lanternlovers: It's very brave to attempt a void comic with this level of rendering! What looks finished looks fantastic. In every battle I've seen you're *almost* there with a 100% complete comic, so keep on aiming for that 100%
Nothin: This isn't too bad for being done under an extremely short amount of time, but it's not reflective of what you can do with more. It's frustrating that you're such a good artist but don't apply yourself more than the bare minimum with these sometimes. I suppose whatever process helps you in the end, but also be considerate of how others feel if you're gonna blow off most of your time table
LANTERNLOVERS- I never thought I'd say this, but I never thought I'd be so dazzled by a drawn intestine. The way you rendered it with the colors and texture is truly (and shockingly!) stunning. know its meant to be visceral and met with revulsion, but you take such care with how you build up and paint your work, it truly is a joy to pore over your pages, enjoying the effort and work you put into them. Bravo. also, kudos to taking this battle in a way I didn't expect. Not everyday we see a voiders side of a battle where they actually lose and make it interesting on top of that. Definitely intrigued with where this goes.
NOTHIN- I mean, you already know. No amount of feedback, critique or wall of text will change your mind or alter what we see from you in *every* single battle until you yourself want to change.
Lantern: WOAH that got intense fast! Some parts are a little sparse but you brought the visuals it where they really counted. Dang!
Nothin: Well, they have priorities. I'd recommend you go flatter, maybe with aliased linework and everything, but you managed to do hand colored not-quite-flats that don't look terribly messy and have an "I meant to do that" look, so...
lantern: you know i love how you paint your gorgeous pages. Alex is a lil shit and i adore him. the expressions are FANTASTIC and the bit with Death blew me away. I agree with the critique you could probably do with smaller panels... you'd have less work to do and less blank backgrounds. the size of the panels can help with the pacing too- lots of small panels make a scene look faster, great big cinematic panels slow the scene down. also like Wolcik said, theres times they still appear a bit stiff during hard action. But your storytelling is getting way better and im gonna come back and gush about the painting some more because holy shit SO GORGEOUS. i hope we can see you battle more! ...when you get ten minutes away from school ^^;
kichi: i thought the expressions and dialogue were really funny, and this has really good action and camera angles. it ends a little suddenly and the backgrounds were pretty blank. This might have been improved if you'd started a bit sooner.
Nothin:
everyone else: you can just say "stop procrastinating" and i know and i try
I'm sorry but waiting until literally a few days before the due time to work on it and just spending the entire time doodling, despite people telling you to work on your battle in the hangouts and discord, isn't exactly trying. It's troubling since you've dropped out of many collabs with people and a lot of the battles I've seen since I joined this site has been mostly imcomplete on your site. Its ESPECIALLY troubling since you just got into another battle so soon, this time a ONE weeker. This isn't really something to just overlook at this point.
Lanteeern I loved your side of the battle :D There are obvious parts that were affected by time constraints but gosh dang your paints look so pretty when you put the time into it and I can totally see where the effort went. Loved Beo's hair on page siiix <3, and page 11 and 12 are definitely my faves! It's obvious you have a strong sense of composition when it's in a more illustrative, "fantasy" feel.
That being said, it appears you struggle more when it's a regular comic format. First off, the story is easy to follow! No complaints there. I'm aware you intended to populate your environments more but ran outta time so my suggestion would be, smaller panels? Still put effort in backgrounds where it's needed but not all of them need to be wide and detailed. For example, pg 8 panel 3 could have had the same effect if you shrunk it to half the size, the framing of it would be smaller, giving much less attention to how much you needed to draw backgrounds.
There are parts where you could have transitioned the panels better if you added small close-ups and actions; for example a panel of Alex's hand grabbing the stanchion before hitting Beo, closeup of Alex's feet backing up to the wall for some detailed, paced motions. This could bring out more movement and flow into your future comics.
A final small nitpick: I'm just a little confused with panel 2 page 8; is this supposed to be a more comical panel or a serious one? I found it to be more on the silly side due to his expression and text and so I felt it sorta threw me off when the next few pages became "oh snap he's actually dying". Intended or not, It's not a huge deal but I was just confused with that one panel due to how the rest of the tone was mostly serious.
Overall good effort and I enjoyed reading this! You have more more intrigued with Alex as a character and I can't wait to see more :D
First time commenting, hopefully I do this right.
Kichi, Stormcrow pretty much spoke what was on my mind about this side of the battle so this is pretty much a regurgitation. I'm really disappointed in how this battle turned out, considering how this was a 3-Week battle plus a week extension which meant you had plenty of time to work on this comic. In relation to that, I can feel the story here really suffers for it (I know there were originally more pages than this and that you had to cut them out for time's sake). Compared to your original thumbs, which I felt had a better sense of pacing, the story here had both an abrupt beginning and end. I know you had to cut pages out but it just feels....really off, especially in the end. Karrin talks, blah blah blah, and then what happens next? I appreciate the small humor here and there and how Bailey is drawn however.
I understand that real life does get in the way sometimes and that depression is a major bitch to work with but if that was the case, I don't think you should get yourself into other battles so impulsively if you're not gonna put that much effort into it to begin with. Know your limits.
