Arena vs David Birch vs Elle vs Lophii Formes vs Marie Fitzpatrick

Thank you for commenting and voting guys. I know what I have is inexcusable for the amount of time I was given to work. So I will not give any sort of justification or reasons what for and whys. I had a lot of responsibility on my part for the story and I blew it. I will just have to learn from that. Here's to learning from mistakes.

It was a little hard to follow. I think most of the problems have already been addressed. I did enjoy some of it though. Tdk's made me laugh here and there and I enjoyed Fern's style. The battle in Pyras' part I felt was very entertaining and well written, right up my alley. You guys know where you need to improve. Keep at it!

thanks Wolc, I'm glad you enjoyed it :)

I feel like everybodye before Pyras was suppose to make a intro for his part and his story... I wouldn't even read 1st and 2nd part if Pyras's battle didn't order me to. 8 weeks, dudes and duddets Orion- It was very unclear to me why David and Elle would fight in the first place and then become friends, I didn't know what they were doing in the serwers - except that it's David's job. DestructiveNix- If it wasn't 5 people collab, and you'd just draw cute Marie falling from hunger on the street and waking in the appartament because Arena took her in, you'd have less page to spread cutness around. tdkgunghoul- I usually can't follow your stories very well, but I kinda enjoyed it here and there, you're definitly getting better at this :P Fern- I was very pleased with Awesome's jokes - you really grasph his mental condition well. The art was nice and I could enjoy he story much more than in previous parts. Pyras- I love this, and I can't be objective. I climaxed all over the place - who cares if Bob's a villain here, he's there and he's awesome. It felt much more like an Armageddon battle for me - maybe because it's my character and I know that his limits are only imagination which makes him a great threat, and I love the way he could beat the hell out of everyone there while being torn to pieces. I would enjoyed it even more if it was VCPD's plot gone wild - and it was showed instead people imagining it to justify his presents.

You're very welcome, Fern!

Yeah it was a collab battle.

Wait, these comics were connected?

angieness: Fern-I was pleasantly surprised when I saw yours, quality wise this was significantly better than any of your previous comics. I'm happy that the brushes I'd shown you helped, they gave a very nice effect on the rendering. This comic really shows you getting more comfortable with your style and with comics in general, the inking was very nice. I didn't understand why Lophii was being followed by the cops and why they seemed sort of friendly towards them in the previous part. I also didn't know what was going on with Arena freaking out at the end. I think overall for everyone it would have really helped to better iron the details out prior to starting to draw. Because the locations change frequently and characters come and go, so it's very easy to have problems with consistency I can't tell you guys how amazing it feels when you say there's progress with my stuff. Honestly. I tried doing non-digital again after a while, and after i've done it I was like: Oh it looks just like my intros. So it's great to hear that there actually is some improvement - I find it hard to judge my own progress. Also, Angie much lovelovelove for those brushes. With regards to the plot, I was not 100% pleased, but also i did not have that much contact with others - specifically, with the vcpd agents first being friendly and then following - I thought they were not as friendly in the previous part as i thought. But I believe that was my own fault, as I am not brilliant with contacting people online (i just got AIM, MSN etc few days ago since my latest computer crash). Also, as far as I know, the idea to have it as one long piece with parts came up AFTER the while thing started. And honestly, I can't tell you how much it means to me that you said "pleasantly surprised" :D I also wanted to say something else but too much sparkly wine destroyed my brain I'm afraid. (sparkly wine is amazing. especially pink, but if you're not a girl or Dr Fabulous you gotta be careful who sees you drinking it)

[quote]Ultimately, if you could take the heat, you really wouldn't need to draw up passive aggressive reaction comics though. That was actually me trying to lighten the mood, as it felt like things could have gotten overly serious. Everything that has been said has been 100% true and I thought that me being TKO'd by the responses conveys that.

