Only just read your critique PuzzleThing but its great. Clarififed things for me. Thanks to WilliamDuel and Kozispoo aswell obviously. I'm definitely going to try and be aware of style in the next comic I do and have been working on the underlying shapes. I think one of the biggest challenges will be making the characters feel like they're actully in the world though. Thats always been tricky for me. I love critiques on Void! So very helpful. :D

Majikura - I totally agree with what William Duel had to say about your backgrounds lacking an organic charm, though I think I'd extend your difficulty with organic forms to your figures too. It feel's almost like you stick too close to the simple geometric building blocks of your armature. You don't have to get more organic and flowing, that's a stylistic choice, but even you want to stay clean and angular you need to get more dynamic and interesting. Everything is too simple, and you totally have the draftsmanship and fundamentals to fix that. To work on your building stuff and background stuff though, you could always draw the backgrounds like you do now, but use them more like a planning sketch than as your final drawing. Just put them on a lower layer and work on top of them to create more interesting backgrounds, and the strong geometry to keep your forms nice I really like your goofy stories though, and that last page is cute as hell. You're a really competent artist dude, and I think you're super close to breaking though and turning that solid foundation into something amazing. Also your comic totally makes me sad Lan Yun's artists disappeared :C Evil Joe - It's perfectly fine to shoot for perfection, especially when you're learning. It gives you a solid foundation from which to work to develop a strong personal style. You'll always have a style, it's unavoidable. If you're not making a conscious decision about how to affect that style, it just means you're not in control of your entire presentation. Duel just want's you to be aware of your own stylistic tendencies, so that you can either strengthen or counteract it accordingly, and your figures are very stylized. Your figures also keep their backs really strait. In real life even if a dude is standing stiff-backed at attention, the way the spine is built causes the chest to point upwards and the pelvis to point down, creating multiple curves in the body. You actually do it on Mammon on the first page. He's standing normally, but his chest is angled so that it points upwards. It always helps to construct your figures with really simple geometric shapes before you get down to more complex forms. It doesn't really matter what you make those shapes out of, they just need to have very clearly observable sides, so that you're always aware what should be visible. That last page was gonna be crazy dude, hoooly craaap.

okay makes sense

pineapple pocky: I am not quite sure what exactly is happening on the two buildings in the beginning of the comic, panel one.. It's a reference to the events of Koosh Koosh vs Veronica Nightingale

I think you're right, Joe. Blame Toast hahah. At least the right person was set as the winner I guess.

I think there is an error in the score. I thought Majikura had a higher score, but because there were two people working on mine and EvilEye's comic that maybe we both got allocated the points, so we effectively got double?

CAMEO KAISER ROCKSSSS!!!!!!!! Proper critique I shall give out in a few days. Good job you two!

I had many ideas on what to discuss on my comment, but after reading William Duel's comments I feel like I'd just be repeating something you've already heard. I always considered your backgrounds to be something worthy of envy because they are technically correct and amazingly exact, Majikura but after giving them a second look, I can see how they don't quite have that personality. Your stuff is admittedly very clean and crisp and I personally don't see a problem with that, but it would be interesting to see some looseness in your comics. Maybe trying some building freehand? I do rather enjoy your inkwork-especially in the TV show pages with the laserbeams. That spotty laser pattern on page 2 was a great opening and of course, that last page totally made me laugh. I dig how a humorous last page is sort of becoming your signature! :) Jeneary, its a real shame you didn't get to finish this, even more so that you had two weeks to work on this and have so few pages. Your panels were heavily detailed and had alot of crowds, so maybe that might've been the culprit. Still ,storywise, its groovy to see other fighters piggybacking on tournament events and expand on them. I always dig it when fighters take a unique angle on interacting with their opponent apart from the 'encounter and fight!' formula and from the little you showed here, I found myself interested in where it was going to go.

