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Anarchy in Caelum City

3 Weeks + 1 Week
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Anarchy in Caelum City
By Hellis
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Hara and Huey
Final Score: 6.29
Anarchy in Caelum City
By Majikura
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Veronica Nightingale
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Final Score: 7.05

Comments (15)

Kozispoon's avatar
Kozispoon
All-Rounder
6 years ago
HELLIS- Seeing your foray into pushing the void canon forward and rustling up some significant upset got me excited. I'll admit plot wise it wasnt completely polished, and the dialogue felt a little too scripted and saturday morning cartoon villian, I see what you're doing and wanted to tell you I appreciate someone going into a battle thinking outside of just a usual meet and beat. This is a good start and I know and hope that with future battles in this vein you'll find your voice and relay a greater story. KURA- I had to doublecheck the names of who was battling who after my first readthrough. Veronica was such a tacked on afterthought in this battle that I'm wondering why you havent submitted her son as a void character and just made this hara huey vs Theo. While, predictably juvenile, the antics were much more compelling and fun to follow than Veronica just...walking in at the end.

Heathen's avatar
Heathen
All-Rounder
6 years ago
Hellis: overall, I enjoyed your comic more, because it was bigger, more dramatic, and felt like you were making a real effort to push the "canon" of void city forward. It's always great to see comics that leave a mark on the city. I also definitely noticed you've taken the critiques we both received on our battle about using local colors. Except for a few spots here, which do stick out, your comic benefits from the blue tint over everything. I would have liked to see some dramatic contrast lighting, though, from the flood lights on the airship, the explosions of the guns, the fires of the besieged Caelum. Lastly, i liked your dialogue, it wasn't overwrought. Majikura: I really wish this was in color, as the gray tones didn't do much for me. I like the setup and callback with the TV show, and I love page 10. My only critique would be, as Radji said, the lighthearted nature of the scenario doesn't lend itself to much drama, leaving me feeling like your opponent's characters were sorely underutilized. I scored it likes I seed it, though, and the points weighed in Majikura's favor. Keep grinding, Hellis, because you're improving, and I look forward to seeing your stories stick.

Radji's avatar
Radji
All-Rounder
6 years ago
Maj: oh god, theo is becoming a real nightingale (shivers) In this comic the threat of Hara and Huey felt... more like a common nuisance than a real danger. I mean when I see people get their asses handed to them Home Alone style, it lesser the tension i feel for the character involved (Theo) althought pissy mom Veronica is really funny. Hellis: I much prefer the scenario you chose: Veronica is bound to piss off people that are on her league and her actions will eventually bring consequences. Especially the tension with the metahumans (nice Old Dock/Armaggedon reference) and it gives us a real good idea of Hara's threat level and how far he's willing to go to wreck shit. Also, i felyt much more relieved to see Theo safe in this one.

Jiisuri's avatar
Jiisuri
All-Rounder
6 years ago
Ok first off, good job to both parties. I was entertained by these so that's always a plus. Hellis: Yo, you went big on plot and tried the big thing. Good effort on that. The main thing I feel you need to work on is your art fundamentals. The perspective is a wee bit off at parts but not in the conventional ways I've seen. Rather than it being a problem of wrongly done point perspective, it's a problem that is somewhere between depth of field and choice of perspective vs framing. That's a mouthful so let me try and keep it simple. You gotta work on choice of framing. There are plenty of panels that look very flat because you place the wall exactly parallel to the viewing angle and just 1 wall converging from one side. That is one point perspective, but cut extremely close that you don't allow for more suggestions of depth to it. There are also plenty of shots where you go for the one point perspective when the angle really suggests more of two or three point perspective. Add that together with very flat colors combined with linework that is very uniform throughout and it begins to lose any sense of depth. And that is really bad if you want to go for dynamic scenes of intense emotion or menacing hellsing glares. Which on that note is a thing to work on too: Shading. I'm not asking you to go full on screentones of beautiful colors, but this is something you can capture very well with inking once you learn that. So in short, go work on framing, learn more about perspective, and grind up on that inking and using it to represent tone rather than just as lines. Kura: Yo, you made me laugh in a public place. ;w; First off, things I love. Really good framing and composition. Excellent comedic pacing. And great story beats, particularly with Theo standing in a high spot all mighty JUST LIKE HIS FAV SHOW. Very nice expressions too, cracked me up. Only stuff I have is similar to jaykat's on tone. Granted, that takes time so I'm unsure how whether you could do it, but some tone at particularly white areas would have been nice. Also, be careful on facial feature placement. Since your style is pretty simple it'll be good to lasso up the eyes or nose and shift them around the face to see if there's a spot that "looks right". Some studies about the facial form and ways to draw features in other angles might be worthwhile too. You don't have to go full realism, just know enough to understand where you can put just one line to suggest a very elegant nose.