To answer one of angie's questions, Mr. Awesome was mentioned by the radio(tv?) in lophii's first page. But yeah the story is a little... All over the place. Orion's section lacked clarity because I don't know what's going on. Here's what I understood, Elle looks for David for some reason unknown. David comes flying out of no where, again reason unknown and gets punched in the face by Elle. Cue one menacing random scene later (which I suspect involves mr awesome) and the two characters are buddies. Yeah no idea why anything happened. It would have been cool if all parts connected but it seems people had different ideas about how to set up their scenes. I don't know what to say about nix's entry. It could have been great? Needs more solid drawings. Tdk's entry was pretty good, you're definitely improving with each comic. But I'll echo angie's sentiment, the jokes are hit or miss and difficult to understand. The scene where Elle explains her distrust of shapeshifters could have used some more compositional clarity. Bit hard to tell what went on. Fern's comic was the best one here in my opinion. Though I sense the setup from the other comics I feel like pyras' comic is the most out of place here. I don't have much to add that hasn't been said, the page count is impressive but consistency and quality really take a dive in return. So what I understood overall is that a bunch of characters gather for not very clear reasons and hang out with Arena's group which is wanted by the vcpd. So some setup later the vcpd tries to do a raid and fails. Mister awesome shows up because he's supposedly escaped (I'd like to say the vcpd released him as part of their raid but that's an unclear point and maybe that's just me hoping to make sense of what's going on). But he's out of control, cue epic fight. But really unless it's like I'm guessing that the vcpd released him it makes the story really random. Meanwhile we've got Komodo who is there simply by virtue of being arena's first battle plus other characters arena has met. It's got a lot of kinks and I would have toned down the cheese factor.

Whoa. My question is who's genius move was to make it a 100+pg 5 parter? Especially if two of you are film students, as you should be uniquely aware of how vital editing can be. Even had the pages been completed to their fullest capacity, the story really seems like it would've been rambling, unwieldy, & just not cohesive. Orion & Nix, really it was hard to get through both of yours as they were both incomplete & either overcrowded with lines or sparse. You may not know your limits yet but with 2 months to draw this, I expected a lot more, even if it came in less pages. Also, you guys have to work on making characters look more distinct & recognizable. Nix, they were very much similar in yours. Orion, Elle looked like a guy & i thought it was some other character entirely. TDK, you're getting there, but keep working on your anatomy & your backgrounds. Fern, while there is a dip in quality, altogether, yours felt the most consistent of the 5 & I felt told the concisest bit of story so you got my vote. Pyras, I've seen much better work from you. You stretched yourself way too thin & this didn't work. On the plus side, at least you didn't trace anything. Least nothing I picked up on. So that was good. But I don't think anyone else has been too negatively critical of it for what you presented. Jax is right. And Hiemie's question was a fairly legitimate one that didn't even question the quality. Ultimately, if you could take the heat, you really wouldn't need to draw up passive aggressive reaction comics though.

Well I may as well get this part out of my system and echo what Orange is saying. You guys had a lot of time and there's a lot of unfinished stuff going on. I totally understand that life happens and I understand that working with a bunch of people is difficult. But everyone needs to learn how to manage their time appropriately because let's be honest, life is always going to happen, there's really no avoiding that. I don't think that you guys should feel awful or terrible since this kind of set up is really hard to work with, but I hope that at the very least everyone learned from this. I apologize ahead of time if I sound really douchey or mean because that's not my intent at all. Orion- I could have forgiven the unfinished nature of the comic a lot easier had there been any dialogue. The thing about keeping comics silent is in order to make them work is you have to have clarity or the audience will have no idea what's going on. Since the comic was so sketchy a lot of the action was lost. I know you busted most of these out on the last day, but never wait to do the dialogue on pages since waiting to do it can really come back to bite you in the ass. While dialogue wouldn't have suddenly fixed the problem of the pages being unfinished, it would have really helped me get an idea of what was going on. There was some hints of some good things going on in here but I had a hard time following what was going on. DestructiveNix-the comic is very cute and I liked the characters' expressions. One thing that may have helped you get a more finished product is cutting out all the shading and instead focusing on more complete lineart. I was a little confused with what happened between you and Orion's parts since they end/begin with different things happening. This looked more like a problem in communication than a mistake of 1 person. I'm not sure how you guys planned this out, but it may have been helpful for Orion and you to have thumbed out the last 1-2 pages of his comic and the first 1-2 of your's together early on to make sure they would line up properly. tdkgunghoul-I think this was a lot cleaner and easier to read than your previous comics so you leveled up which is good. I also liked Elle more in this comic than in previous ones, seeing the way she interacted with the others was nice. I was kind of confused on some things. Like I didn't know what the opening dialogue with William Shatner was about and I didn't know what Mr.Awesome was doing there randomly. I was also confused about the random joke on page 9. Also the characters seem to be appearing/disappearing in random locations. Like at the end of Nix's Lophii is there but then she's not there on here and now she's at the bar and I was just like what? Fern-I was pleasantly surprised when I saw your's, quality wise this was significantly better than any of your previous comics. I'm happy that the brushes I'd shown you helped, they gave a very nice effect on the rendering. This comic really shows you getting more comfortable with your style and with comics in general, the inking was very nice. I didn't understand why Lophii was being followed by the cops and why they seemed sort of friendly towards them in the previous part. I also didn't know what was going on with Arena freaking out at the end. Pyras-I do agree that this probably would have worked significantly better had you cut a chunk out to focus on quality over quantity. I think you had very good pacing here and the action read fairly well, but the unfinished nature of the comic was pretty distracting. I was really confused about where a lot of the characters came from, like Kojiro and Ivan and such weren't in previous parts so they seemed to come out of nowhere. I was also really confused about where Mr.Awesome came from and why he was attacking everyone since he'd really only appeared in 1 panel in any of the previous parts. I think overall for everyone it would have really helped to better iron the details out prior to starting to draw. Because the locations change frequently and characters come and go, so it's very easy to have problems with consistency. I'm not sure how often you guys talked, but it may have helped to make a little private messageboard or use GoogleWave to communicate. Since if important things like why Mr.Awesome was there got missed, someone else could have potentially incorporated that into their half. While I know my comments may seem overall negative, don't take it as I'm trying to tear anyone down. I think that even though this may have not been the most successful large scale group event, it was something you guys all learned from. Learning how to work in a group setting is a very valuable asset to have so it was well worth having this experience.

