I'm a lil late so a lot of things have been said already, so I'll try focusing on things that didn't get brought up;
I remember you asking in the discord how to get across the idea of a stone path going off in the distance, and I wanna say I think you really nailed it in the end! That bridge on page 1 looks *fantastic*--as does the rest of the architecture, tbh!! Admittedly though it was a little muddied by the choice of palette you went with--I think the colors you used were too muted and too close together in value, so it ends up kind of melding together. Nothing especially stands out--you clearly went with a crazy palette for that first page, so you could've definitely pushed that further by using a brighter, more contrasty color to pull the eye where you really want it to go--which is, I'm assuming, the bridge since that's where Leaper is. Alternatively, because Other Guy is so red, maybe using a complimentary color for the bg rather than a purple may have helped?
Re: Motion lines, I think part of the reason those felt lacking is because often--at least in the early pages--they were simply colored lines coming off the object in motion--if you're gonna do that, it's to sort of simulate a motion blur, so a better option would be to use the smudge tool or something to actually draw the color itself into a motion blur rather than adding another layer on top.
I'll second what was said on the expressions, they were really fun hehe. I think honestly my favorite part is the eyes? You made her eyes really pretty, and I think a lot of that goes to the small detail of the little eye shine. It gives her eyes depth and life and really makes her look like she's having the time of her life lol.
Writing-wise, not much of a story here but I feel like that wasn't necessarily a bad thing! You knew what you wanted to convey and you did it--simple fight scenes don't necessarily need a big deep storyline behind them as long as they're fun, which I think you pulled off well!! I liked the aspect of Leaper being kinda confused at the first but not letting it throw her off her game--and then just being absolutely gung-ho about fighting this huge monster lol
I know a lotta people have brought up the phonetic thing so I'll limit my touching on that to giving some advice on how to do it better in the future, from a Writer's perspective: The thing with portraying accents in writing is that often you just. don't do it. Because it's very hard to balance spelling accents out phonetically without sacrificing legibility, and it's very *very* easy to end up slipping into caricature-izing an entire accent. However, a good rule of thumb if you definitely want to portray some sort of accent would be to pick one or two significant ways in which the accent stands out, and stick to *only* using those. For example, with the Greek accent, ch- sounds often become ts- sounds and short i- sounds often become ee- sounds (eg sip becomes seep). There's other examples, but like I said, it's a good idea to pick one or two maximum and stick to those--you may sacrifice some legibility still, but at least you'll be able to get the main gist across, and often that limited consistency ends up helping a lot. tl;dr, rather than trying to spell out every word phonetically, pick a sound or two to focus on and use that. Alternatively, as others have said, use phrases and slang to get the point across as well.
And I'll finish it off by saying this: Seriously, Arts, you should be proud of yourself. This is a kickass comic and it really shows how much work you've put into improving. I love watching you glow up with each comic!
I liked the energy of this comic--it was very much a David VS Goliath sort of situation with Monster Leaper tackling this giant set of hands. I'll point out the things other users have, specifically the breast physics and phonetic dialog writing, but there's also the motion lines in this comic. They look like they're tacked on in the last minute when the motion of the characters seems to be the most important bit of this round. When it comes to action lines, too many can clutter the visuals of the panel, but too little can imply gentle movements instead of the earth shaking, flesh cutting decisions made in this comic. It's a shaky balance, and I think you can get your desired feel with more practice.
I did like that you took some of Radji's lettering process and translated it into your comic, specifically the SLASH on page two. And hey, breasts in motion can be difficult to draw, but keep in mind that they are weighty things. Consider how cloth hangs over them and their shape--they're typically weightier at the bottom, where there's more yellow fat. Tear-drop shapes.
I think the last thing I need to talk about is her weapon--sometimes the blade looks tacked on instead of being an extension of the hilt, and when seen at an angle from the top, it looks less like a blade and more like a flat image set to an angle (bottom panel of page 3 is a good example of this). It would be good to study how axe blades look at different angles to help with this.
This was an interesting first battle for Monster Leaper, and I'd like to see how she tackles her future encounters.
Solid comic Arts! Like the others, I am very impressed with page 3 with how you utilized the scrolling format and the story overall! Also you're getting better at drawing faces too. The accent stuff did throw me off at first as it felt more like a misspelling than a speech pattern. Not really sure how else to address that since it's not an area of comic writing I am very good at. Love the high five at the end :D
I went off on this comic in VC, but the feedback bears repeating!
ARTS- Love the textures page to page- especially your whole process reworking and manipulating that brick wall to scribble graffiti on it. It really complimented your inking style and didn't feel like a crutch at all. You made it work for you and enhanced your work. I definitely wanna echo the previous comments you've received in that this is your strongest work to date. From the colors to the dynamic angles and expressions. You also seem to have found a neat little meme niche that really works for you. The Welcome wagon high five got me chuckling.
My feedback at this point really is just nitpicks- extra frosting to add that metaphorical cherry on top of your work.
- On page one when Welcome Wagon sets the ground rumbling, it'd be great to have Leaper bracing herself- bending at the legs an looking off balance so it relays she's affected by the environment.
- Your hands are technically correct, but I'd love to see their personality punched up. Add tendons, showcase bony landmarks, wrinkles and folds in the palm, etc. Welcome Wagon is such a fun opponent but has no face- use those hands to push those emotes.
