dragon-dan, it's always cool to switch up a style, but don't do it for the sake of anatomy. i mean even people that stylize have to practice the anatomy to get what they're stylizing right, you know? and as far as reference for backgrounds? hey that's what the internet is for. well... partially for. remember too it doesn't necessarily have to even take place in the city. but all & all your side was pretty solid, just practice a bit more & i think it'll put you over the top! drawdan- same deal as the other haha i must say i did like the detail of the smashed ambulance a lot though! and the sense of weight you seemed to give stranger's tendrils. nice work! -J

WOW I'm busy! or at least I seem to be, I completely threw this comic at Wei like a hot potatoe and ran in the other direction :P To get back to everyone, Drawdan: I was shaking in my boots excepting a challenge from such a seasoned voider and frankly a more experienced artist in general. I'm glad though that this happened because damn did you draw the Stranger good. Which brings me to my other point; a big part of introducing The Stranger was to give other people a cool villian to draw fighting their character. I'm sitting here and yeah, it'd be nice if I won the fight but I'm just as stoked that you had fun! It was a very bracing challenge to draw so much I had little to no experience with. Re: crits - Anatomy, definitely not my strong point. I'm really thinking about kicking it over to a full on cartoon style ala Kozispoon, roflqu, and fence for a battle or two. I think I was trying too hard (or not hard enough?) to emulate Draw's style, and he did acknowledge that fussing over anatomy cost him background time. Backgrounds, I do consider it a point of pride that I had as many backgrounds as I did (even the ones on page 7 that were rushed like every part of page 7) I will say they are my biggest weakness because I'm bad with straight lines (ruler or not) but mostly because I live in Victoria which is just enough of a city to be called one but like the tallest building is 12 stories and it sucks I can't just go outside and grab a reference shot. Things like that, panel layout, and the marker work were all, in my opinion, sloppy because the first week of the challenge I was on vacation, and THEN I found the rule about first timers getting no extensions (sorry to worry you Draw) oh and lastly @ dimension, yes! I love drawing the stranger's tentacles (I call them obelisk limbs) I like the challenge of plotting something angular as it twists and winds around like a living thing. I have many more ideas up my sleeve for what he can do with them. Thanks for the warm welcome everyone. It's a great turn out, and I think my ego will survive all the apt criticisms. :D

Corny/Angie: Agreed, I don't want to discourage drawing any backgrounds and practice makes perfect. Dragon: I'm just saying that cityscape drawing could expand your visual catalogue of symbols, lending variety and character to the backgrounds. This would improve your comic environment, and make your backgrounds seem less like \"filler\" and more like cohesive settings.

I don't like arguing against critiques but in my experience, I learned how to draw backgrounds by battling. Sure my backgrounds were horrendous, but since I kept forcing myself to do them I got a lot better at them. It's better to try and fail then to not try at all since you'll learn from the experience.

Joshua I think that drawing backgrounds would help him improve. Sure, you don't /have/ to draw them every time, but the more you do them the better you get.

Dragon: I'm not feeling the marker technique in this. If your going to add values with marker, you have to be more mindful of the way you apply it. I can see your strokes! it is not as obvious on Dreds, but on the stranger; especially on the last page, I can just picture you scribbling in with prismacolor. Your values should read as values and not obvious marker strokes. Lines were pretty good overall, but some of your backgrounds.... again on the last page, the horizontal thin lines do not look so good. Try to stay away from doing backgrounds just because you \"have to\". they can really lend to a story, or they can hurt a story. While these set the scene and were mostly ok, in some places they hurt your comic's quality a lot. Draw some city scenes from life to get a better idea of how you could use city scenes in your comics. I think it will really pay off. Your fonts were pretty good, and I liked how strangers word bubbles were different, but don't cram so much text in a word bubble that it touches the sides, leave some negative space between lettering and bubble borders. Also sound effects could use some work, maybe draw rectangles and such in perspective as guidleines in light pencil, then do your lettering, using the guidelines. Pretty good story, but I feel Dreds could've put up more of a fight \"pushed to his full fighting potential\" a bit more, as is the stranger's objective for collecting battle data. Cool first fight though, pretty entertaining read and definitely an interesting and original character. Practice life drawing and keep it coming! Draw: That missing page helped for sure, i'll just say here that you draw the Stranger fuckin badass, i'll say more on the chia-hui battle.

