Snowy: Incredible work! I love how you've captured the swoopy, almost dance-like movements of the two and how they flow between panels. The imagery of Dairyu breaking through her own blood-soaked stature was incredibly striking as well - it's probably the part that sticks out to me the most in this comic.
Tinn: I love the writing here! Having most of the comic be narrated like it's poetry was super interesting to see. The beginning was the strongest part to me - the way that you introduced Varaki was so grand and menacing, which ends up making Dairyu feel incredibly powerful in comparison to look upon him without a trace of fear.
Thank you to everyone who left a comment or critique, I appreciate it greatly and hope to implement them in future comics. As always, I appreciate anyone taking the time to read and vote on my comics. ❤️
Thank you so much for the battle, Tinn! I really enjoyed your entry, and loved the ambience you had set up for it! I'm looking forward to any comics you upload on Void in the future, and hopefully we can fight again or collab! :)
Posted on The Herald's Landfallcomic by TinnBiscuits
Just wanted to say to everyone who took the time to read our comic, thank you! Every given feedback is invaluable and I'll be specifically taking all the advice to heart. Even though I created the comic more focused on finishing than perfection it was the most fun I had on a creative project. I appreciate you all challenging me to improve and I'm excited to share the results of the next, more focused effort I'll be working in future comics with all of you
Apologies; I had a long thing written up and I lost it all from browser buffoonery, I will try my best to re-write and recall what I had to say
@ Snowy
At this point you have reached a professional quality with your work, so the best I can do to help is dig through the weeds and get a little nitpicky, to help polish what is there to be even better. Starting with your strengths, with your experience with serpentine gods and flowing linework, Varaki looks perfect in your style and is as menacing as is befitting. You’ve gotten really good at making the moments you want to hit really hit, the vast compositions of spectacle and awe remain powerful.
I think you are in a good position right now to dig into anatomy practice; there are small tells in your human drawings that show some more fundamentals training inbetween comics will really do you good. It’s not to say either that you should draw more realistically, but rather that revisiting these fundamentals will help your stylized look feel even more alive and improve overall model coherence.
You remain with a strong main font choice, but while I appreciate that play with the breaks in Page 2, having the break between “the” and “plague” tripped me up and threw me out momentarily, as it didn’t hit as a natural breaking point for the sentence to my eyes.
Your story has a good mythic feel to it, like a solid prologue for potential future clashes between these two gods, but if that is at all in the cards in the future, I would really like to see Dairyu challenged/struggle, especially because this is an opportunity she rarely gets in the Void Lands, with an opponent that seems so well suited to be her opposite and equal. I’m itching to see Dairyu triumph in a scenario where the physical outcome is not assured by her omnipotence, where I’m not certain if she will be able to overpower her opponent. That being said, I recognize and respect your personal stances with your character’s lore and stats that you’ve been clear about in the past. Of course, first and foremost, draw what you love
@ TinnBiscuits
Welcome and congrats on a solid first showing! The moodiness of the atmosphere is especially palpable in the first few panels and the descriptive writing helps carry the gravitas throughout (though it is doing a lot of heavy lifting for what seems like one of the clear things you will want to work on going forward: strong backgrounds). Now is a good time to start building your font library; it’s a common thing for new comic artists to ultimately learn that all-caps dialogue fonts and focusing on legibility will often trump out most artistic stretches (but still keep experimenting with fonts, come to these conclusions and lessons yourself). As it stands, you will generally want to keep your narrative text in boxes unless you are prepared to really make those letters look like they are actively and intentionally part of the composition. Save the most bombastic font styles for bombastic sounds that don’t need to be immediately understood as language, like sound effects.
Aside from this, a lot of what can be said for you to improve is really just stuff you will learn along the way as you stick with it and keep learning, absorbing from things you enjoy, and keep drawing. I have faith that if you commit you’ll be astonished at your improvements in your next comic one year from now.
it's so nice to see Dairyu meeting someone who fights the way they do, and it must be nice for Varaki to finally be able to pick on someone his own size for once. you have such a subtle way of drawing Varaki so his neck really does look heavy and like his body is receding through space.
the internal monologue shows Varaki's personality a lot, but it's a little too much. verbose and lofty is coming across as something other than just conceded. also, while graphic design is NOT my passion, I do think your text needed the following:
a less round and bubbly font choice for the main text
a less artsy/ more readable text for Varaki's speech
having the font in high contrast to the background, either by putting it in traditional bubbles, or giving it a drop shadow + gaussian blur layer copy beneath.
or if you could, just draw the letters of the dialog like it is part of the scenery, though that takes a lot of time
the text with gradient effect on page 21 is too much
page 21 has 3 different text faces, and I guess on re-read this is supposed to be Dairyu taking over the narrative alongside Varaki
Personally, i think the way to make the characters' speech sound like it has voice is to make that voice come through in the writing. but if you want to get cutesy with it, maybe pick EITHER a colorway OR a font to match the character.
