Elle vs. Karma

Elle vs. Karma

This comic has not been rated; viewer discretion advised.

Icon for Elle56.2%
375 points
Page 1Page 2Page 3Page 4Page 5Page 6Page 7Page 8Page 9Page 10Page 11Page 12Page 13Page 14Page 15Page 16Page 17Page 18Page 19

Crit level: No preference


by stefan

This comic has not been rated; viewer discretion advised.

Icon for Karma43.8%
292 points
Page 4Page 5Page 6

Crit level: No preference




Critiques & Comments
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Pennydox
Artist
235 comments
# 16   Posted: Sep 12 2014, 09:55 AM
For the both of you, I am not fond of cliffhangers if you don't plan to finish them. So if you had four weeks to do a comic, then I would have expected your comic to either 1. be a cliffhanger for another story you're going to finish or conclude, or 2. you have a solid ending for your comic.

Ten Dead Kings: Your work gets better and more detailed every time, congrats. and I know you do your work traditionally, so let me introduce you to a few things, as I have realized how many explosions and rubble you put on your work. Time to upgrade your pen arsenal TDK. Here are a few things:
1. a bottle of ink. If you don't got a bottle of ink right now to fill your sweet black, then get it. But right now looks good, just telling you a bottle of Sumi-e ink will save you tons of money from using so much black ink from pens
2. White out. For correcting mistakes if you need to.
3. A toothbrush (yes you heard me right). The crappier the toothbrush, the better. Dip a teeeny bit in ink, rub it around the bristles, and then roll the bristles through your thumb to flick black speckles on the page. it does serious magic damage, and it makes good for blood spots and dirty rubble. When doing it, you need to 'mask' the area by covering the parts you don't want to have speckles with a piece of paper
4. FW white acrylic ink. This is probably the closest equivalent to black ink. Instead of dipping black ink with a toothbrush. you put white ink on the toothbrush and splatter. This too does an amazing job, and instead of black speckles you get white speckles. Great for rubble and flying dust in black areas.

Stefan: Not sure your intentions of the work, but the backgrounds are too clean. I think your work would benefit if you added more textures all over the stuff. You can find watercolor and grunge/gritty stock image textures on deviantart, and put it on your piece, and set it on 'overlay'. Photoshop is the main way to do that, but I think other programs let you do that too. Once you figure that out, you can figure the rest out on your own. Also, please shrink your pages.

Mister Kent
Artist
958 comments
# 15   Posted: Sep 5 2014, 04:40 PM
Congrats on the win TDK - I really like the compositions and amount of detail you put into this. It shows a great deal of care and also progress in your style. Keep it up! I agree on the text balloons--be careful next time that the words have space! All in all, very good read, and of course I loved seeing that Jane's still flying around looking for Karma :D

Stefan, really good effort! I always love the style you put into your linework. Just be careful of the words and the overall polish on your pages--take a little more time, but I can't wait to see what you do next!

stefan
Artist
68 comments
# 14   Posted: Sep 2 2014, 02:08 AM
i wanna thank everyone of you who took the time to comment and crtique on my work,i know there is alot of stuff for me to work on,and i might be progressing slowly,but don't think i haven't read any of the stuff,with most of it i agree. thats the main reason i started a beyond battle,..to see if i can put the given comments on the works,in to effect with the next pages i'm gonna do.really appreciate it ,..
Jongbom : thanks for the tips on the books,gonna look them up and see how it could help me !

Generall: the font used is actually one i pulled from the Blambot website,geuss it just doens't fit with the ''pages'' on the visual aspect of it.
in generall i like to do wide page panels,don't know why,i think its cause i have a lot of space to draw ..haha,

now if i could just find someone to test raed the stuff i put up.

thanks guys !