Thanks for the crits all. I know I got skimpy on backgrounds on this one. I think I am trying so hard to perfect my comic book anatomy that I am loosing some life and energy in my figures. I will keep practicing and focusing on that in future battles. Thats why I love sequential art, theres just so many disciplins to master to pull off a good page. Good first battle dragon, I can tell that you put alot of effort in your battle. I know you were crunched on time too so good work. My crits mirror alot of what has already been said. I had alot of fun drawing stranger, I actually think he is kindof a bad ass as I clearly tried to portray in my comic. If Shredd was still drawing-it would have made a good battle between you and him. He was actually the first fighter Dreds ever faced! Keep drawing man, stranger is a cool addition to the Void city lieup!

Im sure the missing page is my fault, I was really tired when I uploaded my battle. since Im not having any luck getting hold of wei or toast here is the direct link for the page that should follow page 4 and lead into the battle with Chai-Hui http://i24.photobucket.com/albums/c23/Drawdan/strangerpage6.gif

I am still missing a page and I have had any luck getting a hold of wei or toast. Should I post it in the forums?

Nice guys --- No real comments, its all been covered. Keep it up.

IE crashed and I lost my comment... arrrr. dragon: I think the comic needs some clean-up, it's pretty grainy. Try messing with levels in Photoshop to get those clean whites and crisp edges. I also thought the tones were a little imbalanced; I think it's because Dred is pretty much all the same tone. Perhaps you could have brought a little more white into him. I thought the battle itself was sort of imbalanced; Dreds just got pounded and threw one-liners. I think balanced battles are more interesting than just one chharacter throwing all the punches. Other than that, I have no complaints. I look foreward to more battles from you. Keep working :3 drawdan: I thought some of the panels felt empty, as Angie mentioned. Page 2 is my favorite, but I think it could have had more meat in the form of backgrounds and such. The first panel of page 1 is the only one showing environment, but I think that could have been carried over into some of the other panels to really immerse the reader in that world. I can't really comment on story right now since your battles are all running together. I'll probably have more to say later on... I think your inks, at their finest (like page 2), are really nice.

@dragon-dan: Angieness pretty much covered the problems your had with anatomy and your backgrounds. I’ll add another thing about your backgrounds though…your lines on them didn’t look very straight, I recommend using a ruler. I really like how you draw Stranger’s limbs, the way they curve and all…it’s pretty awesome. Your coloring is nice too. I think this was good for your first battle, can‘t wait to see more! Nice work. :] @Drawdan: I left my comment about your side on your battle against Chia. :3

Dragon-dan-This was a good showing for a first battle! It was far better than your intros which I was glad to see. Try to spend more time on your backgrounds, they should be on par with your foreground. Also be careful with some of the anatomy, it was a little rough on Dreds in some areas, I think it was mostly the arms being a little odd and the head being too large. Also watch your perspective, some of the shots I can understand where it would be difficult to get the perspective accurate and practice makes perfect. I hope your next battle goes a bit further storywise but we're all guilty for not doing super in depth stuff right off the bat so don't worry about it too much. Drawdan-well I won't comment on the story too much since like you said, there's a page missing, try contacting Wei to get that fixed. I did find it very neat that you had this battle intersect with your battle with Carlito, I just wish you would have pushed it a bit more. It's worth trying again in the future to see how far you can take it. I did feel like the art slipped in this, there was quite a bit of negative space. And the lines just weren't as strong as your previous offerings.

the battle is finished saint...in another battle....and a page is missing

and a page is missing..