Dragonfly, I've given my input over the course of you working on this comic so there isn't really much to be said. I think you could've managed your time better so some of the other pages would come off more finished and render like some of the other ones but with school and your sickness coming up, there's only so much you could do, I guess. I do really appreciate the expressions you've drawn your characters, especially since you drew them via...personal sources (aka yourself haha). Overall, this was a really fantastic side and I can't wait to see where this leads Alex into >:D
I'm really sorry, I'm going to be the bitch.
Kichi, you've really gotta stop doing this. I'm really happy you turned SOMETHING in, but I think everyone's aware you basically drew everything but thumbnails in the last 48 hours or so. You're a super fast artist with a great talent for funny doodles when you put your mind to it, so it kind of worked out in that there's something to submit, but that's about all that can be said about it.
This was a three week battle, which iirc had a week's extension added on top of that. That's basically a full month you had to draw this comic, and you spent all but the last days of that drawing literally anything else; what's worse, you made it really, REALLY clear to everyone that you were drawing literally anything else. You were streaming and doing hangouts practically every night of the last week or so. Multiple people reminded you about your responsibility to this comic, and your reaction was to say 'I CAN'T do it', 'I'm worthless anyways', 'I'm just going to procrastinate'. What's worse is that this really isn't a onetime deal, you've done this over and over with all your battles that I know of in the last few years. Looking back through Beo's archive, I think you have to go back to Beo vs. Howling in 2013 before you find a battle that isn't underdrawn, cuts off in the middle, or both.
The same thing happened when you and I fought, and while I didn't much care because I had a story I wanted to tell with our characters anyways, you've really gotta stop. I like you a lot as a person and an artist, and I know you struggle with a lot of stuff on a personal level, but if you know that you have motivation issues that keep you from working on battles FOR THE LOVE OF GOD STOP ASKING PEOPLE TO FIGHT until you're ready to handle them again, or at the VERY LEAST tell them you've fizzled out instead of letting them find out the hard way on turn-in day.
It's beyond disrespectful to your opponents to keep doing this. I may be very slow but I know that I spend a day apiece on my pages, and when I say a day, I mean a full eight hours of nonstop work. Even if other people don't take nearly that long, they're putting in a ton of work. They're shuffling around all their other responsibilities--jobs, school, family time, personal time--to make that comic happen and you owe them the same courtesy instead of dashing something off at half quality and half effort. I know that dragonfly managed to make this fight happen despite nine-hour nursing school clinicals and getting monstrously sick in the middle of the fight, and even if she's taking a much more gracious approach than I am right now you owed it to her to put in that same effort and show her the same respect, and you didn't.
Please, please take some of this to heart. I'm really sorry for going off on you but this keeps happening over and over and if you know better than sort your shit out or stop doing it.
Dragonfly, you've already heard my comments over the course of this comic so I don't think there's much more than say other than keep working on time management a bit just to even out the level of the pages, I know things got pretty 'what's even the point' towards the end.
Cool.
lanternlovers - beautiful realism, but try to rag doll these stiff muder fuckers. for the foreground like with the caller try using blur the way Felle has them in his stuff as it would disgictiate the foreground and spacem, the perspecive on crowd got out of hand a bit as they started to shrink like buildings on the horizont
Nothin - cute style, a bit blank - it works for the fade away, but you should establish the environmnet more often - good rule is one background panel per page, but every second page would be fine too - the red colour touch is great, but it would be nice if either the same colour was used thorughall the comics, or each character woudl have their unique shade in order for the viewer to get who's who in 1 second before the details of person comes across
I won't comment on the details regarding story as I can't read or hear, so I take my visual medium at face value XD
@ Nothing: THIS IS SO FUCKING ADORABLE I CAN'T EVEN OMFG.
Poor Alex is SUCH A SHIT.
I have some feelings about my comic and I hope I dont sound ridiculously pretentious but lmao here it is fam
I started off this comic really strong and excited, but kind of dropped the ball near the end. I drew the thumbnails and pages from the last page to the first, but now I know I should drawn the first and last page in the same timeframe, so the burn-out isn’t as noticeable.
I intend to set up a schedule, from now until school ends, where I draw more city scapes and interiors, I’m super upset about how some of the perspective looks, and I think the only way to supplement that is to practice, practice, practice. ( same with some of my anatomy)
Personally, I felt I could have worked in more environments to establish the character’s settings more. Some pages look really bad, and I feel pretty angry at myself for just giving up on that. I wasn’t anticipating my time, and despite moving at a pace of around 0.5-1 page a day, I’m still pretty slow.
If there is one thing I am happy about with this comic, is that I was able to paint a lot of the pages! I thought I would not be able to do that, after my first intro comic. However, as time moves on, I’d like to reach a 20 page marker where atleast half of those pages are painted and rendered.
Storycrafting is still elusive, but I hope that I improved somewhat in which the story that is being told is cohesive. I am unsure how successful I am in terms of pacing and dialogue, and hope there is a marked improvement in my work.
Thank you for your criticisms, and if you have any how-to books you can reccomend me, that would be awesome! I already have read stuff on Scott McCloud, and would like to know more about the three act structure ( seriously guys what is that).
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