Chimaeric
Artist
249 comments
# 13   Posted: Aug 31 2014, 04:19 PM
@TDK: as before, i praised this entry on its awesome composition. My favorite sequence was the bar scene and the fight scene. For me, the actual story was secondary to the read of the visuals. Your weakest page was page three, and it was immediately clear in the first panel due to inconsistencies in your line variation.
It took me a second reading to actually follow the story. While your visuals were great, they didn't integrate the area of the word bubbles into the composition well enough to develop any reader interest in them as a visual element. Your lettering took a backseat because of this, and it seems you're afraid to make your word bubbles any larger than can fit the necessary text, which ended in your compositions swallowing up your word bubbles. I would recommend recreating your word bubbles with a more quadrahedral bent to it in illustrator and saving it as a shape in photoshop (my technique). The quadrahedral word bubble allows for more words in its total volume as well as being more visually appealing than a common ellipse.
As for the story, one of the confusing things was the swap in narrative during the bar/interview scene. It took me a while to get that a swap in narrative took place, and this confusion was lent to using similar compositional cues in both narratives, making it look like a swap didn't take place. The only reason i noticed it was because the swap involved using a different set of characters, which is the only visual cue available i could perceive.
tldr; work on your line art. make some custom word bubble shapes. keep up the good work.

@stefan: There are a couple of things that separates amateurs from professionals in the graphic novel industry, and these things aren't an original style, beautiful graphics, or even an academic-level attention to composition, but the polish and sensibilities that a professional puts into the final product that doesn't enter an amateur's thought of consideration. What immediately struck me when I began reading this comic was bad choice of font and a lack of punctuation. Thankfully, your comic was only 3 pages long.
The 2nd thing i noticed was the fresh style, though while a highlight of your comic, it barely means anything if the visuals from panel to panel can't create any meaningful arrangement of sequences, even if a comic was drawn non-sequitor (and this comic isn't). What is happening in the 2nd and 3rd pages is anyone's guess, because this shit is incomprehensible, even with the nice drawings and super-simplified layout, it doesn't make a dent in letting the reader understand anything you're trying to convey, which gives me a sense that what you've actually created was a collage of images and not a comic.
I would recommend you read "Making Comics" by Scott McCloud or "Creating a Graphic Novel" by Nat Gertler and Steve Lieber. Begin focusing on basic compositions used in comics- and not just in panels, but specifically  how panels interact with one another to tell a story- because its clear you know how to draw, but I'm skeptical as to whether you actually know how to create an interaction between panels to create sequential narrative. There are threads in the forum here that have links to industry-standard fonts that you can download for free. My recommendation on word bubbles also applies to this comic.

Zest
Artist
141 comments
# 12   Posted: Aug 31 2014, 12:49 PM
Both of you should take more care with your lettering. TDK, your text is barely fitting into the bubbles. Either make the bubbles larger or the text smaller and that should fix it. Stefan, the super clean bubbles and the hella rough art can be an interesting juxtaposition but right now it doesn't feel like it's gelling. You both should also double check for spelling errors.

Fearn
Artist
366 comments
# 11   Posted: Aug 31 2014, 03:33 AM
Tdk - duuude I love your sense of humour :D also, this was pretty epic. i see you have potential for an anthro careeer :P although i found the story a bit confusing at times, there is SO MUCH GOING ON. I also agree with all that Puzzle said. DO CONTINUE.

Stefan - i love what you are doing with colors and the mixed media stuff. Lots of vertical page width panels, not sure it was intentional ;) now that i noticed i think its a bit strange, but it might just be me. What you have there is really great, just please, make more! Or do something more complete. I see you are doing a bb, Looking forward to see what you do! This could be a good opportunity to show off a bit more ;)

Minteh
Global Moderator
275 comments
# 10   Posted: Aug 29 2014, 05:34 PM
Brutal Brutal- That character is Pip Poodle by Delya, her character page is up over here: http://entervoid.com/index.php?action=character;id=2002

tdk- duuuude, I feel like I haven't read a comic from you in a while, and hot dang you've improved so much.  I was super engrossed in the story you had laid out and really liked all of the hiemium plot tie-ins and overlaps, plus I think you've got a good amount of contrast within the pages.  It did feel a little weird on some pages where there were sections that, based on some of your other panels, I felt should have more solid blacks (like page 8).

Overall really impressed by pretty much everything you added in here, I feel like I just have small nitpicks that are more of a personal preference, so I'll leave it with that!

