Orion, I'm going to give you some advice, and no this isn't me scolding you. When I was in college I flunked a semester because my car had gotten totalled in a 7 car pileup and I was extremely depressed so I didn't want to go to school. I was also very bad about registering for classes on time as well as signing up for classes. The stress this caused was unbearable. I got scared that all the classes would be full or I wouldn't be able to get financial aid so I procrastinated which would of course made everything worst, I was also scared to tell my teachers about my depression because I thought they would think I was making excuses.
If I learned anything through these experiences it was that nothing can be solved by staying quiet and tackling things on your own. I could have avoided failing classes if I just would have let my teachers know what was going on with me and probably would have graduated a lot sooner instead of being forced to take 1-2 classes a semester because my scholarship ran out and I couldn't afford more. I wouldn't have had so many problems getting in classes and getting financial aid if I just would have talked to someone and could have avoided a lot of depression and anxiety. If things are going wrong, there is no shame in letting people know what's going on so don't think of it as if you're going to hurt your pride.
I understand that it's hard, obviously if it were easy I wouldn't have had all those problems too. But sometimes you just need to let people know what's up and see how they can help you. It wouldn't have been a problem to cancel this battle. Also you should find out what your school's policies are on absences, mine would fail you instantly if you missed more than 2 classes.
I guess I should explain myself.
As far as what happened it was half what always happens and the other outside influences.
First of all, I would like to say that it this mainly was a failing of not just my own self-directed motivation on the project but also on the fact that I broke apart halfway through during a holiday break. I have come to recognize that Holiday Break, and most breaks in general, are a horrible time to work on any sort of project and not feel guilty about spending time away from my family while back home from college This is compounded further when you can't manage your time well either. I found myself wanting to hang out more with my brothers, playing video games then drawing up thumbnails for my comic. That pretty much killed a lot of my time. Do I regret spending that time with them? No. I love my brothers and I love the time I spend with him when I could. That aside it was a bad practice in self-discipline and despite that I could have come up with the time to work on it if I had better mediated myself and kept vigilant. Again, my failing.
Second of all is something that has seemed a bit more obvious to me now and during the fight. I wasn't ready for this battle. When me and IronLion put down what we would do for this comic battle we agreed on 10 pages and the 3 weeks to do so. But even with 3 weeks and all that happened above I have come to realize that my technical skill, writing, planning abilities, and just visualization and confidence were not up to this challenge. I was pretty hesitant to take this on when I started but once I did and got through the first half I knew it was a mistake to have done it. I will admit it was my pride more then anything that stopped me from contacting IronLion and calling the whole thing off as soon as I got the news of my probation or from turning in anything less then the min. page count for fear that none of the sketches and thumbnails I did would be allowed to be posted (and that the story that I had wanted to do for so long would not be able to be told the way I wanted) so I just let it happened. I decided that I would spend the last few days of Christmas break hanging out with my brothers and not thinking about it. I know it was selfish and irresponsible and not talking to any of you has lead me to the situation I am in currently and brought lower then any other time I have tried. I have not picked my battles well and I when I have they have not turned out close to the way I wanted to them. I have been too caught up in the fantasy of my own ideas and not focused on what has been more important and ultimately the purpose of this site: to practice and improve on technical skill and learning to work under pressure. I seemed to not have understood those two aspects well enough to put them in effect in my comics. When I fight again, and I will, I will endeavor to approach each battle from those angles and not from projects that are out of my reach at this stage.
Third, the other half of that was something a bit more personal. When I left for home after fall semester, I did so with 3 failing grades in my classes. 1 of these classes was one I had put in a lot of effort and time into but ultimately, due to my own lack of judgement and discipline, missed too many days of class and had my grade reduced to an F despite turning in all my projects and meeting the requirements. Where this came to ahead was about half way through break I received my grades and, given how that last semester had went, I found myself with a letter saying I was on academic probation. This on top of the failing grades already and the state of the project I that far, sapped any motivation or drive from me and while I kept going at it my heart just wasn't in it as strongly. I have had to reassess a lot of what I had been doing up to that point and build myself up from the ground floor, scheduling my time more effectively, rearranging priorities and even now, 4 weeks into the semester I am still trying to improve on my former failures with better sleep patterns and more attention to my deadlines and class times. I know that is basic borderline stuff but I have to learn it now or else I will just repeat my mistakes. I am one semester away from being dropped from school so it has become less necessity to learn and more imperative.
