[RobThing]

Hey.

I've been signed up for a while but mostly just lurking, and finally decided to make a character 

His basic story is that he recently finished his term as a Lieutenant in the Army, and he's come home to see his little sister, only to discover that she's missing. So he goes on a quest to find her, and ends up following a rabbit-human hybrid assassin through a portal and into Void City. It's sort of my own twisted version of Alice in Wonderland  ^.^

His name is Ignatius Weaver, his family and close friends call him Nacho. Because Ignatius in spanish is Ignacio, and Nacho is it's short form (so it makes sense! Sort of xD). He very badass and manly and gay.

No pages yet, but I'm working on them!

This is he:

[Wei Ingnan]

I would like to see you tighten up your drawings and also see some of your sequentials

[Angie]

Agreed! I think this is looking nice thus far but we need pages! One thing to keep in mind is you might want to step back on the coloring of the lips in that larger image. I thought this was a girl before I read the description due to how the lips were colored.

[RobThing]

Not certain what you mean 'tighten' it?

But here is a page, that I just finished:

[Puzzlething]

While I like the softness of your comics, I think the form you're creating with shadows feels indistinct and vague. Soft shadows are lovely, but you need to make sure the 3 dimensional form of your characters are preserved. It'll also helps your characters retain their dynamism from the linework, which is p nice really. Judging from the colorless drawing in the top left of your design sheet, you totally know how to draw a strong form. Alot of that strength gets lost by the final product though because of your rendering technique.

       Try planning your shadows beforehand by drawing them out as shapes that follow the form of your subject. Make them a part of the initial drawing, and try to keep those shapes relatively strong by your final rendering.

Really though, you're totally at a point where I would approve, and it's seriously uplifting to see somebody post comics so quickly after dropping their design sheet in the incubator. You don't know how many peeps just throw up an illustration and vanish forever, so I totally hoping you sticking around. I'm not telling you to redo it or anything, cause this is lovely. I'm just really trying to give notes for your next comic.

[RobThing]

Ah! Thank you 
Shadows have always been pretty much the bane of my existence. But I just recently learned how to do proper digital painting, and I still need to work with lighting, shadows and mood coloring. Usually with shadows, I do a low opacity solid black overlay, but I haven't really started to incorporate that into my comic work yet. Just trying to work it into paintings with mood lighting, like this one, which is the best turned out yet:



For my next page, I'll try it and see how it goes  ^.^

[Angie]

That looks nice! One thing that I've always done is work dark to light, since that's technically how light works anyway. Like so



On the left I start with the darkest tone that's going to exist on the picture and gradually make it lighter. On the right I start with the lightest tone and gradually make it darker. I find that starting with the darkest tone first makes it easier to control how the light works, whereas when you do light to dark there's the risk of things getting too dark and things tend to get washed out if you're not careful.

[Wei Ingnan]

Not certain what you mean 'tighten' it?

by 'tighten' I meant that your original linework was far too loose and sketchy..

..in your pages this changes to not enough attention or confidence in your linework..and less time spent actually working on the underlying forms....or possibly didn't use as much reference ...your anatomy is a bit wonky as well...you seem to have an issue with the waistline and the lower torso

in addition...the washed out lines in combination with the washed out colours just doesn't work....there isn't enough contrast....with the exception of the heavy black gutters(which makes it worse)

short form.....you are rushing thru the artwork and it is suffering for it.....more practice and more effort and your work will benefit...this is a good start...keep at it

[RobThing]

Ohhh okay. I always tend to work with loose somewhat sketchy lines. It sort of seems like, the cleaner my lines are, the worse they look (Not sure what that says about my work, lol).
These particular pages are supposed to have a more washed out look to them- the idea is that Weaver falls from this world into Void, like how Alice fell into Wonderland, and the normal world is very sort of dry and washed out, and then Void is bright and vivid and colorful.
But I did this next page in more vivid color, just to give you an idea of what it would be, less washed out. Also, I did the opacity shadow overlay on this one. So hopefully the shadows look better.
And when I color pages, I do the whole page in a solid color (the color depending on mood and setting) and then work with darks and lights. But it's a process, and I'm just sort of new at it  ^.^

[Puzzlething]

 I think it looks great dude! I work from mid-tones out myself, but there's definitely benefit to dark-to-light and light-to-dark.

