way better than this. @_@ Time management is a learned skill, right? I'll keep working at it. I'll get it right one of these days.
I'm glad I didn't have to cut the narrative short, at least. That was a real concern, so the extension wasn't a TOTAL waste.
Dear Kozi:
Yeah, I interpreted the bar scene as two drunks spinning tall tales and trying to outdo each other. I'm not even sure how much was \"truth.\" I guess the Hitler bit was a bit obvious and silly, but that's the \"tall\" part of the tale, I suppose. XD
And the grayscale flashback was meant to look very different from the other ones... even before I ran out of time to ink. >.>
Dear Caravaggio:
I really enjoyed the story! It really went deep and was well thought-out. It's a bummer you didn't get to finish the art. Anyway, I think the stories interlock just fine - who's to say that the incident with the Flying Brick Hello didn't happen some time after the Bar Incident? That was kinda cool how that worked out.
And what do you mean, \"yes you are?\" Some people find that kind of thing romantic. X3
Rabbit² - Haha. First of all, that was pretty witty there. Your story was comical, yet mildly serious, so props. Your art, I've always liked it. At some points, your backgrounds and panel ordering (black lines don't feel welcome to me) could use some improvement. Also, I understand that Deman was drunk, but he sort of seemed out of character at places if you ask me. This was a good comic, keep it up and fix it up. :3
Caravaggio - If you don't finish a comic, at least clean up the text areas. Reading through scribbles isn't exactly easy. Also, Tanuki isn't (doesn't seem like) the kind of character who would talk as much as Dem. I know your comics are mostly text stories, but it seems to me like you're just covering up what could be more of your art or action. A good comic, but still lots of places for improvement. :U
PS I'm fully aware a lot of manga artists cheat on backgrounds and a lot of them have assistants, the point of the example was \"backgrounds, you need them\". Since RR isn't doing a 20 pages a week he doesn't need to cheat or use assistants.
RabbitRabbit-I thoroughly enjoyed your side and while it could have been polished quite a bit more, it got the job done. I disagree about the style thing because really, how many people on Void do a realistic style? Yeah, your style is cute and anime but you handle expressions well, tell entertaining stories, and have great pacing. Then again I'm someone who enjoys Osamu Tezuka and shoujo manga so I don't care too much about whether a style is realistic or not as long as I enjoy what I'm reading. I do think if you want to stick with a more simplistic style for your characters, you're really going to have to push your backgrounds to the limit. While Osamu Tezuka's work was very cartoony and cute, damn if his backgrounds weren't insanely detailed. Regardless of the manga you pick up, no matter how simple the characters are, you'll more often than not see extremely well done backgrounds (people like Gantz's artist and Ai Yazawa don't count since they cheat). So I really think that your characters are fine but your backgrounds could use a lot more love if you really want to pull off the whole manga look.
I do agree with Kozi that it may have been neat to do something a little different for the flashbacks, at least to make it clear that they're taking place at a different point in time. You kind of had that happening in that last flashback but because it was the only part done like that it came across as unfinished instead of a conscious decision.
Caravaggio-I do agree that you're either going to have to do a lot less pages, or have better time management to do a finished comic. While art wise this did look a bit better than your first battle, you're still having problems with anatomy and the facial structures. I also had a difficult time getting into your comic, I think a lot of the text was unnecessary and could have been trimmed down. The way the characters spoke just seemed very dry to me. I can understand Deman sounding more like a scholar but not really Tanuky. Pay more attention to the way people talk, remember that not everyone speaks paragraph upon paragraph. It also didn't help that once the scribble text problem came into play I had a hard time reading it. I think you would benefit a lot from looking at Naoki Urasawa's Monster (or any of his work for that matter). It's an extremely wordy series but it's a fairly enjoyable read because the characters have their own personalities and he knows exactly how to pace his text. I will gladly send you a link where you can read some of it through PM if you like. Slow down and do something a bit shorter so that we can see something totally finished from you. I know from experience that it can be difficult not to tell a longass story, but you also have to master the art of time management to pull of long battles.
Caravaggio- Its kinda interesting to flip through your pages and have to come into the story with more imagination since alot of things were missing. also, your markers for where you were going to place your dialogue got in the way of being able to read certain chunks of your text. It was a good story, and the cryptic opening meeting its resolution at the end was a nice touch. Maybe I'm just dumb, but I agree with the Kodama- it was alot of text. Too philosophical for me- I felt like I walked into a one sided conversation where the kitsune was speaking just for speakings sake. It got dull after about the 6th page. :(
RabbitxRabbit- First off, not to gang up on Phill, but realistic style? While, I personally would've gone with a more realistic 'flashback story' style on the Samurai bit (Your style does come off as sterile and rigid- that I agree), I honestly thought the comic was fine. Negative space *was* having a party, but it read well and the story flowed wonderfully. Comics, especially of this type of genre and with these characters, should encourage and nuture exagerration- I mean, its a trickster fox telling a story. Whose to say he wasn't lying? Or even telling the truth? I thought the Hitler story was VERY fitting. It was a well woven lacing of both characters into each others background. I thought it was great :)
@RabbiRabbit: Really liked the story on yours and Deman looked really cute in your style too~
and I actually thought the Hitler thing was kind of funny. x3 I agree with phill about the negative space though.
