On both of these I feel as though you guys could have paced them a lot better, I'll go into the details of how/why in the actual crits.
Mister Kent-I would really like to see you do a comic that looks like that cover page, that came out awful nice. I liked the twist at the end that Sodah had implanted artificial memories in the two, but I would like to see what actually happened at some point too. Now onto the pacing! I had kind of a hard time getting into this one because it felt very drawn out. You have a lot of very large panels that really don't need to be that way, a lot of them could have been condensed into smaller panels which would have lead to a smaller page count and potentially higher quality from you. It totally went over my head on the first read through that the bar scene was all a big flashback, I don't know how I missed the little box explaining it, but I guess it was because the transition from them seemingly meeting in the house and then switching to a party in a bar really threw me off. It wasn't a bad read, I just found myself confused throughout most of it.
Geekpower-I like the color scheme you chose and you have some nice expressions in here. But like with Kent's, I had a hard time getting into it because it really dragged. I think part of the problem was you're throwing a lot of information at the viewer right away, it's a lot for me to absorb right off the bat. It would have worked better to cut some of the pages out and have some of this story stuff brought up at a later date. Remember that you're new and you have plenty of time to build up the character, we don't have to have her whole purpose laid down right away. You could have potentially started the story at page 9 where Todd goes to investigate what's going on. This would have been a better transition from your intros I think.
For both of you, I'm obviously no stranger to doing long ass comics and on going stories. But I'm a firm believer in only allowing yourself to do a comic that you know you can finish with consistent quality. Never tackle something with a high page count unless you're confident the whole thing will be your best quality.
Todd Susser vs. Katherine D. Lamia
Critiques & Comments
# 31
Posted:
May 25 2011, 06:54 PM
# 30
Posted:
May 25 2011, 09:57 AM
michaelharris:
That is an excellent critic dude, you made me realize what was wrong with my pages, I'm still pretty new to doing comics, but your feedback is very much welcome, this is why I got into void, so I will learn from my mistakes, and eventually get it right, thanks for the comment dude.
That is an excellent critic dude, you made me realize what was wrong with my pages, I'm still pretty new to doing comics, but your feedback is very much welcome, this is why I got into void, so I will learn from my mistakes, and eventually get it right, thanks for the comment dude.
# 29
Posted:
May 24 2011, 11:46 PM
Geek: It's important to remember that you have to convince people to like your character as much as you do. Showing and not telling is really important. You present us with several LONG pages, in which the characters sit there and explain the plot to us. Instead of having the characters explain the plot to us, SHOW us what is going on. Honestly I was bored on the first page, and when I scanned to page five I realized that you were just explaining the plot with characters who didn't really do anything besides stand there, very statically, in the same environment over and over again. A lot of the panels could have been easily combined to shorten the page count. I know that a proper critique would require me to read the whole thing, but I simply don't want to wade through all that. Show don't tell. Especially with something as long as the comic you made. A five page comic can get away with poor storytelling because its over by the time you realize that it was weak but with so many pages, I didn't even want to continue.
Kent I like your drawing I think you should pick a coloring style and stick to it throughout the book. I lost interest with the story about the time of the flashback. I think this could have been shortened to cut out the chaff. MOst issues of comics are twenty two pages and they usually get through several scene changes, maybe a plot twist, rising action a climax and falling action. I understand not all stories require this, but I feel this story could have been told faster and needed more meat for the page count.
Kent I like your drawing I think you should pick a coloring style and stick to it throughout the book. I lost interest with the story about the time of the flashback. I think this could have been shortened to cut out the chaff. MOst issues of comics are twenty two pages and they usually get through several scene changes, maybe a plot twist, rising action a climax and falling action. I understand not all stories require this, but I feel this story could have been told faster and needed more meat for the page count.
# 28
Posted:
May 24 2011, 08:09 PM
PyrasTerran: I think the issue is that such thin lines feel like they demand a color palette. Was coloring this your original intention?
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yeah, I was thinking on that, even though I knew I would not finish color them for the deadline, I would do it at a later time.
# 27
Posted:
May 24 2011, 07:17 PM
I think the issue is that such thin lines feel like they demand a color palette. Was coloring this your original intention?
