What I meant that sometimes from profile or while arms are moving, the shoulder area becomes flat or too thin. I also noticed that when you colore e.g. the guy on pg3 you colored the arm like it wouldn't be part of the same body but rahter an round object, the shading didn't match in my eyes.

haha yeah, the only experience I've had with a French or German accent has been from movies and books so I'm not at all surprised I didn't get it quite right.

I really enjoyed this! The chemistry between the characters was just awesome *snicker* Good job you two =)

Angie: I love the moodiness! Your anatomy has improved significantly but I think you should watch out for the hands. The colouring turned out very nice, however it was a bit muddy at times. Maybe you should tune down the blurriness, it becomes excessive sometimes to the point of looking almost like a motion blur. Sometimes the way you coloured things made them look flat, like Gale's hair and coat when he first showed up. Hm ... If I hadn't known Ross was French from reading the Voidwiki, I'd have assumed he was German from the accent ... And I should know a thing or two about a German accent =P

Kaelin: Wow, I really dig all that detail and how Gale's house has so much character! It has been mentioned already I think - you should separate bg and foreground more ... In panel 1 it's just perfect, the bg is unobtrusive and Angie really pops, but in most of the rest of the comic it's too bright. There were also some inconsistencies in height but I guess you're aware of that =)  

Keep it up girls! You set a very high standard for the collabs.

Dim-thanks! Yeah, I'm going to try to stay away from the blurry lighting in the future, and I'll keep working on loosening up my anatomy.

Wolt-I'm not quite sure what you mean by "but I think Angie should work on shoulder area, because it's there were the problem starts." do you mean that's the only problem I seem to be having with anatomy or my drawing problems have to do with them? If you could clarify what you mean, that would be awesome.

Joshua-yeah, I really went overboard with highlights on this one, it was really my attempt at lightening the coloring up a little to try to keep things from getting too dark. I'm also glad that you picked up that Ross is French haha a good chunk of the people that talked to me about him thought he was German so I was like aw I failed at writing a French accent.

Thanks for the feedback guys!

You gals did an awesome job

Great story/dialogue! the 2 chars. really interact well, nice personality mix. It all felt quite natural to me. And that cover is soooo sick! collabo=win.

sorry if i'm beating a dead horse with my crits, didn't have time to read thru all comments.

A;
You've done a kickass job coloring as usual, I think you've improved on your softer/realistic style. The only thing I didn't like about the coloring was it seemed like you went a little crazy with the highlight areas, I like what you're doing with them, with the soft edges and color choices are nice, but there are too many IMO and they might be more effective if they were used more sparingly, too many of the light hues kind of kills the effect. I kind of agree about the lineart being lost, maybe caused some clarity issues, but you've created a great dark and sneaky mood here I think it makes it worth it.  The french agency guy in the beginning kind of threw me off because I thought it was Gale at first. Maybe a little more unique body type or something in his design. Overall def. solid improvements. You've found a nice level for the textures this time, they are not so overwhelming. Anatomy seems to have improved. I also enjoy that Ms. Rudell curses like a sailor!

K;
Your drawings and layouts are real nice! Colors were a bit bright I felt, but it was a nice transition/contrast from Angie's dark and sneaky mode to your,"gotcha! turn the lights on" mode. Very interesting char. and a good intro to him and his personality. I really don't have much to crit, but I'd have liked if Gale's and Angie's suits were not so similar in color, they could both be gray, but maybe a warm vs. a cool grey. Also, at the end, The house looks off, like instead of looking like it's connected to a larger building, it looks like this free-standing little house. I guess because of the tree like forms behind don't suggest the rest of the house to me, eh not a big deal.

Overall I really enjoyed this one, entertaining throughout, champion effort! look forward to more collabs of greatness!

Sorry, but I don't think I able to offer too much critique.
While Kaelin has better lines, Angieness has better coloring. I was hoping to see combination of those like in the cover, but this is aweseome anyway.
It's already late, and only few hours till end of voting so I won't be able to read all other posts now, but I think Angie should work on shoulder area, because it's there were the problem starts.
As for Kaeling I have nothing if I were to tell you something I'd be able to do much better muself Oo I want batle Gale really bad right now XD

This was great :33 I liked a light-hearted Angela comic, and Gale is a funny guy.

just read this today (yes I know I'm late, sorry)

Angie: I do see improvement in this battle, but your coloring really eats up a lot of your inkwork though. The blur effect you lay over your inkwork feels like a bit too much sometimes and also messes with your light source so I suggest lowering the opacity on it or setting it under your linework instead of on top and also, pay even more attention to where your placing the glow effect. I really liked the backgrounds and cool colors you were using here, your anatomy also seems to be getting better, but there was still some stiffness going on in this comic. Pretty cool stuff though. :3

Kaelin: Yours also looked pretty sweet, the anatomy and perspective looked solid to me. I did, however have a problem with the colors too; they felt kind of muted,  a little too much though. I also think the shadows could have been darker. other than that though I have no other problems with it.