  Never ever never never shade with black though. Well you can, but as a general rule it's much more visually interesting to shade with other colours. This is an incredibly basic little thing from tumblr but it does a pretty great job illustrating what I'm talking about http://gawki.tumblr.com/post/65678138390/this-is-a-pretty-basic-one-but-that-doesnt-make There's even a reference to the basic "I am outside in nature" color scheme you're trying out.

    It looks like you really like soft brushes. You should really try using hard edged brushes for setting up your shadows, then scumble the edges (without losing the shape) very gently with either a soft brush or a soft eraser. Or just use hard edged brushes completely and create your transitions by use the eye-dropper alot alot.

[RobThing]

I just happened to have the .PSD file still up, and I bucket filled some of the black to a different color, and wooww. Thank you, it looks way better that way  *_*  Although stupidly grainy because bucket tool  xD
When I do my next page, I'll keep the color shadow/highlights in mind and I think it'll turn out really good.
I had no idea about the "never never use black for shadows" thing, Thank youuu again. This is going to be really neat.
I have trouble using hard edged brushes, because I like to make things blendy. But I shall try!

Here, I fixed up the last panel, to show the comparison. Instead of black I used a dark red on the tree and a dark yellow on the grass patch on the bottom left. It blends a lot more, and it does look much better, I think:

[Angie]

Much better! Since you're newer to coloring, I did do a massive how to color post in Void U http://entervoid.com/index.php?topic=9939.0 that might help you with some tricks too.

[Puzzlething]

I can tell you like blendy stuff alot, but you can totally do that with hard edge brushes too just by lowering the flow and/or opacity and attaching them to the pressure sensitivity of your pen. There's alot of discussion on whether or not to use primarily hard or soft brushes, but I think hard brushes give you a little more control. This is totally not mine as well buuuuut
http://i.imgur.com/jNQveIT.jpg

you can also watch how Loish does it cause she has great blendy artwork
http://vimeo.com/68048661

[RobThing]

Do you mean like this?
(This is an older painting I did, of Simon Baker, from The Mentalist)
Because it's sort of blendy and hard-edged, but has more of a painter-y look to it:

[RobThing]

Page three!
I wish I could submit more than 4 pages for the intro comic!
I tend to run long when I do pages.

I also updated the character sheet in the first post  *_*

The colors are a little washed out, but I did do the shadows and highlights, without using black or white I don't think it's as good as page two though:

[Rose]

If you want to submit more than four pages, you can stack them on top of each other, i.e. save your images so that one image file is actually two pages. The reason for the 4-page limit is mainly to keep people from spending too much time on their intro story and encouraging them to get to battle as soon as they can. With how fast you've been posting your pages, though, I don't think that's going to be an issue.

As for your art, it seems pretty solid to me for the most part. I'd agree with Wei that your lines look kind of sketchy; it can work sometimes, but I feel like there's some inconsistency with your work. Look at the rabbit at the top of your most recent page. The lines in his top half look pretty solid, but the linework in the bottom half looks less confident and put-together. I think the important thing to keep in mind is that you don't want your linework to look like you left it vague because you didn't know how to draw something correctly. (I hope I'm making sense; I just woke up and I feel like I'm still half asleep XD)

Also, I have mixed feelings about the coloring on your comics. It gives everything a sort of surreal, dreamlike quality, which works if that's what you're going for, but it might not work in every situation, so watch out for that. You mentioned that page 2 was supposed to be the more vibrant, colorful style you'll be going for in VOID, but I don't get "colorful and vibrant" from these pages. They still feel kind of washed out and monochromatic, since you're using a limited color palette. The way your colors bleed into each other, especially over line boundaries, definitely adds to the washed-out feeling. I'd love to see some really well-defined color boundaries and more contrast between objects, especially between foreground and background objects.

Thirdly, watch your posing. The characters look stiff and awkward in a few panels, specifically the last panel on page 1, the first panel on page 2, and both instances of Nacho on page 3. The fact that you're using action words to indicate what's going on (like "Turn" and "Leap") shows that your art isn't communicating that clearly, and that's something you could work on as you go. And I just don't get what's going on in the second panel on page 3. It looks like he's doing some sort of flip while hanging onto an invisible grappling hook or something. It feels like the angle of the tree doesn't match the angle you drew Nacho at.

