Thank you, Random Comic Sidebar!

Holy Fucking shit you two.


Seriously. What the fuck??

All I can say is WOW I've missed a lot of amazing stuff! <3

10 points ahh amazingly close! You two rocked it out Congrats Red!

I fully expected to wake up to a loss. This was so close the entire week it was driving me insane haha.

Thank you for the rematch, Jong. Fear of your amazingness definitely forced me to do my best. I knew the only way I could even get close to you is if I drew the shit out of this comic and that's just what I did. I probably put in 15 hours in the first 2 days. I'm totally your fangirl and am so envious of your line work. I'm not sure how much it shows, but I read/stared at your last deathmatch so many times and it was definitely a big influence on me lately. I know in future comics I'm going to be looking back at yours for inspiration. Because wooowwww this was incredible. I love your comic and I think I might be IN love with it and want to marry it. Also, I'm regretting choosing not to draw him in his adorable sailor outfit ; ;

Please meet me in 2018 for our re-re-match!

Thanks for the crits, dudes. I know it looks like I skimped on building detail, but that was just from the tight deadline :/ I didn't skimp on Harry though (I'm not sure if it looks that way?) I've always struggled with stiff looking figures and facial expressions and I know I still need to work on that, but I definitely know I'm making progress. I must have re-drawn some of the panels with Harry in them like 5 or 6 times each, pushing it a little more each time. I feel like I'm pretty fluid when sketching, then stiffen up when I'm drawing it for real. But yeah, I'm making an effort to tackle those weaknesses. Thanks

Thanks for the input on the battle guys. I was worried that i overdid the first page with dialogue, and seeing how it affected the reading of the page was helpful (so not doing that again).
It was a good battle Red. It's not everyday artists are willing to do 1-weekers (which should be the only length of time given for a battle ever!) so I'm glad for the chance to jump on that kind of opportunity.
 
now it will be me planning revenge for the next 5 years >8I

Jong! My god! I love your use of inks and nibs! Simply Spectacular! WOW! Top notch ink, nibs and brush.... Rather short, but splendid form. Bravo.

Red, that was highly entertaining. And by golly golly gumdrups - you are improving by the battles. Pukka work.

Both of you have done splendidly stupendous scintillatingly entertaining comics. Cheers!

          Neither of you did a great job with the "Very tiny shot of Jong against the massive scale of what's going on"-shot that's just completely necessary to draw a Kaiju comic. Whenever you guys tried it, Jong often didn't stand out well, and got lost easily against the amazing details and action that you both knocked out of the park.

Red        -
         
          You should integrate your sound effects into your composition and comics a little better. It often feels like you're just drawing them over top the illustration after your done, instead of planning them into the sketch beforehand. You're a graphic designer, so I'm sure you can do amazing things with text and letters.

          Your gutter style is crazy inconsistent for like no reason. I think in this comic alone you've done every single gutter style I can think of. Switching is always fine when you want to create a certain mood, but when you do it so often it draws too much attention to what should just be a background design choice and makes the comic feel less unified.

          Besides the other crits, I definitely agree that, in general, you need to push your facial expressions a lot. More than anything, I think you should really work on that. You so often do these great, funny stories, and you could really heighten that with better expressions. I struggle with great expressions a lot myself, so I can't really offer any advice besides practice, and don't be afraid to really mess up your characters faces.

        I really loved the story on your side dude, it was such a great, character driven fight scene.  I think you're getting way better at illustrating action and movement in your comics, like I can just feel Somadis crashing through stuff everytime he moves quickly. The details on Somadis just feel so good too. For complaining about his ridiculous spikes, you obviously enjoy drawing him a lot, cause he just looks so great. Amazing work for a week!


Jong              -

              I really hate it whenever I see white halos pop up around your foreground elements. It makes it feel like you're afraid of drawing up to lines, but you're obviously not because it only happens sporadically.

             I think the solid tones take something away from your wonderful lines, but it looks perfect when you integrate them into the form of your drawings and apply subtle gradients. Like I really really enjoyed how you did it on page 3, and to a lesser extent page 4.

             Your story feels more like set-up than an actual stand alone narrative. In fact most of the story is in the set-up. All of the important story beats and development occur on that first page, and then we have a fight that doesn't really further the story. There actually is a nice arc to the first page conversation, and I think if you'd simply figured out a way to spread that conversation throughout the entire comic it would've worked really well. The first page wouldn't feel so oppressive, and the comic would've had an interesting, overarching narrative. It would've made an interesting juxtaposition too, where we're watching a character perform a powerful, amazing feat of dominance over what appears to be an overwhelming force, but in reality he's sort of under the yoke of something else.

         It's a gloriously beautiful comic Jong, the things you do with hatching and movement are amazing. Everything is so fluid and dynamic and HHHNGGNGNGHGHGHGHGHG GODDAMN DUDE. Seriously, you need to be publishing some sort of amazing series, because your stuff is strait up amazing dude, and everyone needs to see it. Everytime I see your art I'm just breatheless. And a week. Goddamnit a week. WHYYYYYYYYY.

Great work dude-bros!

I feel like these stories were really on par with one another, but the page one dialogue in Jong's comic really did me in.  I totally read the first word bubble, then skipped to the last one on the page.  I had to double back at the end as a result which is technically my own fault for not being willing to read, but it felt a bit like a chore.

Red: I loved the cheese that Mortido brought, it really felt like no audience would love this movie as much as he himself loved it, like he was really so disassociated with what was happening in reality, but so so invested in the current events mentally.

