Haha "Shoulder bump of doom"!

I need to use that Thanks for the battle Geeps!

First off, want to say, thanks for all the crits you guys!

I will say, this battle I struggled with more than anything before. I've got 5 scrapped "first pages" each for different storylines and ideas. It's kinda why I made that awkward final panel. I literally couldn't come up with anything to fill the last bit of space on the page that satisfied me, but I just couldn't leave it blank.

Puzzle and Fred, I will definitely start working on my anatomy more. I keep figuring out new tricks and tips to proportions, and I'm still working on trying to implement them all smoothly. Puzzle, I definitely agree with you on the 7-8 heads tall bit. I always feel like my characters are a little squished, so that could definitely explain it, and I'll be focusing on that big time. LeFred, I'll definitely be practicing my facial structures. I tend to let things skew a little bit, which probably explains what happened with the turned face, and I'll try to work on that a lot more. As far as Ray's lip, that's actually a mark from where I was going to fill in with black, but I guess I wound up forgetting. Whoops!

96ma- Panelling is something that I definitely need to experiment with more. I won't say I was playing it safe, but it's more so that I struggle to try to figure out layouts without the grid pattern to work off as a base. I'll try to mix it up a bit more in the future. I'll also dedicate a bit more time to try to make the posing seem a bit more natural, but as for Ray, my goal was to have him standing straight and tall in his entry, trying to be more dramatic. But  since it didn't come off like that, it means I need to work on it.

As far as the eyes thing, I'm willing to try anything at least once. I'll make sure to play around with it some, and see what I like.

KENT- Absolutely loved your comic man. It came out awesome. I do agree the punch could use more punch (heheh), case it kinda feels like the shoulder bump had more impact in comparison. Maybe bringing in things like those impact effects from the bump could add a lot more OOMPH to it. Oh, and I'm totally counting that facial hair as part of the scar. It's too good not to.

Thanks again everybody, I'll try to take everything said to heart, so you can all see better next time around

I think everyones done a right fair job with the critiques and I haven't got more to add to I will say both these comics were excellent, I laughed, I loved!  Kent, "red rover red rover this games' fuckin' OVER" dude you may just get an extra entertainment point from me because for some reason I LOVED THAT BIT lol also poor Howling, everyone always picks on his eye! XD Geeps I liked that they weren't adversaries in yours but incompatible teammates, and Ray's scar is pretty rad too! Great comics everyone, good luck!

GPS - Thanks for the match! I love how you had Ray enter the scene. I totally need to draw him holding his guns like that!

Also Thanks for all the crits so far!

Shadows - Good points Pizzlethang -- I should have pushed the shadows harder in the park scenes. I will definitely try that out next time I do a night comic.
Texture - I normally don't use texture, but I'm trying to use it in at least all my Ray comics. I think I went overboard here though. My thinking was that by Page 9 it gets really strong because the whole park is burning, but I simply didn't know how else to show the heightened affect.
Posing - More action! more fluid! OMIGOSH 96ma you're so right about that punch. It plagued me, but I just didn't know what to do for it. I'll work on action and poses next time. Expect an all action comic one of these days...eventually
Pace/Sequence - I see that the last page threw some people off - I think doing it again I would have put "You gonna walk off buddy?" at the end of Page 9, in a quote-caption, to lead people to Page 10, maybe? But yeah, as you may know, I absolutely LOVE out of order sequencing I'll just be careful to make it clear in the future.

I THINK GPS AND I WILL SAVE WOLF FLIPS FOR OUR COLLAB COMICS

Kent          -
           
            I think the texture you chose is mostly great, but it gets a little crazy in some of the fire panels, especially 8 and 9. On page 8, I don't know if it's the blending mode your using or just how you colorized the texture, but it draws way too much attention to itself in spots like the sky and the foliage. And on page 9 it feels kind of like it's flattening the page, but that might just be because the characters have no rendering or toning to fight the texture.

           I think your restrained use of shadows suited most of the comic, but once they're in a burning forest at the middle of the night I think you could've gotten way more intense with it. The best thing about a scene like that is that there's almost no wrong spot to put a shadow either, since who knows where the light is coming from! You just get to drop whatever heightens the mood.

          The ending was a little confusing to me. Was it supposed to have happened in between pages 3 and 4? I think if you had just put the "C'mon buddy! You just gonna walk off" line at the end of page 3 it would've read like that much better.

         As always, I love the way you write characters. Raygun has such a strong voice, it's easy to love him. Your pacing is always great, it never feels too slow or too fast, or stretched or anything. It just moves effortlessly forward.


GPS             -

             I agree that your anatomy needs some work, and it's not just your faces. You have a tendency to draw short characters, everyone seems to be between 5 and 6 heads tall. Even Gregory comes off as kind of a stubby guy, and he's supposed to be massive. Most people are between 7 - 8 heads tall, make sure you've got the proportions down in your armature before you flesh them out fully and commit.
 
              I really like how you do these stories-in-progress. You're good at delivering just enough story that we don't feel lost, and in such a way that it doesn't feel like the characters are just spitting exposition directly at the the reader. However with such a short comic, pretty much all the writing needs to be spot on, and the line  "I didn't bail on you guys to deal with your ass" makes no sense to me. All the other writing is awesome and funny, so maybe it's just me being a dummy.

             I did like the writing though, and the humor. I thought it was great how you subverted the whole "Fade to black, dude who was angry beats everyone up" cliche and had Raygun get mangled.



