@ Thresher - Thanks for the critique!
Boots n Dred was supposed to make an appearance in Drawdan's part (according to the script we wrote together), but looks like he wasn't shown as planned. Not sure what happened there...
I find it difficult to draw muscular bodies, mostly from the fact I'm used to drawing ladies XD Sorting page lengths and how to stylize certain panels were always tricky things for me, I cannot seem to pick out how to best convey particular scenes.
Tatsura:
You really have upped your game!
The page lengths seem to change, which isn't very consistent. Your effort is really showing through on those cityscapes, but your bulk dude anatomy could do with some work.
When you show Swan flying, you make it look as though she's standing, you should put more flow into her movement which'll help enforce the whole flying thing.
You use some interesting angles in the less interesting scenes, but when it gets to the action you have some fairly standard layouts. Go nuts with the action!
Drawdan:
You do some lovely pencil work, but you seem to miss a few things.
Holy crap is Swan's spine broken in that first page?! Take a look at the bottom left panel on that first page and ask yourself if that is physically possible.
You pose the action well, but doing so give it a kind of stiffness, like it's setup. Most of the panels are less for depicting action and more for an awesome shot. Awesome shots are best left to covers, we want to see action, not posing!
I am jealous of your musculature, it's pretty solid.
The panel with Drawdan is extremely abrupt. One second he's flying above the city then BAM, literally next second he's behind some dude. Throw in some transition panels! Show him flying down and being badass.
I also feel you could have done a better angle for the face slam shot, we're losing alot of the impact with a straight on camera, a more interesting angle would have benefited you greatly.
That last double spread (I assume) should NOT have that red in it. It looks ugly amongst what are otherwise quite nice pencils.
To Both of You:
I assume you did the story together, so here we go.
Why bother with Boots and Dreds on the catchup panel when he has no bearing/impact/mention in the comic? Seems unnecessary.
Overall it's a pretty tried and true comic story, introduce hero's and gangsters, have heroes beat gangsters, get the story rolling. You introduce Swan better than Drednaut in this and it feels like this should be part of an ongoing serial to a Drednaut series that Swan is entering midway through, and this is how she's introduced.
The gangsters dialogue felt stilted and their motives a little too simplistically depicted. you really could have made them much more interesting as an ongoing threat. Make them people, not cardboard cutouts of villains.
The ending is rather strong, but it leaves the story feeling cutshort. I'm not one to talk, but a 4 week collab battle could have been much greater in scope. You've got a combined 8 weeks of drawing time between the two of you, and you could have used that to great effect (although I understand that life takes precedence).
Overall, I was a bit bored by the basic idea of the story, but Swan and Drednauts characters were more interesting and were able to bring it back up a bit.
I'd like to see the characters tested more, we get Drednauts emotional turmoil and Swan being trussed up, but it seems to lack the tension that could really drive a story.
Anyway, hoping to see more from you two again soon!
Kojiro: "Dancing is lame... when can I go fight something?"
You know looking in retrospect I should have thought of something a bit more iconic for the Dojo when I made the outside...
A nice collab if a bit brief but definitely fun to see Entourage people doing things as well as doing some establishing for future work as the last page did.
Should write more critical things later...
I like the idea of a collab battle! Tatsura, I always enjoy reading your comics, and I like how much you keep improving with each battle. Drawdan, I'm diggin' the puns aplenty. The text/bubbles does clash a bit with the pencil lines, but you've got some solid poses and action going on.
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