THE BATTLE was fun, and the twist that Varaki actually can talk was fun, too, and I found it believable. Finally, Dairyu has someone as aloof as herself to un-get-along with. this battle also, in a meta way, explains why Dairyu isn't out there just curb stomping all the lesser Kaiju in Void right now. She has her hands full with the one big bad already!
I think it was really gracious of you to end on a cliffhanger, like we the viewer are going to be playing the role of fate and destiny. very fun user engagement there!
Posted on The Herald's Landfallcomic by TinnBiscuits
I began losing focus so I had to re-read this twice in order to say something that came from sincerity and not fatigue. 21 pages in 2 weeks is very atypical and I want to give you props for pumping out so much. Thank you for adding a new villain here, we are in constant need.
Posted on The Herald's Landfallcomic by TinnBiscuits
ooooooooo this is pretty. Snowy! the blue everything is so nice and I think I remember back in the 2000s some manga subscription magazines printed like this and it is so nostalgic! It is also cool and gracious that you've incorporated Varaki into Dairyu's origin story! They have a real nemesis now! and Varaki looks so cool! The part where Dairyu dashes around killing the baby Varaki was a little confusing to me, maybe because her misty tail from the next panel is covering up some of the gore. My baby brain needed to see the before and after of the Varakilings being chopped I think. I also didn't pick up on Dairyu being just a statue at first. I think if you had shown her worshipers leaving her food and her statue just sitting passively I would have gotten it, but also, if the statue drawing was designed to look more static and stone textured I would have gotten it. Stone sculpture usually doesn't have long skinny pieces sticking out because it's so brittle, for example. usually artisans will curl spindledy pieces back around to touch the main body of the sculpture so they have more support.
anyway, it's a really cool battle and showcases the level of polish and cleanness I've come to expect from your comics. A+
Excellent work on colors and environments, Varaki feels ominous and intimidating, and the use of his abilities are an exciting spectacle. The grayscale art makes what color is there really POP. Very excited to see more stuff from you here Tin.
love how this reads like an old fable myth or prophecy, really dig the vibe! I couldn't help but feel like there was a more fitting font choice for the narrator, just a nitpick. Awesome job 21 pages is crazy
Posted on The Herald's Landfallcomic by TinnBiscuits
Fantastic storytelling! You set up both characters really well; Varaki's framing as a manifestation of darkness makes him very ominous, and the two characters feel like they have this eternal rivalry that gives the story a lot of impact. The narration does a great job at contextualizing the fight and is poetic in its own right, very reminiscent of an ancient text. The art is also very striking, with the vibrant coloring of their abilities drawing attention to those moments.
Posted on The Herald's Landfallcomic by TinnBiscuits
The artwork is absolutely gorgeous; the blue hues against the white are super pleasing. For the limitations you had, you really made it work. You're great at conveying the flow of action through lines of action and speed lines, even in your onomatopoeias; that "SLAM" is especially striking. The framing of the fight against the war between destruction and creation also gives it so much narrative weight.
SNOWY YOUR ART IS SO PRETTY AS ALWAYS!!! I think these are some of your best inks yet! And your composition just gets better and better with each comic! I was blown away by how well you used panel composition and camera work to really sell the transition from the village being peaceful under Dairyu's protection to the utter destruction caused by Varaki's appearance. The angles and panel breaking made me viscerally feel how big Varaki is compared to the village, and then when Dairyu transformed into her Daikaiju form the shift in camera angle really sold how powerful she is. I just can't get over how much you managed to communicate with a relatively small number of pages!!! You're becoming a master of the craft and I'm so hyped for everything more you create!
The prose in this was so fun to read! Very poetic and thought provoking. I love seeing these two incredibly powerful beings as forces of nature, directly opposed to each other, born to fulfill opposite purposes. Varaki's arrogance vs Dairyu's determination is a very fun contrast. I think the art itself was a bit of a mixed bag, mainly because of how sparse the backgrounds felt. It kind of fit the theme of this battle—the void of the ocean vs the expanse of the skies—but I think some more detailed backgrounds could have grounded the fight a bit and made the destruction feel more dangerous. On the other hand, I thought the color choices were GORGEOUS and loved how they reflected the motifs of the writing. Excellent work and I'm excited to see more from you!!!