               I'm not sure how much I agree with the idea to use smaller eyes, even with the great reasoning behind it. I don't think exaggerated feature are directly in opposition to good action scenes, and these characters have always felt less like fight dudes and more like "Dudes whose story we're telling, who just happen to be tough guys" . You both dip into humor and character moments more than you do action, so I think expressive features really help that. Still it's always a great idea to play around with your stylistic choices and see what else might work.

             Great work on the comics guys! It's always enjoyable reading your stuff, since you both don't skimp on the story. Unfortunately I had to give you both strait F's for the lack of flipping wolves.

Master Kent: I love colored comics and I think your coloring here is pretty fantastic. GG dude. If you were to redo this comic someday the only major thing I think you should change is page 4. I think the punch here could use more emphasis and be more dramatic. Right now it feels very static and I think you should somehow make the reader wince and feel like they're watching the punch as it happens. (I think this could be done by maybe adding "movement" in the current frame with some more emphasis on the impact, or by redrawing it as two or more panels) A smaller nitpick I have with this page is that I think the moon could be brighter or have a glow around it. It's already emphasized pretty well by the blur affect you used but since the bubbles are lighter than the moon, my eyes didn't really focus on it on my first read through.

GPS-Device: Because the length of your comic was less than half of Kent's I expected the story and quality to compensate, but unfortunately I don't feel as much effort coming from your half. (The last panel was disappointing and I think the ending should have been executed much more seriously) While it isn't necessarily a bad thing, the panel layouts on all four pages are very symmetrical and it shows that you were really playing it safe composition-wise. On the last page, the slight "bump" in the space between the left and right halves is distracting, and it should have been even like all the other pages. And finally, your poses (especially on the first panel on the third page) seem stiff and can use more fluidity and variety.

Also a side note for both of you, I think both of your styles could use smaller eyes because larger eyes tend to look less badass. It's mainly that both of you used eyes that seem pretty cartoony and not very actiony in my opinion

@Kent: Gosh your comics have such a wonderful flow and feeling to them! They are very visually appealing and you have a very very good sense of color harmony which made the comic very visually pleasing in my opinion. I also felt that the paneling was easy to follow and so the story was really easy to read. The only thing I'm noticing about your art is that in some panels, it feels a little bit stiff? There seems to be a lack of fluidity in some of the action posing, which isn't really a huge deal because it doesn't take a whole lot away from the comic it's self, but I do think that if you could try to put a little more spring into some of your posing, especially the action posing, the scenes would look more dynamic. My favorite page in this comic was page 7, because I love Raygun's expression and body language in the last panel!

@GPS-Device: I really like how you can pull off B&W and make it look fantastic! You seem to have a good understanding on how to use dark shadows and how to balance a monochrome scheme which I am incredibly jealous of. Like others have mentioned, I think that you should try to pay some extra attention when you're drawing faces, because I feel that you're good at drawing the expressions THEMSELVES, but the placement of some of the features on the faces of the characters are very off and it takes away from the seriousness they're supposed to be portraying. I also feel that if you drew your characters with smaller eyes as well, it might look a little better, because it feels as if you are going for a very rugged, masculine style, and with the large eyes it makes it look a little more cartoony/cutesy than I think suits the rest of your stylistic choices. My favorite page was the second page, especially the last panel because it looks really badass to me! The SFX placement is really cool too, a very great portrayal of action!

You both did fantastic, it was fun reading both of these comics and I really like both characters!

Kent, LOVE the non-linear sequencing! I'm not against your panel execution, but I'd love to see add depth.

GPS, LOVE you throwing us right in, but filling us in. But the "skip-to" fight scene kinda denied us of what could've made the comic all the more better.

The thing was over due to double default. However I wouldn't mind battling the winner when I have the time. Which would be quite a while due to PPT.

kent: fun stuff, I got totally lost on the last panel so I had to backtrack and realized I missed that "three moons ago" thing, it might have helped if there was a caption saying the last panel was in the present again. I'm surprised that after what Ray did to him, all that Howling did to him was just a punch in a face~

gps-device: Very funny, listen to LeFred's words and you're on your way.

Great job both of y'all!  Is there gonna be a final scar match between ray and clyde now? or did I completely misinterpret what was going on with those past scar matches? XD

Kent, it's just crazy how good your stuff is getting to look. Ijust wish you'd put some tones on Jpop and the other street people, just so the backgrounds in those, like, two panels, didn't look as flat. I was also a bit put off by the bareness of page 5; I mean, it makes some sense when you go into the flashback, but it's weird when you come upon it.  Everything else is supper sweet.

GPS, I really like your humour dude, this was a lot of fun to read. Your anatomy could use some more work, especially the faces. I'm not exactly sure what it is, but I think maybe the faces can be too big for the head? Also like, p3 panle3, the dudes face is all like 'NOPE, TAKING A 45 DEGREE TURN'. Ray looks alright, except I don't know what's going on with his mouth in that first panel we see him. My only other complain is that it was just a tiny bit small. Not so much to be hard to read, but just enough to be slightly uncomfortable. Otherwise, this also was super sweet. That door kicking is like, so fucking explosive.

Great job from both of you guys!

I missed on doing the wulf flips
Maybe next time, though :p

space guns and werewolf backflips

let's do it

The stars were not aligned for me and Geeps last time :/

But we shan't disappoint again!

Don't tease me like last time guys, my heart can't take the disappointment!

omg yes.

Yerp
Let's try this again...