Inwrot a comment earlier and then it got eaten by then internet so I'll try and boil it down into it's essence Dani: I like the idea but the dialogue implies Veronica has a use for Sehema that only she could fill, otherwise she would have a.) Attempted to kick her out of Caelum already and b.) Would have already filled the role with someone or something else. So my big question is why Veronica needs Sehema SPECIFICALLY. it's not about having a clean up crew or powerful assets, Veronica has those. Having a pet vampire might be an interesting status symbol but, again, isn't necessary to Veronica, so I'm wondering why she's fighting so hard to keep Sehema. Artwise I will reiterate what's been said about backgrounds. That first panel has surprisingly little City for an establishing shot of cealum city. And in a lot of the later panels I am completely lost as to who is where or how they got there. Kura, I dig the art and the idea behind it. My issue is that it just feels so EASY for Veronica. I can see her winning out in a game of with as she did, though I agree with Jii that more drama is needed, but my issue really comes in with the mind control, because she just breaks free so easily. I don't doubt that Veronica has a will strong enough to do it, but then it's surprising it didn't happen earlier. If it was that easy for her there's no way Sehema would have gotten away with it later ng enough to get Veronica all the way out there. If there was some semblemce of a struggle to regain control it would make more sense that it lasted long enough to get her to the manor. In get that you don't want to distract from the main event but I feel like I had to address it.

i've been peer pressured by fiendish scallywags to comment Dani: I really like what you're going for in a lot of the panels that you personally sketched. Even if your linework could be improved, there's a lot of great detail you're capturing anyway, which I love. I can't pin it down, but, also, there's something about the writing and the dialogue here that I also really like. You've got a ton of potential, is what I'm saying! To point at specific aspects though, I'd definitely say two things. One, the speech bubbles on page 1 are all kind of weirdly cramped in a way they aren't on the other pages, like where in panel 3 the tail doesn't go anywhere in the direction of Veronica's mouth, but in panel 4 it's a bit too close, and in panel 2 Sehema's mouth is closed — That's all kind of nitpicky, but it all being on the same page kind of struck me weirdly. Secondly, if you can't color or shade, I think this lineart is a bit too thin to feel comprehensive. Everything's a bit too airy, especially in comparison to the thickness of the word bubbles. Other than that though, it's great! Kura: yooooooo i love this layton+zero escape-ass setup it's BRILLIANTTTTTTTTTT. i will always stan for a comic based entirely around a really good puzzle. The vagueness of everything is a bit of a turn-off though, as nothing is really implied about Sehema's motives at all - granted, she isn't your character.

Kura, this was beautifully drawn and inked, and I loved the puzzle aspect, I thought it was very clever! I'm Intrigued to see more of Veronica's dealings with the vampire society, shes just smart enough to make it out alive! Dani and Golden, for a debut comic for sehema I wish it had been a little more finished, but veronica as a first fight really set the tone for the character! Cant wait for the next one!

