Ayyyyy congrats on getting into Void!! I'm very intrigued in this birdman and what his story's gonna be~ I loved all the little details you put into the background, like coming up with names for some of the buildings and using established places like the Spider's Bite--really made it feel like a lived-in city, y'know?

I'm honestly kinda neutral on the idea of music comics, they can be tricky to pull off, so mostly I'll just say that I wish we would've been given a little less lyrics and a little more insight into Darren's reasons for wanting to come to Void University! Normally when you think of a musician coming to a big city, it's not to go to college, lol. So I'm left wondering why Darren is going to the university rather than, like, trying to make it big on the stage or something.

Congratulations on bringing Darren into Void!  I've already spoken with you in the voice chat about some things to consider for your future strips, but allow me to reiterate them here--

It's my opinion that when picking songs for comics, it's best to take the musical approach and select ones that help convey the emotion of the scene.  In addition to that, the lyrics need to stand well enough on their own that, if we're not familiar with the melody, we can still glean the meaning behind what was picked.

It will also be very useful to get practice in capturing movement with your character.  If he's performing in a song and dance routine, having motion lines or a slight smear can help punctuate the intended blocking.

But overall, this is a good starting point to build your skills upon!  I'm glad you were able to finish this comic and bring a fun birdman into Void.  Welcome!

Congrats on getting Darren in! I thought the story was cute, but was a bit confused on the font choice for Darren singing. It looks like a distorted font, which makes his singing a lot more ominous than what I think you were trying to bring across? Beside that, I really appreciated his ghost bird band coming out to help him out, and the variety of expressions you were able to express on a beaked face! I'm excited to see more comics. : )

My favorite part of this comic was all the cameos and references. It's always fun to see that kind of world building. As far as things to improve upon, I'd say with your backgrounds you want to either focus more on proper perspective or go for a rougher style that fits things not being quite right a little better. I think Flytee's a good example of someone whose style makes it work well when they eyeball perspective and backgrounds, because her linework brings life to her backgrounds in a way that counteracts any wonkiness that might exist there. I'd personally recommend spending some time with proper perspective though, because that'll help you get better at eyeballing it in the future.

I'm also not the most enamored with your font choices, especially for the backgrounds. It didn't match the perspective a lot of the time, and the way it just looks printed onto everything takes away from all of the different ways lettering appears in city environments. Buildings should have letters that look like 3D objects attached to the wall, or if they're painted on, there should be some imperfections to reflect the texture of the wall. The train station should have LED screens with glowing letters that reflect the kind of screen they're displayed on. Is it a dot matrix display? An LCD screen with set shapes like a clock that light up according to each character being displayed? A low-res computer screen with antialiasing and Windows 95-esque UI? There's so much variety to how letters can appear in the background, and I encourage you to explore that. Also just make sure it always matches the style of your art. If your art isn't super technical and exact, hand lettering (or even tracing over a font) will look more congruous with your style than a font pasted directly on the page.

I really like how you used shades of gray to clearly separate out elements. It can be really easy to make things muddy, but I think you did a good job there. I also appreciate the fact that you put effort into actually having backgrounds, and consistent backgrounds at that! Never in the entire comic was I left wondering where everyone was relative to the world around them. It felt like Darren was in an actual city, in an actual train station, riding an actual train. And in my book, that's huge!

To wrap it all up, I'm just happy that you finally got Darren accepted! Welcome to VOID... again! I can't wait to see more of Darren and where his story leads. I feel like you've just given us a brief glimpse of who he is, and I can't wait to see more!

Congrats on getting in! I'm looking forward to seeing what you do with Darren
I can't wait to see how you tell musical stories in a comic format, the possibilities have me really intrigued!  

Congrats!!

I'm really happy to see this Darren finally make it in officially! While I see what you were going for with all the details you put in the backgrounds, I hope you'll quickly pick up your own new ways to short-hand things and learn which information to spend time on or not. But putting yourself though the agony of rendering all that stuff shows your willingness to experiment and put in the hard work, even if it means learning the hard way. Congrats and hope you have a long and fruitful void career!

Hell yes! Good solid intro! I am curious who his voice claim is. :thinking: Always good to add more to the roster of musically-inclined characters Void has. Xia, Lilyfeather, Ghost and Cadenza to name a few and now we got Darren!

We need  Void Band! XD

It's so good to see Darren in!
You got knocked down and you came back swingin!

What a step up from your first attempt, congrats on getting in and more importantly pushing your self and your skills. good luck with your future comics and keep pushing yourself.

I know I said this already but congrats on getting in!! It’s been so cool seeing the upgrade from the first version you shared with us That establishing shot on the first page is SO good. I also find it pretty funny that Darren is like “it makes me wanna sing ” and then actually sings while the passengers just kinda stare.

I agree with most of the crits below so I won’t repeat them, but something that stood out to me is Darren’s wing-hands. Sometimes he appears to have human-like arms, ending in hands and simply having feathers up the sides, sometimes it looks like his feathers are the fingers. In closeups like on page 2, they don’t look like feathers OR fingers. There’s a bunch of animated movies you can reference/practice wing-hands from; off the top of my head, I can think of Rio as a good example.

Welcome to Void!! I'm so glad to see how far you came from your first draft!

Welcome, friend! Here's to growing alongside each other!

Heck yea time to fight the bird!

Seeing you go from what you had before to this shows that even in the span of like a week you improved just from feedback.

Grayscale is good the various backgrounds feel lived in and have detail.  There's more you could have done with the buildings to have them be less blocky but that'll improve with time and work.
The figures feel a little off at times to them I suggest doing some figure drawings to really work out getting the human shape down pat.
It is tricky to do a musical character in comic form and as you go with Darren i'd play up the feeling and mood of the song more than just having lyrics written on the page.  You have some opportunity for big emotions and maybe go abstract with musical comics.  The music should feel like a bigger part of the world Darren lives in.

All in all it's a great effort.  You already show potential.  You're gonna do well on Void (you have already)

AAAAAHHHHH HE

Wowie! You've really put in the effort and it shows. Delicious backgrounds.. I hope you work on lighting and shadows in the future to mKe shit pop. Not sure why Darren was the only color in the last panel page. It just felt sudden than a thematic thing.

Otherwise ITS DONE. BIRD UP!

It's been a long way time coming but you finally made it, welcome to EnterVoid my friend, and once you're here, you're here for Life :-)
Great job and I can't wait to see the zany musical adventures that await this bird in the coming years.

Woo hoo! welcome aboard THIS crazy train!