Hey there zest, this is my first Leland comic and I enjoyed it, even not knowing either character well, good job there, It was a bit wordy for my taste, but nice mix of shots and angles, it helped keep me in the story. The 4th panel on the 2nd page had the best mix of line-weights, I like the character to BG relation there. Keep at it, good stuff!
Alright, as promised, here's my crit for Amanita!
Your art is really coming a long way, I really like your style a lot. Your lines are starting to be able to stand on their own without color which is always a plus. Really the only issue I had with your comic is the text. There's a lot of it and it's very cramped together. From pages 3-5 I had a hard time keeping interest because of the text. It's not that I'm anti wordy comics because that's not the case at all, it's mostly because you're cramming a lot of it into smaller panels which makes the panel feel overwhelming to look at.
There were also times I was unsure of the order the bubbles should be read like on the last panel on page 4 I kept wanting to read all of Leland's bubbles first instead of Leland then David then Leland. Because normally when two bubbles are connected, if the other person who is talking's word bubble does not intercept the "connection" my mind keeps wanting to read it as a pause instead of it jumping to the other character. Because I'm sure that all made no sense, this should be a bit more clear http://img696.imageshack.us/img696/5567/wordexample.jpg I won't pretend to know all the rules of lettering, this is just how I normally read pages.
I think it was overall a nice improvement and a good comic, just work on giving your panels and text some more breathing room.
whoa, I'm glad I decided to read a battle today. I really enjoyed Zest's comic!
I thought page 1 was intensely clever and fun, and drew me right into the comic. It may be that it's hard to read upside down, but I managed it, so I'm not complaining.
I agree that you should think about varying line weights. Maybe introducing solid blacks will also help to make things more clear, in addition to making the artwork less "busy"?
I like that you add lots of detail, but it feels unbalanced in that some panels are stuffed with detail while others seem empty.
The addition of grey tone, such as in the speed lines, is inconsistent in that it is are only used in a few places. If you are going to use tone, you should incorporate it into the whole comic. Personally, I think that you could have done without it.
I hope you continue to play with layouts a la the first page. It really complements the cartoony nature of your style. Maybe think about doing away with conventional paneling altogether?
Orion: if you have problem putting your drawning into panel/page form then as you keep on doodling while chatting then just draw your opponent character and add text bubbles to make story out of it, this way we'd get something out of you - this is as bad as a single page saying "Sorry guys I tried not to default"
AmanitaZest:
Like Orange I'm not found of that Special Hell so here I am XD
It was a pretty neat story, but after into page like that I expected some more crazy innovative ideas - birdy band was a nice touch, but it didn't follow with laptop/monitor flipping moment ;)
It's a nice 1 week battle with overall constant quality and completestory ;) and video games are good for you XD
I AM COMMENTING SO I DON'T GO TO A SPECIAL HELL. I WILL ALSO VOTE.
As always man I love Leland comics. They are just so full of charm, and very cartoony. Its a different take on VOID and I dig it.
and Orion - what the hell man. I gotta echo what Angie says, if you take on a battle stop joining the chat and talk about drawing - actually DRAW something.
zest main reason I told you before to practice drawing or sketching using your arm is cause the main issue I see with you and most tablet inkers is jittery lines. so try doing warm ups on paper drawing straight lines, boxes and round shapes and apply it to tabley.
Zesty: BRO. That was MOST TRIUMPHANT. Totally tubular radtacular awesometastic! The whole look and feel coupled with the story have a super classic Saturday Morning Cartoon vibe going. The only thing that could have made this better were some rich colors to make your cartoons pop. You're getting a lot better with facial expressions. I'd say keep an eye on your proportions, sometimes your characters change sizes from panel to panel in relation to eachother and themselves. Watch for that! Overall, fantastic work. I love it. <3
I will give Amanita a proper critique later today, I just need to get my initial anger and wrath out at Orion.
Orion, seriously? SERIOUSLY? You can't do a comic in 6 weeks and you take on a 1 week deadline? If you spent half as much time drawing as you did typing in the Void Chat, you could have had at least 3 complete pages for this. Don't you dare touch a 1 week deadline ever again until you're capable of finishing a comic period. Technically your comic shouldn't have gone up due to this rule http://entervoid.com/board/index.php?topic=10721.0 but I was unsure of who was who due to the extreme rough nature of this comic. I'm not trying to be a jerk here but come on dude, this is unacceptable and extremely unfair to your opponent.
Onion- I do agree a little bit on the time management issue. 1 week battles can be a tricky thing, especially if something should come up at the last minute then you could really get screwed if you mis-step a day in progress.
My only advice is that you should try to use the least amount of strokes as possible when you do an underline/contour of the body. Sketching them over and over will produce hairy lines, which in turn will result in issues with anatomy when you add in the final details. Despite noticing the under-drawing, your anatomy is getting better so keep on practicing!
Zesty - This was a very fun comic! I agree with Le Fred, it definitely has that feel of a good cartoon I'd totally watch back in my youth. The interaction between David and Leland reminded me of one of those 80's early 90's buddy comedy films and to me that's an awesome thing.
Page 1 also threw me for a loop, but I get why you did that. However I found myself wanting to flip my laptop upside down to read the rest of what the dialogue was saying, but that would've been a costly mistake of $550.
Your lines are very smooth and clean, but it seems like there's not much line width variation between the characters and word bubbles. I'd be a good idea to play around with line widths more, maybe making the bubbles thicker and foreground elements thicker too. Great job Zest!
Mr. Zest, there's defenetly a strong kid's cartoon vibe to this, I wouldn't be surprised to fall on this turning up my tv on a saturday morning. It gives the story a sense of familiarity which is nice, while still being fun and original.
But the pages are unbearable to look at. They attack my eyes with all those lines and whiteness. You overstuffed every inch with lines and there's just nowhere for my eyes to rest, page 1 being by far the worst. if you added greys like you did on page 7, that would already make everything easier to read.
Anyway, still a pretty enjoyable comic, nice job!
Orion.. man.. you have GOT to work on your time management :( Speaking as a friend. But you haven't been able to completely finish a single comic since you've come here, and after this, I think it's proof that something you're doing during the process most definitely isn't working. I don't know how busy your time is but there have been plenty of times on this site where artists with filled time schedules managed to pull out more content than this, even artists who were working on more than one comic on a time managing to crank plenty of stuff out. I'd dare say that before you even start looking at your anatomy, composition, etc., priority 1 for you should be to finish a comic. If you need help on anything, let me know.
Amanita: Cool, I could see this being the script for a cartoon episode :) There's alot to like from this, and even without colors or shades the pages are filled well. Good job! Also I haven't forgotten our belated leland/arena battle~ I'll let you know when I'm good for that
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