Bat vs Danielle vs Drednaut vs The White Dwarf | All-Together Now! 2010 Round 2

Thx for the crit RTV...WE are well overdo on a match. Good luck in the next round!

Drawdan - The composition on the first page is boss!Excellent lines and softshading. From first to final page. I really like, worship and envy the intricate textures on the lady's dress. At first sight the dialogue seems alot and possibly a chore to read, but it isn't. Maybe if you bubbled up those speech bubbles a bit more it would be a bit more pleasing to the eye. (if that makes sence, i dont know how those things are called.) Kudos for that kick ass tower on page three. That cage like platform they're standing on at page 4 is CRAZY! The story was enjoyable and adventurous, you managed to squeeze in just enough info. May i reccommend you use a more vivid font to match with your excellent line art? We shall face off. If not this year, i can early 2011 NeoIke - Really cool, slick and dynamic art style. I absolutely dig how you drew Sopie Roachus, hahaha. Dangerous, ,but some how still cute. Awesome how you drew Dred on page 3, simple yet bad ass. Page 4 panel 4 is one of my favourite shots. That there just looks terribly threatening, hahaha. That interception kick was a nice well drawn surprise. However, maybe it would've worked even better with the kick coming from right to left. The last two pages where the most fun to look at cuz each panel looked like it was moving. This is a pretty interesting battle. Calm shaded pencils vs dynamic inks. Good luck in the next round, whoever that might be!

Man you guys both had some really nice comics! Drawdan you had some really amazing drawings in there, very nice to look at. I gotta admit though I didn't find the plot AS entertaining as Neo's side, I also got really confused at the end, but overall it was still an awesome comic. Neo, I really like this follow up to your last fight and I think Bat is a space-tastic character :D Whoever moves on from this fight, good luck in the next round!

Thx again for the crit Rofl...If I make it to the next round Ill make sure to try even harder !!

Drawdan: Wow! Color me impressed, man. Did you get in contact with the you from long-ago, because this is some seriously classic Drawdan right here. I could stare at your pencils all day, man, they're seriously a gorgeous asset of yours. One you should definitely use more, because you do wonders with them. Your art is very top-notch here. I think you need a little work on your faces. Your 3/4ths view specifically could use a little tightening up, but a lot of it I really can't complain about. You've got a real nice handle on your anatomy and your emotional range for the faces. You do a really great job building on and developing the connection with Arena and Drednaut, it feels really legitimate and I am interested by it. This is a start of something really strong and I can tell you're interested in it, too. You also did a good job bringing us back to Danielle and Bat's story to give us a continuation of what NeoIcarus started. However, I think you stretched yourself too thin here though. The plot jumps too much and never seems to get that solid glue that brings it all-together (AHHHHHH!!! IT'S THE SECRET WORD!). These ideas with the Seer and Masked Men are what you're working towards, but it all feels like coincidence. In fact, it feels like if you had omitted Danielle and Bat here, it wouldn't have ultimately affected the plot. I like how you're using The White Dwarf in this. This still feels very much like a Drednaut story, but the way he's included feels natural to the plot. The focus isn't removed from Drednaut, but The White Dwarf is very much a player in it. I feel like you haven't been able to really develop the ideas you'd put forward in your last few battles and to see these plans started and followed through with is absolutely cool. If you lose this, I still want you to do more after this. This is a set up for what could be a really interesting story if you decide to go places with it. Don't be afraid to utilize the story you've set up involving the collaboration between Drednaut and The White Dwarf too. Having him join Legion isn't that bad of an idea. I'm excited to see your next comic, whether in the semi-finals of the All-Together Now! Tournament or back on the regular battle circuit. Way to go, Drawdan. NeoIcarus: Hey, alright! Round two keeps rolling. I really liked your action here, a lot of strong fighting scenes and it really kept on moving well. I really enjoyed your fighting scenes and I think you keep on getting better with them. I love how Bat just gets wailed on in pretty much every fight he enters, it's probably one of the more amusing aspects about him. You need to work a bit on your anatomy. Your feet feel kind of weak and page 6's final Drednaut has some serious steroid issues there. You could do with some more practice regarding drawing muscular heroic figures. Everything else feels alright, but it feels like you don't know how to handle characters like Drednaut all that well. I think your blacks are still lacking here. With no supporting grays or whatever, you've got a LOT of negative space that I feel needs something there. I do like how you're adding detail to the walls and ground though, that's a good step. You could still push it though, so I hope to see that. Or even just one gray color, anything would help. The way you drew Duane running is really annoying to me. I know you're trying to play up our Guildenstern and Rosencrantz for being our comic reliefs, but I think the absurdity of what they say and them walking in a group of bug-men by accident is enough for it. You utilized your supporting cast (Duane and Marcelo) very well though. I liked how they weren't saying joke phrases here and the physical comedy they engaged in was much more of a relief vs how they were handled last round. They weren't in the foreground, but they weren't far off from the plot either, it felt very well-done. I like the cliffhanger here. I thought it was really cool how you ended it with The White Dwarf apparently dying, it's neat to see the idea that he doesn't necessarily have plot armor utilized. If you win, I'm really excited to see your semi-final fight next round, if you move on. Otherwise, I'm way ready to see you jump back to battling. Good job, man. (Also, is Danielle older now? I like this new outfit and stuff, you should update the design sheet to reflect it, if it's permanent.)

Thx Ang...you and Wol both have very valid points that I will deff integrate into my next battle, in this tourny or other...I think I let my love of actually drawing get in the way of my story telling this time around. I presented what I wanted to present in this comic..ie 1.Dreds and Arenas first date, 2. Important characters in the new faction I am building, 3. The continuation of Bat and Daniells escape from the insect men and coincidental intersect with Dreds, and 4. The intro of Kateri. but I agree that the introduction of atleast one more page would have helped the story transition easyer and an intro page out of the comments section and actually in the battle would have helped. I will check out that link and work on the word bubbles. Thx again for you and Wol's crits.