# 26
Posted:
May 24 2011, 05:22 PM
@ geekpower, yeah that's what I meant. Your lines could be a little more full, but it's good to work on speed too.
# 25
Posted:
May 24 2011, 04:54 PM
Tatsura:
Well, I do have a wacom cintiq tablet, I ink on painter 11, with the Pen - Scrathboard Tool, it's not like Photoshop, no vectors, just freehand pulse, I'm guessing what you are trying to say with a natural feeling, its to have more thicker lines because it looks so clean?, if that's what you mean, I think I haven't really tried that in a while since I was trained to ink this way to improve my speed, anyhow, I will keep that in mind and will practice some of it, thanks for the comment.
Wolcik:
Hey dude, you are right I'm not making animation, I have to remember that, also great pointer on how I was just focused on adding to much info rather than portrait well the characters, I didn't notice until now that you say it, as you can see I have very poor writer skills, so making a story it's a bit hard for me now, hopefully with pointers like this, I can get better, thanks for the advice, and glad you like my art.
Well, I do have a wacom cintiq tablet, I ink on painter 11, with the Pen - Scrathboard Tool, it's not like Photoshop, no vectors, just freehand pulse, I'm guessing what you are trying to say with a natural feeling, its to have more thicker lines because it looks so clean?, if that's what you mean, I think I haven't really tried that in a while since I was trained to ink this way to improve my speed, anyhow, I will keep that in mind and will practice some of it, thanks for the comment.
Wolcik:
Hey dude, you are right I'm not making animation, I have to remember that, also great pointer on how I was just focused on adding to much info rather than portrait well the characters, I didn't notice until now that you say it, as you can see I have very poor writer skills, so making a story it's a bit hard for me now, hopefully with pointers like this, I can get better, thanks for the advice, and glad you like my art.
# 24
Posted:
May 24 2011, 04:09 PM
Mister Kent: I like your work even without colors, but if you have just one shirt colored or something like that then I'd prefer to keep it without it - it makes it look more unfinished than just clean lines on color page.
Is Soddah taking over cannon now? I like how each one of "the Orphanage" members can update on gang's status
I like how you skipped the "I'm very new to Void's concept of world" for Katharine and went to more interesting part - it's not action packed (fighting wise), but it's a nice change of pace after your battle against Christopher.
I wonder if Todd ever is going to cover his version on Mr Awesome's battle
Is Soddah taking over cannon now? I like how each one of "the Orphanage" members can update on gang's status
I like how you skipped the "I'm very new to Void's concept of world" for Katharine and went to more interesting part - it's not action packed (fighting wise), but it's a nice change of pace after your battle against Christopher.
I wonder if Todd ever is going to cover his version on Mr Awesome's battle
# 23
Posted:
May 24 2011, 04:02 PM
geekpower:
Very nice first round - I understand you had a big thing in mind and bite more than you could chew, but it's a very promising start
Like Coatl said - you should plan your panels better, and remember you're not making a movie or flash animation. It will help you reduce the page count, and in comics form you can't decide how long a person will look at one panel - so using few panels to zoom out is sometimes unnecesary, because in most cases it's readers imagination that does the zooming out or in.
You focused so much on adding biblical "epic" information and making your character "special" in its own story that you couldn't focus more on portraing her personality and emotions in her new state (that's why Kent left it out) or build your opponent well into your story. Todd just seems to follow the plot for its conviniance - like when his summon was taken over and for some reason they both went somewhere. I'd suggest thinking over that shadow demon, since having a plot device that follow your character around can turn into obnoxious, obvious deus ex machina - it's still nice here when he's showing her the ropes, but be warry
Art wise I like how you drew Todd's summons, and your characters (designed for flash aniations as they are) are shown in quite some perspectives and carry a lot of detail
Very nice first round - I understand you had a big thing in mind and bite more than you could chew, but it's a very promising start
Like Coatl said - you should plan your panels better, and remember you're not making a movie or flash animation. It will help you reduce the page count, and in comics form you can't decide how long a person will look at one panel - so using few panels to zoom out is sometimes unnecesary, because in most cases it's readers imagination that does the zooming out or in.
