snagerYour traditional work brings such a fun energy that we just don't get enough of these days! I love how your loose style allows you to really play with facial expressions and other forms of emotional communication. I think my biggest gripe is that the watercolor looks really splotchy(?) in places. Which sometimes works and sometimes doesn't. I'd just make sure to focus on clarity and making your effects intentional. I don't know watercolors well enough to give you more specific advice, unfortunately, but as long as things are clear and easy to understand (unless of course there's a reason to make things unclear), I think you're on the right track. You have a bit of a similar issue with your lines, most notably in Amelia's office. There's just a level of wigglyness to those lines that makes it feel like you weren't entirely sure what you were drawing. I absolutely LOVE the denseness of that panel, though, and I think it fits your style so well. I love when artists include little details in their backgrounds, especially in scenes that show off a character's personality, such as their home or office space that they decorate. I ALSO love the punch line of this story, how Kurdis stresses out about getting this job only to find out there's no need for it in Void City because Void City is batshit insane basically. I'm hyped for more from you! DizI really dig the colors on this, although I feel like the browns sort of spoil all those vibrant cold colors. I'd love to see what this would look like with a more limited palette sticking mainly to blues and purples with that neat yellow/green contrast. it feels like a cyberpunk Halloween almost. Story-wise, I have to say that I feel like nothing really happened here. With such a short page count, I would have spent less time on setting the scene and more time on the action. An actual confrontation of some sort between Kurdis and Amelia would have been interesting, as would seeing what's going on in Amelia's mind that's got her so upset. I want to see more of what's going on inside her head! Also, I'm not sure if it's intentional or not, but her scary face feels like something right out of Adventure Time. I'd try to play around with that in the future so it feels more YOURS instead of feeling like an homage to someone else's work. I really do love Amelia and hope we get to see more of what's going on in her head and what she's doing with her life!

Snager: Your traditional art is cool. I think my favorite thing about your art is all the expressions you give Kurdis, they're really good and give so much personality to him. I do like your experimental layouts and constant pushing of them, but I do think page one was a bit confusing. Mainly the dialogue and the repeating imagery of the place at different views seemed to be out of order. However this was still a fun comic and i love that you keep pushing stuff and experimenting with this stuff. Invader Diz: good job on your first comics, this is really clean overall. writting wise there is a big pacing issue in that not enough happens on every page. each page only has 3 panels which is not enough panels. Standard comic pages should have somewhere between 5-9 panels on average. Most all these panels didn't need to be this big and could have been shortened. This could have been shortened to two pages and likely should have. You ideally want each page to end with a point of interest that makes the reader want to move onto the next page. All page one does is set up a barebones scene, there is nothing to interest the reader in moving on. Page two ends with a character following the noise, this is a more interesting set up for the next page and why all of this should have been combined into one page. Your clean style would lend better to smaller panels and more panels per page. It is good to see you getting into a comic rhythm and I look forward to seeing your future comics.

Nice first battle you two! Completing the comics is a huge hurdle in and of itself. Can't wait to see more!

Oh, Welcome both, I do enjoy new blood! Snager: I gotta say I always love seing trad comics on here. I am enjoying the colors quite a bit. The lineart is rather hard to read however. Its not complimentary to your colors, as they don't really serve their roll as to contain the colors and outline the shapes very clearly. It becomes rather messy and hard to read which makes your cool angles on page 2 a big disservice. Also I will say I quite enjoyed the silly punch line. Invader: The colors for this is rather pleasant. I like the pink and purple. Althought I am not sure about what you went with for for the grass. Puke green doesnt work w The perspective and surroundings feel rather flat and a look more like bit of a after thought. Writing wise, I am just gonna echo Kozi. I think you need to look up the place you wanna depict, to convey it better. And Short comics are fine, they are tricky thou, and I think the setup for the ending was rather...absent?. It was "Go into a house, GET OUT, Ok"

Heey, glad seeing and old friend and a new friend fighting each other for my entertainment. Snager- Your artstyle has a funky and natural feel to it that gives it tons of personality. I'd work on some of the clarity in terms of writing but overall it's a fun read Diz- Heck yea good to see you here. You have a good grasp of drawing characters and design but much of this comic could have been condensed into two pages. But keep it up since I want to see more from my oldest friend.

