LeFred: Thanks for the strong crits dude! Yeah the first page blows all the other pages out of the water for quality and it's probably dude to my worst managed comic time-wise. I'll keep a look out for the deformaties because I'm starting to become aware that is starting to throw people off. Also I have a habit of not always having open mouths when characters are talking - sorry that doesn't agree with you. When it comes to the abrupt narrative it was due to running out of time - when I started the comic the first three pages have a much slower pace then page 4 and 5 because the comic was initially going to be about double the length? Anyway, excuses excuses.
Puzzle: OH YOU BABE. Also! If you google up "water colour textures" onto google and overlay it over your page between 50%-80% you can achieve that look! I'm glad you like her new design, I have a habit of changing it a lot. anyway thanks for the comments and tips!!
Hats -
Man I'm really struggling to find something critical to say, this is great work dude. Lefred seems to have covered most of it. Where on earth did you get that texture, it's like perfect. It's visible just the right amount, so nice. And Wizzie's new design is super cool, when you first posted that design on the end of your BB I thought you were just doing a Tank Girl style "I got a different crazy haircut for every day of the week" thing.
I think your use of color was the strongest on the first page, and after that it became more a mechanical "This is that color, this is that color". The way you used small points of more saturated colors in the initial beach scene really locked it down. I think it's a good idea for you to try changing up the colors of everything slightly from page to page. I totally don't think using one color scheme throughout a comic is bad, but varying it just a little every time will force you to pay more attention to how the colors are interacting on the current page.
I think this a great, solid comic dude, and I think you've established a strong base to work from. You should totally push your stuff way out there from here, go crazy!
Atomic -
WAAAATTEEEERRCOOOOLLOOOOOURS YESSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS. Everyone uses so much digital I don't get to nerd out about stuff like this! I feel like I could go a little crazy talking about all this so I'm gonna try my hardest to be brief on painting, especially because I'm not so great at it.
Immediately my eye is drawn to some of the unpainted halos around stuff in the comic. Be really careful about painting all the way up to the edge, because leaving spots less painted is how you show light in watercolour. If you don't control that stuff really closely it'll weaken the effect when you do it intentionally. Keep a pointed brush close at hand to get into small corners when you're doing a wash. It's also a good idea to paint from "back to front". So like on the first page you would paint the bricks first, and not worry tooooo much about painting into the characters (you can always get mistakes off with a little pieces of tissue/toilet paper) because you'll be painting stuff like the hair and dress on top. I hope I'm making sense.
I think as the comic goes on, your pages get way cleaner/have more contrast, and the colors get bolder and more confident. Were you having scanner issues on the early pages? They're way more grey than the later ones. I can actually see a little off the page, make sure you crop that stuff off or brush it away . I usually just the clone stamp tool.
I dunno what kind of watercolours you're using, but if you don't have a student line from one of the more major watercolour brands, you should totally get some! They're just as good as the artists grade line, they just won't last like 500 years, and I'm being completely literal when I quote that as amount of time people look for in their watercolours. Synthetic Sable brushes are super sweet too, and really cheap, they just get junked up pretty fast.
Your lines and characters are getting so strong dude, it's awesome. I think you still have a tendency to put the horizon line too high. but you're definitely getting better with it. Remember, you can always just default to the eye line of one of your characters and it'll look fine. The story was really good, though I think it would've been nice if Wiz had more of a part in it. She was just Convenient-Plot-Exposition: the Character. Which is not to say her your characterization of her wasn't great, because it totally was.
