Dashiram vs. Loct

Critiques & Comments

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Batty
Global Moderator

252 comments

# 10 Posted: Feb 14 2020, 01:30 AM

Kozi: I fuckin loved this story, it was so funny. The art was really great too, and Dash's expressions are the bEST. I was also intrigued by the beginning of the story, with Greece--I feel like there's something going on here and I'm intrigued to find out what it is--and I don't think it's really necessary to have preexisting knowledge of what exactly is being talked about here. It amps up the mystery. The only thing I will say that would've helped clarify that intro scene would be some mention of how Greece is related to Dash--the rest of the convo can kind of be inferred from context clues, but there's zero clue as to who Greece is to Dash. Is he a family friend? A blood relative? Or is it just simple werewolf kinship?

Corn: I'll echo that the painterly style looks really good for the most part--especially for the backgrounds and things like the dog and Loct. It does, however, definitely fall short on Dash's face; a lot of times her face looks completely different from one panel to the next, to the point where it's sometimes difficult to tell she's the same character. At times her face also looks kinda wonky--I think it's the lack of definition that comes with this paintery style which seems to rely heavily on sharp contrast to define shapes, which is hard to do in more subtle places like the face. The last page was also a little confusing as to what's going on, unfortunately.

That said, I really like the humor in yours, especially the "salt" circle and Dash being more concerned about her clout than anything else XD. Also the giant robot standing down for treats. That's good humor lol

Flutterbyes
Artist

299 comments

# 9 Posted: Feb 5 2020, 08:37 PM

Kozi: Funny Kozi has returned! . I'd say running around half shaved and naked is a great way to make an introduction.

Under those intimidating tattoos and that zoanthropy, Dash is hilarious and relatable. And so is, how do you say, Loct, who also has a fun presence. Everyone is just wonderful to look at with their energy!

Corn: Those establishing shots! That lighting! There are some really nice faces and compositions, but sometimes it's a little hard to look at. The values are close together in places where they should be further apart to really sell some of those amazing faces you have going on there, particularly during that funny stare-off (Dashiram's eyes often disappear into her face, for example). The framing device went over my head, but the antics were fun.

ArtsandGoodies
Artist

566 comments

# 8 Posted: Feb 4 2020, 11:34 PM

Kozi: Being used to you writing Remy and his comics, seeing this humor is quite a surprise. In particular your expressions are fantastic to show the humor going on. Your art is ofcourse top quality and I love the sepia coloring here, limited color comics in general tend to be my favorite. Great job as always Kozi.

Corn: I love this painterly experimentation your doing. You made some fantastic backgrounds with it and the setting in general looked awesome. Though some of the faces it looked rougher and i feel some more solid lines may help on the characters. Also Loct is a great character who i wanna battle at some point.

Heathen
Artist

462 comments

# 7 Posted: Feb 1 2020, 04:42 PM

Kozi: Alright, you asked for feedback, so I'm picking some nits here. You know there's not much else I can do with your stuff, you're S tier round here.

I never read character bios or previous comics prior to reading a void comic, unless the comic specifically tells me to in order to have context. Every comic should stand on it's own, and be understood by anyone who reads it, even if they've never been to void before. No one is expected to go read Spider-Man's wiki page before picking up any random issue of Spider-Man. All that is to say, I am not familiar with either of these characters, to the point that I don't even know their names or anything about them besides what is told and shown to me in these two comics, and I read them in the order they are presented-- yours, then corn's.

I don't know who anyone is.

We open with a closeup of a hairy middle aged dude on some sort of hologram. I'm not thrilled with his dialog font, but it's fine. He never says the name of the girl he's talking to, and she never says his, so I don't know either person's name. Since I didn't read the previous comic, I don't know what incident the guy is referring to in the woods, but I'm 90% sure he's Greece. We see glimpses of the break-in antics, but never get the toon (?) intruder's name either. The reading order on page 1 is confused by a couple things. Most notably, the shape and arrangement of panels 3-6 (the pop-out of Dashy (yeah, I'm using a parenthetical inside a parenthetical, what? I'll stop beating around the bush for the sake of clarity, yes, I'm typing this after reading both sides of this battle, so I've discovered the girl here is in fact Dashiram, I assume Loct is the toon thing) the pop-out of Dashy is a panel). So based on your dialog, I think you want me to read panels 1, 2, then 3-5 are the flashback, 6 is the pop-out, and 7. But the shape and arrangement of these panels would work better if you essentially just flipped the balloons. It's okay for English language comics to read right-to-left if the shape of the panels, the direction of movement, and the placement of balloons follows the natural "Z" eye path. So the way I WANT to read this page is from panel 1 to 2, straight down to the right side of panel 3, across to the pop-out of Dashy, across panel 4, down to panel 5 from right to left, and down and across panel 7 and off the page. If this is confusing, I'll show you what I mean in discord later.