Stefan- I really dig how rough and stylistic your work is here, it feels like several different elements clashing together to make a harmonized image.  As much as I do enjoy the visual, I have to echo Puzzle in that some of the grammatical and spelling mistakes make me stumble when I'm reading through it.  On top of that, it really doesn't feel like you've put enough work into a four weeker with no apparent resolution and (although lovely) a very minimalistic visual style.

Animeshen
Artist
1490 comments
# 9   Posted: Aug 29 2014, 04:09 PM
tdk- oh man, always so much cool stuff happening in your comics, you can really fill a page! I kind of agree with Puzzlething about your line weights, it can make the action a bit hard to follow sometimes but thats like pretty much my only issue, theres excellent writing, direction, composition in this, great use of black and white, excellent use of cameos, its just allover awesome.
Stefan I like your lines and use of colours but I have kind of no real idea whats going on ^^; sorry you didnt have time to finish.

Puzzlething
Artist
457 comments
# 8   Posted: Aug 29 2014, 11:49 AM
TDK         -

            Oh my god the Hiemium storyline got really complex.

            I think what makes your artwork feel so crowded is just your linework. Too often, everything in the same scene is of a similiar, uniform line weight. It can make some panels difficult to parse. In general though, you just need to try and be more confident with your linemaking. I think the roughness and the scratchiness of it masks alot the improvement you've brought to your structure and anatomy.

           I love love love your framing and visual storytelling dude. The building silhouette holding the panels, The birds eye shot of the interview meshing cleanly with the past, even the plot device of dual narrators; These were all great elements!



Stefan         -

              Dude, get someone to proofread your stuff. Spelling, grammar, and capitilization are such tiny things that have such a huge effect on how polished and readable your work is.

              Beyond that I don't know if it would be totally fair to critique anything else. This looks super unfinished, so I can't really be sure what you would have done had you actually had the time. Your characters look pretty complete though, so I do have to say that they could be emoting way better. They pretty much just maintain  neutral expressions throughout the entire comic, until that last shot.

             Also, regardless of how finished your work is, it seems like your text and bubble stuff is always rough and jarring. They don't mesh with your killer art at all. I totes struggle with that alot too, so sit down and take some time to work out a consistent and effective way of presenting that stuff.

      You're an amazing artist dude, your go for broke thread just makes me drool, so I can't wait to see a complete polished comic from you.

BrutalBrutal
4 comments
# 7   Posted: Aug 29 2014, 08:29 AM
Really cool read TDK. Can't wait to get into your other work.

I saw a character from this header, which I screen shot to find out which character it is. I love the style and want to read the pages:



no bb code images here?

http://imgur.com/CCOpk5Q

Chimaeric
Artist
249 comments
# 6   Posted: Aug 28 2014, 06:30 PM
@TDK: AHHHH!! THESE COMPOSITIONS ARE AMAZING. I need to lie down (critiques for the both of you coming soon)

stefan
Artist
68 comments
# 5   Posted: Aug 28 2014, 05:51 AM
Holy Crap,now i feel really bad for my low show up,...

i appoligize to ya for that TDK,
But your pages are pretty impressive,story wise i loved it how you integrated the jane blonde story line,into this one.There are some pretty awesome panels in these pages man,with the enviroments and vehicle's...looking good !
Art looks overall solid,sometimes it gets a bit to crowded with foreground and background lines work but meh who am i to critique ! loved it

stefan
Artist
68 comments
# 4   Posted: Aug 25 2014, 07:39 PM
time managemen really is my biggest Enemy !! not done by a longshot,.but uploading hat i have right now


Ten Dead Kings
Artist
269 comments
# 3   Posted: Aug 24 2014, 10:50 PM
Uploaded. This continues from Elle vs Jessie Valley, and Jane Blonde vs Karma if y'all are into that.

Orion
Artist
224 comments
# 2   Posted: Aug 23 2014, 10:23 AM
Wonderful!

Fearn
Artist
366 comments
# 1   Posted: Aug 23 2014, 01:02 AM
aaahh loooking forward to this! not long now :)

Comic Details -

 
Regular Match
Drawing Time: 4 weeks + 1
Ended: Sep 3rd, 2014
Votes Cast: 17
Page Views: 1937
Winner: Ten Dead Kings
 

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