This was a fantastic battle guys!
nice stuff Atomic; I really like the watercolor-coloring; is it done digitally or did you pull out the old watercolor-set? Anyways, it's a really nice look and fits your characters beautifully
hats: Good solid effort all-around; I won't shower you with too much praise, we all know how good you are so it takes something very impressive to get a pat on the back ;) Good show though and just shading it in the story-department.
oh my gosh these were both so awesome I could explode! Hats, I love how you draw the goth girls, your lines and colours are always so great! That first page was phenomenal, and I liked the joke at the end! FISH- ...is THAT what happened in Goth Girls vs Gray? XD XD I'm sorry I had a hard time figuring that out before, I didn't know that spirit came from Alice! well thats awesome that something cool came of it, now maybe they can go chill with Satin and Lilyfeather lol! I like your watercolours too and how they stuck roughly to the g-girls colour theme, it had a real stylish feel! (also lol poor Andy has terrible luck!)
great comics everybody! =D
Bedroom Magician: Oh my god, that first page. I was like, whoa, is this for real, that looks so great I hope it goes on for the whole-- and then, yeah, it still looks great, don't get me wrong, but it's just not as strong as that kick-ass first page. For one, the backgrounds all but disapear, and I'm a sucker for environements, so I loved the very first panel and would have been okay with a full comic of just that stuff, and though you do put a sand line sometimes, all the people but the bare minimum to present instant in the story have all vacated the beach for whatever reason. Wizzie seems to be missing some forehead in some front and 3/4 shots, and the big heads in the last panel of p3 look odd, it's like they're morphing back from the more cartoony/deformed style that went on in the last two panels, but did not quite finish transitioning back to normal, getting the details, but not the proportions... and Wizzie became a ventriloquist on page 4, is that part of her magic act? It's kinda bothering me especially in the second panel because she says a lot of open-mouth sounds and all the closed mouth are m's and plosives which are not relaxed closed-mouths like this.(I know this may be minor, but ventriloquism in comics is one of my pet peeves...) The ending was very abrubt, there was no sense that any time had really passed and then like, bam! Floating heads oh wait no they're buried I can tell they're burried because of that tiny bit on Alice's neck. But seriously. They look like they're just floating there. Maybe at least some shading could have helped with that. Now, with those little things said, this was a pretty damn nice comic, and I think that with just a better timed ending, it would have been Great. with the big G.
Not Comformist: I love the watercolors, they're not like 'oh wow, lookit them watercoloooors' but they work so well with your style to make something with personality and presence. I hope you'll do more of them in the future. Your font is a bit hard to read, it's just a bit too stylized and a bit too small. You have some very expressive faces and poses, which I love, you just need to strenghten your structures a bit. Some glaring examples: p2 panel 2, it looks like Alice should be falling, I suppose that she's leaned on the wall, but the lack of perspective is fighting this idea. p2 panel 3, Wiziie's right shoulder is sinking. That naked lady has no mid-section or space between her legs, it's like that sun thing is sucking everything up. p4 panel4, Alice's face is sliding off, it should be a bit more towards the right-side edge. p5 panel 4, Alice has no back skull, which means, among other things, no motor functions. :( P5, last panel, wizzie. Her arms are too long, her neck unexistent, I get what you're trying to do, but the head is just too straight down to make it work. Story-wise, I wasn't sure if the monster was intentional, at first. The page where Hannah screams, it's unclear if she screams and reads a page or what. You could have made it clearer that it came from the book, and not her throat. And then they fight, and I didn't know if she summoned it to back her up or what. Then it becomes obvious what's going on, but there was too much quiestioning. Questioning is only good if you're doing a mistery. But despite these flaws, I love the Goth Girls, and I loved this comic, the energy that it has.
I was super excited for this matchup, and I feel 0% disapointed. Godd job you guys and keep at it yo.
Oh my GOD Atomicfish I TOTALLY LOVE YOURS aosubgfdougb its so CUTE AND WATERCOLOURLY and lofgbodfbg Andy you always have a bad day but we love you ofgubfg LOVE IT.
Okay!! I missed my train to get home from my boyfriends BUT I'm catching an early train tomorrow morning so I'll be able to upload in time! Hopefully with the last panel with flat colours if not totally finished.
It's not my best comic. BUT BLAH THIS 2 WEEK DEADLINE BUSSINESS IS HARD.
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