@Caravaggio: lookin' good ;3 better than your first battle. I'd really suggest working on your line widths; it was kind of hard to tell some things apart. Like on the last page, 4th to last panel I could tell that was Tanuky's hand, I thought it was just his face O.o;
anywayz....nice battle guys! :D
(Sorry about the duplicate posting earlier, apparently it'll post again if you just hit refresh after posting?)
@Phil. Thanks, but there are 2,123,321 hairs on Deman and I got to catch'em all!!!!! And the grass! Don't forget the GRASS. Eh... I know you're right. I started imagining something simpler, almost Mignola-like, a few days ago actually. About the proportions, I think all I can do is draw them more, so yeah...
After reading rabbit's I actually feel worse, that was a good comic and I'm surprised how interlocked they are in both plot and theme. Both even start with a little half finished myth. If it didn't have Deman apparently forgetting Tanuky while mine had Deman remembering him the two would have actually fit into each other extremely well, and we didn't even collaborate all that much. And the personality he made, I could see writing the deman part of Rabbit's comic myself, so he should get props for that as well.
Of course I'll post the final version on DA when the voting's over, I owe tanuky that much.
(Note: yet another fuck up was the very last mini cartoon of the two. They got shifted so Deman is actually saying Tanuky's lines now. Just. Fucking. Wow.)
PS: r2, yes, yes you are. :p
EEEEEEEnterestingk comic.
Rabbit: Not bad, your inking has stepped up, but I really would like to see a more realistic style from you in the future since I know you're capable of doing it. The story was cool with me, though the whole \"association with Hitler\" seems kinda overplayed to me for Deman. Overall though I feel that this was the better comic of the two but beware of negative space.
Caravaggio: Not bad, it does look better than your last entry, but the fact that it's very unfinished really hurts your quality score big time. Cut back on pages if you can, the less you work with, the less work you have to worry about. Story was pretty straightforward for a change and I liked it, but had you of finished it would of read better. I must admit that I really... don't like the style you draw the characters in, I like how realistic you're making these characters, but they just seem too misshapen and out of proportion facially. I really would like to see you draw characters a bit more simplistically, it'd really be better in the end if you didn't have to draw every bit of fur on Tanuky's and Deman's faces or areas where there's fur.
Trust me dude, having an anthro character myself I know these things.
Vote goes to Tanuky on this fight.
Hehehehe, I was scribbling so fast in painter the last few hours to get in at least some sketches to make things legible that I forgot I hadn't done all the word bubbles in flash yet. Hence the squiggly marks RIGHT OVER half of the fuckin' dialogue were missed as I ignored the images in flash in lieu of hitting \"import\" and \"export\" a hundred times a second.
I assure you, I find this much more hilarious than you readers probably do. :p
That said, sorry if I disappointed anyone (especially R2). Even though it looks less finished I think I put more put more hours into this one than my first fight believe it or not, so I'm not going to be entirely unhappy with the inevitable score.
Hehehehe, I was scribbling so fast in painter the last few hours to get in at least some sketches to make things legible that I forgot I hadn't done all the word bubbles in flash yet. Hence the squiggly marks RIGHT OVER half of the fuckin' dialogue were missed as I ignored the images in flash in lieu of hitting \"import\" and \"export\" a hundred times a second.
I assure you, I find this much more hilarious than you readers probably do. :p
That said, sorry if I disappointed anyone (especially R2). Even though it looks less finished I think I put more put more hours into this one than my first fight believe it or not, so I'm not going to be entirely unhappy with the inevitable score.
Hehehehe, I was scribbling so fast in painter the last few hours to get in at least some sketches to make things legible that I forgot I hadn't done all the word bubbles in flash yet. Hence the squiggly marks RIGHT OVER half of the fuckin' dialogue were missed as I ignored the images in flash in lieu of hitting \"import\" and \"export\" a hundred times a second.
I assure you, I find this much more hilarious than you readers probably do. :p
That said, sorry if I disappointed anyone (especially R2). Even though it looks less finished I think I put more put more hours into this one than my first fight believe it or not, so I'm not going to be entirely unhappy with the inevitable score.
Submitted!
Dear audience:
My comic has been built with the site's new viewer in mind, so please give it a try before going immediately to \"classic view.\"
Also, while reading, please repeat to yourself the following chant: \"at least it's not a default, at least it's not a default...\"
Sincerely,
R2
Honorary Queen of Nothankyoualjustan.
shittles, I just realized that the day after this there are fights with both P2 and Black. This must be what hellboy felt like when he heard batman was opening just one week later. Best advertise what works I guess...
!!!!Wet T-shirt Tanuki contests in my strip!!!!
It's ok dude, haven't you heard? These days it's \"trendy\" to default! I saw it in another comic thread by artists much better than me. Heck I'm thinking of doing it myself. Go ahead, all the cool kids are doing it, you know the ones that smoke behind the school? :P
Wizard World was mindblowingly fun! :D
And I left all my thumbnails there. I can't do much until I get them back. D:
(They're on the way, I'm just anxiously climbing the walls in the meantime.)
Now don't go trying to \"steal\" his heart now, R2. That comes AFTER serving the morning coffee.
( shocked audience sfx followed by an 'Oh no she di-in't!' and a 'mmm hmmmm' )
Hahahaha best of luck to both of you gentlemen!
Someone get the hose, the canines are fightin on ma's lawn!
Stop the presses, it's like Jack Lemon and Walter Mathou attending a furry convention!
First new (announced) fight for the new system!
I cannot yell loud enough!
Comments (30)