- Love, love the expressions you got going on here. I don't know if its due to having animal features but your characters tend to emote on the wooden side, so it was great to see cheeky sideways grins, surprised upturn of brows, etx. Who knew a bovine face was so expressive? There are moments I think there could definitely be some stretching- like page four when Leaper is beginning to be pulled down into the depths. More shock! More surprise! she seems so 'well meh' about it.
- This was a good first attempt with experimenting with an accent ,but I agree that it does come off as more typo than dialect. Keep fiddling! I'm sure you'll find a good middle ground.
This was an awesome scene. Page 3's composition stands out. You rose to the challenge of the hands and gave it 110%.
The only things I found distracting were Leaper's phonetic accent, which just looks like typos, your choice and size of font, and her boobs sticking out, not just for no reason, but in defiance of reason. Gravity wouldn't allow them to sit like that, they're just these two baseballs on her chest sort of clipping through her gi. Your insistence on showing her bare breasts at all times seems like a very specific effort on your part that felt fetishized, because she is wearing a shirt, just in a way to intentionally expose her breasts. It feels like a wardrobe malfunction.
I love Monster Leaper! I don't have much to say or crit but I love how you draw expressions! My favourite panel is the third one on the first page, where she's looking far away! Her eyes are so pretty!^^
I’m pretty much gonna be echoing everyone else XD so I’ll just keep it brief. This is probably the strongest comic I’ve seen from you yet, especially in terms of posing (monster leaper’s backflip on page 2, wow) and expressions. Page 3 was extremely rad, you used the scroll format really well for monster leaper’s attacks. Weirdly enough though, I found the action on just the previous page to not be pretty disconnected, since you only focused on separate parts of the characters without showing where they were relative to each other. Give us more stuff like page 3 please!
Arts, this is seriously good shit.
The thing that brought it down was your typography. The sound effects could have been a lot better. And I think your text bubbles and speech could be a tad smaller? The other thing that stood out to me was on page one with the background that started out grey and slowly got darker. I see what you did there and I think it was clever. But I think you should have given that a little color, maybe a purple or red, because having it completely desaturated stands out in a bad way. Overall, this is great though!!!
Other Guy got pretty hands.
This was a really great fight scene. That third page had me going "ooh OOH oh sweet nice!" That and the establishing shot of the temple were the best panels here. Served as a solid introduction to the character.
For the motion lines I'd say instead smooth them out more or give the lineart some jagged lines to show movement more.
The big "rumble" sound effect looked weird to me, since it was typed. I find that drawing out big sound effects usually makes them feel more organic, which it looks like you did do for the others so I figure go with more of that instead of a preset font.
For ML's accent i'd say go less with literal phonetic accent since it can make her dialogue actually hard to understand.
With writing in accents less is more. going with idioms, some slight dropped or changed letters, and misunderstandings of local slang can work better. It's done more in comics than in novels but i'd say find some examples in other media of how people portray an accent in text.
Other stuff with the artwork this shows you definitely getting better. You're steadily going up in all aspects.
Well done, Arts! I gotta say, your paneling is getting surprisingly good! 3-4 are awesome pages! Agree with pyras on all counts. I'll also reccommend not using soft brush / airbrush for shading. If you have a textured look overall, you should up the hardness / roughness of your coloring brush. Oh, and you know to do this, but keep working on limbs and faces. That's all I can say lol, well done!
good shit good shit good shit
This is a serious level up for you, excellent use of vertical scroll, strong action, both funny and intense
The texture is overly strong and stretched out, it's distracting, rather than stretching a texture down I would recommend tiling and flipping it, use faded gradients so you can merge each atop the next. The heavy accent isn't working with the phonetics, it's good enough that she has trouble understanding figures of speech and informal terms, the phonetic dialogue ends up just confusing the joke. If you aren't upping the smoothing for when you try to make these motion line swishes I would recommend trying that, and if you are you need some more practice with them.
great dynamic entry for your character, keep it up
Awesome comic. I feel like I say this every time I read one of your comics, but your art has levelled up. The expressions here particularly stood out compared to your older pieces. Leaper had tons of personality - the final panel on page 2 is a good example of this.
You also continue to show me why the "webtoon" style of comics has become popular, it was very effective here the scenes flowed SO nicely.
I loved the hand five gag as well, that was great.
Crits- Your figures are still on the stiff side. (This is a problem I face so I'm hyper-aware of it). However, even though in the back of my mind I felt like the poses could have been pushed further or drawn in a more fluid way, your choreography for the fight scene was so well thought out it carried the action.
accent crit. This is my personal approach so take it with a pinch of salt.
[Spoiler] Her dialogue didn't work for me. Personally, I think when you write a character from a non-English speaking country, its best to write their dialogue how you would anyone else's- then maybe, sprinkle in some words or phrases from their mother tongue that they might slip out occasionally- particularly expressions of annoyance or heightened emotions. This is something I've noticed Bilingual people do.
While there are ABSOLUTELY exceptions to this were phonetic dialogue works (I wouldn't get into this) - I generally think this is the easier and more enjoyable approach, it's also less distracting for readers, who are likely to automatically assume an accent if they know a character has come from x country. I'd argue that this could also be extended to characters from non-US English-speaking countries, but that's a conversation for another day lol [/spoiler]
Crits aside, overall this was an excellent showing, I can't wait to see more from this character!
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