Drawdan-the rendering was extremely nice on this, I hope you continue to do stuff like that if you make it to the next round! On the story it probably helped that you gave me a lot of the information prior to doing the comic so I wasn't lost initially. But I think it would have helped to provide some kind of recap or something to let the audience know who these guys are (for the people that don't read the comments). You're still having some issues with overloading the text in the bubbles, one thing that may help is http://www.blambot.com/grammar.shtml look at the part about joining balloon to balloon. It should help you break up large chunks of text better without having to throw in 8 million word bubbles. I think the main problem with your comic is like Wolcik said, there's not much connection between the scenes. Like Drednaught/Arena's scene did connect to the Danielle/Bat scene since you showed them interested in something in the sky. But the opening and closing scenes didn't have something that allowed them to transition to to the next scene/from the prior scene. You already know I loved how you drew Kateri and I got some ideas rolling from that for when we do our thing. Neoicarus-I think you did a really good job connecting this comic to your previous one and you're doing a great job with character interaction here. The quality also seems to be similar from the last comic as well which is good. I'd like to see you start using some solid blacks for shading here and there. Like you started to do it a little on page 6 4th panel, but to really work as shading more of Drednaught would have been black. You don't have to totally Mike Mignola up your comics, but just some blacks here and there as shading would add a lot more depth to your work, especially since you have such clean lineart.

Thx,..Ill work on trying to improve that in my next battle.

Drawdan: I read your two rounds a little more times, and it's very hard to follow. You tend to give expossition to characters instead of personality. I undestand they are sharing new information, but they should treat each others like retards that readers are (since they know nothing about the world your characters are in). A preview page would be awesome to break the 4th wall complitly and with one or two small pictures write us all the important base information that we'll need - "Drednaut met Arena and fought a evil vizard from organisation that blah blah blah, and now they're going to blah blah blah" and you don't need 2-3 pages of evil characters explaining each other what they want and instead you can show the result of their plan. I wonder how do you feel about small square bubbles describing the location characters are in, e.g. "Forrest near Void", "Abandoned Industral Building".

I deff see some of your points. The only way I could use Bat and Danielle in my current story arc in the same place and time, was if I disavowed Neo's first round comic, which I didnt want to do. As for the larger word bubbles, I had this comic thumbed into 12 pages but had to make cuts because of the time constraints. I feel pretty good about what I acccomplished in 2 weeks givin the level of detail. I could have done more pages of I didnt shade all 8 pages, but that was what made it enjoyable for me. Im sorry if you didnt follow the story, I thought it was an easy progression from my first round comic. I actually liked the idea of Bat and Danielle's adventure in space randomly intersecting with what Arena and Dreds where dealing with. thx for the crit.

Drawdan: There are momrent when overflow of text overcomes page - 2nd page is a good example. It looks like characters were drawn there just for expossition and it breaks immersion - to fix that you should spread information into longer dialoque, but that would require probably to draw more pages :P I don't get exactly the plot of your story - things happening in diffrent places don't connect too much and it feels like something is missing - Danielle and Bat would be as relevant as a deer in background forrest if Arena and Drednaut weren't actually looking at them the moment. The archetype of storytelling was based on 3 constant rules - one place, one time and one action - moving from that requires much more glue to make it believable :P Art wise I liked it very much as I saw a lot of improvment in anatomy and shading :) NeoIcarus: Very clean story. I got sucked in. You "dropped" characters from previous round and gave them a comedic relief role. Wite Dward and Drednaut got a big role in this one and they both kick ass in comparison to Danielle or Bat XD I'd love to see how saves the kids next round :)

wow, great matchup, and it shows. good show from both of you

Thanks for keeping Arena around :) It's great to see her getting close with someone. Both comics were grand, this match is one of the hilights of this round.

Srorry all btw for the spelling problems here and there. I caught a few of em a minute to late. They seem to get worse wen I digital letter.

I'm gonna go ahead and accept that compliment William duel, lol! Just don't ask me to name them all!

Cool Continuation Neo...Ill give you more of a crit in a bit...

Ridiculous Drawdan. I call BS. I say you're a team of ten highly trained midgets who rotate art styles.

wow... Mr. Dan, those are some beauties of pencil pages, it's amazing! Mr. Icarus, why must you torture us so with them suspenseful endings? I want more now D:

Looking forward to it!! This is a pivital comic in my new story arc and the launching story for my future collab BB with Angie..Win or loose, Im having alot of fun with this current story line. Ive noticed that alot of knew artists that dont know any back story on the old school characters get a little lost so I thought I would include a little precurser to this battle so people can get right into the story.. ......….Some time ago Drednaut was recruited by a shadow organization called the Legion. It was a hush investigation unit (think X-Files) sponsored to hunt and destroy super human and super natural threats. A little over six months ago it was officially scrapped. Unofficially, the Legions conductors moved their focus directly into Void City. An ancient order dating back to the days that Gods roamed the skies has began operations in the seedy city. An equally ancient gathering of power called the Cult has also fixed its gaze on Void City. To what end, no one yet knows, but Drednaut and any Void City champion that dares stand in its way will face great peril. The lieutenants of the Cult are starting to make themselves known as they choose targets that they consider threats and allies. Their adversaries are also moving pieces around the board, trying to recruit fighters as well as learn what the Cult’s next moves are. As this story begins, the Seer(an Greek demigod or goddess that can glimps the future) meditates,. Using her immortal gifts to try and see the future as it moves and changes.

Good luck you two! This is a fun matchup

Oh man, this one is also a Sophie's Choice! Good luck guys!