yo Tay!! Nice work, your draughtsmanship is improving- this is a v solid comic for 1 week, so great job! you tried out a lot of cool stuff and took some risks, so although the train one didn't pay off so well, there were some great experimental ideas. The bottom of page 3, where Tsumi stands up slowly, was magnificent. there are a few little things that could help you out quality wise without being a time-drain. b-b-b-b-backgrounds!!! sorry! these are bland to the point that they were distracting in places! BUT i think it would help a lot to be free-er with the shapes you use. Ditch the ruler! right now it's all square boxes and straight horizons but a little bit of variation goes a long way. Peppering the foreground midground and background with things like trees wont take too long, and will make things a lot nicer to read and add depth. Grab your reader by the face and drag them into the world of your comic. Heres a nice ref of what i mean: http://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Guardian/Pix/pictures/2011/11/1/1320165226087/Picnic-scene-under-shade--007.jpg you get a sense of depth- you know they're up on a hill, you can see the buildings in the distance. A little suggestion will send your comics a long way. so this brings me onto my next point- colour! The blue of the sky and the green of the grass didn't do you any favours. They're both very saturated and this makes your characters get lost against them. Be careful when choosing colours for your backgrounds, make sure they make your characters stand out. You don't always need to pick the local colours of green for grass and blue for sky. You can use these colour picks to suggest the lighting and time of day, so be careful to choose ones that expand the world for your readers. eg this comic in early morning is v different than if it was set in late afternoon. If you want to know more, just do some research on google about 'relative colour theories' or read 'colour and light' by james gurney if you can. OKAY the last little thing i'll suggest is to break up your chunks of colour! especially in your backgrounds. Quick and easy ways to do this can be to use gradients and textures. Gradients will help you add lighting and depth. eg you can make your backgrounds fade the further away things are from the audience. It'll help a bundle, even in blocktown. ;) It's always rad to see Tsumi, so thanks v much for this ace 1-weeker! Hope to see more comics again soon!

Thanks for the comments guys~ I am realizing now how weird the train ended up being, especially since I didn't use it anywhere else this comic. And a lot of the fixes fall into the "if I had time/effort" category, which isn't meant to defend them. They're all things I need to practice and get FASTER at. Because I could certainly spend 3 days drawing a heck of a side of a building, but that'd take forever and make the rest of the comic a LOT shorter. hehe. I could explain what Tsumi's reasoning is, but that'd be spoilers. ^_^ It is nice to hear people are interested in it though. I get torn wondering if I should bother telling such a sad story instead of aiming for comedy.

OTAKUTAYLOR- A bloo hoo huu ;3; AH MAHGAW THE FEELS! I expected this to be something of a throwaway tale. Just some chance interaction.working out, but his took such a surprising turn. I will note, technically, there were some small flubs. Like the tangents between the word bubbles and the background elements, and general layout. Also, your linework wasn't as crisp and clean a I usually expect from you. Its amazing what you managed ot convey in only 5 pages. It killed me to see Tsumi get so close to having a kindered spirit-someone to talk to about having a ticking timebomb looming ver your head, but she pulls back. Why? Why not open up? what's hindering her? While this comic doesn't give us the answers, it definitely leaves us primed to see more. Looking forward to seeing where she goes from here NIBBLES- I am so SO HAPPY to see you and your fighter back in the game. Was so sad to see this not come together for you. Crossing my fingers to see you bring your A game next time!

@Otakutaylor. be careful with your backgrounds. the second page is confusing and i struggle to make differences.

@Nibbles: I'm glad you're alive, and I dearly hope you pull through okay and everything is fine!!! I look forward to whatever you're able to submit in the future, and wish you all the best for now. Rest up! @otakutaylor: I actually read your comic before it was posted because I clicked on the first page to get from the Admin section to the comments section (admin section doesn't link directly to this page, but if I open an individual comic page, it does hahah), and I was sucked in by your beautiful rendering of Eighty-Eight and my curiosity about why the two were training together. After that, I just had to keep reading. This is probably your best comic I've read as far as storytelling goes, and you did a gorgeous job of drawing Tsumi and Eighty-Eight. Your backgrounds felt a little sparse, although I can tell you did put at least a little effort into laying them out. Your coloring also looked pretty rudimentary, especially with things like neon green grass and fluorescent blue sky and ocean, so try to work on your color schemes a bit more in the future. I would even be happy with just some simple monochrome or duotone shading if it meant you could spend more time fleshing out your background environments. Either way, you made me feel for the first time in years (jk I'm a mess of emotions), so I loved your comic!

Good to hear from you Nibbles. I'm perfectly fine with you posting a BB when you get around too it. Take all the time you need. Seriously, that is some nasty stuff and I hope you can get past it soon. If you don't mind the default, then yeah, the admins can go ahead and post mine up. Sorry in advance though, I didn't write the... happiest of comics, and I sincerely doubt it's what you wanted to read about considering what you're going through right now. Let me know if there's anything I can do to help.

Thanks Taylor. I'm alive, I'm awake, and I'm not at urgent care anymore (fluids and a spinal tap, yay)--though if the dysmotility of my guts continues I'll be in hospital in a day or two. Gross tremor in my right arm, right leg still doing it's best wood impression, right eye... completely blind. Probably temporary. This won't be the first default I've had from this crap, and it won't be the last. I'd like to put mine up as a beyond battle when I'm feeling better if that's alright with you.

Ok so, I only just checked Nibbles tumblr, and shes got some pretty serious sounding health issues right now. I dunno if the admins can do anything at this point, but this battle might need to be cancelled or delayed. If you can, hold off on posting it till we hear from her or something if she hasn't already uploaded a comic.

Uploaded~

Awww yeah, DnD buddy battle!