Wendybird wrote:I've just been rather harshly reviewed, and I survived. Bring it on!
Really? Can I get a link of that review for comparative purposes? With all the craptacular fantasy/elf comics I had a chance to read, I don't think you're so bad. I mean, the story has some interesting bits, involving characters, not nearly as much boring exposition as other fantasy comics and art might not be perfect, but isn't putting me off either, it's certainly not ruining the comic.
On the other hand, I am much more inclined to be harsh on artist such is Paul Escobar up there. He is a completely formed artist with an enviable set of skills, and I'm inclined to see his comics as finished work more so than yours. Everything in your comic speaks of you as an artist still in process of learning and developing, comic serves primarily as a vehicle for learning, and for most of shortcomings, the best advice I can give you is "keep practising".
For instance, when I tell you that you need to improve your drawing, I'll feel like I'm repeating something that you already know. Of course, there are anatomy issues. What you've drawn so far is decent, but it usually has characters standing or sitting, doesn't reveal much of their anatomy, so one cannot really say whether you'll land on your feet when you proceed forward from drawing (fully dressed) characters in static poses. Eventually you'll want them to run, dance, or at least stand with body weight on one leg.
I can't help but notice that
the most dynamic scene so far has been purely executed. Hint: when character is running, his pose is different from walking - speed lines behind him don't help.
Actually, scrap the "you'll want to" part. You'll have to try a bit more dynamism. I see efforts at creative page layout and sertain experimentalism there, and they are seriously undermined by the fact that your characters are always shown from the same camera angle, almost always from the same distance, and most often in very static poses.
One thing I have to point though, I think that you need to work on details of facial features, so that your characters have greater reign of emotions and facial characteristics in general. Perhaps the best illustration of this is how father of main characters doesn't look a day older than they are.
However, I really like what you do with backgrounds. Seems like you have intention to use the forest surrounding to experiment on it: early on, you have a sort of
impressionist landscape juxtaposed with characters drawn in a classic comic manner. Sometimes, though, this combination looks a bit awkward and it proly would be better if characters were shaded to extent (see, background has depth and characters don't) but in general, it's experimental and different, and
this is rather cool.
Later in the comic, you choose somewhat abstract background, which, I think, works out because of green-red colour combinations you gave it. I find it interesting because it's abstract, but at the same time suggesting the forest really well.
Of course there are times when you draw background more or less in the same manner as characters, and those pages usually lack the punch. Comic itself would probably be better if there was consistency in treatment of backgrounds instead of constant switching from one way to another, but as I said, you're getting your feet wet and you prolly want to test out different things. I do think that you can make something out of these ideas. For instance, provided that characters arrive in some human, more urban setting, it'd be very interesting to see it done in same impressionist style, as contrast to forest setting.
As for script, I have to commend you for "showing, not telling". The very beginning strikes me as an example of introducing characters through series of anecdotes which efficiently tell us what we need to know about characters, their powers, and thus about their world. There are so many comics that expect you to "bear with us" through exposition until we get to "interesting stuff", that I like seeing a comic that jumps onto entertaining stuff right away - actually makes exposition entertaining.
So much that when some sort of task was mentioned, I thought "well, the fun is over, here comes pretentious part". I felt that that the comic was falling into the old "great quest" carried out by "the destined ones" cliche that about 97% of fantasy comics fall into. However, that part of the plot hasn't arrived still, so I don't know how you'll carry it out. So far the comic lacks the pretense that burdens so many fantasy comics.
While your comic is at times burdened by some "dead" dialogue, it also has parts that relief of that burden. I should, however, remind you that the price comic author pays for every line of text is higher than the one of, say, novel writer or a filmmaker. Each new reply requires a new speech baloon, space for that baloon, and a few of those require a new panel. This affects the pacing and rhythm of the story, not to mention that too much excessive dialogue makes scenes overly lengthy.
According to my experiences, nearly all cases of overly long dialogue scenes can be solved with some simple editing of the script - usually, when you re-read dialogue, you can find things that seemed integral to the dialogue when you were writing them, but in retrospect aren't. I think that it's a good idea to check the scene after writing it and edit it to what you think will fit smoothly into narration - or even to check entire chapters and try to replace some of dialogue scenes with something more illustrative.
I notice, for instance, that for one moment in your comic, those scenes in which father tutors one of his children about using their powers carefully, became redundant; there were about three of them in a short span, and one can't help feeling that at least one of them might have been replaced with more rewarding content. If I had to blind-guess, I'd say that this happened because in one moment you didn't know where to go next, so you were basically stalling.
It may not seem like a big deal, but one day when your characters get involved into some convoluted storylines, you might regret that you didn't spend these early comics more efficiently.
Finally, I don't think it's a problem so far, but I'd like to warn you to go easy on flash-backs. While author may think that flask-backs help flesh out his characters, reader is usually more interested in what's happening right now, and would prefere that author fleshes out character with something that's happening at present time.