Posted on The Herald's Landfallcomic by TinnBiscuits
I really liked the narration in this, maybe for that for next time add some sort of box behind it to help out? Instead of a circle, a box would probably help with it.
But this is fantastic overall, that was my only petty nit pick but the fight was really cool, fantastic job man.
Posted on The Herald's Landfallcomic by TinnBiscuits
I thought the colors were, absolutely stunning, it felt cold like the air, I mean cold in a good way, just visually fitting to the theme. Character was a lot of fun to see in action, and what I appreciate a lot is seeing how both characters are incorporated into this world building of gods, great job
I know it's not quite finished, but this is still a hell of an entry! I especially like the paneling. The only nitpick I have is a serious need for contrast in some places, but obviously that would have fixed itself if you had time to color so I won't dwell on that. The blue you used for your monochromatic rendering is also such a lovely shade!
I wanna start off by saying that for a first void comic this is a very strong showing. The visuals are mostly clean and consistent and 21 pages for a 2 weeks deadline is a hell of a feat. Snowy is a tough opponent but I think you've risen to the challenge. I do have two main criticisms, though, and they are kind of ties into each other. The first is that with 21 pages of flowery and poetic prose, the comic does start to feel a bit long winded. Narration is a dangerous game in that sense, and I feel like it did a lot of heavy lifting in some places, which brings me to my second point. There's a lot of telling without showing here. You say a lot of things like "the ocean trembled" on page 10, "the heavens flinched when his weight met the soil" on page 11, lots of descriptive language to describe these two forces of nature clashing cataclysmically, but the visuals don't necessarily show that. It's a well choreographed fight, don't get me wrong, but these are lijes that we should be seeing, rather than reading, to really sell the overwhelming power at play here, because while this definitely reads at a big monster fight, only page 9 and 13 really show the kind of power you're trying to describe. Simple backgrounds can help a lot to get a lot of pages out in a short time span, bit this is a comic where the backgrounds should have been prioritized and even focused on, in my opinion.
Posted on The Herald's Landfallcomic by TinnBiscuits
Comments (33)
Snowy: Incredible work! I love how you've captured the swoopy, almost dance-like movements of the two and how they flow between panels. The imagery of Dairyu breaking through her own blood-soaked stature was incredibly striking as well - it's probably the part that sticks out to me the most in this comic.
Tinn: I love the writing here! Having most of the comic be narrated like it's poetry was super interesting to see. The beginning was the strongest part to me - the way that you introduced Varaki was so grand and menacing, which ends up making Dairyu feel incredibly powerful in comparison to look upon him without a trace of fear.
Thank you to everyone who left a comment or critique, I appreciate it greatly and hope to implement them in future comics. As always, I appreciate anyone taking the time to read and vote on my comics. ❤️
Thank you so much for the battle, Tinn! I really enjoyed your entry, and loved the ambience you had set up for it! I'm looking forward to any comics you upload on Void in the future, and hopefully we can fight again or collab! :)
Just wanted to say to everyone who took the time to read our comic, thank you! Every given feedback is invaluable and I'll be specifically taking all the advice to heart. Even though I created the comic more focused on finishing than perfection it was the most fun I had on a creative project. I appreciate you all challenging me to improve and I'm excited to share the results of the next, more focused effort I'll be working in future comics with all of you
This is such a great first comic. I love the use of limited colors and I'm excited to see you make more comics.
Apologies; I had a long thing written up and I lost it all from browser buffoonery, I will try my best to re-write and recall what I had to say
@ Snowy
At this point you have reached a professional quality with your work, so the best I can do to help is dig through the weeds and get a little nitpicky, to help polish what is there to be even better. Starting with your strengths, with your experience with serpentine gods and flowing linework, Varaki looks perfect in your style and is as menacing as is befitting. You’ve gotten really good at making the moments you want to hit really hit, the vast compositions of spectacle and awe remain powerful.
I think you are in a good position right now to dig into anatomy practice; there are small tells in your human drawings that show some more fundamentals training inbetween comics will really do you good. It’s not to say either that you should draw more realistically, but rather that revisiting these fundamentals will help your stylized look feel even more alive and improve overall model coherence.
You remain with a strong main font choice, but while I appreciate that play with the breaks in Page 2, having the break between “the” and “plague” tripped me up and threw me out momentarily, as it didn’t hit as a natural breaking point for the sentence to my eyes.