I know what style is. I just never consciously try to think about having a style or sticking to it because I feel that it could be damaging to my progress as an artist. Perhaps it would be worthwhile to attempt to 'stylize' my work for one comic at lease, to really embrace the quirks, but my biggest problem with that is that here on Void, if style is a "series of consistent yet visually gratifying errors', then I would constantly get the same criticisms of ‘your figures are too skinny, you lack perspective’ etcetc. I think that the problem may be down to my unwillingless to embrace my quirks, and fighting for ‘perfection’ in drawings is freezing me up a lot. Basically, me trying to reject style may be a hindrance. When I draw for myself, when no one sees the work, I am not encumbered by such feelings. By fully embracing the quirks, and like you said, by being consistent with them, perhaps people would overlook these ‘mistakes’. I do totally agree on your analysis that the figures tend to float and how I just construct the background around them. You pretty much pinned down exactly what I do and I certainly will aim to have the characters interact more harmoniously with the environment from now on. I like your idea of really dedicating a longer amount of time to a finished short comic aswell. That makes a lot of sense. Thanks.

JoeNeary: Hey WilliamDuel, thanks for the comments. The "underlying structure is weak" in regards to the background comment, Is it just perspective you are talking about here then? "I don't have a problem with your slender bodybuilds but you lack the necessary consistency for this to be reliant on style. It's why so many artists champion anatomical study before style" This confuses me a bit, I don't really try and draw in a style, I just draw. I've never been someone to say, ooo I need to have a style. I guess Starker has a varying figure throughout some of the panels and thats more to do with because I haven't really nailed him down as a character I'm totally comfortable with drawing as of yet. From what I can see here, you don't seem to be planning the backgrounds ahead of time. Perspective is a part of this. From what I suspect, you simply do it and construct the background piece by piece. So aside from the perspective issues making things look odd, you're characters are affected by the way they stand. There's not enough weight and gravity to them. And the panels where they are from the midriff up, their bodies just extend into the beyond. Look at that first page which is all close up shots. Starker there never seems to be standing on solid ground, he always seem like he's slanted in one direction or the other. But anyways yeah, work on perspective it'll probably fix a lot of this. As far as style, everyone has a style. A style defines the way you draw. It is the hallmarks and and distinctive aspects of your art. It is the way we view and categorize art. The way you choose to draw, the way you draw naturally that is style. I have heard it described that if we understand perfect realism as the default, then a way to understand what style is, is a series of consistent yet visually gratifying errors. Your tastes and likes and dislikes inform your style. The way you draw people tends to be slender bodied people with elongated faces and small waists. You can see this on Cue. It is fine to develop this and continue with it, as you say you just draw and this is what comes from you. But your anatomy is often inconsistent especially with elbows. Best example is page 2, in the first panel on the bottom row, Cue's arms are fine. In the next panel, her arms are twice as long.

Kura: probably one of the most enjoyable comics I've read from you so far. As a typing thing, when you write an essay you would use two dashes (--), but if it's comics, it's often one dash (-). It would help to make the single dash a slightly larger font so the shape is longer. Some typing programs combine the two dashes into a longer one, which is why it's often used in word programs. From all the things I've read about Satin so far, this looks totally different, the change was too sudden for me. I am not quite sure what exactly is happening on the two buildings in the beginning of the comic, panel one. Theo is very adorable; I enjoy your renderings of little kids, they're very cute. When you draw larger people, usually their eyes are smaller to emphasize their face is larger. The cameos of additional characters was really awesomely fit in btw. Another nitpick is when you wear pantyhose, your toes don't pop out like that unless the fabric itself is cut at the ankle or toe area (doesnt seem like it in this comic). They're pretty much like very long slim socks that are slightly see through. You probably want to remember that for Satin for the future too. Joeneary: You might have been a bit too ambitious for two weeks. Since this is unfinished pen, I am not sure where you were going on this exaclty, but I think one issue with pure black and white comics is defining what is in front, what is behind. One way you might consider is making the background darker/lighter than the foreground. When you do that, you can rely less on lines to make your statement, and make it a little more vague, but still imply all the information in the scene. I am not sure how to elaborate too well on that, but hopefully you get what I mean.

