Golden - My favorite things in your comic is your lovely layout and panel experimentation--like the way the leave cluster around the panel at the end of Page 1, or the overlap in later pages. Backgrounds were sparse but show some promise, especially in the first pages with the naturalistic mountain scenes. Your linework was solid throughout. I am eager to see what your next comic will bring, and how your style grows from here!
Swagginmun - You have a great animated style, and I loved some of the cinematic widescreen scenes you had going on. However, a lot of the widescreen panels seemed empty with nothing to fill the space around the characters. Also sometimes its better to pull back instead of stretching yourself too far--have fewer more complete pages than lots of loosely sketched ones. Your comic gave a glimpse of the great potential you have! Can't wait for more!
GOLDEN: Really interesting characters and I love how you manage to give us time to get to know them within the small amount of pages that you have.
Would also have loved if you had given Dyami a little more reason to his actions. Just hearing that a couple of people are dissatified with their chief, just doesn't hit the mark for me.
SWAGGINMUN: I enjoyed your dialogue a lot, and it's super interesting to me how it feels like Dyami isn't quite aware of what he's doing or what's going on.
Would have liked to see either Sukri or Aleyjah get a hit in on him, or anything that would tell us a little more about them and their personalities. They didn't really get any time to shine in my opinion.
* GOLDEN This was a great piece and your characters look like ideal parents. Anticlimactic ending though, sure the guy ended up cheating but an off panel arrow to the back? Never the less good luck and have fun!
* SWAGGINMUN The conversations between your main character and furry #100 was a tad drawn out. I do like your character concept but it feels like you tried putting too much into him. Nice work especially with the time restraints
Golden: I really like how you were so well able to estable a tribe and culture in these few pages. You gave very good sense of space and culture that Is hard to pull off, your first page alone gets so much done with so little it’s really impressive.
You also did very good art for this comic though there were a couple things I was confused about. On the bottom of the second page it looks like she’s going into the darkness but then it opens up on the bright room, also the opponent didn’t really come off as having any sort of evil aura in this match up so it was a odd trying to figure out what that black aura stuff meant. Also the fight on page 4 was confusing and I occasionally had trouble telling who was who in the fight, I think if you color Dyami’s hair like you did in the final page that confusion would really be there.
Swaggin: So since other comments talked about cutting I could mention that also but I think I’m going to try go about talking about parts that can be cut. Also the reason for cutting stuff isn’t because it’s bad, it’s because it’s not needed and with such a tight deadline optimization is important. All of it was honestly pretty good, your dialogue and writing are pretty good and you have some good action panels, but since there was so much of it you were overburdened and unable to make any of it truly good since your effort was so divided, the person who chases two rabbits will catch neither and that is what happened in your case.
Now that I explained why you need to cut stuff I’m going to just give a couple examples of what you can cut. Pretty much everything from the first three pages except that last panel. The first two pages establish a location that is not used and dialogue helps characterize a character you do a good job at characterizing with dialogue later on. The final panel of the third page could be your establishing shot with just him by a campfire. There is also the two pages showing the mystical goat, I think that could be reduced to just a panel. You put so much time on it I thought it would come back later in some kind of importance. Those two examples should be enough to get the point across. When you have a deadline as harsh as one week you need to get rid of repetition and optimize your story.
Fight Commentary:
Golden - Gets it down with tightened lineart however lack of values leaves much to be desired with this style. However it manages to make do with spots of rendering and black bubbles to balance the scales.. Nonetheless the story executes without missing a beat. With each character presence having their own corner in the story One gets lost in the emotional spectacle of the ending but doesnt get enough time to percolate. This causes it to seem forced however the reader buys the characters' interactions as true nonetheless.
Swaggin - The faustian sacrifice of story over art requires far too much from the reader in order to parse the thing in its entirety. One would have benefited greatly from simply editing down the story to its base distilled parts in order to gain readable expressive art. Though I only say this because the opponnent turned in something complete, and tight when in any other situation, this gambit would have stood a chance against another equally incomplete work because the characters and writing here are golden and the comic would have been great /as thumbnails/ for a more finished version.
Golden - Your lineart is so expressive and beautiful AAAHHH And I love some of the layouts you went with. Storywise, it was short and sweet but just the right amount. I love that even with her tough exterior Aleyjah shows she's just as caring and compassionate. Save for a few hiccups like one panel with its sketch still in place, some razored panel lines and the cramp areas mentioned earlier, you did good this round ~
Swaggin - I love Dyami a LOT. Though I think the large page count worked against you here, and as a result your art suffered. Trim the story down to a few pages so you have more time to polish them up nicely for another time. And the pages themselves felt a bit large so resizing them down a bit would help. I also liked that you hand lettered your dialogue, though I had to re-read some of them. Other than that, great first battle ~ I can't wait to see more comics from you soon.
@golden: your character art is beautiful, and I love the little family you've created! I wish there had been a little bit more of something to show me why Dyami would think Aleyjah was uncompassionate, which would have lent more weight to the discovery that she actually cares deeply for her tribe. I can understand the sentiment that it felt cramped, although I would have suggested cutting out some of the story rather than adding more pages. You could have had a more finished, polished comic if you dialed it back just a bit. Either way, I really loved this story and look forward to whatever comes next, whether it's more of these two or just more from you somewhere else :)
@swaggin: I love Dyami's attitude haha. He's such a smug asshole, but it a somehow charming way. I appreciate that he's not necessarily a bad guy, but still apparently has a bad habit of killing people (in self-defense in this case, but who knows what happens in other cases?). I would definitely say to cut down your story a lot so you can submit more than just sketches and simple inks. You could have benefitted a lot from more backgrounds and just details in the environments in general. What you did have was great, though, and I hope you stick around whether you win or not!
Golden: Your art is so damn good and your faces are so expressive, it really carries the story. I will second COrn, it felt a bit cramped at time. Possible spacing ut out another 1-2 pages could have been the solution. I enjoyed your writing, all tough the last part felt a little as if there was a piece of the conversation missing.
Swagging: It was hard to make out a lot of your comic due to the looseness and sketchiness. It left a unfinished impression which is understandable with how many pages you went for. That said, planning and managing according to the time you got is a big part of comics. I feel that if you had kept it shorter and kept the story slimmer while focusing on more easy to read panels and more finished art, you would have benefited a great deal. YOu clearly have the artistic chops, sense of expressions and good pacing. Just got a bit overambitious is all..
Both of you did an amazing job making these comics so full of character and world building,
Golden your art looks amazing but I feel the pages are a tiny bit too cramped maybe the same amount of panels but more pages would have helped the flow a bit. but what is there is spectacular!
Swagginmun I liked the pacing of your comic and those expressions were great the line work was a bit too loose at places and some shots were a bit hard to make out but over all this is a really great comic!
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