I thought the story was really cute and I enjoyed it, nice BB collab guys!

Phill-yeah that's totally a bad habit of mine, after I colored the first few pages I made sure not to over detail again because it was just too much work to put into something that would get covered up by the dark coloring.

Zsa-I'll make sure to not have the soft glow next time, for my next battle I have a general idea of what I want to try to do with the colors so the glow won't be necessary. I'll keep working on my anatomy as always, taking figure drawing the past two semesters has really helped but obviously I've still got a ways to go.

Thanks for the feedback guys! I'll keep these things in mind on the next comic

zsabreuser: You're right. A lot of people have pointed out that thinness and I agree 100%, and I should be smacking myself for that because I know better! I think that was laziness on my part.. no excuses really. My bad!

Gale's gloves are green, I don't know why. They started GRAY.. and ended green. His whole outfit palette was something from the colors bargain bin, I don't know what I was thinking. I think I just hate digital coloring that much. XD

I'm lovin' these critiques guys, I appreciate the time taken to do them a lot. And I don't mind being told the same thing more than once. That's the golden rule.. if three credible-enough people say it's true, it's probably true.

Late, but not failed hehe, so here it comes!

Angie: I really like your coloring, specially when it comes to characters, and you can really pull moods with the backgrounds, I find that the most difficult part, and you can do it.
However, theres a side of the coloring that have always bothered me, which is the glowing highlights, they generally erase a lot of your linework, and thats just sad! But maybe thats just me being a very blur hater (this effect makes the lineart becomes a bit blurry where it touches, blurry or just too smooth?).
On the lineart department, you can still keep on focusing in anatomy, since Im fine with the huge detailing aspect, (on this one, btw, maybe a not so dark coloring could benefit you, either that or make the BGS less detailed and keep the darkness), like in most cases, Angies arm is verry long, or just bends in a weird way. Also, in the bgs, sometimes it looks like it was very ¨ruled¨ and maybe you could either use the ruler only for the sketches and lineart it freehanded, or in some cases, erase some of the lines (in page 10, it totally killed any volume value there should be in the top right panel)

Aside from that, pretty dandy looking comic, lady!

Kira: Kira, first off, I LOVED your bookcases, and the way you colored them, looked very solid to me. Personally I thought your comic would be perfect if the characters were rendered that way too, with more simpler colors, since you already have KILLER blacks.
I liked a lot of the scenes youve pulled, specially the comical attempt of angie to grab the can thingie. Very clever.
On the coloring side, aside from the rendering thing, I jsut couldnt like the way you did with Gale, dunno if thats because of the light grays, but something Im not really aware of, didnt work on him. Then again I think if it was just a simple render of that gray, he would look perfect!
For some reason, almost all your distand shots of characters had a funny anatomy, like, it looks correct, but the characters are either too thin, or lack curves, being mostly a thick stick men, dunno If im getting it right.

BUT, have I meantioned I LOVE your linework?

Looking dandy girls, I hope to see more of this!
Oh, and I think you two should have done more pages like the first one, maybe like 2 or 4 pages like that in the transition.

I thought this was pretty good, I don't really mind it being in BB format either. The art quality is nice, but a few things did seem a bit weird for me. First in Angela's part I noticed that her technology themed backgrounds are very cluttered and are getting a bit over detailed. It's not a bad thing but I think without the colors it'd be too difficult to make out. When you got to the home of Gale I think things got a bit more clear and that's the level of detail you should strive for with your inks but maybe a tiny bit more detail.

For the Gale half I would of liked to see a bit more details with the background personally, and I think things might of been a bit too cluttered with the panels being so small, but it honestly wasn't a problem overall... I just like seeing how you would take to bigger panels and establishing shots like you did with other battles only with a massive interior again. The story I enjoyed but some of the dialogue just sounded a bit strange. After Pee scared Angela as she was sneaking around, would she take a small moment just to say "Dude."  Little things like that you gotta act out sometimes, personally I see Angela being a bit frustrated and having her heart pound in her chest and just being silently angry.