Welp, guess I'm chiming in. Team DaniGold - Alright so I understand that the comic and a whole was incomplete and inconsistent in quality due to factors relating to problems with coordinating between you two and overall lack of organisation. Let this battle be a lesson that you need to at least nail out a process and milestones for working on this comic within a deadline. This applies even more since this is a joint effort. Furthermore, there are areas that, as pointed out earlier, are actually better looking rough sketches and such than the inked things. I'm not sure what is going on, because I'm sure I've seen way better inks before in Goldie's previous works, so I'm making a guess that this was a result dani's first foray into planning out a comic on a short deadline. In that case, I hope you take whatever you've experienced in making this comic and work out a better process for future comics. Also, background cues. Even a suggestion of a table or wall or something behind a character can help a lot with character placement and perspective cues. Kura: Alright dude, you've shown me the stuff and I didn't make much noise about stuff because it's planned out already and you are on a strict schedule. And overall, I think it was still a good read. What I do believe, however, is it can be better but to do so requires you to take another look at your own writing style in general, exposing yourself to more stuff and then applying things observed into it. What I'm saying is the thing needs more *drama*. Well, maybe drama is a bad word for it and what I mean has more to do with pacing, setup and reveal, but this is what I mean: At this current state the comic goes like this: Veronica gets in and meets Sehema, they banter and decide to play a game, rules are established, Sehema explains her devious trap plan in thoughts, plan enacted, Sehema falls over, Veronica explains her counter-plan after the fact, Veronica leaves cooly. All good, it's fine. Here's an alternative: Veronica gets in and meets Sehema, they banter and decide to play a game, rules are established, Sehema explains her devious trap plan in thoughts, plan is enacted, Sehema is convinced she has won and looks at veronica expecting her to fall over, Sehema falls over instead and is confused as all hell, before figuring out herself what Veronica has done as Veronica leaves cooly with a one liner. What I have presented is a moment for dramatic tension, to let it sink in that Sehema thinks she's has it all made before taking that away from her. This was what the comic was lacking with your decision to save time and work by using a few big panels with both characters over multiple panels of Sehema looking composed before losing her shit(and bowels). And this is why my suggestion for you is to look through more different types of comics and manga and see how it's pulled off in terms of panel layouts, compositions, character moments, pacing, etc.

This comic originally started off as a riddle that I intended for the audience to solve along with Veronica. The first draft was based on a poison riddle i found online and had Sehema with the even numbered vials and Veronica with the odd numbered vials. However, re-reading the riddle, the solution kept making less and less sense. So from there it evolved into a battle of wits where Veronica uses my counter-solution to the original riddle solution used by Sehema. My number one priority was to keep the rules clearly explained to the reader...which was an extremely difficult task thanks to both characters speaking like pretentious bitches. I believe making the game more complex would not be an ideal solution in this case... I was already struggling to keep track of a trade involving four identical wineglasses. the super gay panel was my creative workaround for this problem.

Schema team: While it’s a shame you couldn’t complete the comic it’s good you managed to put the whole story there. I mainly want to focus on page 2. It interests me because it mixes the clean lines with the messy ones and I think it works for this page as a form of indirect storytelling. It feels like as Schema loses her temper the page itself gets more messy which is kind of cool and even if unintentional I kind of want to see this implemented in future comics, where scenes of calm are the clean lines and when Schema starts to lose her cool the panels become that sketchy style. It’s an interesting thing you could use for indirect storytelling. Also I like how you developed the story for the Schema as well, quickly getting her multiple relationships with other characters. Majikura: Reading your stuff feels like I’m reading an actual manga which is pretty awesome. I love your inks and you make black and white comics feel complete without color which is something I want to strive to eventually. This story was also a good fun well written magna story. However it did follow a common manga story trope, and some people may know that formula too well and enjoy your story less because of it. That formula being what I’ll call the danger gamble. Step 1: antagonist proposes a game/gamble that will allow the protagonist to get want they want if they want with some serious stakes on the line. Step 2: The rules of the game are explained Step 3: We see the antagonists thoughts and what they plan to do as well as what they expect the protagonist to do. Step 4: game happens and things don’t go the way the antagonist planned. Step 5: Protagonist explains what they did that was different. You watch way more anime than I do so I imagine you have seen this a bunch and it definitely influenced your writing for this comic. I think you did this trope pretty well and I like this stuff I enjoyed how you did it. I think you did what you set out to do and made a good comic with that. But if you unintentionally followed a formula closer than you would would have liked, here are some ideas for avoiding that. First of all realize the trope you’re following and fully understand it, once you do you will know how to change it. Next time you could try making a game that says something about the characters. The game would potentially need more exposition since it would have to be more complex than this because when a game has more options the options the characters choose say more about that character. Something I realized while writing this crit is that I can’t really recall a time you used symbolism in your comic. Of course you have way more stuff than what I have read, but it in your comics you always show what’s happening and describe it with exposition. If you want to branch out in your writing I think you should get out of your comfort zone and try describing a situation with a symbolic image or show someone's mindset through some symbolism. Your character is called Nightingale so it would make sense to have some bird imagery in your comics, yet I can’t recall it any of your comics having that imagery. If you want to try something different with your writing I think experimenting with symbolism will be a good way to test your limits and improve your writing. That being said, your writing and art are already at a level you could make a legit manga style comic, but everyone can always improve.