Snager i fucking LOVE this traditional art style theres something about it thats so like, raw and natural about it that really draws me in. The word bubbles got confusing, i didnt always know who was talking. Diz, pretty colours! the story didnt really seem to amount to anything or go anywhere but the layouts were nice, good composition. LOVE U GUYS KEEP FIGHTIN

This is what I love to see- two new kids going for first blood against EACH OTHER >=D Grats on your guyses first battle! Both sides are complete and in full color- no mean feat. Good on ya SNAGER- Aaa, its so great to see traditional comics. These watercolors are so radical. If you're up for spelunking and inspo I'd look up Hiemie and tinman's Toro Joe. some heavy hitter trad artists that really knocked my socks off. I'll have to echo the confusion of the double use of the dialogue on both pages. It was left re-reading and wondering if Kurdis suffers for deja vu? premonitions? It wasn't very clear. Still, I dig the strip mall environment and cramped conditions of Amelia's office. You definitely gave the world they were existing in a personality. I personally loved the exaggerated expressions, but I agree some of them didn't make sense in context. DIZ- I'm all for short comics. Sometimes the challenge CAN be relaying a story in so little, but I find the more you do it, the more creative artists tend to be. It sounds like you had plenty of preamble to set the stage in mind that just didn't come across. I never would've known where we were if you hadn't labeled the panel with 'New Orleans'. I'd suggest looking up references for montages or vignettes. It's a less linear and more loosey goosey method of getting a good deal across in very little time. I think the things you wanted to depict historically up to where Amelia is would've benefited with that method.

Hey Diz, I know you're not used to having constructive criticism, but since i have your consent, I'm gonna go for it. just take what I say with a grain of salt - people DO tend to hyper focus in on weaknesses in others that they are self-conscious of in themselves. AHEm. SO everyone noticed in yours what I was having trouble pinning down myself: Your comic isn't 'short' as in page number, but is less dense than we’ve grown accustomed to. as you learn more about comic design and sequential art, you'll pick up tips and tricks to condense more information for your audience to pick up on. Plot and story isn’t always connected dots on a story outline: sometimes story is atmospheric. Examples: Think of Rick Sanchez’ garage lab - it tells you a lot about the world-building of the whole show when you look at the details of the garage: that this is a normal sit-com suburb world, which whacky 80s sci-fi elements sprinkled in. It also tells us a lot about Rick and makes us ask questions about him: no one ever comes out in the show and says “If you’re so smart, why are you here on earth where you are clearly out-of-place?” But that idea IS the crux of the show. Or how about Invader Zim’s iconic plot in between two houses in the suburbs: The home of someone who thinks he’s blending in, but he sticks out like a sore thumb. On a subconscious level, Zim is always going to be a story about wanting to belong. So in comics, when we say ‘establishing shot’ we don’t always just mean ‘WHERE’ but also ‘WHY.’ That’s why some of the other critiques are calling your pages words like ‘vague.’ To tell everything you wanted to tell, you could have spent one page establishing the home - homes represent the 1950’s nuclear family. How you depict that home - run down, dirty, trashy vs. clean, humble vs. imposing, compensating - tells us how the story feels about the nuclear family. Your little house tells me that this was simply a poor neighborhood, but it doesn’t tell me if the family who lived there loved each other. Only that no one lives there anymore, but that they REALLY liked pink, which is a good first step. The next page should have told us more about the family - you could have included photos, their personal effects, damage to the property - all of those kinds of things tell a story, and if it reads (is drawn clearly and iconically) people will pick up on it on a subconscious level. It also would have given you more opportunity to set the mood, which I think for a first comic, should be a very simple one: loss, fear, sadness, compassion. BUT JUST ONE MOOD. One should also pick who their protagonist is going to be for this reason. It’s complicated to have more than one protagonist in a story, but people on this site and even more contemporary tv shows try to pull it off; make it so every character’s experience is ‘the experience’ at once, and that can muddle the story you’re trying to tell. When I saw your first page, I thought this was going to be a story about a dude feeling sorry for a ghost, which could have ended with him trying to talk to her only to have her not listen and get upset OR have her not even want to talk to him, so he just leaves her an offering or his well wishes, and have it end up in the air like so many creepy pastas and urban legends do: and they say if you wander down that street on your walkman, you can still hear her crying. Comics can be as simple or as complicated as you want - you can tell a lot of story with abrupt angles, scene direction, color, word placement and jam all that information in one big panel. Or, the other method, which is easier to learn, is you make all your panels the same size and uniform shape or there abouts and guide the reader’s attention by using the fine art of pacing: then we break out the crazier layouts on special occasions. Comics like that usually have a really mellow feel, and that can lend itself really well to the horror genre. It's important to read as many different comics as you can and read them with a critical eye: I can tell you know comics and cartoons and are trying to replicate things you’ve seen. You’re just starting out, so of course things won’t always work. But when we say ‘length’ again we don’t always mean ‘pages.’ I’m sorry I said to keep it to like 4 pages, because MY four pages are loath to have unutilized real estate, but YOUR pages and much more energy efficient. That’s just a personal preference thing artists do, and the people on this site tend to favor denser page layouts - but that can be hard to design when you’re first starting out. The tendency in comics right now (namely webcomics) is to spend a ton of energy on each individual page, panel and piece of dialog, and the mistakes I see MORE often on this site is people going overboard with that. “Four page story? Oh, you mean 100 panels?” Blame late capitalism, in which artists are paid ‘by the page’ and not ‘by how good the story is,’ and are expected to have it BOTH ways. So in the future, so long as you’re making these short sweet panels with all that breathing room, just let your partners know that the amount of information you intend to lay on a page is probably less than what THEY are going to be cramming in. As you learn more about layout and composition ect. You might start being one of those people who thinks 10 panels per page is just fine (spoilers, it’s not fine, they’re not fine, we’re not fine.) and for some occasions it might be. But for now, just recognize that comics are some of the most nuanced and hard to learn storytelling mediums out there and that you’re doing your best. Don’t give up!

