Tofu/Coatl: I really like the art in here, and P2 looks really cool in this style. You two work really well together and it's a bonus that you two live so closely and can work together in person. The backgrounds are pretty sparse and I wish they had the solidity that was applied to the characters in the story. Starting off with them brawling is fine, but then it switches to them before the fight and them talking about arena. I think there could have been some mention like "A few hours earlier", part of the exposition could have been that they were going out for burgers which was mentioned at the end of the comic. My favorite panel was the one on page 4 when Ehren transformed into M-Zero-Oh. I liked the frenetic sketchiness of it that gives a sense of energy to the drawing that stood out against the graphic quality of the rest of the drawings. I liked the colors it has a soft quality that I like and wish I could have seen more of it applied throughout the comic rather than the spots here and there in some of the pages. Overall this was a nice comic and you two should definitely work together again.
Fel/Pyras: Cool action comic, lots of fight scenes which harkens back to old school void. The establishing shots and the exposition of the story where the characters come together are great. The story is set up nicely and both sides are included equally and of course stories around the Orphanage are sure to be interesting. It was a surprise to see dead agents of Orphanage back in the story and I'm interested to see what you have planned since the ending seems to denote that they will be used in some way, puppets perhaps? It's been mentioned before, but sometimes the renditions of Sonny and M-Zero-Oh/Ehren aren't quite as polished as P2 and Arena, sometimes the faces don't fit structurally with the head. The backgrounds started out pretty strong, but in the end, they started to become generalized as texturized blocks of gray. They are fighting in a car garage/structure, so I feel like there should be more cars in there, it would probably help with breaking up the blocks of gray. I'm glad you two are back doing comics and I look forward to seeing where this story will go.
Tofu/Coatl - Nice comic! It ended kinda scratchy, but I liked your art throughout, especially the action and body language. The color was a bit too sparse in my opinion, because while I like that not everything was colored there were some pages with only a tiny spot of color, and that was distracting. The best use of color was on pages 2 and 10--great shade of blue there! I really hope you guys make more team-ups because this was fun.
Fel/Pyras - This comic also had a shaky ending, but it was pretty strong otherwise! Nice to see Todd and Fedra again--glad to see us dead Orphies aren't forgotten :D Really loved the animated expressions, though the facial anatomy was pretty inconsistent. Also, the colors were really slick--from the highlights and shading and everything. Great job!
Pineapple pocky: thanks for the tips, we'll definitely work on our use of the opponents' characters.
Duredhel: thank you for the critique, I'm glad our colors and lines work well together for you. We will see what we can do about environment interaction in the next comic.
William Duel: thanks for the crit. The font I'm using is the Digital Strip 2.0 from blambot. Any better fonts you know of that you might recommend? I can try out different ones to see which works in the pages. Thanks for the Sandman examples, I do see that the sand can be a little more yellow, or lighter, just less cardboard colored in general.
Tofu Coatl: I think you two are a great team up who should work together more often. I think you guys were able to really improve each other's usual strengths and weaknesses. And obviously the influences you guys share shine through here ;P I sometimes have issue with Tofu's anatomy but I see none of those usual weaknesses here. P2 looks like Tofu's style and he looks great. Together you guys have a great sense of composition and flow but admittedly this can't always make up for the lack of detail in the backgrounds. Page 7 is my favorite but this page also stands out as the least cleaned up. I see no levelling or contrast in comparison to the other pages. It would have helped to really clean up your blacks and make them pop. The story, the jokes and the expressions were definitely the strongest and most enjoyable parts of this piece. I also truly enjoyed the effects written into the speedlines and motions. The highest compliment I can give you guys is that this was a really stylish and fabulous piece.
Fel Terran: As usual Fel's style and flare shines strong in this piece. I liked Todd Susser doing his thing here. Some of the early pages though, I felt p2's body type seemed a little inconsistent and the perspectives weren't great but it definitely got better and more varied as the story went on. The story was fine but I felt like Ehren and Sonny's role wasn't as strong as it could have been. This was more like P2/Arena versus Orphanage and then Sonny's connection to Arena is remembered for a brief moment. I wish they could have been more integral to the plot as poor Ehren/M0'o got the least interaction here.
Word balloons could have used a thicker border, better word placement and perhaps a different font. I know the font thing is not easy, I'm always looking and searching for a better one and I haven't found one I like yet so I don't know what you guys have as preferences. But ever since coming to VOID, the decision of what font to use has always seem to me to be an important part of the comic.
And one last thing, while I understand that the general story is that Arena's sandstorm is covering the city while battling the orphanage, the use of so much brown and of the same texture made it dull at times. There must be ways to change it up. I can only think of using mainstream comics as reference here and there's none better than the Sandman from Spiderman. In comics where that character is featured the sand often has a more yellow tint in addition to brown to contrast with the character's green and I think you need to take such color choices more into consideration or else the constant brown threatens to undermine the mood.