The other thing that isn't helping your reading order is that you've forgotten part of the halo around the pop-out of Dashy, so Loct's legs are creating a tangent with her head. I suspect this was just an oversight with your layers, but it has the effect of drawing my eye straight from the left side of panel 3 to the pop-out, which makes me want to read what she's saying there, which leads me straight down to that balloon, so I've skipped over half of panel 3 and panel 4 entirely and have to look back up the page after reading a bit of dialog out of order. Again, I'm nitpicking, but the details is where all them devils be.

One last note on page 1; it could have done with a good establishing shot. The dialog suggests we're in her place of business, and we'll get a serviceable glimpse of the storefront on page 2, but we never really get a good sense of where we are or what time of day it is. Pull that camera back more.

Dash and Greece's relationship. He seems much older and more emotionally mature than her; but he asks is her parents know she's "with" him. She isn't physically with him, so I took that to mean they're in a relationship. If so, she's being really shitty to him, and I don't see it. Again, these are just some of the details that are easy to forget when you're writing a story as someone and for someone who is already familiar with your character and their backstory, and can alienate a new reader. It's probably the biggest issue among void comics at large, and it can be difficult to know when you aren't giving the reader enough when you've got the whole picture clearly in your head. Get feedback on your script from someone outside of void if possible.

My last critique is on Dash's motivations and knowledge.

So she sees the police officer outside (by the way, how overstaffed is the VCPD when they can afford to stake out a henna shop for a reported burglary where the register wasn't even touched? Found that funny), and she becomes enamored with her. Is this the cop who took her report? Did she talk with her earlier, or is she just basing her interest on what she can see of her from the window into her vehicle? And I'm sure this was the joke, but we're talking about the inner logic of the plot and the character's motivations, so even with comedy things should make some kind of sense. Anyway, she's infatuated with this "cute" cop girl. We don't really know why, as we only get one completely unflattering shot of her yawning and she doesn't appear again until right at the end when she's a big werewolf all of a sudden. Now, I happen to have seen this werewolf cop before, but to anyone who hasn't, this would come completely out of nowhere and leave them with a ton of questions. Page 5 is wonderfully drawn, though, and I love the way she looks (apologies to her artist, I don't know her name, and it isn't stated in this comic!).

Back to Dash's motivation and what she seems to know. So she blows Greece off to go get spruced up for the cop, and she's shaving, I assume, her entire body. As others have said, this characterization is great and it is a funny scene, but it tells me she is self conscious about being a werewolf. Ok. But it also seems to imply that she doesn't know the cop is a werewolf. And for all intents and purposes, neither do we, yet. Keep that in mind. The reason this doesn't work for me is because of her reaction, or lack of reaction, to the reveal that the cop is also a werewolf. Dash frets and toils over shaving her body hair to impress the cop, but then has no reaction to the cop's now beastly form, and in fact lays the flirting on thicker. So is she into the hairy thing or not? And why is she so embarrassed when the cop finds her hairball? She's a freakin werewolf, obviously she understands.

So basically, Dash should have either been put off by finding out the cop is a werewolf, or she should have become MORE comfortable around her. Instead, she remains mortified about the leg hair. It just doesn't ring true to me.

So there ya go, I went deep on this one like you asked, take some of this with a grain of salt, as I am admittedly ignorant and coming at this from a purely comics craft perspective and not having followed all the comics featuring these characters, and didn't read their bios. Seeing comics from you is always a kick in the ass for me to finish my current projects and free up some time to battle you, because why the hell have we never battled? Definitely my fault.

Corn: Not gonna pick yours apart so much; Kozi specifically asked me to tear into hers, so I will if you want, but others have sort of expressed the main issues with the roughness in some places bordering on unfinished, inconsistent faces. The dog is great, and reminds me of Bill Plympton, so as far as I'm concerned, it's name is Bill Plympton. I know I'm old because Dash talking to her phone didn't immediately click with me as her doing a live stream or recording for a YouTube video, I thought she was just insane for a few panels. Thought it was funny that she didn't turn the lights on when she walked in and was showing the place off to her viewers in complete darkness. And that Bill Plympton was just sitting there on the couch in the dark like a fucking weirdo. I have no idea what happened in the last few panels, but it feels like you ran out of time and meant to have some dialog there and another page. Overall, fun comic despite some rough edges.

