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The Gauntlet Part 2 - Mark of the Blood Beast
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Uploaded May 08, 2013
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Sean Patrick Kelly's avatar
Sean Patrick Kelly
All-Rounder
12 years ago
Du Dun DUN! I love cliffhangers like that especially with such a jam packed comic to boot. I really love how the main colors are black, white, and red it's simple but effective. It gives a real dread and when there is another color, like when arenas eye turn blue, it makes her pop out a lot more. It's also a relief to find out the beast is actually intelligent because for awhile since you had him in Arena's bio i was worried he'd be just another mindless monster, good thing i was wrong it just gives him a more imposing presence. There's nothing else for me to really say other than i can't wait to see what happens next.
Posted on The Gauntlet Part 2 - Mark of the Blood Beast battle

Cracking Skulls's avatar
Cracking Skulls
All-Rounder
12 years ago
Well no, that's not what I meant by the ending being confusing, I meant that there was little to no development on Anya's sudden change of alignment on this story specifically. I've read every TTT comic, and on Dure's side, it was only a vision of the future, while your BB just...thows it in there. In general, it's too fast paced, and clarity and story suffers as a result.
Posted on The Gauntlet Part 2 - Mark of the Blood Beast battle

PyrasTerran's avatar
PyrasTerran
Writer
12 years ago
Thank you everyone for time-taking words, and I'm happy that I'm able to produce something that's taking this long to go through and yet still has people interested at all~ CrackinSkulls: I can see how I went a little overboard with the swearing. I probably tried too hard thinking about how a guy who grew up in the Bronx would go about this. But talking during combat (really just a comic/anime phenomenon i've noticed) is still something I'm trying to get better at. Sorry that the ending confused you: In Koba & Anya vs. Satin & Lilyfeather, the oracle goddess Nausica gives Koba a glimpse of a possible future, and Anya's form in that comic is that of her dark persona Gate, which Koba unlocks at some point when he finally captures Anya. In the TTT Prologue of Arena and P2, Koba does capture Anya which starts the P2/Arena teamup, so by this time, Koba has managed to awaken Gate. Koba's new outfit also reflects his future look from the K&A vs. S&L comic. I won't be explaining this much in the next installment so I hope this helps clear that up. Bobo: Sorry about some of those confusing pages. In page 8, Chiroptos is punched in the face by one of Arena's signature giant sand fists. Set is not taking control, she's breaking out of her fear. I was hoping that the actions going on while Chiroptos was speaking would be enough to warrant those pages being there, since he is speaking while things are happening. I'll think harder on what is and isnt necessary next time. It's not so much that I'm trying to take shortcuts, but I'm trying to find a good pace. For most of my comics it's either that I move too fast or that I move too slowly, or move too fast in some parts and too slowly in others. so I haven't found that happy middle of even pacing just yet, and the times that I successfully have, it feels completely by accident and I can't reverse engineer it. I'll keep working on that as well. Yes, on page 8 I was trying to express her fear through the word bubbles. I'll try better on that in the future... actually.. I didn't realize that an ellipses strictly requires 3 dots, and I really should, shouldn't I.. I honestly don't know where I learned to make it two, as I've been doing it forever, and you're the first person to ever correct me, so thanks for that I suppose. I'll try to remember that rule next time. Is that really what you consider a harsh crit? I've had much worse slung at me, don't worry. LeFred: Sorry about the RED, I can see why you especially would be bothered by my color inexperience. Shamefully, I didn't have an ulterior intention for choosing the colors for this comic, and that's probably the biggest contributor to the issues with it. I'll try to think more about what colors to pick next time I do a color comic. Yeah I love silhouettes, if I could get away with making a whole silhouette comic without it being crap I would. And yeah, Chiroptos is capable of making anything bleed. Be they humans, sand people, walls, water, even robots. And sentient creatures will feel the pain as if they could normally bleed. Add to that his size/strength and a very durable, elastic body, and he's pretty dangerous. That was an Orphanage brand mind control disc implanted inside Chiroptos. Puzzlething: I'm sorry that that element seemed so quick. I guess I felt personally that Arena's fear of Chiroptos is something entrenched for so long in her story that I didn't consider newcomers who know nothing about previous comics. I still need to find that medium between giving too much and giving too little. Ah, no, actually, I can NEVER drop down any background quickly XD they're one of my weaknesses, and I do try to make sure I practice them in the comics I've been doing, but, I guess I forget about them a bit during action scenes. I think I grew up on action scenes where it was just the opponent vs the opponent, Final Destination style, so I need to break out of that somehow. Julz: I'm glad you like Chiroptos. Actually, originally, he was going to speak plain English and everyone would know what he's saying. But then something in the back of my head started scratching saying, "why the hell does he know english?" so I worked on a vocabulary for a silly made up language and slapped that on instead. Now, if you REALLY want to have some idea of what he's talking about, there IS a comic on this site that may have some answers... And it's not an Arena comic... Thank you all again for the critiques and well words.
Posted on The Gauntlet Part 2 - Mark of the Blood Beast battle