http://fc08.deviantart.net/fs70/f/2011/036/1/5/ten_comic_reactions_by_pyrasterran-d38tzna.jpg Well I wouldn't be here if I couldn't take the heat. Thanks for the crits and I do want to see more.

Jax, to be honest, I agree a little bit with you. School is no excuse, especially if there were Christmas holidays about... Also, I am aware of the quality drop after first few pages. I'm ashamed. I think it mainly comes down to backgrounds, I think I will do a lot of drawings of backgrounds only (and kittens), so maybe I will stop being scared of them. Glad you liked the blues :) It was a bit of an experiment with photoshop brushes Angie linked me to (THANKS!) and I think it worked not bad. Anyway. I haven't got time to read all this just now, as i'm off to worky worky... Will do when I return :)

Yeah I have school and all that stuff too, I know what that is like. I guess maybe it just baffles me that for 8 weeks, or 2 months, there was not enough time to spare for 1 page a week. It would have left you with only 8 pages instead, but that is 1 page...essentially just one large drawing per week. There has to be at least that much time in a week to make for that. If you know there is no time for this stuff, and you're planning a big group project, why even say you can do it when you know you do not have the time? In the end the entire thing suffers because some people didn't manage their time wisely or even knew what they were getting themselves into. Again, I am not trying to be mean, I just think as a whole, I was pretty disappointed with it because for an 8 week deadline I still think there was a lot of time not managed properly or even used effectively. I get it, real life comes first, I know that one quite well. I did the invitational while school was going on and I had homework and finals and was preparing to have my sister move out here to where I am. I had no summer break, I had to simply just manage my time. I don't recommend anyone going to the same lengths as I did because I ended up neglecting my health, but I mean if you have to take an extra hour off your sleep every night to do a page a week - so be it. It was a commitment you made to get this story out and to do a big event, at least I wish people had honoured it a little more. I'm going to stress it again. I am not doing this to be mean to anyone, I am just being honest here and not sugarcoating what I think.

Pyras... I got a question. With all this, with the GIANT COMIC, why didn't you... just.... FIGHT MISTER AWESOME!? This was Arena and Company vs. Mister Awesome.

@Jax One word: School. 16.5 units of schooling in a quarter brings crazy amounts of schoolwork. I'm not the only one in this school situation. Eight weeks for us was something more of a one week thing. pryas and I are film students. that involves a hell of a lot of work. you don't get many breaks. It's not like we're lazing around eating cheetos and playing xbox(ew, cheetos, ew xbox) we've been legitimately busy. that's why we set it for eight weeks. We knew we wouldn't have the time to turn out something half way decent in one week or one month. as it stands I've had one day a week to do anything. And with the obligations to my family, that was cut down to something like four days total. this last week I had all of the images sketched(and resketched) then I had to ignore my classes so I could finish my pages, which would have been on the computer but my tablet has officially crapped out on me(way to go tablet). all in all I think we did good for busy people with lives and school and shit. @tdk: Awesome D&D reference. Love you forever for that!