Your story has a good mythic feel to it, like a solid prologue for potential future clashes between these two gods, but if that is at all in the cards in the future, I would really like to see Dairyu challenged/struggle, especially because this is an opportunity she rarely gets in the Void Lands, with an opponent that seems so well suited to be her opposite and equal. I’m itching to see Dairyu triumph in a scenario where the physical outcome is not assured by her omnipotence, where I’m not certain if she will be able to overpower her opponent. That being said, I recognize and respect your personal stances with your character’s lore and stats that you’ve been clear about in the past. Of course, first and foremost, draw what you love
@ TinnBiscuits
Welcome and congrats on a solid first showing! The moodiness of the atmosphere is especially palpable in the first few panels and the descriptive writing helps carry the gravitas throughout (though it is doing a lot of heavy lifting for what seems like one of the clear things you will want to work on going forward: strong backgrounds). Now is a good time to start building your font library; it’s a common thing for new comic artists to ultimately learn that all-caps dialogue fonts and focusing on legibility will often trump out most artistic stretches (but still keep experimenting with fonts, come to these conclusions and lessons yourself). As it stands, you will generally want to keep your narrative text in boxes unless you are prepared to really make those letters look like they are actively and intentionally part of the composition. Save the most bombastic font styles for bombastic sounds that don’t need to be immediately understood as language, like sound effects.
Aside from this, a lot of what can be said for you to improve is really just stuff you will learn along the way as you stick with it and keep learning, absorbing from things you enjoy, and keep drawing. I have faith that if you commit you’ll be astonished at your improvements in your next comic one year from now.
I love the blue monotone color going on, cyanscope is always fun. Also the way this is presented like a myth is really fun.
I enjoyed the story very much, felt like I was reading a light novel, and I say this in the best way possible.
I loved your paneling and action sequence on this one Snowy!
it's so nice to see Dairyu meeting someone who fights the way they do, and it must be nice for Varaki to finally be able to pick on someone his own size for once. you have such a subtle way of drawing Varaki so his neck really does look heavy and like his body is receding through space.
the internal monologue shows Varaki's personality a lot, but it's a little too much. verbose and lofty is coming across as something other than just conceded. also, while graphic design is NOT my passion, I do think your text needed the following:
Personally, i think the way to make the characters' speech sound like it has voice is to make that voice come through in the writing. but if you want to get cutesy with it, maybe pick EITHER a colorway OR a font to match the character.
THE BATTLE was fun, and the twist that Varaki actually can talk was fun, too, and I found it believable. Finally, Dairyu has someone as aloof as herself to un-get-along with. this battle also, in a meta way, explains why Dairyu isn't out there just curb stomping all the lesser Kaiju in Void right now. She has her hands full with the one big bad already!
I think it was really gracious of you to end on a cliffhanger, like we the viewer are going to be playing the role of fate and destiny. very fun user engagement there!
ohhh pretty cool clash of two extremely powerful creatures. Both are terrifying in their own way, great fight
I began losing focus so I had to re-read this twice in order to say something that came from sincerity and not fatigue. 21 pages in 2 weeks is very atypical and I want to give you props for pumping out so much. Thank you for adding a new villain here, we are in constant need.
ooooooooo this is pretty. Snowy! the blue everything is so nice and I think I remember back in the 2000s some manga subscription magazines printed like this and it is so nostalgic! It is also cool and gracious that you've incorporated Varaki into Dairyu's origin story! They have a real nemesis now! and Varaki looks so cool! The part where Dairyu dashes around killing the baby Varaki was a little confusing to me, maybe because her misty tail from the next panel is covering up some of the gore. My baby brain needed to see the before and after of the Varakilings being chopped I think. I also didn't pick up on Dairyu being just a statue at first. I think if you had shown her worshipers leaving her food and her statue just sitting passively I would have gotten it, but also, if the statue drawing was designed to look more static and stone textured I would have gotten it. Stone sculpture usually doesn't have long skinny pieces sticking out because it's so brittle, for example. usually artisans will curl spindledy pieces back around to touch the main body of the sculpture so they have more support.
anyway, it's a really cool battle and showcases the level of polish and cleanness I've come to expect from your comics. A+
Lovely comic, I think you did rather well even if you came short of your set expectations.
There's a certain artistic flow to them. Maybe due to their slithering-serpent forms, they flow naturally throughout the pages
The theme of "void beast of darkness" vs "aerial guardian beast" is so cool. Visually great match!
