Right, so, as promised
Kura and Shen: This is a nice story. I enjoyed it. In a way you got a case of the "this entry would have beaten many opponents, but not this one" bad luck. That's okay!
It's a nice and cute little story that moves along briskly enough. I enjoyed the jokes ("All that and you missed???", the bow gag was adorable, the epic arrow, etc) and I enjoyed how you ran with Hiemie and Tinny's canon. This is where my issue came in, though: Creativity. You gave me a nicely drawn and enjoyable story that borrows too much from your opponents, imo. It's cool of you to acknowledge their canon, but too much of it informs your setting and how things play out, I didn't really feel like you made it your own. A good example actually would be Hiemie continuing to use his flying James Bond villain desk. Sure it works, but that dude has no attention span and is always playing with some new maddening toys. It felt a bit ho hum to just take so many of the elements from their first SLAW comic as is without reform or a personal spin.
This is made more apparent when the story is about the girls trying to finish a school assignment, and thus the SLAW chaos becomes more like window dressing. In their comic Hiemie and Tinman took your characters and made them an invaluable part of the narrative, to the point that the story wouldn't be the same without them. The SLAW chaos in this comic, however, could just as easily been a Great Chicago Fire-esque blaze, or an earthquake, or whatever. You imported a great deal straight from hiemie and tinny's work and didn't change or engage much of it, nawmsayn
Still, I liked this comic. It's been a while since I've read it and I still vividly recall many elements, like the pitch perfect comic timing on the whole stretch of comic from the "make me a bow" scene all the way to the arrow decimating Angus's airship.
TINMAN: I was wondering if that was the purpose behind the lack of detail in those characters. Perhaps it could have been made just a little bit clearer that that's what was going on, but knowing your intention, now that panel makes perfect sense. :)
Let's see....a LOT of things rolling in my head after reading both. The stories, just absolutely wonderful. And what was this, a page-count tournament? Haha...okay. No seriously, every page was great.
Hiemie/Tinman: Let me say a couple things before I rattle on about whatever. I feel this story would have been Void's best INTRODUCTION to the characters of EnterVoid that I've ever read. Without looking up the character's information, a ton of them have been introduced only with a sentence and picture effectively. I also want to note the moment I read the last panel on page four, the theme song to the kid's show "The Magic School Bus" popped in my head. I think a slightly different text might have been better when some of the dialogue was 'electronic', just to point the difference. Just drawing the shape of the dialogue box a little different might not be effective enough either. That's because in a ton of panels, the line width of the speech bubbles are very similar to the line widths of the drawing itself, so they begin to blend together a bit, and all you see is floating text (therefore, emphasizing the text would probably be more effective). On page three, the cut-out panels in the middle was probably unnecessary. I think you could have zoomed in on the moon on one panel and zoomed out to show it was actually the fish+hook thing. When you have a cut out panel, it usually indicates a slightly changed scene, so in my opinion, sticking both panels together would have made a better impact. Might have been a coincidence, but I felt the expression and eye contact with the characters in this comic are much better too, congrats.
Kura/AnimeShen: This story had a wonderful pace that I'm personally used to (because of the comics I read on a daily basis). I loved when Satin made a bow for Lilyfeather. Whoever is shading on the pages with solid blacks and shadows, make sure you carefully figure out what you want to shade first, and how it will look like. Texture, shadows, and objects give off different kinds of shadows. You may consider looking up 'Volumetric lighting'. I think that's the term which kind of describes adding shadows that can represent volume/depth. Since I can't say if a lot of it was intentional or not, I won't point any pages, and tell you that it's just something you should look up and study on. BUT if you want to keep it consistent, make sure if you add shadows to metal, that you do it to the entire piece of metal.
Some drawings are a bit inconsistent with size. The scale of the dinosaur on page 18 and 20 are way too dramatic. I don't want to point out specific pages, but you two should decide how Satin's face should look like--hair is long and whiffy, or face is pointy or chubby. Even if you two are different artists, I still think you should consider it a bit. A little bit of proofing together before doing the final work will help this drastically. Even if this is a wonderful effort of teamwork, the fact that you decided to make it black and white as well as have pages of both your work mixed together gives me the idea that your intention was to make the pages consistent with each other like one set.