One final thing, and this is something I comment on frequently—BACKGROUNDS. Right now, I have no sense of where your comic is taking place. A few trees, some scattered bushes, a blank horizon line—all of that gives me nothing to instruct my sense of place. There's so much you can add with detailed backgrounds, and I'd like to push you to do more there. Think of them as environments rather than backgrounds. Try to give us a feeling not only of what's around your characters, but where they've come from and where they're going. Tell us a story with the objects around your characters. Think of your panel composition, as well—has Nacho been chasing the rabbit for a long time before the start of this comic? Maybe the top panel should be arranged with a lot of space to the left of the characters that shows how far they've travelled from the city (by showing a city far in the background, with trees or bushes or grass or whatever they've been running on between them and the city). On page 2, I get the impression that the last panel is supposed to communicate that Nacho is in some sort of new/strange environment. Or maybe just that the tree is big and weird. The problem is, you haven't made me feel impressed with the environment. As the reader, I don't really get why Nacho is saying "Whoa," because the environment doesn't look all that different or unique. And if the tree is supposed to be intimidating or something, you need to communicate that more clearly. Is it a really gigantic tree? It actually looks pretty small the way you've drawn it. Is there supposed to be something strange about the whole environment in that panel? Make sure we get exactly what's going on.

Keep in mind, all of this feedback is stuff you can work on as you continue making comics on VOID. Don't feel like you have to do everything perfectly before you submit your character or turn in a comic. (I learned that lesson the hard way very recently...) Like Puzzlething said, you definitely have the skills to get your character approved, so feel free to submit what you already have and get to challenging other artists to comic matches. But I hope you came to VOID to improve, and I hope you take all of this advice to heart as you go forward and continue to draw.

Oh, and welcome to VOID!

[RobThing]

Ohh that's a good idea. I could just stack them  <3  Thank you 

Don't worry you are making perfect sense to me. And I see what you mean, some of the lines are very solid while others are sketchy. Does that not work in giving a sense of depth at all? I tend to do like, if it's up closer the lines will be more solid, and further away they get sketchier, just because it doesn't seem that further away it would be very clear? Or am I totally off-base with that?

I got the Hatter M graphic novels by Frank Beddor, and I fell in totally love with the art (even though some of their anatomy is really wonky and their kid characters look like little old people). So I'm sort of modeling my comics after how those ones are. Mine aren't quite to that level yet, they have a higher/better contrast and effects (They use a lot more black and grey than I do):

Here's an example of pages from Hatter M, just so you guys don't have to look it up:





I really like the moods and the use of texture  <3 The black grout lines are just  *_*  And the way the faces are painted <3 It seems like their lines are sort of sketchy as well, but a lot darker than mine?

I saw some progress shots, and these pages are also painted from a medium color (darker or lighter depending on the mood they're going for) and that's how I learned that part. This is actually the first image I did in the style, just to test it out to see how it would look:



I did come to Void to improve! And I've already started to, with the shadowing/highlighting in colors other than black and white. I'm excited to see how my art will compare, a year from now.

I'd like to go professional, and I have the writing skills to do so, and I don't think my comic skills are to that level yet. I'm hoping that Void can help me get my comic skills up where it needs to be (It feels very promising so far!)

[Mister Kent]

I hope you submit soon--your art is very appealing!

[RobThing]

Thank you, I'm glad you like it  ^.^
I have one more page to do, possibly two, and then I will be submitting!

[Rah]

You've gotten some good critiques so far and it looks like you know what you're doing on this intro, so I'd say just crack on and get something submitted!

[RobThing]

The forth page is now done. It looks better, but really odd because it doesn't fit with the first few pages. I tried the color zone face thing, that was interesting (Nacho looked like a rainbow for a minute there xD) but I think I've got it, or at least the start of it.

I tried to make my lines less sketchy. Not sure if I like it this way, I think I like it a little sketchier.
Also, lot of darker colors, trying to make it a bit more contrasty and better shadows.
Not sure if I succeeded  >.>

I think this will be the last of the intro pages, though it ends sort of in the middle of a scene, but I can pick it up with the next comic I do. I think it would look weird if there was three pages regular size and suddenly the forth is stupidly long.

[RobThing]

I sent in my application 

Fingers crossed  <3