Looking for some critiques

Bluebug · Post by **Bluebug** » Fri Jan 16, 2004 9:20 am

KittyKatBlack wrote:
bluebug wrote: Mainly the bottom left panel in http://km.keenspace.com/d/20030501.html. He's obviously surprised by something (I'm still not sure what though), and I assume it's the girl with the knives since she seems to be more powerful than him. But in the next panel he walks out as if nothing is wrong. You would think that a little stunt like that would make him be a bit more careful and have some doubts about his victory. But he doesn't even seem to notice he was 'given' that battle until later in the story when his antidote is fake.
Ah yes, I see what you mean. That fight scene was poorly done on my part. I just wanted to get it over with so I cut it short. I should have made it at least one page longer, so that the flow would be better. What happened in the page is this:

KM kills his fellow assassins one by one. In the end, only a fairly young girl of about 17 is left. She begs him not to kill her, but he does so without hesistation. This was supposed to show his policy of "no mercy" ... he's not someone who balks at killing women and children (that is, if he believes it's necessary ... he's not someone who goes out and hunts down women and children either). Anyhow, all those assassins were students of the lady with the knives. She readies herself to do battle to avenge her students, but the leader of the Guild stops her before she can do so. That's why our "anti-hero" leaves unscathed and unconcerned. In his self-centered mind, the leader of the Guild stopped the attack because he was afraid.

I think another thing that confuses me mostly is the Japanese names, but that's mostly me. I'm not Japanese, I'm American so the names sometimes all end up looking sort of the same to me. When they're talking about other people that aren't on the page, I sometimes get lost over who their talking about. That's not really your fault, but I just know I sometimes got confused by it. I guess the only way to really get around this happening is to make sure you have enough story about a character to make a solid connection between a face and a name. More or less, I'd just suggest avoiding having a character show up breifly on one page and then later involve them in a conversation where people are supposed to remember who they are.
Right. I suppose I could sometimes insert panels with people's name next to the them ... like they do in some comics. I've noticed they even do it in some X-men comics.

I think this only happened a couple times, and I noticed at one point you aeven put a comment at the bottom to remind people who someone was incase they forgot.
Yeah. That decision was based on my weekly update schedule ... meaning it had been a while since readers had seen that character. But also, the picture was a bit blurry, so I was afraid people wouldn't be able to tell who it was.

I hope this answers your question.

Yup, thanks!

Bluebug · Post by **Bluebug** » Fri Jan 16, 2004 9:22 am

The layout has been tweaked again as per Lana's suggestions. I'm finally pretty satisfied with it.

Lana · Post by **Lana** » Fri Jan 16, 2004 10:41 am

The layout has been tweaked again as per Lana's suggestions. I'm finally pretty satisfied with it.

yay ^_^

Cinematic · Post by **Cinematic** » Sun Jan 18, 2004 2:46 pm

[nothelpful]

First off, holy crap. I've been reading through your archives. I love your art, even though I'm not a fan of Manga in general, and the site design as I see it now is very, very good. The navigation buttons are absolutely adorable, and the thing with the other links having the red backgrounds after you've mouse-overed them is pretty cool. I like your art and I like your site design.

Problems:
- On your title page (the first comic), I can't even read the title of your comic. Maybe it's my eyes or my screen resolution, but that text is impossible to read for me. I think its partly the font and partially the color that makes it so hard for me.

- Reading through your archives, I have absolutely no clue as to what's going on at any given point in time. This is mostly in the first few pages but it really turns me off from wanting to read more. Maybe this is just because I don't read enough manga-driven comics or comic books, but I can barely identify characters from each other, much less discern a storyline. Then again I generally tend to have problems with any comic that introduces all its characters at once. Maybe you could sort of introduce them one at a time in your next work?

- I agree with what's been said before about problems with speech bubbles. They clutter up your images. Take, for example, the last panel of http://km.keenspace.com/d/20020330.html, or http://km.keenspace.com/d/20020520.html. BIG problem.

- The cliche argument could also be made. So far I havent gotten far enough forward in the comic to really critique your storyline, but at least where I am it's all pretty typical.

I guess I'm not saying much of anything new here. Your art and your site design are strong. They work very well and are much better than anything I could possibly ever be capable of. I guess part of my problem with the comic is, it's just not my bag of chips.