Before I forget!! Sehema is a ‘joint’ character, meaning I worked on this alongside Danibot ; v ; I provided various sketches on pages 2, 3, 7, and 8, as well as the inked panels on 8. I helped edit speech bubbles, as well as cleaning paneling a bit. That’s about all I did, the rest was Danibot~

@danibot Opening your comic, first thing i notice is that you really went all out on this background, like you can see the effort, and honestly that looks just great!!! I feel like this establishing shot however could still be improved if you didnt have so much empty space to the left. Putting some trees, some electrical wire things, or even a view of the road going onward, could heighten this a bit! I feel like playing with your ground level could work wonders for you. The quality of the people art changes a bizarre quite a bit at a number of place, I'm particularly confused by how for a few panels here and there, the line quality grew messier and the anatomy improved drastically, it looks like a completely different artist drew those parts, especially since not even the braids have the same sort of consistency as the rest of your art? If this is a different technique you're using for those parts, stick with it, because better line consistency, seems less rigid and things overall look a lot better. Usually your anatomy of things seems a bit wonky especially in the facial region so i highly recommend looking into doing more studies. Especially on faces, see how other people make em work, because face type stuff is heavily important. I notice one thing you tend to do, is elongate the portion of the head where the face ends, to where the jawbone line and ear starts, rather heavily, I highly suggest working on that a bit, cuz i feel something just like that could help a lot. A big example is the duo headshots in page 4 I won't judge you on your more unfinished pages, cuz it happens, we get it, I love the part where Sehema has the evil sparkle eyes The last two pages especially turned out well... I very much wonder how the art quality can fluctuate this much, it seems off, and ive never seen anything like this? o-o @Kura Happy to hear you were able to have fun with the comic. Anyway, first impressions, very good page that gives off a lot of distinct texture and looks nice... In page three however, the first panel causes some confusion, like... Is Sehema in front of Veronica or behind, is Veronica suppose to be looking at her, or like the exact opposite way? The composition here makes it a bit confusing to tell exactly. One thing if anything that could use improvement that I can think of is the way you draw faces. The up close shots seem to have a bit of a tendency to have a disconnect from your art, possibly due to the simplistic feel against the rest of your art? It can be a bit of a bizarre transition at times, and doesnt feel like there's much life to the expressions, and not always, but having read your comics, i know for a fact that times like the closeup of Sehema on page 4 can happen quite a bit where it feels like the face is just not in the proper location. Overall however on most occasions it feels like your faces are missing something that causes them to feel off. On page 4 as well, the lower down drawing of Veronica is one of the best faces ive seen from you, that seems to fit well with the rest of the art. However despite that critique, everything in this is very very well done, the backgrounds all have clear attention and care put into them, and my eyes keep being drawn to the well drawn hands you've put in your arsenal for this battle. Overall great comic, the story in the end was a bit predictable as soon as you got to Sehema explaining her plan, and was easy to tell what Veronica would do, but overall it was a fun read and well done ANYWAY, congrats you two on a neat battle, and good job Dani getting through your very first one!

I honestly hate that I had to submit this unfinished but I have to admit I underestimated a lot of things here. Despite that, I truly had fun writing for Veronica and hopefully people will still be able to follow the story. I've learned a lot with this being Sehema's first comic and I just hope I get better from here. Thank you Kura for the opportunity!

uploaded. This is possibly the most fun I've had writing a comic on this site.

HYPEEEEE!!! I'm so excited to see these two interacting!

oOH THIS IS FINALLY A THING I AM HYPE GOOD LUCK FRIENDS

BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOI HOWDY!!!!!!!!! I'M FREAKING PUMPED FOR THIS!!!!

Oooh? What's this? I am excited to read this!

Oh-hohohohohohoho