EvilEye: Thanks for noticing the speed and tension we worked to create in our pacing. Trying to capture a citywide evacuation and large scale event in a compressed format of one round was a challenge, but we had to make it personal and relatable on the individual level as well- hence the rotating Toro/Satin/Lily scenes against the crowd pages. Glad the transitions were clear and you caught the convergence in the end. While we could have decompressed the Evacuation into another round, I’d rather keep things moving- than stagnate on any one idea or place for the whole of the tournament. DRIVING EVER FORWARD! For diversity’s sake as an artist but also because there is SO MUCH STORY to be told yet!
Kura/Shen:
It was a treat to battle creators of such caliber as yourselves. You crafted a tale that ties in so many SLAW elements and feels very much like a comic we’d have made, tying smartly into our cannon of events and expanding the world of Void with so many cameos and subplot threads strung together throughout. Great minds think alike where the development of Satin is concerned, and I hope we did her justice. I enjoyed your depiction of Toro Joe and Hiemie and the bravado with which they accomplish their mad agendas. The scale on which the battle takes place is impressive as well, though I’d have liked to have seen more of the city, your characters always expressive and well spoken. I look forward to your advancements in plot from here on out as always.
Bobo: The page 16 you were referring to is intended to represent a spiritual plane, ghostly souls passing through stages of life and unlife, past, present and future as indicated my their color schemes. Its an odd and symbolic effect I’ll admit was quite experimental and conjured on the fly. Glad to know the colors make my art pop, as I start to do more of my own. I’ll see what I can do about pushing my style closer to my esteemed partner’s ink work. If nothing else these rounds are huge challenges in pushing my limits and being experimental in format and mediums. Its quite liberating. Had to include some Wacky Races elements for the Convoy Exodus, I’m currently on a mechanical drawing kick.
Pyras: Thanks brother, we’re still sorting out our palettes for the sake of clarity and complexity. Taking color into account when doing my linework is admittedly a fairly new equation to wrap my mind around.
Fed: Yeah, we tried to streamline some plot threads to keep it all aligned between the larger meta plot Exodus and Toro’s character development with the girls. We’d actually planned for another 5 pages or so that we ended up cutting out in the interest of not being tangential and keeping it to a bearable length.
Coatl: Thanks for the kind words Bronesto. Two weeks of pedal to the metal is hard on a body but we shall try to keep up the pace for you!
I don't think Hymes/Tinny's comic has any fat at all. There are a lot of spreads and establishing shots and so forth, but all of them contribute to the increasingly panicky and chaotic atmosphere. The story itself (as in actual plot development, not the concept) moves so quickly that it almost straddles the line of TOO compressed, imo. With that said I felt it fell well on the side of "briskly paced but good" rather than "too quick to savor it".
Joe's arc permeated the story as an anchor point perfectly and the psychedelic nature of his Turn was gorgeously rendered. Following Hiemie's antics (and a few other Murphys in cameos) during the evacuation made the opponent characters' ministory feel like part of something bigger rather than just a bus trip in a traffic jam and gave a sense of mounting lunacy. The sectioning points for the jumps from one plotline to another were crystal clear and well-chosen. Lastly the Ark takeoff and Joe's narrow escape made for a perfect and tense dovetail for the plot threads.
This is a True Comic Length void battle, and it shows. With a little more time to work on the art itself I think this would be as good as anything you'll find in a shop and I now count this story as one of the comics I follow as ravenously as my ongoings. I just LOVE this comic.
(I'll critique the other one later, I was just spurned to respond to Fed. Plus I got studying to stop-fuckin-procrastinating already)
Tinman&Hiemie: Great art as always, but the story could use some trim. Chopping away the "fat" and making a more streamlined story would make for better entertainment in my opinion. Still, as others has said, impressive effort in the time you had!
