Really odd and unexpected match up this one!
Rhino - Great storytelling here! Your inking is very good too and shows a lot of confident strokes. I love it. I know there is a lot of gore but that did not bother me at all. In fact, it enhanced the emotional aspect of the comic even more. You did amazing job.
Bat - I love how you threw everyone for a loop when you submitted a Dog in the tourney (including me). I can tell that your art has improved tremendously since the last time I saw a comic from you. Shame you were not able to finish but the silver lining to this is that we get to see more of Dog for sure!
Rhino: Amazing comic, one of the best of the round both in story and comic quality. This inking style you did worked wonderfully in this comic. only thing i could think of is maybe having some more highlights to help the colors of the characters not blend into the background which does sometimes happen. But even then it helped this comic feel oppressive and dark great job on the comic this was amazing.
Bat:Sorry that life stuff happened and got in the way but what you had here is nice. Dog is a cute character and doing more comics with her will help you understand the anatomy of her more. also make sure to always use reference. For drawing dog, look for videos of dogs and take screenshots from that as reference to help understand a dog in motion. Also it's good to practice backgrounds, I would recommend working with the perspective tool and working on your line variety in the backgrounds. The further away from the camera the background goes the less details that are visible and the smaller the lines are. Also try playing around with different brushes to try and get some textured lines for different parts in the background. would be cool to see a completed version of this comic as a BB when you get the chance. Great job pushing yourself.
Rhino- Niiiiiiiiiice.
I'm not a big fan of super Gorey stuff, but I think it helped the feeling come across really well. You captured the emotion of every scene really well and you had me hooked from page one.
HeavenBat- I liked where it was going, but everything also felt really loose. I would have liked to see a good ending for it, it's too bad you weren't able to finish. In the end I have a lot more questions than answers. XD
But maybe dogs do too.
Good luck! Stay safe!
Candy - Hello my very first thought is you drew A Dog so cute?? RIDICULOUSLY cute. First page melted my heart, her little face was so precious. I really dig this harsh black shading you’re using too. Combined with the grey tones, I really got the sense of this environment being desolate and isolated. And when the gore showed up it certainly hit a little harder for me, since the red was just so bright against the dull background.
My biggest issue is that the way you’ve written A Dog, the conflict doesn’t really make sense? Why would a scared dog willingly approach a big, scary unknown thing (Proto-2), who’s ALSO surrounded by a whole pack of wolves? Art-wise, the blood has a “stuck on” kind of look a lot of the time, i.e. not really visually integrated with the surface it’s on top of, and I think your quadruped anatomy could be improved. Proto-2 looks great to me anatomy-wise, but then A Dog’s front legs looked broken a couple of times, for example in panel 4 page 2 and panel 1 page 11.
Batty - I’m so sorry about the tornado again :( I don’t blame you for not planning for it at all, since you didn’t receive any warning for it beforehand and it’s literally a natural disaster, so don’t blame yourself for that.
I really like the lighting effect you managed on page 2, and that large panel of Proto-2 on page 4? Great anatomy there, loved that chunky neck and jaw, I could really feel the power behind them. I also noticed your angle variety and think you did well - I particularly like panel 1 page 6, that’s a difficult angle to convey without looking awkward, the final panel on page 8 also looked like a really cool pose to me, even in sketch form.
I sort of agree with Kozi though with A Dog’s internal dialogue. For me it was in this weird space where it was definitely simple and animal-like, but still a little too human for a character who’s schtick is being just a regular dog. I also found it weird that her immediate first thought after being thrown through a glass door wasn’t something like ah!! Pain!!! Or continuing to defend her territory, but suddenly wondering where her family was. She’s still in immediate danger and was the one who instigated the attack in the first place, but then seems to forget it immediately.
CANDYCORN- I appreciate the warning at the begining. I had to put on my heart armor for this one and it still made it ache. I've been reading some of the theories of how Prototype and dog are related and whether or not its true, the idea that Prototype used to be dogs owner only to come back andsave their dog just adds an extra layer of bittersweet to such an unexpected story. I love that there was minimal dialogue in this because it makes total sense. A dog and killer dinosaur really wouldn't speak. You really let the comic speak for itself. Great stuff for a first round.
HEAVENBAT- Sorry that time crunch got the best of you, but I commend you for getting all your panels filled in, even if it was just rough sketches. As a reader, it really allowed me ot understand the whole story as opposed to having blank spaces. I was really excited to see you utilize a character who can't speak for this comic, so I was a little bit surprused to see so much internal dialogue from dog. The idea of a real life dog dealing with sich a ridiculous menace felt like a missed opportunity here with how self aware and humanized they were. All the same, your color work really showed some promise. Those sun rays on the first page are great
The good die young.