You focused so much on adding biblical "epic" information and making your character "special" in its own story that you couldn't focus more on portraing her personality and emotions in her new state (that's why Kent left it out) or build your opponent well into your story. Todd just seems to follow the plot for its conviniance - like when his summon was taken over and for some reason they both went somewhere. I'd suggest thinking over that shadow demon, since having a plot device that follow your character around can turn into obnoxious, obvious deus ex machina - it's still nice here when he's showing her the ropes, but be warry
Art wise I like how you drew Todd's summons, and your characters (designed for flash aniations as they are) are shown in quite some perspectives and carry a lot of detail
# 22
Posted:
May 24 2011, 02:51 PM
Geekpower, just curious but did you use the pen tool to ink your lines?
I have nothing against using pen tools, but if you own a tablet you could try drawing out the lines, it would give the art a more natural feeling. It'll take some getting used to but you'll get great results at the end.
I have nothing against using pen tools, but if you own a tablet you could try drawing out the lines, it would give the art a more natural feeling. It'll take some getting used to but you'll get great results at the end.
# 21
Posted:
May 24 2011, 02:04 PM
geekpower: Coatl:
Thanks for the pointer, I think you are right, I do so many unnecessary panels, I guess it's from the habit of doing so much storyboards, and yeah I understand your example from page 2, so now that I have that in mind, I will improve the layout of the panels so the page won't feel at a slow pace.
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It's good that you visualize that way it helps get all your ideas out then you can simply edit them down.
# 20
Posted:
May 24 2011, 01:19 PM
Coatl:
Thanks for the pointer, I think you are right, I do so many unnecessary panels, I guess it's from the habit of doing so much storyboards, and yeah I understand your example from page 2, so now that I have that in mind, I will improve the layout of the panels so the page won't feel at a slow pace.
Thanks for the pointer, I think you are right, I do so many unnecessary panels, I guess it's from the habit of doing so much storyboards, and yeah I understand your example from page 2, so now that I have that in mind, I will improve the layout of the panels so the page won't feel at a slow pace.
# 19
Posted:
May 24 2011, 12:57 PM
angieness: In GP's defense on the page length, they had to stack the pages to get the uploader to take them. Toast is going out of the country for the rest of the week so it would have lead to a huge delay to have him put it up unstacked. So 40 pages had to be "stacked" down to 20.
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yeah it took me a while to realize that.
# 18
Posted:
May 24 2011, 12:51 PM
Kent if you honestly didn't have time to color that's one thing but the least you could have done is add a brighter color on the characters and some grads or something on the bg to make them stand out.
# 17
Posted:
May 24 2011, 12:45 PM
In GP's defense on the page length, they had to stack the pages to get the uploader to take them. Toast is going out of the country for the rest of the week so it would have lead to a huge delay to have him put it up unstacked. So 40 pages had to be "stacked" down to 20.
# 16
Posted:
May 24 2011, 12:43 PM
GP: I think my main gripe is that you pages are too long. My suggestion is to try to try to set the width between 600-700 px or to use a smaller hight. your inks are good, I suggest you use a bit thicker lines to separate foreground from background and I also recommend that you do what's known as a halo around characters, a white spce that surrounds the characers that seperates them from the bg.
Another thing is tha I feel like the pace may be slight slower. I think next time when you're thumb-nailing you should try to brainstorm how the same amount of information and condense it in less pages.
For this critique, I'll use page two as an example, the part were Katherine gasp, you could have done it at a different angle, had the guy's silloutte in the Foreground and have him say "we don't have much time" all in one panel. And panel 3 and 4 felt unnecessary because you could have used panel 5 as your 3rd panel and insert the dialog there. (If you don't know what I mean, I'll try to do a crappy edit of the page to show you.
Panel 6 felt unnecessary as well since 5 doesn't show her looking threatened. Pn7 and 9 could have been axed and you could have put 9's dialog in panel 8. (also be sure to double check proportions, the guy's hand looks a lot smaller)
I can't say anthing more about the last two panels but I do fell like the extreme close up for her wasn't the best choice.
Another thing is tha I feel like the pace may be slight slower. I think next time when you're thumb-nailing you should try to brainstorm how the same amount of information and condense it in less pages.