Kura&Shen: Your art is a bit flat, the lineart is clever and crisp, but it needs more depth and "roundness" (if that makes sense?). As with Toro&Fish the story could use some "trimming", but overall I found it a more enjoyable read.
Tinman/Hiemie: Go Toro! I can't think of concerns for improvement really. There were some pages that probably could have used more than a single color shade. I'm excited to see what happens next.
Majikura/Animeshen: Solid story overall as well, I think the art suffered more in this round than in last round, though. You could have probably cut the page count in exchange for stronger overall pages. There's alot more empty space in this comic as well, I imagine time didn't help with this. Some of the jokes, like the one in the last page, were great.
Credits for Critiques Sake
Plotting/Scripting- Hiemie/Tinman
Cover: Colored Pencils- Tinman
Pages 3&4,14,17 Hiemie
Page 13 Hybrid page- Tinman/Hiemie
Page 14 Collage and Watercolors- Hiemie
Pages 15&16 Inks/Watercolors/Collage- Tinman
All other pages- Inks by Tinman, Watercolors by Hiemie
Track list for your listening pleasure!
Huey Lewis and the News- Hip to Be Squarehttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LB5YkmjalDg
Beach Boys- Surf Cityhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Byzq9HdaROg
Electric Six- Rock and Roll Evacuation http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vtH3DJ8Dyyg
Thank you for reading, commenting and voting on our little comic.
*cracks knuckles* Here we go.
Hiemie and TINMAN: You did not disappoint! Even though there were a few rough spots (the bottom of page 16 especially stood out to me as unfinished), I feel like the overall quality of art in this round improved from last round. Adding color to a lot of Tinman's stuff improved the ease of reading for me, because it helped distinguish characters and other page elements better than just the black and white could have. The biggest beef I still have is the jarring effect that comes from switching between Hiemie's thick, solid linework and Tinman's thin, sketchy linework. I think if Tinman would thicken up some of his lines and make them darker, it might mesh a little better. As for the story... WOW! I was anxiously awaiting the next installment of this story, but I was in no way expecting this turn of events! Pretty much everything caught me off guard, and I'm really interested in knowing what happens next. I also really love the vast number of cameos you've got in there, especially the Wacky Races references, which were fun to see. I applaud your efforts to involve all of VOID and can't wait to see more from both of you!
Kura and Shen: Another HUGE page count comic that didn't leave me wanting! Your art quality dropped quite a bit from last round, as several pages looked rushed. It's a real shame, because the more polished pages looked wonderful! I have to at least applaud your efforts to include backgrounds even on some of those less finished-looking pages. As for the story, I enjoyed seeing how you incorporated your continuing plot with the Eviction plot and tied it all together quite nicely. I enjoyed even more the development of Satin. Since I was around for that death match against Ivan, her confusion of love and bloodlust is something I was hoping you'd address soon, especially since it seemed like she just magically stopped being evil last round, so this round made things a lot easier to understand. I love the blossoming relationship between these two girls, and that's the strongest point of this comic. The lengths they each went to do help each other (including an appreciated reference to my battle with Hugo hahah) were very endearing. I felt like the premise of Lilyfeather waking the dead was a little forced, but it was worth it to see Agent Black and all those other oldies coming back. I enjoyed seeing how you used Murphy's Law, especially bringing Angus into the story. The fourth-wall references were fun, even though it felt out of place for a non-Cue comic (but since Cue was at least in there for one panel, I guess that's enough to make it count). Overall, I really enjoyed your story, and the humor was great, but the drop in quality took the punch out of some of the more intense parts.
Ok, when the cover arrives, (which is almost done), we should be all uploaded.
I had to reorder some of the pages. The page file names might look wonky, but this should be the intended order.
Hiemie:
Said earlier last week: "Oh hey Matt, you're gonna be in Arizona the first week of round 2." "Oh, well, hopefully I'll get lucky and not face Kura"
Oooooh crap! Who's going to win the eviction battle?!
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