Overall however it was a very enjoyable read and I hope you two keep up this level of quality.

Ah O.K. Makes since

haha pretty much. I was working on my final animation since I'm a senior in college and work almost full time now so I couldn't handle doing something with a deadline. We both just wanted to chill and do a comic for fun.

They wanted to do this without a deadline, cause they were too busy to do a real battle.
PEOPLE HAVE LIVES AND JOBS, DEAL WITH IT.

That was pretty Cool! I wish i could color like you Angieness. but i don't understand, why didn't you guys just battle?

Unfortunately that wouldn't have really been possible unless Kaelin mailed me half her pages because I'm not a digital inker. So that would have stuck Kaelin with both pencilling and inking, and me with the coloring. Which would have placed a lot more work on her. The only way we could have really done anything differently without it killing either of us would be for me to just color both halves and we still both draw our own halves.

We actually did have something to split up the halves planned like a little ad page but the people we'd contacted about doing it never got it to us so we just dropped it. The ad page was supposed to serve to cut the two parts in half since we'd wanted to lay this out like a traditional comic which is why there's a front and back cover. It may have helped to just give both parts their own little cover to better split it up and make it not so jarring.

I had to take a point off for the jarring transition. Both parts separate were awesome, but in the end I had to consider it as a 'whole'. It would have been easier to swallow if Angie had done ALL the coloring and Kaelin the penciling. (And perhaps both of you the inking.) The interesting thing about this new collaboration thing, is you're not just practicing your artwork, you're practicing your teamwork.

I was blown away by both of you guys! awesome job! The story played out beautifully as well, despite the change in artists halfway through the comic.

Kuro-Thanks for the crit! Oh yeah I know I totally botched the perspective in that huge establishing shot haha next time I'll try to run it by people first and see if they can't help me iron out those errors before I ink the lines. The windows especially were a source of pain for me, but I really should have done a better job error checking before I inked them considering how much trouble they were giving me. I'm glad you like my coloring, I really try hard to set a certain mood and atmosphere in every battle I do. I'm going to try to make sure I do an earlier time of day for my next comic so I can get away from the super darkness. I'll take a look at Mignola's work, I remember on my Frank battle I wanted to do something like that but I wasn't able to because I couldn't get it to work. I may give it another shot!

Jhalton-Oh yeah page layout is a harsh mistress I've always battled with. It certainly doesn't help that I mostly read manga and not too many of the ones I read get too adventurous with the panel layouts. (well aside from the really girly comics, which I could really learn a lot from) I'll try to work on it some more, it seems every time I have a battle where I did a little more with the layouts I fall into the same box layouts again.

Thanks for the feedback guys! I was happy to see some more in depth responses when I got home from work. While it's nice to hear we're awesome, we know we're not perfect so I don't mind hearing things I could have fixed/avoided so I know what to work on for my next comic.

This is really cool. I love the drawings, Angieness it's cool to see paintings as panels.

I just gave these a quick look, will have time to look at it more closely later. But the one thing I think you can both benefit from is page layout. While what was IN the panels is looking good, it seems like there's a lot of boxes just stacked up row after row.

On page 8 of the first story and page 5 of the second I can see you guys trying to break out of that a little. Push it some more and maybe having less actions per page could help this a lot, so there's not as many things to cram together.

Jared Lewis: I appreciate the critique, I don't care how long it is! And I agree, I definitely noticed that this bunch of pages were really pretty bland, at least when I look back and compare them to some of the stuff I've done previously. I'm not sure why or how that happened. I used this collab largely to practice my pacing, and I think my pacing improved.. but I accidentally lost some other good things I didn't want to lose, I'll spend some time getting that back next time. I'm glad to know I wasn't just imagining it.

I'm actually kind of laughing because no one has pointed out the holy-crap amount of inconsistencies in my half. (For instance, I don't think I ever drew Angie's tie the same length, and I don't know if anyone else noticed but from my first to last page, her character design gets increasingly different). The window in the last few pages is also not consistently the same size.
Truth be told I noticed a lot of these things while the pages were still in pencils, but let them go and posted with the errors. Maybe it'll help me remember how to avoid it next time.