Julz's avatar
Julz
All-Rounder
12 years ago
I thought that your blood beast was a very well designed monster. I'm also rather enjoying this story, so I'm always excited to see another. It would have been nice to get some context as to what the beast was saying though. Maybe like an asterix with subtitles for the reader? I don't know, that was probably part of the whole experience. Yay!
Posted on The Gauntlet Part 2 - Mark of the Blood Beast battle

Puzzlething's avatar
Puzzlething
All-Rounder
12 years ago
I usually love the whole "internally push yourself" thing a lot of action stories do, but you started it up only 5 pages into the fight. You really hadn't sold me on the desperation and fear of the situation yet, and that diminishes the whole scene. I know you mentioned previously that this is a Bad Dude, but even if your reader is familiar with the seriousness of an enemies reputation you need to put in the time to build that mood within the current story. More background would've been nice too. Having a good set adds so much to a fight. Not only does it help you think of more interesting shots, but you it really helps establish the scale of the conflict. I think you set up a great location for a fight, so it sucks we didn't get to see more it. It's got a simple, recognizable theme, and it's easy enough to draw that you can drop it down quickly. You'd have to use more of that charcoal in the background though. The way you covered much of the setting in the same flat red makes it hard to see what's going on back there. It's a great job dude, and I hope you keep putting this stuff out there.
Posted on The Gauntlet Part 2 - Mark of the Blood Beast battle

Fred's avatar
Fred
All-Rounder
12 years ago
Bro, don't just flood everything in red like that, it just makes things hard to read. Like, unless P2 is purple, he's really difficult to look at because his RED gets lost in all the RED that's going on everywhere. Red is not like white, it's an intense color, lines will get lost if you don't bring them up with some contrast. The pages with the purple help that, but on the other end, it's such a peaceful Lyla color, it doesn't convey the same intensity as the rest. It's a weird choice. It does make the splash of Arena peircing the beast that much more powerful, but it could have been a less 'peaceful' color and more 'grim' and get the same effect. Maybe something more greyish or brownish or dirty blue or even orange, if you still want the contrast but still have intensity. The over saturation of red before that page also make it less effective, because it's basically puts things back to normal, to what you've made us used to. Try to play more with making the color describe the rises and falls of the plot. I get that you're probably trying to make a general mood for the whole piece, but if the mood is INTENSE ACTION screamed at my face the whole time, it looses effectiveness. I really liked the silouette panels tough, they looked pretty badass. Talking of badass, making EVERYTHING bleed? NICE. Anyway, nice action, slightly confusing plot (what's that orphanage frisbee thing and where did it come from? Inside the beast? Could be clearer.) and overall enjoyable comic.
Posted on The Gauntlet Part 2 - Mark of the Blood Beast battle