Jong: I feel the biggest strength of this comic was the texture you gave to the world, it was so tangible, things that needed to be prevalent, were, and the balance maintained is masterful.

Also 50/50 whaaaat

the suspense of this outcome is slitting my throat

Oh! It was because Mortido's previous movie was about his adventures in the Wacky Races. He explains in the beginning that if he puts on a good show they might make this adventure into a movie as well, just like last time. So the comic was him kind of creating the plot for the future movie. End the last page (I meant to write epilogue, but used the wrong word on accident) just explained that it DID get picked up as a movie.

Good job, guys!

Red-I enjoyed your use of black and the story was a lot of fun. I kind of feel like you kept choosing specific things to make super detailed, but left a lot of other things pretty simple. Like you spend a ton of time working on rendering everything on Somadis, but you have to be consistent. Either simplify him a little more or give everything else the same attention. Like Harry was drawn fairly loosely and roughly in most panels so it looked like you kept rushing drawing him outside of the splash page.

I do have to agree with Will that the epilogue sort of felt like a prologue. It probably would have established the scene a lot better to have your ending be the beginning. Like I guess it's not super important, but I felt like Harry was mostly just being a campy teenage hero for shits and giggles and not because he was legitimately making a movie. That didn't hurt my enjoyment of the comic, but it's something to consider. I just remember getting to the ending and being like what?

Jongbom-Love the art here! But I have to admit, I still have yet to actually read through the first page, I just look at the pictures there and read the text on the rest of the battle. That's because the dialogue is so dense here, it's very hard on my eyes. If you're going to do an info dump, you have to give the reader some room to breathe. (and make it easy on their eyes!) There's 21 word bubbles across 4 panels, which is just way too much. It would have been better to break this into 2 pages.

I'm totally fine with having to read a bunch in a comic, it's just that second and third panel I saw the way the dialogue was laid out, saw how small the font was, and said fuck it. You have sort of a similar problem as Red, but in your case you have a lot of detail in the drawings, but the overabundance of detail makes it difficult to read what's going on in some areas. You don't need to tone down the detail, tons of detail is fine when you're consistent,  you just have to use tricks to make things stand out better. Like you have toning here, which is a good start, but like that middle panel on page 2, it would have been a lot easier for me to read had you bumped down the value of the gray just a bit more to really make certain things pop out.  

Try looking at how James Stokoe manages to break things down with his use of color. When you see his lines in BW it can be pretty overwhelming to look at, but his gradients really help push things to the background/foreground.

Red - Your lines throughout this comic are very well defined, yet loose enough to make the art seem fluid, energetic. There are a few stiff poses that detract from that, which I will point you to. But overall really fun comic to read!!
By Page:
1 - I love Somadis' entrance!
2 - Harry has a cool posture in the first panel, but his close-up is a little stiff--uninspired, maybe? He looks ecstatic first off, but he's barely emoting in panel 3.
7 - I like the energy of the top panel, and how you visualized deployment of Harry's powers. I always find it distracting when there is too much space between lines in a word balloon, however, Panel 2 being the most jarring of the bunch.
8 - I really dig how you render the full transformation - a good example of the thoughtful line work I mentioned above.
10 - Great large panel with Somadis on the ground. I think you can push the facial expressions a bit - like the smile in the top of the page, or the expression in the last panel. Mortido usually has really exagerrated expressions in his own comics, but you don't have to that far. Simply widen the features up a little so we don't have to rely on text to tell how the character is feeling.
11-13 - I enjoyed how you illustrated the explosions - the hard part (at least to me) of drawing Somadis is creating the impression that he is made of rock, and I like that when you draw his disintegration it feels very natural, no asteroid or piece of rubble looks out of place. So kudos

Jong - I enjoy reading serious, heroic Harry (not that I don't enjoy goofball Harry too). This comic felt longer than it was because so much seemed to happen, which is awesome--you made a really compelling tale and I was never bored.
1 -  Love Harry's landing crouch pose. You're so good with poses. The machine design is great
2 - Machine design here is not as great. Or it might be, but its hard to tell. I think your strongest rendering of inorganic objects (buildings, machines) is in scenes with more depth and distance. Too close up tends to look overly busy, like Panel 2 in my opinion. The characters are the best part of this page. I always love when your characters are in motion, its such an inspiration to me. This page is no exception, and bonus points for working in the SFX smartly.
3 - Awesome version of Somadis, very Stokoe-esque (but of course with your own kinetic flavor)
4 - Very nice leaping poses, very fluid!
5 - All your story beats were well planned and paid off greatly with this comic. It definitely works towards a powerful arc of character development, so I can't wait to see where it goes next!

OHHH MANNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNN

Ahhhhh I'm such an asshole.

Red I think your 'prolouge' was supposed to be an epilogue.

FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU UCK

AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHhhhhhhhhhhhhHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH HHHHH

i ship it.

Mortido x Somadis is my VOID OTP.

It's like all of my fan fiction is coming true OOHHHHHhhhhHHHH~

Redrevolver: Plotting Vengeance since 2008

Yaaaaaay! This is gon' be crazy good! Bang it up you two!

oh.
oh my!
oh dear lord!

F U C K

To Clarify: I am very much excited to see two of my heroes duke it out!

FOR 5 LONG YEARS I'VE BEEN PLOTTING MY REVENGE.

also, holy crap that was F I V E  Y E A R S  A G O.

GODDAMN I AM SO EXCITE I'M GONNA GO EAT A BRICK AND PUNCH A BEER.

i guess its time for me to use my ultimate form.