CandycornRhino [spoiler]Can you at least try to disappoint people? Just kidding. This was a touching intro to a devastatingly gruesome dinosaur on wolf showdown. Feels like Heavenbat and you might have planned this all along? Lol Let us see if extinction was merely an astronomical fluke. Great work![/spoiler]
Heavenbat[spoiler]Poor orphaned pup. You did a great job of illustrating the view of this rather ordinary dog and I commend you for this feat. Them Alaskan Malamutes sure are beautiful animals. You did a great job for what you were able to get done in the two week span. Try not to focus too much on what the dog is thinking as much as how an onlooker watching the dog from afar might perceive through the dogs body language and facial expressions. Great work... and... continued in un-spoiler[/spoiler]
Pita: on top of this hypothetical scenario for what we readers can only speculate, Heavenbat's portrayal of a dog lost to all it is aware of also ties into an aspect of a lingering soul. A dog could have been killed and is now stuck between worlds without any idea of it having transpired. Thus thinking it was left behind, but only able to smell itself since it's dog nose can no longer pick up on the scents of the living world... erh. But. Yes. Besides all that. I think this would be a collaborative idea that CandycornRhino and Heavenbat should mull over. FOR THE FANS! 8D
@Rhino: lmao whoops, I probably should've used different phrasing in the dialogue or made it more clear! I wasn't going for Proto-2 thinking Dog was a witness, more like, he was mad at her biting him and wanted payback lol!
Loved your comic, how dare you give me EMOTIONS. I know you were feeling nervous about this coloring/lining method, but I think it worked really well! Really contributed to the atmosphere and drama of the whole thing. Definitely not where I thought the story was gonna go, but, damn, I almost feel bad now for making Proto-2 so mean in my story ;A;
@Pita: Honestly I had the same thought!! It kinda makes me glad I didn't go with my other idea for an ending, which would've been really similar lol! I thought about having the dog realize that Proto-2 smelled familiar, and then having her realize that he was her boy's uncle, lol.
Thanks, though! I had a lot of fun writing a dog brain :D and yeah I'm definitely aware that just cuz she died in Rhino's comic she's not dead for reals :P We'll see where her story goes from here!
Ok guys, hear me out. What if Rhino's round is an origin story?
It sounds super corny, but when there's no dialog in the comic, you get a little wiggle-room with the context.
- A man who hunkers down in a Cabin in the Woods. Probably a game hunter, knows how to track and locate his prey.
- He disappears for a thematic beat, it's been a long enough while that Dog claws her way out of the cabin door and into the wild. And soon after she does, a big ol' metal case drops out of the sky. Maybe he's placed in familiar territory as a test run?
- The Dog claws and whines at Proto like she's familiar with him--loyal no matter what he looks like.
- The blue neckerchief. It's her identifier. He knows this. He erected a grave with a cross and her neckerchief as a memorial to her.
NOW MAYBE this is all coincidence, they're totally strangers who meet up by circumstance, and he only does that because he's got some humanity in him and has a soft spot for dogs. Dogs are great. BUT MAYBE this is him knowing that he Can't Go Home Again, has to execute a mercy kill to the one thing still tethering him to his past life, and has to move on to his new life as a McFreaking Dinosaur.
That's how I'm reading it.
HeavenBat, I liked the Dog Logic your good girl has. Dog-brain thoughts fuel my dog-meter of needing to see more dogs. While Rhino totally killed your girl in his comic, this was a regular round. If you wanna do more Dog Adventures, I would love to see them.
Good job on the comic Rhino i was wondering how this would play out it's cool that you showed your character had a human side by showing him acknowledging the dog as an innocent and burying him the silence and emotions translated well
Heaven wish you could have finished story seemed to have a lot of potential
Hahaha. Batty, awesome job, PROTO2 THINKING DOG IS A WITNESS LMFAO THEYS JUST A D O G.
Good job with background, would've loved to see everything finished, but understand IRL got in the way.
Also everyone crit my comic please, I tried something new and not sure if I like it.
uploaded! I really wish I could've finished but a tornado hit the city I live in and I lost an entire day of time to work on it... Which is a little bit my bad for not having planned for disaster, but. Y'know. I'm not stressing too hard because hey! Things could've been a lot worse!!
Anyways, I tried to push myself in a few areas here, notably the backgrounds and trying for some really dynamic angles. I'm aware that there's some anatomy issues, I just... didn't know how to fix them so I just rolled with it, lol. I'm kinda glad I got Proto-2 as my first opponent, it gave me a really good jumping-off point for dog's story!! Best of luck to you Rhino, and I hope I did Proto-2 justice!
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