Dragondan. That was a really good read. I love watching huge monster things going on rampages. The only thing a bit weird was around pages 3 and 4 the guys looked like giants for a few panels. Drawdan. Shame you didn't get to finish. Judging from what you got, your technique is amazing but, something about the comic seems corny. Like I mean, I could go through your comic without reading and know exactly what they're gonna say at any time and I could guess whats gonna be in the next panel without looking at it. But the bit where the thing \"cooms\" him in the head is still cool. Just try think outside the box more I think.

Ok ..the prolouge is supposed to go BEFORE the comic..If you could fix that wei or toast that would be cool. Keep in mind folks the stranger battle runs right into the chai-hui battle.

not bad battles on either side. Dragon-dan: I liked yours quite a bit, it shows alot of potentional. Nearly every panel had a background which not alot of the boiders can say they do. also the grey markers worked well and the inking wasn't too bad, minus some rough lines, but that just takes pratice. What i would say though is you need to work more on the basics, so perspective, anatomy and all that jazz. but the main issues that needs to be fixed is the panel design, layout and angles. With each panel being a square/rectangle it starts to bore the reader, also with page 3 having all the panels layed out vertically and horizontally level with each other could confuse the reader as they could start reading the panels downwards insted of from left ro right. also try and lead the eye of the audience with the text bubbles and content to the direction to the angle and off to the next panel. for example on the same page, the 3rd panel of just the metal limb could of worked alot better (comicwise, probelly not storywise, but this is an example) if it was fliped around so the eye follows the point to the next panel insted of going off to the left of the page. and finaly add some instresting angles to your work. look from above, below, behind, eyeline, birds eye, ANYTHING! mix it up a bit, just keep it readable, but exciting. Other then that it's just basic issues that you will fix over time with just practice. good job. Drawdan: Artisticly it's pretty slick and i'm loving the backgrounds and the crash scene. that bit was hot. i'lld just say get your lines blacker when you scan it or on whatever image program you use as they fade out against the pure black of the bleed. Also page 1 was pretty much awesome, but stranger is introduced a bit quick and page 2 could of worked alot better if those pointed panel type things where leading the eye towards the impact. (well the first one works as it points to the dudes face, but the next one goes off to some black space.) Thats all i can think of in the crit department. Not bad man, not bad at all. (minus the cheesey lines, but thats kind of a trademark for drenauts comics ;] )

i tried to get you an extension, but I dont think it went threw only because your fighter is new. Did you get it in?

Congrats and getting into void dragon-dan. I thought you'd disappeared. Good luck on your first battle. I can't wait to see what you Dan's come up with.

ahaaa....nice

Shredd really let himself go didn't he... oh yeah I said it!

go Dragon! Go Draw! Go Dans! Waiting for this one!

Just as I knew I would, I am having fun drawing the Stranger..When I am done with my comic..he will be feared...

Drawdan...yer nuts. I love you. Dragon-dan. The best of luck, it's always a blast to see fresh meat. You got one hell of an interesting fighter there. OFF TOPIC: I wouldn't be surprised if some nutcase would actually count the name Dan in Void and list them in the forums, lol

Corny, yeah, I got a lot of requests but drawdan just threw down a challenge and I ran with it. I do plan to address everyone who was nice enough to hitlist me when I joined. ... and, you know, do THIS battle >_>

Shish...wow..you're brave^^ Wish you good luck Drag

Worry not phill...its only a 3 page min. on each and the two battles will blend together. I am treating it like one big battle.

Be careful now Draw, 2 battles at once as impressive it may be, mean you've got double the amount of work. Dragon this is your first fight, it took you quite a while to get in too, give us your all! May the battle of the Dan's commence!

I feel betrayed D: Naw I'm just joshing. I wish you both best of luck.

Ohhh man, this is gonna be sweet ;D good luck to you on your first fight dragon-dan! :3

Ta quote Wyatt in one of the greatest westerns..ever...\"you tell'em Im comin and Hells comin with me, ya Hear!! HELLS COMIN WITH ME!!\"

A MAD MAN, I SAY.