Now, I know this doesn't change the fact that I defaulted, or the fact that by not talking sooner I might have alienated a few of you. I felt I should clear the air and hope that I can move on and try again.
I hope I've explained everything well enough and given an insight to the why. From now on I am going to try and be a little more realistic with my time and my page count and focus on improving my ability to draw and write and deliver a product before I start getting all excited for big projects and grand ideas again.
Until then, back to the pencils and ink.
I think that http://bancomicsans.com/main/?page_id=2 makes it clear why it's so hated. It's essentially because it looks bad and got overused like crazy for the wrong purposes. It doesn't work very well for comics even with the word comic in the name.
Pretty entertaining stuff Ironlion, this is the first I've seen o' this gator guy...interesting approach of this encounter. Few pages devoured my screen. Additionally I do like the balance between the solid shades and the line work.
Iron: Why was page 7 and page 10 so huge? It was overly large and much bigger then other pages. It's a simple fix that would have really helped overall.
In page 8 there was a panel for Hellgator's eye which could have been clearer, I was unsure as to what it was until later in the page.
One major thing to look at is your proportions, they tend to become rather elastic. Main example is on page 2, with David's neck getting stretched out to about the same length as his arm. I'd also keep an eye on using your page economically, I felt you could have used less pages to more effect.
The concept here is simple, but leaves out a few details which leave you a little lost (i.e. why David is down there in the first place).
I think you can do better, but it was enjoyable. Good luck in the future!
actually this counts as a win for you (granted, via default which is recorded in your profile), and a lose and a serious drop in the grade for Orion.
Unlike school, your grades don't reset every semester or year; any default remains as a huge blot on your overal grades forever.
I hear what you guy's are saying with the dialogue, that bit where he seems kinda prejudice was my pathetic attempt at being cheeky LOL. The lesson has been learned. So I take it since there was no actual battle, there's no win or loss, right?
Iron: Your inks are coming along nicely, the solid blacks, like angie said, were nice to see. I think my only beef with this comic was the dialogue. It just felt a little over the top, especially when Sam (I thought his name was David, did I miss something or was that an error?) says "I came here to beat you for being different from everyone else". I don't think anyone would ever say that out loud and out there, even if their motive were for that reason, it just sounds out of place. Just work on that and I think you'll be fine. Good work!
Orion: Okay, I don't know what happened here. Again. I do remember you saying you were working on it, then saying you had to change the story or whatever. If some emergency happened outside of void or life problems got in the way, it's excused. But dude, if it isn't, I think I found your problem. You over think your battles. Way too often. Eric and others told you not to over think comics and just do your battle. This is your second default, and not the first time you brought almost nothing to the table. I remember you saying you'd like to battle me someday, but I'm gonna be honest, until you can show at least 2 more completed comics on this site, I'm not gonna take up that challenge. Not to be mean to you, bro, but you can't keep taking up challenges, over think, and end up not doing a complete comic. I have a lot more to say, but I'm not gonna turn this into a thread of rant. We'll talk when you're online.
Iron: Not bad, it looks like you're improving. David Birch is a little out of character the way he's now Prejudice-Man, but listen to Angie's notes and you should perform well next match as well.
Iron-I think you had a nice use of blacks, but the ballpoint pen cross hatching is taking away from them, just stick with the solid blacks. Try to keep your fonts consistent, it looked like you used several of them across the comic for the dialogue. (and stay away from comic sans) I would like to see you eventually get this guy out of the sewer so you can have more chances for different types of backgrounds. (I could be wrong but I feel like this is primarily where they've taken place) It's a fairly simple and straight forward story, I have no beef with just a simple action story, but watch how your dialogue flows. I had a hard time keeping track of what was going on because the dialogue felt really disjointed.
Orion-I would like to see you take what you learned from my bootcamp and actually use the knowledge I gave you on how to actually get your comics done. This is unacceptable and you have wasted your opponent's time yet again. Now in the chance your house exploded or your computer melted or something of course disregard that, but considering your track record I don't think it's out of line for me to assume you just didn't do the comic. Spend less time being excited about who your battling and talking about being excited about battling people and use that time for drawing.
This is actually pretty nice, Iron. I like the heavy blacks, though sometimes it gets a bit hard to distinguish elements within the same panel.
And that last page, was it intentional or did you run out of time?
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