For this critique, I'll use page two as an example, the part were Katherine gasp, you could have done it at a different angle, had the guy's silloutte in the Foreground and have him say "we don't have much time" all in one panel. And panel 3 and 4 felt unnecessary because you could have used panel 5 as your 3rd panel and insert the dialog there. (If you don't know what I mean, I'll try to do a crappy edit of the page to show you.
Panel 6 felt unnecessary as well since 5 doesn't show her looking threatened. Pn7 and 9 could have been axed and you could have put 9's dialog in panel 8. (also be sure to double check proportions, the guy's hand looks a lot smaller)
I can't say anthing more about the last two panels but I do fell like the extreme close up for her wasn't the best choice.
# 15
Posted:
May 24 2011, 12:13 PM
Awesome history Mr. Kent!, I like it, more funnier and entertaining than mine I must say, I apologize for not finishing mine in time, even after the extension, I think 40 pages was a bit too much, XP, I just hope it doesn't look so bad with the lack of Backgrounds and colors, and sorry for my bad English too, I know I must have a loot of mistakes with that as well, but non the less this was fun to do, and its pretty awesome to see someone else drawing your character, I think I'm going to learn a bunch of stuff here.
# 14
Posted:
May 24 2011, 11:15 AM
angieness: Email all your pages to toast@entervoid.com or stack them to make it 20 or less (2 pages per file). Emailing them to toast can cause a pretty big delay as he's about to go out of the country for a vacation but he's the only one that can put a comic that's longer than 20 pages up.
Quote
thanks angie, but i think i fixed the problem, i stack them, and lower the size, and upload them one by one, so i think i got it this time, phew.
# 13
Posted:
May 24 2011, 07:23 AM
Email all your pages to toast@entervoid.com or stack them to make it 20 or less (2 pages per file). Emailing them to toast can cause a pretty big delay as he's about to go out of the country for a vacation but he's the only one that can put a comic that's longer than 20 pages up.
# 12
Posted:
May 24 2011, 12:59 AM
im having trouble uploading, so im going to send the pages to the mail (weiingnan@gmail.com) already tried like 3 times and say No images have been uploaded.
# 11
Posted:
May 24 2011, 12:22 AM
Tatsura: @ geekpower
http://entervoid.com/board/index.php?topic=9919.msg156247#msg156247
Quote
thanks, i see now, have to stack them, XP i hate doing that, well i will stack them, and reupload them.
# 10
Posted:
May 23 2011, 11:44 PM
# 9
Posted:
May 23 2011, 10:42 PM
question, i have uploaded 30pages, but the uploader wont take more, how i upload the rest?, also i dont see were to upload the Thumbnail picture, so what do i do?
# 8
Posted:
Apr 22 2011, 04:52 PM
Good luck on your first battle!!!
# 7
Posted:
Apr 20 2011, 08:47 PM
Can't wait to see what Kat D. Lamia can do! Good luck geekpower!
# 6
Posted:
Apr 19 2011, 03:46 AM
angieness: This is an awesome match up
Quote
# 5
Posted:
Apr 18 2011, 05:39 PM
Show the newbie what Orphies are made of, Kent >:3
# 4
Posted:
Apr 18 2011, 05:12 PM
will do my best!, good luck to mister kent too.
# 3
Posted:
Apr 18 2011, 03:29 PM
This is an awesome match up
# 2
Posted:
Apr 18 2011, 02:36 PM
Hey geekpower, good luck with your first fight!
Real excited to see how this turns out.
Real excited to see how this turns out.
# 1
Posted:
Apr 18 2011, 02:16 PM
Now that's interesting
Regular Match
Drawing Time:
4 weeks + 1
Ended:
May 30th, 2011
Votes Cast:
21
Page Views:
2233
Winner:
Mister Kent
Intro Story
King
@ 12:38 PM Mar 29th
The End of Extinction
@ 11:26 AM Mar 29th
Monsters of Nature
Dairyu vs. Rickter & Gus
@ 8:14 PM Mar 28th
Help Needed
Theakon
@ 8:41 AM Mar 28th
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Artist
you are absolutely right, I guess I got a little to carried away, being my first comic and all, but now I know what not to do, so hopefully the next one will be better.