Good critiques. Comic skill level is one thing that I want to be better at, and I feel like I made some stylistic choices that I like and didn’t like in retrospect. The only decision I’ll defend is the shortness, because we had both agreed to make a short battle and I wasn’t sure how to fit in a funeral, the death of a loved one, familial bigotry, and an intense desire to be left alone while wallowing in sorrow in her childhood home into 4 panels. Saying it out loud the choice would obviously to have had a tighter more concise concept for four pages. But you live and you learn.

OKAY here i go with my bullshit opinions. SNAGER - overall you know im happy to see more trad art, and i like your second page the best, the limited palette showed a lot of good understanding of value and contrast and man am I happy to see that, I hope you keep pushing that contrast cause it looks so cool with watercolors and the whole ethereal nature of it ESP when fighting a ghost like this. The whole interaction is very amusing and I like the power dynamic here. My only complaint is that I would like more! DIZ - This is pretty good for a first battle on this site! I like your want to use more neon and vibrant colors, and I think you can really make those stand out a LOT more by pushing shadows in your environments and on the characters, as it'll let the brights be BRIGHT and the darks give us better understanding of form and weight. I think this was a cute interaction but I didn't understand some of the details due to the shortness and... almost vagueness of it? I want to know more about why New Orleans is important, why was Kurdis there? (okay, maybe not WHY Kurdis was there, this is Void, home of the random encounter, after all.) Give me more to be invested in when you drop these little details! I'm a sucker for ghost characters, I have one myself!

Snager- your watercolors are so stylish and nice to look at! Really lovely expressions too! Your backgrounds look so charming and lived-in. Had a good time reading! Diz - I liked the pacing of your entry, but I can't help but feel that it's incomplete- it ends way too abruptly, and while short and simple stories are great, this felt way too simple. I really liked the light effect Amelia projects into Kurdis! Would have loved to see the house being darker to really see Amelia glow

Eyyy congrats on your first battle you guys!! Snager - God I love your goofy expressions. The Kurdis on the bottom left on page 1, pretty much all his expressions on page 2 and the last two on page 3, they’re great. I liked the gag, and I thought it was super cool to have Amelia light up her whole room with that light blue glow. Also liked that little subversion of “you look like you’ve seen a ghost” into “you look like you’ve NEVER seen a ghost.” I think the joke at the end worked fine without the same lines being shown on the first page though. All that did was confuse me. Was this a reference to the lines that would be said just two pages later? Kurdis is told to “come back”, so was this a different encounter that just happened to start with the same words? It’s pretty unclear. I didn’t get what was going on with page 2 either, with Kurdis saying he was underdressed and Amelia blushing. Also, be careful not to make everyone look goofy all the time, and only when it’s necessary! On that same page, just before Amelia blushed, I thought the face she pulled was out of place. It’s just so odd that she receives a compliment and in response pulls this wall-eyed, pupils in different directions look. Diz - This was pretty lacklustre for me, both story and art-wise. First of all, nothing really happened. When I got to the last page I thought wait, that’s it? Kurdis walks into a house, is told to get out and just says yes, the end. Even the simple premise doesn’t make much sense either, because you start the comic off with some spooky “oOOOOoooo” sounds, pretty typical for a ghost, but then Kurdis approaches? And says he heard someone scream? There was no screaming sound effect. And why would Amelia scream only to tell him to get out? It was also pretty short and simple for a two-weeker, iirc you finished super early, and I’m not saying you should be working manically right up till the deadline but I think you definitely had time to refine your script further or add something more to the comic. There’s no shading and not a lot of detail in the majority of the panels, which makes the environment feel kind of flat and boring. The house is pretty generic and doesn’t give any information about the occupant or why she’s in the state she’s in. I have very little sense of the environment Kurdis is in before he encounters the house. I see a shape that could be vaguely read as a city off to the right when we first see him, and it seems like you just gave up on drawing any more grass and opted for a square of green instead on his other side. I also don’t think such vibrant colours were a good choice for an ominous comic, unless you’re perhaps pairing them with spot blacks for a more dramatic effect. Sorry if this came across as harsh, it just seems a shame to me that you could have done so much more, because there were a few panels that you DID do shading for instance and they were great! Like where Kurdis stands at the door, his shadow casting in, and when Amelia jumps out and you an see her glow reflecting on his skin. The premise of this more ghoulish Amelia was also interesting and I’d have liked to see where that went or why she was in that state.

Good Luck both of you on your first matches here on Void, we all await to see what crazy stuff y'all got in store :-)

I like that this battle is both of ya'll firsts! Best of luck!

YOUR FIRST BATTLES I AM SO PROUD