The Void On Air group critique and discussion for this comic can be found here at 1:20:30 featuring Thresher, TINMAN, Kura, AmanitaZest and Docpye. http://youtu.be/a1DX4A36OM0?t=1h20m30s
GREGLY- I gotta say, that first page brought a smile to my face. You really put some TLC into that establishing shot of the city which is really great. Also it wasn't just a straight on shot, the buildings were drawn at various angles making it interesting to look at-good on ya! Following through to the second panel where you can still see the city in the window, but we've moved onto a different location was a very smooth transition as well. The visuals alone already tell us that Gwen and Regi are a point of interest for your opponent and that he's been keeping an eye on them in one respect or another before its even alluded to in the conversation. Definitely a great first page by all accounts.
I'm ever a fan of black and white/grayscale, but I will have to agree with the other comments here that I'd watch how you use 'em. The white is rather striking and kind of detracts from your artwork. I find myself going to the word bubbles first before the panel itself! Give the WetMoon comic series by Ross Campell a look-see. He has a very lovely handle of grayscales and how and when to use pure striking white when needed. Definitely a fine reference if you're looking for one.
your cameos were adorable and Merricks Regi cosplay was all kind of amusing. The story was bittersweet and raised just enough questions to keep the reader interested, but not feel like they missed out by the time they got to the last page. Very well done!
POCKETMOUSE- Short and sweet, but still just as striking. I've found your chunky flowing inks to be an acquired taste that I'm enjoying the more battles of yours I read. Also found it amusing a withes lair turns out to be a trailer, haha! I like that your fighter really lends itself to exploring any aspect of your opponent which is evidenced here in older Gwen and broken down Regi. Updating her outfit, going heavy on the witch familiars with the cats and the general magic of how she behaved really shows a respect to your opponent, but with your own creative flair. I especially loved the fourth panel on page two where she's magically making Merrick in a drink in her kitty cup.
such a sweet and even casual encounter between the two. Definitely a match up that'll be tough to vote on!
These are really good for one-weekers! Nice and complete battles, story and quality-wise.
Gregly: Glad to see you managed this amount of pages in such a short time! The ">:V" face on the monster is just adorable and I loved the little twist at the end. The shading here could use a bit of work, I would say it mainly needs more contrast. If you are using Photoshop don't be afraid to just pop in to the Brightness/Contrast tab and adjust it. This can also apply to colour as well!
Pocketmouse: The bg's do need a bit more love but it doesn't bother me too much for a one-weeker. Overall it's short, sweet and memorable.
Your character is growing on me. I have to admit the first few times when he was around I was like "uhh I don't understand who exactly this guy is, he's jumping around too much!" but now I'm kinda seeing it as part of his charm. I love how you interpret each of your opponent's characters differently as Merrik travels through time and you always manage to create a great atmosphere to integrate them in.
Gregly: I enjoyed this story, especially the cliffhanger on the end. I really find Gwen and Regi to be such lovable characters. Compared to your other work though, I feel the lines are still a little bit on the pixellated side. I'm wondering if you did the lines by hand, drew it on the computer, or is your scanner's fault. But when you figure out how to smooth out the lines, I think your work will get s super boost. The text in the beginning would have been done a lot better in the computer, since the typography was meant to look 'digital' in the first place. But if you do it by hand, you may want to whip out a ruler or a Ames Lettering Guide. Either one is still tedious, but is a good helper when you need it.
Pocketmouse: Gwen looks a bit too old in this comic (unless this is the future Gwen). Some colors spill over past the beautiful black lines. Some of it is okay, but some parts, like panel three on page three you should watch out. I'm assuming you colored the thing using a brush instead of a selected fill tool. If you're using Photoshop, try pressing ctrl+backspace(background color), or alt+backspace(foreground color) hotkeys for filling in colors, with combination of the lasso tool.
Both of your comics had emotional undercurrents, which was great! I really liked how you portrayed each other's characters in your own ways that really make them fit into your worlds.
Gregly, your ending made me so happy! From the icons, I didn't realize your pages would be colored; that was really nice to see. You did a good job coloring, and the backgrounds look awesome, but you have some improving to do with photoshop.
Potcketmouse, I like your color choices, but some of the color fillings get a little too messy for me. Also, you have an awesome inking style.
Gregly, I like how comfortable you are telling your stories although I was getting worried before I got to the end. Without the twist at the end, this might have fallen flat. You make a real great effort to fill in the backgrounds and detail them which is awesome. The quality overall though is a bit lacking and the shading muddles the pages. Remember that white is your brightest color here and because everything is so dark, anything you make white is basically gleaming like the sun. So this distracts a lot when Gwen shows up because up to that point everything has been either one of two shades of grey. Either way this was a lot for the short amount of time you had, the story flow was great and you made a great effort.
