Some time in december the new style I'm trying with my comic should show up and I thought I'd ask some other artists here if it's really an improvement.
Here are two examples.
First up this pic is in the old style. There is heavy shading used, the faces are very rounded, and the boddies are low to the ground and chubby. Additionally I don't use ink here.
This next pic shows the new style.
The things I've changed here are that the legs are longer (while still retaining a rather rabibit like shape with long feet and large thighs) the shading is still quite deep, the overall look of the characters is fuzzier including added tufts of fur on the sides of the face, and the most obvious change, the use of ink in various degrees of thickness.
And yes I'm quite well aware that I made perspective mistakes in the backgrounds of both pics.
I like it, though I do hope that you will colour it. I find that coloured comics tend to hook readers better. What you might want to try is to colour them in photoshop then turn the transparency on the colour layer down so that the shading will still come through. But otherwise it's great.
I agree that the change is one for the better, but I might also suggest that you try to work a bit more contrast into your drawings. Your art right now is very grey - I'd like to see some areas of much darker shading.
I didn't even notice the ink in the second one until reading the notes underneath it, and I think the reason is that you don't have any sharp white areas. When you use pencil it tends to smear so even the white spaces are more a light dusty colour and it inhibits the extra pop you should be getting by adding black lines.
In regards to the colour suggestions, one thing you can do if you have photoshop is to scan it as is, create a new layer set to "multiply" and colour atop it (or just fill the entire layer with a sepia tone or something similar if you wanted to go that route). The multiply will keep your original shading and just blends the new colour in.
The two pictures, though, do seem very much alike which is something you specifically asked. So picture two is an improvement, but it's not really drastic. Of course, it doesn't need to be so long as you are happy with it! It looks like you put a lot of work into your shading though, at which point you might consider trying out colouring on the computer anyways - it may take you just as long to shade in pencil as it does to colour with photoshop but the colours do attract readers (as an above poster noted). If you want to try it I'd recommend just doing lineart, scanning that as straight B&W, cleaning it up as needed, changing mode to either greyscale or colour, and then adding in your shading and whatnot.
(And if you haven't got access to Photoshop you can check out the Gimp, which is free.)
It's definitely an improvement on every level : ) In my case, this is enough to make the difference between looking at the comic once or actually reading it.
To the color suggestions. I should have explained at the getgo, the choice of gray is not due to any amount of work invovled, it's strictly stylistic. If you read the comic from the beginning, you'll begin to see how color would work agianst the atmosphere of the comic. ANd yes it does take about as long to hand shade as it does to color. I use color in art commissions and a few fanarts when I feel like it, but for AntiBunny gray is the only thing I'll accept. In fact I've taken efforts in the web design to elliminate almost all color.
However using darker pencils might be something to look into. Perhapse I should adjust contrast to get those lines to stand out more.
I think when it shows up in actual comics it could make a difference in helping characters stand out from the background. When it's a single character in a large image it may not seem like a problem but when it's in a full comic with smaller images I noticed it becoming a problem.
Anyway, thank you for the comments and suggestions. I do hope when the new style shows up people will enjoy it.