Kozi: Alright, you asked for feedback, so I'm picking some nits here. You know there's not much else I can do with your stuff,  you're S tier round here.

I never read character bios or previous comics prior to reading a void comic, unless the comic specifically tells me to in order to have context. Every comic should stand on it's own, and be understood by anyone who reads it, even if they've never been to void before. No one is expected to go read Spider-Man's wiki page before picking up any random issue of Spider-Man. All that is to say, I am not familiar with either of these characters, to the point that I don't even know their names or anything about them besides what is told and shown to me in these two comics, and I read them in the order they are presented-- yours, then corn's.

I don't know who anyone is.

We open with a closeup of a hairy middle aged dude on some sort of hologram. I'm not thrilled with his dialog font, but it's fine. He never says the name of the girl he's talking to, and she never says his, so I don't know either person's name. Since I didn't read the previous comic, I don't know what incident the guy is referring to in the woods, but I'm 90% sure he's Greece. We see glimpses of the break-in antics, but never get the toon (?) intruder's name either. The reading order on page 1 is confused by a couple things. Most notably, the shape and arrangement of panels 3-6 (the pop-out of Dashy (yeah, I'm using a parenthetical inside a parenthetical, what? I'll stop beating around the bush for the sake of clarity, yes, I'm typing this after reading both sides of this battle, so I've discovered the girl here is in fact Dashiram, I assume Loct is the toon thing) the pop-out of Dashy is a panel). So based on your dialog, I think you want me to read panels 1, 2, then 3-5 are the flashback, 6 is the pop-out, and 7. But the shape and arrangement of these panels would work better if you essentially just flipped the balloons. It's okay for English language comics to read right-to-left if the shape of the panels, the direction of movement, and the placement of balloons follows the natural "Z" eye path. So the way I WANT to read this page is from panel 1 to 2, straight down to the right side of panel 3, across to the pop-out of Dashy, across panel 4, down to panel 5 from right to left, and down and across panel 7 and off the page. If this is confusing, I'll show you what I mean in discord later.

The other thing that isn't helping your reading order is that you've forgotten part of the halo around the pop-out of Dashy, so Loct's legs are creating a tangent with her head. I suspect this was just an oversight with your layers, but it has the effect of drawing my eye straight from the left side of panel 3 to the pop-out, which makes me want to read what she's saying there, which leads me straight down to that balloon,  so I've skipped over half of panel 3 and panel 4 entirely and have to look back up the page after reading a bit of dialog out of order. Again, I'm nitpicking, but the details is where all them devils be.

One last note on page 1; it could have done with a good establishing shot. The dialog suggests we're in her place of business, and we'll get a serviceable glimpse of the storefront on page 2, but we never really get a good sense of where we are or what time of day it is. Pull that camera back more.

Dash and Greece's relationship. He seems much older and more emotionally mature than her; but he asks is her parents know she's "with" him. She isn't physically with him, so I took that to mean they're in a relationship. If so, she's being really shitty to him, and I don't see it. Again, these are just some of the details that are easy to forget when you're writing a story as someone and for someone who is already familiar with your character and their backstory, and can alienate a new reader. It's probably the biggest issue among void comics at large, and it can be difficult to know when you aren't giving the reader enough when you've got the whole picture clearly in your head. Get feedback on your script from someone outside of void if possible.

My last critique is on Dash's motivations and knowledge.

So she sees the police officer outside (by the way, how overstaffed is the VCPD when they can afford to stake out a henna shop for a reported burglary where the register wasn't even touched? Found that funny), and she becomes enamored with her. Is this the cop who took her report? Did she talk with her earlier, or is she just basing her interest on what she can see of her from the window into her vehicle? And I'm sure this was the joke, but we're talking about the inner logic of the plot and the character's motivations,  so even with comedy things should make some kind of sense. Anyway, she's infatuated with this "cute" cop girl. We don't really know why, as we only get one completely unflattering shot of her yawning and she doesn't appear again until right at the end when she's a big werewolf all of a sudden. Now, I happen to have seen this werewolf cop before, but to anyone who hasn't, this would come completely out of nowhere and leave them with a ton of questions. Page 5 is wonderfully drawn, though, and I love the way she looks (apologies to her artist, I don't know her name, and it isn't stated in this comic!).

