Rhymes- I'm glad theres a vote for me to use bigger pages at least thats an easy decision to make from now on. [Bigger pages means more "space"] And somehow it would allow me to use my text space better.
Kent: Argh you caught me ! I saw consistency mistakes popping up in the last 6 hours of my editing when all I really wanted to do was check over text, pacing and musical accompaniment. But yeah the problem with the faces might be fixed if I practiced the other facial types I've just discovered in the past year. I also heard from more than one source that I could benefit from doing skeleton scripts with someothing as large scale and orchestrated as Mar's stories :O !
I'm kinda glad I took up the character because his fighting style is actually quite unique from Black's. Thanks for the advice you guise !
THRESH - Curse the luck! Hope to see your stuff up soon!
MONDAY - It goes without saying that your comics have style for days and you're a real workhorse, able to crank out a pleasing number of entertaining pages every time. Quite admirable all around :D Some things I think you can work on:
Text and word balloons - I'm fine with textdumps, really--a lot of expositional info doesn't scare me off, but there are ways to manage it that don't clutter up your comic. When typing out the dialogue on the page (or when scripting, if you do that) think about your word usage. You might find more succint ways of getting your point across, which will in turn help the space situation. About the spacing: In the boxes/balloons where your text is bumping right up against the line, it looks messy. Normally, I'd suggest making your text smaller to leave a rim of space around the words, but your text is pretty tiny in some places already.
Consistency - especially when it comes to anatomy and faces. I found it hard to follow who was who in some scenes. You have an attractive style when it comes to the Mars/Yamato/Agent Black/ type of face, and you are really consistent about those kind of features, but I think that the facial features of any character not fitting that profile tend to shift depending on the scene. For example, Edge seems to have a strong jawline on Page13. It's not consitent with how he's drawn on Page 8, and he's not even consistent in both scenes on the same page.
Contrast - I do enjoy the gray tones you use here, but the problem becomes that foreground and background tend to blend together in some scenes. Examples: Page11, last panel--it is frenetic, but its all the same pattern and tone that its hard to see anything at all. This is also the issue I have with the last panels of Page4--I really cannot tell what's going on there. The first panel of Page13 is more on the right track, as the room has clear depth. Same with the tank panel halfway down Page14--the tank clearly is apart from the the background due to proper contrast. I'd like to see more of that.
Overall, I did find this a very entertaining comic, and I am excited to see more of Mars' adventures!
I'm glad to see you are still kicking, Monday. Mars has been a nice return to Void for you, so far.
This comic is fun. The consistency throughout isn't quite there (more so in the beginning), but still, this is a strong piece overall. I have got to say, though, the way you do your speech bubbles could be improved upon. A lot of them are either too small or have way too much dialogue placed within them, also some of the dialogue within is placed noticeably uneven.
The problem with blocks of tight dialogue is that it hurts the flow of the comic. Aesthetically, more padding between the walls and dialogue is more pleasing to the eye, so that could help. You may also want to consider breaking blocks of dialogue into multiple blocks of dialogue, that flow throughout the panel (or multiple panels).
reading Ashley wood comics in art school gave me good bad influences ;E
I agree that there were parts that totally felt out of line, and while editing I even had a hard time deciding on a resolution. That's definitely something that shouldn't have to change at all even if its a digital medium you're working with. In fact there were plenty of other things I could have been "unconventional" with whilst staying within limits.
But it is as you say, this is a comic to have fun with -- but should also be fun to read. Thanks for pointing out the weaknesses in the style.
Thresher -
My tears are unending. I can't wait to see your side when it goes up though, I need more Thresher goodness., it's been too long!
MONDAAAAAY -
Goddamn dude this is just strait up glorious. I can't believe we went so long without seeing your art here. I can't count how many times I must've ruined the pacing of the story in your comic because I just wanted to stop and admire the craft of what I was seeing. Everything about it is just amazing, and it's incredibly how playful and passionate your art is. You change it up what feels like completely on a whim, but almost always perfectly suits what's going on.
The only thing I can critique you on is that I think sometimes that whimsy goes a little too far, and becomes inconsistency in quality. There a number of scenes in which a panel becomes too muddled and busy to understand at a glance what exactly is going on. From this comic alone, it's obvious you know how to establish clear visual hierarchy and clarity. It often looks like you draw/render very quickly, but make sure you take a moment to go back, examine your illustrations, and correct accordingly.
This is such a stupid good comic dude, it totally makes me want to actually work on my action and mass painting.
Monday: I really like this art style you did here. Using a lot more tones then lines at times.... I might need to try this at some point. I think it'll make some elements more fun to draw. Also I really like your action and SFX in there, you do a good job of conveying the motion.great job
Yeah it seemed like I was gonna aim for way more with one episode which accounted for the heavy foreshadowing. But when I realized that I had to simplify the plot I had to simply let things hang on the next episode to resolve.
But other than that I'm glad you're digging the characters. I was also worried I was introducing too much but it looks like people are digging Sever and the Twins.
First of all, good comic Monday~ I just got a few pointers that kinda bug me.
Early on, the exposition dump was a little intensive and made me feel a little claustrophobic. Would probably be a good idea to space out the distribution of information a little bit more. Furthermore, at the end, I didn't get any graphical cue that the teachers got kidnapped. Perhaps it's due to the way that last panel was shot and also the fact that it never registered in my mind that those were the teachers. Also, there is the issue of contrast which I'm pretty sure Jong told you about so here's to seeing some nice stuff in future.
That said, I love the characters you're bringing in.
@Jong: Thanks for helping me out with my technical problems btw, and I'm glad that my clarity is getting a /bit/ better.
I'll probably go on to add and attempt something naive and try to make the void canon hold together through Mars' lens. But of course his viewpoint of the current reality is one of many. Despite all that having a continuity that goes one after another is proving to be an interesting challenge with its own ups and downs.
@Thresher: Dang, better luck next time :c
@Monday: You already know all of the technical critiques I gave on this battle over skype, so there isn't a need to repeat them again so I'll just talk about other stuff haha.
It's always a pleasure to read your stuff man. With this new character Mars, your treatment of the Void narrative continues, thus making Mars a sort of successor to the Black narratives. The only difference is -of course- different characters, and a plot-centric approach, rather zeroing in on the perspective of a single character.
This battle serves as a pretty good chapter of an introduction to all of Mars's classmates and their roles. The Sixtem short-had bio's of each character and their ability serves this purpose really well. We even get a sense of some reversals on the "expected" roles of a few characters (ex. Mars is a leader but gets anxiety, Sever has a badass power but with an exploitable weakness), which gives us an impression of them being 'fuller' characters despite limited screen time.
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