I realize it was only a week but it felt like you guys took a lot of shortcuts that kind of got in the way for me.
jii- It felt like you were too ambitious for what you were trying to tell in the space of a week long battle & because of that, the art felt super rushed & the composition kept feeling tight. at times, it was hard to gather what i was looking at in some of the panels. the very first one is strange in that I can only kind of gather the context by the next but then I go back & I still have problems seeing it. All the while, that's cutting into the pacing of reading it. the sequence outside the lab has a lot of action but that action's lost in the way you're framing the panels & the angles you're picking. things feel flat or cramped. Seems like things you did for time but it kind of hurts it overall. I mean if you were considering this sketchiness from the start, why not consider zooming out on some of those a little?
elge- There's a lot of dead space happening throughout & compositionally, it feels all very sparse & same-y. while the lines are mostly cleaner than Jii's side, there's hardly any lines at all. A story with talking heads can be monotonous but it's made worse when it's a lot of the same shots or flat angles with backgrounds where you might as well have used the line tool. It also doesn't help how it's paced either where as the balloons start running thicker & thicker until it starts feeling a little like walls of text.
Speaking of which, I didn't get why you just put that other text in balloons in dead black panels. If you're going to skimp on drawing, why not just make it a solid caption? Balloons are for injecting text into the scene. If there's no scene, why not just box it? If you want to determine a character's saying it, why not add quotation marks? Ideally, you should be more savvy about your angles, draw out the conversation in full, with balloons coming from the characters, but what you did just didn't make sense to me. It also felt strange to end on that note too, rather than see a character actually saying that.
Beyond that, your proportions are off panel to panel, & it often feels like you're just drawing the characters to fit the panel instead of fit anatomical proportions. Case in point, her hand on the second to last panel of page two. It doesn't matter if you're going to crop out a good portion of her body, sketch it & figure it out instead of just drawing what you think you might end up seeing. And look at how facial features sit on the face. The eyes are usually half way down the head. It felt like they kept creeping higher & higher with your character while their mouth sits way down in their chin.
Sugha, you've got some great expressions in this! Paavo looks adorably flustered and terrified, and I like that last panel of him where his eyes transform. I think you know you sort of phoned in the backgrounds so i won't say much there but I think maybe some plants or diplomas on the wall could make it look more office-like, or even some Venetian blinds idk. I think though for dialogue heavy comics like this you would do well to vary your panels so its not all tight on the faces- pull way back, show their feet, go from above, move the camera around a bit, make it interesting to look at. But you've got some good stuff happening here, i hope someday you get to fight Howling lol!
Jii- yeah because of the sketchy thing, some of the art would have been very hard to read without an explanation, like Paavo going berserk on camera and the ice powers he ended up with (which is pretty cool btw)(no pun intended), i understand it was a one week battle so i wont harp on it but i hope your next fight is a little cleaner so i can see it better. you have strong silhouettes though, when its not very action heavy everyone reads very well. I like the story though- good job working werewolves into your very political character's story lol. i look forward to seeing what Minori can do with this information. Good comic- it flows well and has good panel variety.
Great job, everyone!
Thanks guys. I suppose I panicked a bit, and just wanted to finish this battle. I really should avoid 1 weekers, I guess.
I'll take note on what you two said and try to put it to work on my current comic.
PyrasTerran:
Good job guys, hope to see more in the future
Oh but Pyras. Of course there will be more. *hint hint wink wink* ;)
Ah, about that sketchy thing. I went this way since it's the fastest way I can pump out stuff, specially within 1 week. Totally wanna do something more finished though, sometime.
Also, noted on the black shadows thing. Still trying to figure out the balance and figure out how to do softer shades on certain areas soooo I'm considering screentones or translucent layers or something next time.
Also I really gotta learn how to CG up text bubbles. Or have better handwriting.
jisuuri: Not too shabby, but I really wanna see a completed, non-sketchy comic from you.. I'm not sure if I've seen such a comic from you to be honest, i could be forgetting.
elge: Hey hey a whole comic! Kudos to that! now you just need to start filling in your negative space more. When I have to do it, I tend to let my pen wander and see what it makes. You'd be surprised what kind of architecture can then pop up. just start fast and loose, and then add your clean lines after. Filling up spaces can be intimidating when you're looking at an empty space, so if you just charge in inks blazing some of that anxiety will melt away.
Good job guys, hope to see more in the future
Jii: I kind of have an issue with you hand drawing your word bubbles and then typing in your text. it's just kinda off putting. either draw in both, or use the CPU for both. Personally I'd like to see cleaner lines from you, everything I've seen from you is always pretty sketchy. Try cleaning up your lines and adding more dark shadows instead of relying on messy crosshatching.
Elge: Turning all of your pages grey does not remove the vast amounts of negative space. If you aren't going to show highlights with grey overtone, then don't use it. To solve the problem of negative space...just fill it in with more background, or cheat your way with the camera angles and the text so you can cover the blank parts. Also, word bubbles want to be bubbles, not pancakes. Reading long lines of text like on page three feel like reading a textbook, condense them into smaller bubbles like in page 2.
I'm still surprised how you two managed to get the exact same number of pages, I find it oddly hilarious. Good job completing your comics you both.
Jiisuri: Good job, I like your pannel work, though I do want to talk about pages 3 and 4, having their text all over the place. While I understand it is a narration, I think it should have their own "bubbles", if that make sense. Other than that, I enjoyed the story. And apparently Paavo got some cool Ice powers from what I can see. That's interesting.
elge: Go blow a dick. You suck.
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