Back to Dash's motivation and what she seems to know. So she blows Greece off to go get spruced up for the cop, and she's shaving, I assume, her entire body. As others have said, this characterization is great and it is a funny scene, but it tells me she is self conscious about being a werewolf. Ok. But it also seems to imply that she doesn't know the cop is a werewolf. And for all intents and purposes, neither do we, yet. Keep that in mind. The reason this doesn't work for me is because of her reaction, or lack of reaction, to the reveal that the cop is also a werewolf. Dash frets and toils over shaving her body hair to impress the cop, but then has no reaction to the cop's now beastly form, and in fact lays the flirting on thicker. So is she into the hairy thing or not? And why is she so embarrassed when the cop finds her hairball? She's a freakin werewolf, obviously she understands.

So basically, Dash should have either been put off by finding out the cop is a werewolf, or she should have become MORE comfortable around her. Instead, she remains mortified about the leg hair. It just doesn't ring true to me.

So there ya go, I went deep on this one like you asked, take some of this with a grain of salt, as I am admittedly ignorant and coming at this from a purely comics craft perspective and not having followed all the comics featuring these characters, and didn't read their bios. Seeing comics from you is always a kick in the ass for me to finish my current projects and free up some time to battle you, because why the hell have we never battled? Definitely my fault.

Corn: Not gonna pick yours apart so much; Kozi specifically asked me to tear into hers, so I will if you want, but others have sort of expressed the main issues with the roughness in some places bordering on unfinished, inconsistent faces. The dog is great, and reminds me of Bill Plympton, so as far as I'm concerned, it's name is Bill Plympton. I know I'm old because Dash talking to her phone didn't immediately click with me as her doing a live stream or recording for a YouTube video, I thought she was just insane for a few panels. Thought it was funny that she didn't turn the lights on when she walked in and was showing the place off to her viewers in complete darkness. And that Bill Plympton was just sitting there on the couch in the dark like a fucking weirdo. I have no idea what happened in the last few panels, but it feels like you ran out of time and meant to have some dialog there and another page. Overall, fun comic despite some rough edges.

Radji
Artist

624 comments

# 6 Posted: Jan 30 2020, 05:01 AM

Kozi: Fun debut for Dashy. The gags abouth the daily inconveniences of a Werewolf gal had me laughing

Corn: I like this quircky character. That's some high level of messing with one's head.

TheCydork
Artist

606 comments

# 5 Posted: Jan 30 2020, 12:58 AM

Kozi - I just love how fun and quirky Dash is, and paradoxically, how normal she is? It’s nice to see someone who’s just kinda done with weird shit, where instead of being angsty in the bath about being a werewolf she just.. complains about needing to shave her legs. Her expressions were great as were the little details like “Hellish Henna”, and I also like how depicted Loct.

I agree with Candy though on the “French-isms”. I know Loct isn’t supposed to use French and misuses it herself, but it felt like a forced misuse as opposed to genuine misquoting, if that makes sense? “No le guts, no le glory,” feels super awkward to actually say for instance.

Corn - This looked pretty messy and incomplete compared to your last two comics, and it really threw me off, some of the faces in particular looked pretty wonky. If it had slowly gotten less polished it probably wouldn’t be so jarring, but there appeared to be alternating panels in different levels of rendering. I had to reread several times to get it and I think the messiness was a big factor; even now I still don’t get what was up with the big robot or what happened at the end. The way Dash spoke also felt awkward to me, like you tried to fit in a lot of slang or meme material without fully knowing how. The dog was pretty funny though and I enjoyed Dash’s extreme expressions, especially the last one on page 3.

CandycornRhino
Artist

118 comments

# 4 Posted: Jan 29 2020, 08:08 PM

afdssssdgf THESE COMICS. My god I laughed so hard at the both of them.

Kozi: Really like the sepia coloring, and your expressions are so goood. And the fact she was more concerned on embarrassing the cop lady than saving her hair was a cute idea. Though some of the "french"-ism were kinda tacky like "le shit." Would've been more convincing with actual French colloquialisms like saying Merde instead of le shit.

Corns: Very good job on going with a lineless comic, easily was able to distinguish what was what. Though I have to say some of Dash's expressions look kind of flat and unimposing, like when she was saying "My clout!". THE SALT RING MADE ME FUCKING LAUGH SO HARD.

GOOD COMICS THE BOTH OF YOU 10/10 battle asdfgdfb.