Examples:
http://0.tqn.com/d/comicbooks/1/0/3/C/sandman2.jpghttp://www.dynamicforces.com/images/C113628.jpg
The sandstorm empowered P2 was really cool though.
PyrasTerran:
you guys performed like noble minority knights, be proud~
No Lie, me and tofu are proud of our battle regardless of the results and we're glad that we ended up facing you guys.
I'm loving this tournament! Not a single default!
Tofu and Coatl - The comic feels kind of rushed, some of the dialogue was funny and the action sequences feel appropriately... 'actiony' but it's all a bit confusing. Some exposition at the beginning one way or another would have been appreciated, nothing wrong with a straight up fight but there seemed to be a storyline there. One major gripe is backgrounds, man. It's hard to know where the characters are or how they're moving when they fight on empty space or just a line.
Felle and Pyras - Oh man, Koba vs Arena was an important fight since three battles (if not more) in this tourney have taken it as a starting point. Stuff looked great Felle, sometimes your figures suffer a bit from head oversizing but it's much less noticeable in this fight. The action poses look great too and Pyras' color compliments your lines nicely. Normally when one does color, you have to try not to overpower the ink, but in this case ink was pretty light, no heavy blacks or high contrasts, so that is a good chance to make the coloring more dramatic (in terms of lighting, hue, contrast, etc). Your backgrounds were good, I understood they were fighting in some sort of parking structure but I would have appreciated a wide shot every now and then to know where the walls were, columns, etc, or even some cars. Some interaction between the characters and the environment would have made the fight seem much richer. Overall great stuff though, even considering the last two pages, it's a strong showing.
tofubeast/coatl: (note: I'm gonna treat this critique like I don't know who did what here) Whatever the hell you did, somehow I can't point my finger to who drew and who scripted. Anyhow, I would say my favorite panel was page 7, panel 5. Now THAT's what you call a beating :P. But to the actual critique, I think the quality of the work could have been better. I'm thinking now, since it's happened multiple times I've seen both your work, it might not actually be the scanner or photoshop, but the paper you're using is too absorbent, causing oddities like textures or small bleeding to occur. Try using a more tightly-woven paper, like toner paper, vellum (not the bristol), or bleedproof, so that the ink doesn't bleed in as much. Also, you are really pumping photoshop levels for those blacks/whites too extremely. If you need to intense the blacks THAT much, please duplicate the linework, set it on multiply, adjust the opacity, and merge it with the original linework. Using too much white/black adjustment in photoshop creates static white/black noise, because it will register even a single piece of dust on that picture if you push it too hard. Regarding color/texture overly, as your homework assignment, go scan and photoshop some coffee/watercolor stains, scan in a bunch of tree leaves, and photograph some metal rust or something. You need some variety of texture/colors if you want to do what you're doing right now. Regarding the story, I felt that the pace was very fast, and you could slow it down a little more (sorry i don't know how to do that efficiently, so I can't help out here). I have a feeling about who had the say on the text, and although some dialogue makes sense, some are blended in too much with the other bubbles that you aren't sure who is saying what. I think when you posted this, the comic could be a bit smaller. The text bubbles/text are very large, and although conveniently covers spots on the panel, I don't think it needs to be THAT big. Sound effects look better than the actual dialogue.
FelP2/Pyrus Terran: I think the most powerful thing in this story is the establishment of the setting and the meaning behind it. Because the characters all gather at one place for a reason and leave to another, it makes a good transition to the next TTT if you survive this one. It could just be my imagination, but the concentration of drawing your own characters vs. drawing your opponents are different. Like, the attention to line width and detail isn't as well drawn compared to your own characters (pointing fingers to page 9-11). I am guessing it's because you never drew them before, or rarely do it. Make sure when you draw your opponents, that they look just as great as your own characters, because in your work, they're just as important as yours when establishing a story. It's cool how you have uneven and slanted comic frames, but try not to do it too excessively. It can screw peoples' brains into thinking the entire comic was slanted until they see one page that isn't and suddenly it feels weird. On page 11, watch out for overlapping panels. When you overlap a panel, it often points out that you should read that panel right afterwards, but in this case, you're supposed to read the one to the right and THEN the one underneath, so just consider that next time when you do that. In a japanese manga, this would make sense, but in american comics, we read left to right, and so when you have overlapping images, it often shows up on the right side instead.
Also, congratulations on completing this round, you deserve a big pat on the back :]
Bobo:
Welcome to VOID's most racially diverse tournament battle! XD
Haha good point! :D A lot of history and drama in this character match-up--can't wait to see what happens!
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