Majikura's avatar
Majikura
All-Rounder
6 years ago
PyrasTerran: ...when I re-read the 2nd time it suddenly got me asking questions about the traps: were these set up before the pirates even entered the mansion, and if so, why, and if not, then how did they get setup so quickly...
I had to cut the setup montage for time constraints and tossed in a throwaway line where Theo says "These traps never work on Hina" in an attempt to justify why they are set up beforehand and insinuating that it's some game they play. It's not the perfect solution I know.

PyrasTerran's avatar
PyrasTerran
Writer
6 years ago
Hellis: Super ambitious to go and *add* pages to an already large-end comic but I'm not sure if that helped in any capacity; it not only dragged the story a bit longer than necessary but also more easily highlighted your current flaws as an artist; I feel that one of the things you have a big problem with is negative space; characters are often in rooms that are both giant *and* empty feeling, without any shading or texture your empty spaces are even more pronounced. There are moments where you want to pay more attention to your composition and get the most you can out of your panel budgeting (a big offender example is page 2 panel 4, all that empty space around this image you could have cut this panel in two and given us something else to look at with the remainder). A few other examples of panels that needed better composition to engage your reader and sell your story: Page 9 last panel, the attention needs to be on the gigara mutant attacking Nightingale, but practically half of the panel is used for this big ol wall painting that isn't important for this moment at all. This is alot of work that you could have saved yourself from if you kept focus on the quality of your compositions. Jump to your story's moneyshot, page 14 panel 2.. you wanted pure unadulterated chaos, but there are exactly: 3 fires, 3 overturned cars and only 5 pairs of mutant-and-victim attacks for such a massive panel featuring a huge swath of street where you'd expect many more cars and far more crowded sidewalks. If you had cut down the panel size of several negative-space-ridden panels throughout your comic that would ahve given you more time to really spice up this one, extremely important panel to sell home the chaos you're trying to sell. As an aside, I'm not sure why you chose this format of giant white gutter space around the actual page but little distractions like that only further pull the reader from the comic; you want as few reasons as possible for the reader to get disengaged from what they're reading. These are the major issues that come out to me when it comes to your visual storytelling for this comic; This is a good opportunity to take a look at your opponents' panels, look at how he builds his compositions and removes (or utilizes) negative space whenever possible. Every moment of leftover negative space is another opportunity for your reader's eye to wander and get lost for a moment, momentarily disengaging them from the moment, and those add up. Don't get disheartened, trust me I've been there MANY times when I'm so excited for a story arc and end up falling short with it. For your next battle, focus on paying extra attention to what's going on in your panels, the more you can remove negative space/empty rooms I guarantee it's gonna help your readers focus on your story better and stay more engaged Kura: hey this was fun and funny, honestly aside from tripping over Huey's face in page 7 this isn't too far from your usual quality when you're running short on time~ I can tell that you were trying to keep the reader's location oriented with the layout of the two main rooms the event takes place in, and while that's def appreciated, I still got a little lost x_x and when I re-read the 2nd time it suddenly got me asking questions about the traps: were these set up before the pirates even entered the mansion, and if so, why, and if not, then how did they get setup so quickly---- all in all though it was an entertaining comic would recommend