Speaking of chips, methinks I should eat some ^-^

[/nothelpful]

Bluebug · Post by **Bluebug** » Sun Jan 18, 2004 8:12 pm

Cinematic wrote:
First off, holy crap. I've been reading through your archives. I love your art, even though I'm not a fan of Manga in general, and the site design as I see it now is very, very good. The navigation buttons are absolutely adorable, and the thing with the other links having the red backgrounds after you've mouse-overed them is pretty cool. I like your art and I like your site design.

Thanks for starting off with the good news

Problems:
- On your title page (the first comic), I can't even read the title of your comic. Maybe it's my eyes or my screen resolution, but that text is impossible to read for me. I think its partly the font and partially the color that makes it so hard for me.

Yeah, I should stop being lazy and just change the title on the first cover. I tried to create my own font ... unfortunately I can't create fonts to save my life. The old cover used to have a True Text font, but then I decided to be creative. Bad idea.

- Reading through your archives, I have absolutely no clue as to what's going on at any given point in time. This is mostly in the first few pages but it really turns me off from wanting to read more.

Ouch. That's not good. But I needed to hear that. I think you're in the majority ... most people don't want to struggle to understand the first chapter of a comic. Especially when it's 30 pages. *dies*

Maybe this is just because I don't read enough manga-driven comics or comic books, but I can barely identify characters from each other, much less discern a storyline.

No ... the first chapter lacks direction because I rewrote it five times ... while I was creating it. Sigh. I knew where I wanted the chapter to end up ... but not how to get there. It's been bothering me for a while, but I've been getting increasingly complacent about it. I'm slowly starting to convince myself that it may be worthwhile to redo the first chapter.

Then again I generally tend to have problems with any comic that introduces all its characters at once. Maybe you could sort of introduce them one at a time in your next work?

I'll probably still introduce them all at once ... but cut down on the number of characters. Some of the characters don't really need to exist.

- I agree with what's been said before about problems with speech bubbles. They clutter up your images. Take, for example, the last panel of http://km.keenspace.com/d/20020330.html, or http://km.keenspace.com/d/20020520.html. BIG problem.

I cringe with hindsight. Unfortunately, I still have pages with a gazillion speech bubbles. That's what happens when I update once a week but strive to get two pages worth of material onto each page. Come February, I've decided to start doing two pages/week. Hopefully that will remedy the speech bubble problem. I'll just have to restrain myself.

- The cliche argument could also be made. So far I havent gotten far enough forward in the comic to really critique your storyline, but at least where I am it's all pretty typical.

IMHO, after the first chapter, the comic steers away from being "a cliche", to using cliches as a jumping board for a unique story. I hope. If not, there's no point in me writing this story ^^;;

[/nothelpful]

All in all, a very helpful critique. Once in a while, I need a dose of truth to zap the whimsical bubbles floating over my head. Bleh. Taste soapy.

KittyKatBlack · Post by **KittyKatBlack** » Sun Jan 18, 2004 9:02 pm

Falos has told us about this site on General Discussion called http://www.fontifier.com that will create custom fonts for you. I'm going to try an experiment with creating a font using photoshop. (Instead of printing/drawing/scanning/adjusting/resubmitting it.) If it works, which I don't see why it shouldn't, I think I might use it more often for fonts. In fact, I might go back and change all my previous comics to the new font (When I get around to making it) if it looks good enough, mainly because I won't be under copyright restrictions from using a font from Blambot. You could probably do this too, if you want to create your own comic fonts.

Bluebug · Post by **Bluebug** » Mon Jan 19, 2004 5:59 am

That's an awesome service. Thanks for the link, KittyKatBlack.

I see great potential here ... for this to suck up hours and hours of my time

I've always wanted to see what a font of my would look like if professionally done.

KittyKatBlack · Post by **KittyKatBlack** » Mon Jan 19, 2004 3:49 pm

Don't thank me, thank Falos, he's the one that brought it to everyone's attention. But glad it came in handy. ^_^

Taiwanimation · Post by **Taiwanimation** » Tue Jan 20, 2004 9:01 am

Very much improved, only one issue I have now. The index page, with all its stuff and the black background, looks like a whole bunch of rectangles floating in space. Id remove the first and prev buttons so that the top edge of the comic lines up with the bocks on the left.

Bluebug · Post by **Bluebug** » Sun Jan 25, 2004 9:04 am

To KKB : I don't know who Falos is.

To Falos : If you happen to be reading this, thanks for the link to Fontifier!

To TA : Funny, I didn't make that box flush with the top of the comic on purpose so it would stand out. I guess it worked, given your comment. Also, if I make that box flush, the gb and forum buttons near the bottom of the comic would be completely out of line with the "prev/next..." buttons, which bugged me.