Pocketmouse, your entry was really short but I love the quality of it. I was really fond of Gwen's design here and the color scheme is great and eye catching. You're able to fake perspective well enough that it's not a super obvious issue but some proper work would go a long way. As angie mentioned, play around with the shading some more to increase depth. I did like the story but was disappointed by Merrick's role in it. It doesn't feel as if Merrick's own story has advanced much and instead has been advanced for him. Though you leave some nice clues in the dialogue that are worth exploring. Stupendous job!
gregly-I enjoyed the story quite a bit! I think you could use some more contrast in your toning. Right now everything is overall the same tone like page 3 there's not much depth on the page. There's clearly buildings further out from the foreground, but your toning isn't really helping to give the illusion of depth. Making the buildings that are further back a lighter tone or even just putting a color hold on the buildings would have helped push them back. Incorporating more white in the toning could have helped some elements stand out more too, aside from just Gwen's hat and eyes. It was sort of a missed opportunity to not use the white for her attack on the bottom of page 6.
Pocketmouse-short and sweet, I really enjoyed this comic. You have a good eye for color and the textures you chose worked well. But I feel like your backgrounds could really use just a bit more love. Incorporating a little more shading into the backgrounds would have helped bump things up quite a bit I think.
Mon Capitan Gregly: I'm quite disappointed with the quality of your shading, although I'll give you some slack since it was a complete battle in only one week. You know I'm such a fan of your style, so what else can I say about that? I would recommend looking for some ways to smooth out your linework and just add a little more polish to your comics in the future. That said, I applaud the attention you put into your backgrounds, especially all the cool little cameos and references to Merrik's relationship with Ehren. I can't wait for the next episode in this saga!
Mademoiselle Mouse in a Pouch: One word describes what I like best about this comic (and most of your work, really): ambience. No matter what the scene, it always feels like your characters are inside a living world, full of emotion and spirit. Your use of color, even with flat digital instead of watercolor-textured colors, creates a beautiful setting for your comics to take place. With that said, I felt like the setting kind of lost its color consistency throughout your comic. The first page was beautiful; the second enticing; the third was fine; and the last page was almost washed-out. And maybe some of that was intentional; it kind of adds to the distance that the narration adds to the story. But my biggest issue with your comic is how lost I felt as far as your characters went. Granted, you provided some very concise clues about what was going on in the world (which was super cool, by the way), but I wanted a little more personality from them. The world has more personality than the characters, and that was just a little disappointing for me. Other than that, it looks like you got a little rushed towards the end, but I still love your art so hard! Can't wait for more!
The amount of humor, story and creativity in Gregly's made up for the poor quality in the art, I'm fascinated by the possibilities of future gwen and regi and i really dug the cosplay idea.
As for pocket, it's interesting to see your style in digital as apposed to watercolors. Still dig your style, but maybe due to it being a one weeker, there's just not a lot to it. I assume Gwen is older in this and has been through some rough times!
Overall, loved this matchup, keep on comicing, I'll never get tired of these characters.
This stealthily went up when I wasn't looking!
Gregly: Very cute comic, and it's great to see something that's fully inked from you! The way the story flowed was this comic's strongest point.
Mousu: Not exactly sure when this takes place or if this is just another one of Merrik's time shenanigans, but it's also cute. Watch the perspective in some panels--bottom panel in page 3 especially where everything looks a bit squished.
Gregly: This is an amazing comic for one week dude. Your backgrounds get a little simple, but most of the time it fits right in with the characters and feels good and effective. I don't know if you meant for this to be in grayscale, or you normally just do your tones and then color over them. Whichever it is, I think you'd benefit from adding more tones to your value range. Right now it flattens the space a little bit.
Pocketmouse: I really like your loose line work, brushed lines are just amazing. I don't know if the rush of 1 week got to you, but I think your line work was way stronger in your last two fights. Here it looks kind of wobbly and the variation in lightweight seems more haphazard. I think the color meshes really well with your lines, and the warm color schemes of the first 2 pages feels great.
The setting is charming, simple and homey. I wish the space inside the trailer was a little less amorphous, and just a small amount of technical ruling with proper perspective would have helped a lot. If you don't want to ruin the sort of natural feel you have to your line quality, you can always just used the ruled line as a guideline to do your brushwork, or do the perspective freehand/without-rulers while still throwing down horizon lines and vanishing points.
I think too much of the comic's dialogue was taken up by jargon and references to other stuff, and Gwen is written as much more reserved than I see in Gregly's comics. Too much of her speech is just cold information giving us the context of the world. And that's fine but her feelings never really even color what she's saying. Is she wistful? Is she afraid she's going to lose someone important to her? Does she feel deafeated? Is she mourning? She talks about Regi in what seems like a really offhand manner, and that takes the weight out of the reunion at end. If the situation is supposed to be light, then I think you could've played up Gwen's lackadaisical attitude.
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