I want to thank everyone who has read and/or commented on this battle. I always try to push myself with each battle hoping to figure out what my niche is or a new way to make the comic process quicker/better. I hope you all are looking forward to Viro's next story!
PLATINUM:
You wanted in depth, so here I go!
PROS:
- I liked the energy in the comic. It reminded me of the initial teenage mutant ninja turtles comics and the energy in those stories.
- Good effort on making the backgrounds. As well as knowing when NOT putting a background is the better choice to focus on the emotion.
- You had some good creative shot choices in this, like the silhouette shot on page 4.
- You're doing really good with showing the expressions on your characters faces.
- Good job on the fight scene, a lot of varying angles and the flow is easy to follow.
CONS:
- I would experiment with your line weight to help with showing depth. As right now, all your lines are the same so everything looks like it's on the same plane.
- On the subject of depth, since you work with grayscale, learning to use various tones of grey to help with displaying depth would help in adding a sense of space. Since you already seem to have fundamentals of perspective.
- Hair and figures seem very stiff. Have you practiced doing gesture drawings? Learning about lines of action would definitely help with loosening your figures and make them "flow" more.
- This is a nitpicky thing I have with a lot of comics (so this isn't specific to you only), but characters thinking out loud. On page 4, he goes on a lengthy spiel to himself. All of this, with a little bit of thinking, could probably be done in a way where you can show it instead of telling us. For example, he's leaving a note for Zavan, so you could have just shown us dino guy
(I forget his name...) struggling internally. Which you did do visually with panels 2 & 3. Just changing those slightly with let's say, zooming in on panel 2 so we can clearly see the expression and that the focus is on his internal struggle. Then on panel 3, just showing his fist slam on the table (since that would tell us everything we need to know: he's frustrated). Then probably panels to show he's made up his mind, writes a letter and THEN you actually show us the letter that contains all of his thoughts and what he's decided to do. So with all of this, you get rid of the self talk, and you actually get the reader feel more like they're part of the story as they're also reading the letter meant for the other character. Giving a bit of feeling of mischief that you would get as a child and you looked at something that wasn't necessarily meant for your eyes.
- More of the above on page 6. You don't necessarily need to tell us "Finally, I'm in" or "Let's see what...", those could be solved only through visuals. If there's a way for you to "show" us instead "telling" us, that option is usually the more engaging one for the reader. An example of where you did good is on Page 11. It has a nice moment on panels 3-4 where you
just know what's going on in your characters head through images and the ambience. No need for self talk dialogue to tell us. It's all in the visuals and the characters expression. Very nice.
- Not necessarily a "con", but something I wish you would have done on page 9 instead of the black panel with just the text, this would have been an ideal opportunity to give us an epic shot of what seems like the characters "ultimate move".
- Feels like that black page 10 is unnecessary. Even though I get what you're going for. It just makes me annoyed that I have to click again for nothing. Instead you could have made it a splash page of, let's say, the defeated hero, and then just have a black gradation going towards the right to sort of suggest the same effect that you wanted to achieve (or the effect I'm assuming you wanted to achieve anyway).
- You use "stringed" balloons a lot where they're not necessarily needed. Looking at page 12 right now at the top 3 panels. These don't really need to be attached. It actually does the opposite of what is intended and makes me more confused. So it sort of takes me out of the reading experience.
ENERGY:
I'm not going to go as in depth as Platinums critique because he had specified he wanted an in depth one. But I'll just give you a bit of my critiques.
I think you have good composition choices as far as your "camera" angles go. I would just suggest now practicing with facial expressions and then trying to add a bit more rendering to your pieces. Doesn't need to be much at first, but just practicing adding a bit of detail more and more I feel would add a lot.
Story wise, I'm pretty new to Void, so I'm not sure if the last panel is supposed to be a character everybody knows, but I'm confused as heck. And is he standing on a hoverboard? I was very confused at first. Maybe just adding more details to that would have made it more clear what it is.
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