Excellent work on colors and environments, Varaki feels ominous and intimidating, and the use of his abilities are an exciting spectacle. The grayscale art makes what color is there really POP. Very excited to see more stuff from you here Tin.
wow, your linework and panel compositions are very impressive! Wish we saw more of Dairyu's final form at the end
love how this reads like an old fable myth or prophecy, really dig the vibe! I couldn't help but feel like there was a more fitting font choice for the narrator, just a nitpick. Awesome job 21 pages is crazy
Fantastic storytelling! You set up both characters really well; Varaki's framing as a manifestation of darkness makes him very ominous, and the two characters feel like they have this eternal rivalry that gives the story a lot of impact. The narration does a great job at contextualizing the fight and is poetic in its own right, very reminiscent of an ancient text. The art is also very striking, with the vibrant coloring of their abilities drawing attention to those moments.
The artwork is absolutely gorgeous; the blue hues against the white are super pleasing. For the limitations you had, you really made it work. You're great at conveying the flow of action through lines of action and speed lines, even in your onomatopoeias; that "SLAM" is especially striking. The framing of the fight against the war between destruction and creation also gives it so much narrative weight.
Well, this was certainly a thematically fitting matchup! Brilliant comics, both of you!
I know this isn’t your FULL POWER but it’s such a beautiful comic!!
Tin! Your shading and color really helped establish the sheer size of the kaiju! You nailed that 'ancient beast rising' for this comic!
Snowy! I know I said it before, but this came out so good! I really love the flow andcolor you went with! Also Dairyu cat form in action!!!
SNOWY YOUR ART IS SO PRETTY AS ALWAYS!!! I think these are some of your best inks yet! And your composition just gets better and better with each comic! I was blown away by how well you used panel composition and camera work to really sell the transition from the village being peaceful under Dairyu's protection to the utter destruction caused by Varaki's appearance. The angles and panel breaking made me viscerally feel how big Varaki is compared to the village, and then when Dairyu transformed into her Daikaiju form the shift in camera angle really sold how powerful she is. I just can't get over how much you managed to communicate with a relatively small number of pages!!! You're becoming a master of the craft and I'm so hyped for everything more you create!
The prose in this was so fun to read! Very poetic and thought provoking. I love seeing these two incredibly powerful beings as forces of nature, directly opposed to each other, born to fulfill opposite purposes. Varaki's arrogance vs Dairyu's determination is a very fun contrast. I think the art itself was a bit of a mixed bag, mainly because of how sparse the backgrounds felt. It kind of fit the theme of this battle—the void of the ocean vs the expanse of the skies—but I think some more detailed backgrounds could have grounded the fight a bit and made the destruction feel more dangerous. On the other hand, I thought the color choices were GORGEOUS and loved how they reflected the motifs of the writing. Excellent work and I'm excited to see more from you!!!
Both of these comics are absolutely amazing
I really liked the narration in this, maybe for that for next time add some sort of box behind it to help out? Instead of a circle, a box would probably help with it.
But this is fantastic overall, that was my only petty nit pick but the fight was really cool, fantastic job man.
I thought the colors were, absolutely stunning, it felt cold like the air, I mean cold in a good way, just visually fitting to the theme. Character was a lot of fun to see in action, and what I appreciate a lot is seeing how both characters are incorporated into this world building of gods, great job
I know it's not quite finished, but this is still a hell of an entry! I especially like the paneling. The only nitpick I have is a serious need for contrast in some places, but obviously that would have fixed itself if you had time to color so I won't dwell on that. The blue you used for your monochromatic rendering is also such a lovely shade!
I wanna start off by saying that for a first void comic this is a very strong showing. The visuals are mostly clean and consistent and 21 pages for a 2 weeks deadline is a hell of a feat. Snowy is a tough opponent but I think you've risen to the challenge. I do have two main criticisms, though, and they are kind of ties into each other. The first is that with 21 pages of flowery and poetic prose, the comic does start to feel a bit long winded. Narration is a dangerous game in that sense, and I feel like it did a lot of heavy lifting in some places, which brings me to my second point. There's a lot of telling without showing here. You say a lot of things like "the ocean trembled" on page 10, "the heavens flinched when his weight met the soil" on page 11, lots of descriptive language to describe these two forces of nature clashing cataclysmically, but the visuals don't necessarily show that. It's a well choreographed fight, don't get me wrong, but these are lijes that we should be seeing, rather than reading, to really sell the overwhelming power at play here, because while this definitely reads at a big monster fight, only page 9 and 13 really show the kind of power you're trying to describe. Simple backgrounds can help a lot to get a lot of pages out in a short time span, bit this is a comic where the backgrounds should have been prioritized and even focused on, in my opinion.
So this one seems the most like a setup XD
hyped for this one