DIOV Tournament '23 Round One

shen; I commend your ability to get the most story on the page for the least amount of time available to do so. your clean lineless art and the limited pallet works well, and the way your full story was planned to only be 5 pages for a great way to tackle a speed match. your set design/panel layouts are masterful enough that even your lose pencils are still readable thanks to where, which and how big your fonts are. Selevan: Terror Hunter is a pretty scary guy, here. His moods and attitudes switch up so abruptly it's hard to understand his motives. we're set up to care about Grey, the kids, and the church she runs. but it's impossible to tell if TH cares about any of that or if she's just a crazy drifter or what. the story has conflict, but without a plot to move us in any one direction. on to the art: your photo bashing techniques worked wonderfully, but they are a little at odds when you draw your organic poses for the characters. like the top of page 8. TH's butt cheeks. i can let them slide because they're not that important, but then it seems his hand was injured. it's hard to understand what the injury is. are his fingers bent back? I guess what's important is we learn TH like to fuck with people and kill them, but will cut them all the slack if they're a meta. looking forwards to seeing if this theory holds out in the next round!

Shen- I'm so glad you managed to submit something. Those first two pages were great, It made me really want to keep seeing charlottes antics- Void needs more super pure, good characters for people to bounce off of. Get well soon! Wishing your hand a speedy recovery. Selevan- Correct me if I'm wrong, but this really felt like something inspired by Berserk. From the story to the way you draw Harrisons true form. This is a good thing btw :P I'm very excited to see how you develop as an artist on Void, this is such a fantastic and interesting foundation. I do have some thoughts about the panel layout here- it feels a bit chaotic and overly complicated, I wouldn't say it was difficult to read but it does look a bit awkward and unplanned. Sometimes roughly thumbing things our can easily enhance a page's quality. I'll use page 6 as an example/ ATTEMPT to break down what I mean by chaotic. Currently, the space on this page could be used more effectively to make the scene flow nicer, [spoiler]- Panels 1-2 take up a lot of space considering the fact they have no dialogue/ do not move the story along. - This is paired with some very large gutters. I think this is to show the passage of time, but I don't think it's pushed far enough to do this effectively for the space it uses/ a simple "the next day" box would probably work better. - Panel 3 is a nice wide panel showing a full scene. However, the speech bubbles are all crammed into the busiest part of the drawing instead of being broken up and placed across the page l/r. This will help give the conversation from flow and rhythm and get rid of the empty space. - The following 3 panels mirror these issues. An example of how you could plan this with thumbs would be to think about what panels are the most important. -In this case, the two wide shots featuring Charlotte. -You could extend both of these until they fill up the page, you could simply show more sky. - then shrink down and place the remaining close-up character panels within these ones. - For the speech bubbles, they don't necessarily have to all be attached to one another, especially on pages like this where one character is speaking. As long as the dialogue flows and there are establishing shots of the speakers, you can spread bubbles out. This is just an example of how you can plan a page out with 1- the most important/interesting panels in mind 2- the flow of the page from a reader's perspective. Give thumbnailing a go. [/spoiler]

Animeshen: Hope the hand heals quickly! Really liked what you were doing with the colors for this. specially with Charlotte stepping away from the light into the dark Selevan: Diov Harrison is so darkly intimidating! I love a good despicable villain. The last page had some of my favorite panels with the hand and that final look Harrison gives Charlotte

Shen: honestly those first two pages are blowing me away. The color use is so delicious I love it. As you said, the story is par for the course but given the deadline mixed with the circumstance I don't feel it doesn't detract too much. Sel: I appreciate how unhinged TH is, and how he mostly seems driven by what he seems to perceive is the most enjoyable course of action at the given moment, which is always fun with a character whose moral sensibilities are skewed/nonexistent.

My condolences Shen, I'd be so frustrated too if my hand was injured, especially cause on my last comic of 2022 I felt like I almost came close to wrecking my wrist. This was an interesting take Sel, maybe not my cup of tea 100% but props for being ballsy enough to do something like this. Now to see him getting his head lopped off.

Shen - I'm so sorry about your hand and I hope it heals well! Still, even with an injury you made a complete story, and the first two pages look beautiful! That's an accomplishment to be proud of, I just hope you didn't push yourself too hard to make what you did! I wishing you a quick recovery. Selevan - Terror Hunter is so fucked up I love it. Poor Charlotte! At least he didn't actually follow through with his threats? I love the panel layouts and expressions, and I also agree some of the text was a bit too small. It was still readable though!

Shen - Hope you are having a good and quick recovery! Sevelan - this was intense! And I say it in a good way! Good action my dude.

Snowy: Shen - I hope you take your health seriously and take the time to rest and heal. The story was easy to follow, if a bit typical of religiously based characters. I really liked the lineless style you used for the colors, and I hope you do more with Charlotte in the future. I know, i HATE how 'typical' it was, I usually try to be more creative but it was a bad week so i wrote the easiest story i could think of U_U dont worry i wont be drawing for a while, but when I come back I'm giving Charlotte a do-over Diov! Sel, wow even if i HAD finished i think you would win, your story is much richer and the world seems so fleshed out! TH is so scary, shes ABSOLUTELY gonna have nightmares for a long time! Despite all his threats though all she suffered was a bump on the head before he set out to take care of her problem, maybe he did more harm than good? Although, now no one is guarding the church XD Excellent comic, cant wait to see TH advance!

Shen - I hope you take your health seriously and take the time to rest and heal. The story was easy to follow, if a bit typical of religiously based characters. I really liked the lineless style you used for the colors, and I hope you do more with Charlotte in the future. Selevan - Very interesting story! I liked how horrifying you made Harrison, it really sold the 'DIOV' version of his character. I think the main critique I have is the speech bubbles, they were very cramped in some places, but I really enjoyed your comic!

Shen- I really love the colors and lighting of those first few pages! I'm sorry about your hand. You did a good job of making a short and sweet story that was easy to follow regardless Selevan- I love how creepy and fucked up you made Harrison here! He really felt unhinged and intimidating! His dialogue was also fun. I found some of the speech bubbles hard to read- I think maybe the text just needs to be bigger? Hope he has fun catching those pigs.

im so sorry, fellas... i broke my drawing hand U_U i did what i could with what i had and managed a complete, if barely legible story, but this is the best i can do. im really sad about this... i hope Charlotte gets another chance to shine someday.