Majikura's avatar
Majikura
All-Rounder
6 years ago
[quote] Jaykat: I immediately got a Home-Alone vibe as I read on, and I loved every minute of it! It gave me a good laugh here and there, what a clever little scamp Theo is! And that ending, oooh boy lol Theo has some explaining to do all right! Yep, Home Alone was totally the inspiration. I originally planned a spaceship vs Airship fight, but then was like "nah let's just play pranks on Hara and Huey"

Sean's avatar
Sean
All-Rounder
6 years ago
Hellis, I fucking love this story arc you are working on right now. It's fucking awesome seeing this type of creativity! Embrace the nihilism! I need more of this from Hara! I really enjoy the dynamic early in the comic between both your dudes and how they differ so much on this plan. Creating a bit of tension between your two characters will make for some interesting comics in the future! Definitely want to work with you in the future involving this arc!

Hellis's avatar
Hellis
All-Rounder
6 years ago
@jaykat Hara got it in his previous comic where he stole kaiju blood and explained its properties. The reason you dont shoot down a massive space ship, is becouse it would crash down ontop of the city. As for the lack of lightning and such, I simply ran out of time. I took on a bit more then I could manage to ssay the least lol. Live and learn.

JCee's avatar
JCee
Inker
6 years ago
Hellis: It might end up sounding like nitpicking, but please bear with me on this. I’ll say it again that you definitely have improved your lineart on both your backgrounds and characters. Much cleaner and crisper compared to your previous comics, and of course I adore your use of spot-blacks. I would have liked to see more polish given to your colour scheme, such as shading and lighting to go with it, kick up that atmosphere some more for next time. Also, I always like seeing Hara and Huey interact with each other. I like seeing how brotherly they act towards each other despite their differences. Especially with Huey’s concern towards his captain’s plans being too reckless even for the likes of him, it makes me wonder just HOW far Huey is willing to tolerate Hara’s madness go before he decides he may have to stop his brother-in-arms himself. And how that’ll ultimately affect their relationship with one another. As impressive as your page count is, and I definitely applaud the effort you put into them, I do feel though that the story itself kind of dragged out here. It was a lot of exposition being dumped and it just went on just a tad too long to keep me fully invested. With Veronica being powerful and wealthy, I would have thought she’d have a lot more, if not, harder defences prepared in case someone such as Hara dared attempt to invade her territory in the first place. It just seemed a little too easy that he invaded Caelum the way he did. And I’m not a big fan of the NPC Carla, I’m sorry to say. I do understand why you included her to show off the effects of that serum, but personally I think you could have done without her, and just leave it for that moment when Hara drops it on Caelum itself to show off the shock and horror of what it can do to its citizens. For that matter, where and how did Hara even get that serum? Unless it’s a previous detail that I missed, I don’t see how he would easily attain something as lethal as Kaijuu blood. Overall, story I feel needs a little tweaking here and there, but it was still a VERY valiant effort for taking a crack at doing something as big as this. Majikura: I immediately got a Home-Alone vibe as I read on, and I loved every minute of it! It gave me a good laugh here and there, what a clever little scamp Theo is! And that ending, oooh boy lol Theo has some explaining to do all right! I loved the action scenes and camera angles sprinkled throughout, and I’m aware that it’s not as polished as it could be, still I feel the art could have benefitted from some screen tones at the very least, give more spice to the lineart. But I won’t harp on it too much here. I also love your characterisation of Huey and Hara here. I immediately thought of Harry and Marv with the way they interact with each other and Theo. I’m not really sure what else to add here, other than it was super entertaining and nice to see more of little Theo.

Majikura's avatar
Majikura
All-Rounder
6 years ago
hah hah hah I never thought I would hear Veronica say the words "Well done Theodore" This must be one of those alternate temporal Veronicas running around


JCee's avatar
JCee
Inker
6 years ago
I can't wait to read this one ~

Majikura's avatar
Majikura
All-Rounder
6 years ago
Let's get this retribution thing going