Okay, I don't want to sound like a dick, but I probably will come across as one anyway - but seriously? This is what 8 weeks can bring to the table? Personally, I think for some of you guys I saw better during the invitational with the 1 week deadlines. Remember, its all about quality over quantity. I think the story really suffered here because there were a lot of unneeded pages that could have been left out, and rather condensed to make the action that much snappier, less wordier, and just that much more dramatic. I think what also hurt it was the sheer number of unfinished and sketchy pages. C'mon guys, what happened? I don't want to be -that guy- and please don't take any of this personally, but I think this was something that was a little doomed to start. Its rare when a great 2 person collab story really comes together imo, and so with 5 people it gets a bit messy. The story would have worked better with at least half the number of pages and with each person pulling their own weight accordingly over 8 weeks. That is pretty much 2 months guys. 2 months to produce at least 3 pages each. With the story you guys built up the page count could have been cut down and spread out more evenly. I still just cannot believe though that there is so much unfinished stuff in here. I gotta give props though to Fern and TDK who I thought brought some nice pages. TDK I think your stuff is getting cleaner and while I still got confused and lost, there were some nice moments in your comic mixed in with some nice humour. Keep at it man. Fern, I loved your first few pages (the quality started to dip afterwards) with the nice blue palette you had going on. I didn't find it nearly as confusing as some of the other entries and still thought it looked nice. Pyras you did pretty good too, but again - page count. Also the transparent word bubbles really were distracting on that one page, as well as the random useage of colours for the powers here and there. It didn't feel cohesive at all. The plot dragged on a lot at points, you could have really trimmed it down a lot and tightened it up and maybe have somewhere around 20 something great pages as opposed to 49 that just keep getting progressively worse/rushed. I'm not trying to be mean, I just think there was a lot of wasted potential here. Better luck next time I guess.

tdkgunghoul: last page, 2nd panel "I NEED TO PEE! SO BAD! I'M GOING TO PEE RIGHT HERE!" (critiques to follow later)

it's up! YEY. '3' I'm happy! sick as hell but happy as a clam ~w~ thank you for letting me draw with you!

...... :|

Extremely cute. :D

speaking of kittens, check what I recently drew :O

PyrasTerran: The number you'd have to be crazy or suspicious to grade my comic: Ten Should be: "grades that all comics should get or else...: ten" ;P Also yeah, I think Lophii did a good job submitting it and all cos I couldn't be bothered. But it's her story after all so she kinda cares more than I do (F. being unfunny) Anyway, from now on I'm only drawing comics about kittens ^o^ I wish this was kinda all viewable already as I don't really know what the rest of the story is :P Apart from few crucial elements that allowed me to do my part :P

PyrasTerran: fun facts! name of the comic: Ten number of heroes that help Arena: Ten Page number where coloring in my comic stops: Ten Next numerical set of pages before black shades stop: Ten Numerical difference between when shit hits the fan to the end of the climax(beginning of the falling action): Ten The number you'd have to be crazy or suspicious to grade my comic: Ten Woah it's getting all symbolic in this bitch!

Nix and I had submitting problems so they were sent via email.

eleven pages *hopefully*submitted. It's still loading ><;

Al of my pages submitted. 13 in total. *whew*

fun facts! name of the comic: Ten number of heroes that help Arena: Ten Page number where coloring in my comic stops: Ten Next numerical set of pages before black shades stop: Ten Numerical difference between when shit hits the fan to the end of the climax(beginning of the falling action): Ten The number you'd have to be crazy or suspicious to grade my comic: Ten

Lophii & I have submitted :]

This is gonna be hella awesome.

Work work work work GOOD LUCK GUYS D:

If any of y'all may not make the deadline with a finished piece, then maybe give a page of text about what was left out, since all our comics are interconnected.

Oh shit where'd the time go?

It's 8 weeks so that the awesomeness of the product will make everyone jealous. Yes. :P

Unfortunately we're very busy folk :( BUT if we finish early then we'll post early! :D

8 weeks - whaaaat?

ooh damn this is gonna be fun.

I think we're(the artists) all enthusiastic about this, I hope we make something great together :)

wow so many people are in this one, good luck everyone

Man, there's a lot of group matches lately. And that's a good thing! Can't wait to see what you guys pull out.

Very nice lineup! Good luck everyone!

Im Beri Excited!

Something wicked this way comes!