I'm reading all of these critiques, I appreciate all the input, keep em comin'!

Wow!!

This story was great.
Been away from watching Void comics in six or more months and started with this one.

And I was satisfied with this being the first to watch.

First time Seeing a comic with Gale and I just have to see all that there is with this guy now.

Angieness stepped her art up to a new level, as she writes she was somewhat trying to do and again it didn't dissapoint at all.

Overall my votes will be 9,9,8

Looking forward to see more from both of you

shit... that ended up being long. sorry guys!
but that's for preoccupying me during my lameass work day haha

angie, you're getting better with each battle. the perspective turned out pretty well with that difficult table in the beginning, but at other points there were still a few convenient angles. like a lot of straight side shots. and the bay window bit on gale's place looked a bit odd at times. understandably, the beveled sides make it a little rough to block out. oh & the trees. yes they don't have straight lines to them. but the way you did the snow on them in that big establishing shot made them look as though they were being seen from a higher angle & played against the perspective. and while you're in the upper echelon of colorists on this site, & i loved the textures you had going. and no one really every mentions it but you do a nice job atmospherically as well, with glows, & fogs, & diffusion, & all that bullshit that's usually too subtle to get noticed but go a long way to give depth & realism. just be careful with how dark you're getting. it feels like we're missing a lot of detail you're doing in the line art by skewing everything so dark. that or don't be scared to optimize the details & chunk out large portions of black...? that way, you're only drawing the highlights really. like mignola almost, if that makes sense.

kaelin, i can't quite put my finger on it, but i really like something about the way you draw characters. it's purely a style thing. they're fun to look at & that's something a lot of people have a hard time trying to pull off when they draw, myself included. there were a couple of random panels towards the end where they seemed a little elongated, but it wasn't a huge deal. your backgrounds, though complicated & well detailed weren't necessarily bad, but could use a bit more work. if this were any other battle on void or anything, it'd definitely be top wrung sort of stuff. but a lot of times, they seemed to repeat & be a bit flat looking. i'm not accusing you of reusing them, but sometimes it would feel as though maybe we were looking at a character from a different angle, but the background behind them wouldn't be very different from the one we just saw. one way to rectify that is by trying to give depth & volume & then shifting that depth with the angles, if that makes sense. i mean a few times, as i mentioned with angie's half, it would conveniently seem as though we were looking at the precise side or straight forward view of something. for instance, even with the books of the library standing cover to cover on the shelves, we seemed to only see their spines when (whenever the size of the book varied) we should probably see the cover tapering off into some slight perspective or something. does that make sense? in a couple of spots you made good use of perspective, but don't be afraid to play with the composition a bit too. if we're seeing angie & gale fight over the artifact from down at the bottom of a stair case in another room, don't be afraid to get a lower angle & look up. push the eye level a bit further, you know? i'm also a stickler for text & what you had didn't quite work for me. while it looked the slightest bit handwritten, skewing the aspect ratio of it so thin started making it look computer-y & synthetic. it also seemed to change size in some places. try to keep it as uniform as possible, unless you have a reason to change it. and the one bit where angie lost her temper & you hand lettered looked neat enough, but the thin lettering didn't quite match the impact. again, these are purely nitpicks, since you asked.

between the two of you: since you each completed your own parts, i think it would have made for a nicer transition between your styles to maybe switch with gale turning on the lights. even if it were redone & mid page. while you both have very nice styles in your own way, they're different styles & the switch between is a bit jarring. and as separate parts, the 'recap' bit of angie caught in the act kind of prolongs a beat. now for a trial run, it's not a huge issue, but in the future this is probably something people doing collab battles should keep in mind in the future if they do their own separate parts of the story.

but, can i just say though that i'm glad we have the collab thing going now? this makes a lot more sense than trying to split a battle with one long story into two complete narratives!

and i know we're not supposed to comment about other people commenting, but they're looking for feedback guys, not just generic compliments. if it was good, tell them what was good about it! they spent a lot of time on this, & you could at least try to do the same in the comments.

Thanks guys!

amazingdavid-I'll keep that in mind, I'll try not to depend on the hazy look next time since in further away shots it really hurt the scene.

BCEMan-Yeah, I was afraid some parts were a little too dark, I tried to remedy the problem by including windows in the hallway of Gale's house and make the top of the library room have one large window, but I certainly know what you're talking about.

Good story... liked the little creature!