Hey WilliamDuel, thanks for the comments. The "underlying structure is weak" in regards to the background comment, Is it just perspective you are talking about here then? "I don't have a problem with your slender bodybuilds but you lack the necessary consistency for this to be reliant on style. It's why so many artists champion anatomical study before style" This confuses me a bit, I don't really try and draw in a style, I just draw. I've never been someone to say, ooo I need to have a style. I guess Starker has a varying figure throughout some of the panels and thats more to do with because I haven't really nailed him down as a character I'm totally comfortable with drawing as of yet.

Cameo Kaiser is one of the greatest things I've ever seen.

First off good job. Neary`s comic may be incomplete but there is clear indication of intent and purpose. Unfortunately that incompleteness will cost you. The way I see it you're both to be congratulated on your attention to backgrounds but both of you have the opposite problems. Kura your backgrounds are boring. That's not to discredit the attention to detail you've obviously put in for probably hours at a time but for all that detail everything is constructed by the book. Even bedroom scenes are just boxes piledon top of each other. There is no organic feel to any of it. Cities are built by many architects and thus you often have competing styles built around and over each other. What I'm basically saying is that to go to the next level you need to think about worldbuilding with your backgrounds. I'd expect something more futuristic from a city like Caelum. Another trait of yours that I haven't seen change is the lack of line variability. This makes everything flat and unexciting. I feel like this is a common flaw of digital artists that in pursuit of clean digital lines they don't realize the effectiveness of line widths in comics. Most pro manga and anime utilize this to good effect. Anime will have lineless backgrounds to have their thin lined characters pop. One Piece creates a white all-around characters to separate them. And the most common is to simply have different line widths between characters and backgrounds. In the case of purely lineless art then it's up to the coloring to create the separation. Going forward you're going to have to decide what method you want to use or else your ability to tell stories will remain stagnant. Nearly like I said you have the opposite problem with backgrounds. There are good details and it feels organic to the story but the underlying structure is weak. I cannot tell if you are attempting perspective, it needs some work. As far as line width is concerned you seem to havetroubledeciding when to use it. Use line widths to call attention to characters especially on busy pages and also to imply perspective on close up characters. I don't have a problem with your slender bodybuilds but you lack the necessary consistency for this to be reliant on style. It's why so many artists champion anatomical study before style. So watch out for those awkward proportions. I would like to see you work with longer deadlines with a focus on finishing 3 to 5 complete pages.

well, the curse of the unfinished comics continues. Le sigh. Cameo Kaiser was pretty goddamn funny though.

Does Cameo Kaiser have new faces every episode~

Cameo kaiser is now a thing. NOW A THING.

Sorry to hear that Kura! Joe and I have had some troubles with our schedules lining up that we only resolved recently, so we're actually considering an extension. FWIW. edit: welp, I extended. I just like what Joe and I are cooking and can't bear to see my return to Void be another damn unfinished comic hahaha. If you finish your other battle or get huge headway, feel free to poke at it a bit. Itchin' to see what you did, Kura, and hope you're feelin' bettah

i have gotten sick TWICE within the deadline of this battle. It is clearly cursed. I'm gonna upload whatever I've got and be done with it.

haha not getting credit for your work would be maximum bogosity. Plus now you're on the hook for that score! Motivation!

Cool! Was wondering if I'd get added or not. Thanks Bobo. :) Good luck Majikura!

JoeNeary added to the battle! :)

AWW yeah! Nice to see you back in action Evil Eye ~ you too, CUE you little cutie pie

Feels weird seein' my name on here again. My artist-bro will be JoeNeary btw. Figured he deserves a shoutout.