Rose's avatar
Rose
All-Rounder
12 years ago
Orphanage continuity issues aside, I enjoyed the art and action in this comic a lot. My issue is that there were a lot of sections where you used dialogue to tell what was going on instead of showing it, which is a big no-no in my book, especially since it was unclear who was saying what, like on page 9 at the bottom. I have no idea what was going on there because everything is in square boxes as if it's narration rather than dialogue. And on page 8, I can only guess what happened because you're missing a key moment in the action. I'm assuming from context that Arena is somehow blasting that monster and maybe it's Set controlling her or something, but I really have no way of telling since all I see is her face glowing then a giant watermelon squishing the monster's face then the monster sliding backwards like he got hit by something huge (like a giant watermelon). Pyras, you have a really interesting storyline that's been going on for a while, but I feel like you continually take shortcuts to try to further the plot faster than you have time to develop it in a good comic. You might just need to slow down, throw in some extra pages, or just cut out some of the less necessary parts, like the demon talking in a language no one understands for four pages. A couple of issues with your speech, too: I noticed the speech bubbles on page 8 look really sad and deformed; I'm not sure if you were trying to communicate Arena's fear with that or something, but it just looked unfinished to me. And be careful that your text fits into your speech bubbles with enough padding around the text that it looks nice. Also, what's up with all the double periods? You know that an ellipsis is three dots, right? Reading your comic, I'm not sure if that's just a typo and it's supposed to be a single period or if it's supposed to be an ellipsis. That just really confused me. I think that's about it from me. I'm giving you a harsh crit because I like your stuff and see that you have a lot of potential here, and I want to see you keep improving. I can't wait for the next installment!
Posted on The Gauntlet Part 2 - Mark of the Blood Beast battle

PyrasTerran's avatar
PyrasTerran
Writer
12 years ago
oh feck, sorry about that, didn't realize~ <_>;
Posted on The Gauntlet Part 2 - Mark of the Blood Beast battle

Angie's avatar
Angie
All-Rounder
12 years ago
I'll give a proper critique in a bit, but dude your pages are each 1MB+. I thought the site was running slow because each page was taking forever to load, but then I took a look into the FTP and saw your file sizes. Never ever save at such a high quality that people can't easily sit down and read your comics. Your pages shouldn't exceed 500kb.
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Cracking Skulls's avatar
Cracking Skulls
All-Rounder
12 years ago
Starting off with the good points, I like the color scheme you used for this comic, it sets the mood you wanted to use when Arena's facing her biggest fear. P2's powers being represented with purple was nicely used and didn't stand out too much from the red, black and white. Page 15 was nicely pulled off and gave that sense of impact, so good job! Onto the second part, I feel you used a little too much red. It's difficult to really pull off the reds when you're heavily dependent on it. I would suggest doing more research on how to utilize color schemes like this while giving some balance. The action itself I had some difficulty understanding; it took me a second read to get what exactly was happening, but I have addressed this before, so I won't repeat myself this time. As for writing, I had only 2 things I wanted to address: 1. P2 swears. A lot. Almost unnecessarily. Did he really need to say 'Bitch!' on page 12? I can understand if this is all in the heat of staying alive, but it just feels repetitive after a while. While I don't mind or care about curse words in a comic, I do feel that when it's used too much, it just gets annoying. 2. The ending is confusing. Suddenly, Future Anya is on the orphanage's side?? IS that Anya? What is going on?? I probably am speaking too soon, as I assume there's a final part to all this and it'll explain what and why this is all happening, but gosh, that threw me off as there's no explanation as to what happened and it's reveiled on one single panel. It doesn't even emphasize on Anya suddenly siding with the Orphanage. With all that said, I do look forward to seeing the next comic BB of Arena and P2. Just keep in mind that even if this is a big haul for you to work on, if something needs serious explaining, you GOT to explain it for the sake of clarity.
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PyrasTerran's avatar
PyrasTerran
Writer
12 years ago
Sorry for the disappearing act with this one.. but it's all uploaded and ready to go. I made it a 2 week deadline since it took an extra week more for me to get it up. Here are the thumbs for whoever is uploading: http://we.tl/mZw4PprmCM
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