Maan! This really made my day!!! Wonderful stuff girls!

Great juxtaposition of styles!  I have to say that I feel like the first half of the comic is a little to dark at times (the lighting).  The story seemed a bit strange... easy to follow, so thats good, but it felt like it was missing an element... can't quite put my finger on it... oh well.  Aside from some minor drawbacks (mostly personal preference), you both did a pretty damn good job!  Great illustration for the first page to!

The colors were great throughout - that was a nifty little story, too

Great Job over all. I love how the atmosphere shifted in the middle. And the panel layouts were well plotted. 5 thumbs up all around very inspiring

I haven't been in impressed in a while and I was truly impressed by both of these.  I agree with justin I think both of you are so comfortable with your own work that its too easy...maybe I like what was happening with the cover and would have been delighted to see a closer collaboration throughout the book (color each others line art...someone pencils the whole thing some one colors...etc.)

Angie- Looks like your anatomy is improving loads...most of the full body shots were spot on for your style and are much less stiff than in your previous battle. (still a bit stiff...) The coloring while not being my cup of tea is well done...while you did an excellent job at creating the gloomy musty old room look...the haze kind of muddled the colors and linework and it all blends...meh..

Kaelin:  Excellent...your comic was a wonderful foil to Angies..bright and colorful and full of funny...I really enjoyed your part.  The drawings were well done and the coloring top notch...I think you could use a larger variety of values in some areas the panels felt very flat throughout...also your backgrounds were just at the tipping point of being richly detailed.  Ive drawn libraries before and they are a bitch but your books in the background I felt were a bit to uniform and flat...(book spines are bit rounded at the top and bottom like cylinders eh!?) also it might seem trite...but old book usually have a foil label on the spine where the volume edition or authors name might go...that might help add some variety.  but this is nitpicking...very good go.

wow great colors! i love them

Thanks dude! Yeah I know I went crazy overboard with the colors this time around, hopefully on my next comic that won't happen. And yeah, I'd offered to color Kira's half as well but she really wanted to try doing it. The reason we did this as a collab instead of just a 2 part battle had to do with neither of us having the time to finish something within a deadline. That and we both really just wanted to chill and have fun without worrying about competing. This comic was just our way of doing a comic just because really haha.

I sort of wish you guys collaborated more on the art work like you did the cover.  It is still quite good and pretty entertaining overall, but it doesn't seem any different from a standard 2 part battle.  And, Angie, the coloring is hot in yours, but you are really draining out the line art in a lot of places.

But good job you twoss

haha I'm fine with critiques, I'm pretty used to people critiquing every little thing, it's fine.

It feels good to be done. Hahah. SO GOOD.

I said pretty much all I needed to say in the author's notes at the end of the comic, but I'd like to add this. Please, critique my half to your heart's content. Even if it's something that seems small and stupid or obvious, I WANNA KNOW. I'm not gonna get offended, I take critique very well. I'm cool with it!

Though I emphasize it being 'my half'. XD Angie might not want hard critique on every little thing.  I wouldn't really know! So.. yeah, be mindful of that.

awwww!

hope it's sorted soon.

We are both finished and uploaded, but something odd happened with the uploader so it's going to have to wait until Toast can fix it to go up.

I'm still puttering through my half. But soon. Soon!

PS, I hate digital coloring. Please kill me now.

I'm excited about this! Have at it.

My half is all done and uploaded. Kaelin still has a few pages to go, it will go up when she finishes. As a heads up, we've been working on this comic for the past 2 or so months. We gave it a deadline to get us to finish up.

Thanks Kuro, I hope everyone enjoys it

This has been in the works a looong time guys, make it a good one!

nice.
looking forward to this!

sorry.
that's a lot more generic sounding than i really intended. haha the bits & pieces i've seen have made me eager to see the final product!

so nice!

I second the notion! The two week wait will be so worth it.

Looking forward to the awesome

two weeks days is 14 days too long of a wait ; ;

HOOORRAAAYYYYY!!!!

Well we didn't take advantage of the collab thing as much as we could have but this format opens a lot of possibilities for people to try different ways of collaborating in the future.

I look forward to z' collaborative comic

This may encourage future collab comics.

oooh this is gonna be so cool!!!

Countdown to Awesomeness XD

shit just got real!!

Sweet, I'm looking forward to this one.

HOORAH

Hope you guys enjoy what we have in store for you!