mcDuff's reviewalicious thread

[Joel Fagin]

The first thing that hit me was that you should've been writing a NOVEL, Lightbringer, not a script. Your writing isn't suited to be a script. There's character there, but it's wall of text. Text jammed, in a small size, into speech bubbles.

Well, copious dialogue is generally a bad idea in a novel too. Mostly.

- Joel Fagin

[Nutshellcomics]

Thanks for the thorough going over. you are correct the aliasing in the earlier cartoons is due to the fact that i scanned a lot of these into MS Paint as that was the only tool available to me at the time. I am using Photoshop now and i feel that the quality of the coloring has improved a great deal. the more i use it the more i discover what i can do and how to do it. soon, i hope, i will not have to use Paint for any part of the art work.
i have read almost everything anyone here has said about fonts and believe me i have made efforts to get away from the standards but try as i might i have yet to find one that did not look blurry by the time i had the comic reduced to it's final size and so i will always welcome any advise on this i can get.
i can certainly work to be more "viciously funny, outlandish, and crazy" but at times i find myself tending to just be mean and i really have to watch myself on that.

thanks again

[Metruis]

The first thing that hit me was that you should've been writing a NOVEL, Lightbringer, not a script. Your writing isn't suited to be a script. There's character there, but it's wall of text. Text jammed, in a small size, into speech bubbles.

Well, copious dialogue is generally a bad idea in a novel too. Mostly.

- Joel Fagin

Yeah, but they can get away with it more.

[Warofwinds]

The first thing that hit me was that you should've been writing a NOVEL, Lightbringer, not a script. Your writing isn't suited to be a script. There's character there, but it's wall of text. Text jammed, in a small size, into speech bubbles.

Well, copious dialogue is generally a bad idea in a novel too. Mostly.

- Joel Fagin

Yeah, but they can get away with it more.

Only if their [insert family member here] is their publisher OR it's the fifth book in a series that has already proven itself.

...usually.

*stops self from naming names*

[Metruis]

Only if their [insert family member here] is their publisher OR it's the fifth book in a series that has already proven itself.

...usually.

*stops self from naming names*

Pick up some of those paperback fantasy books at your library. Oh. My. Goodness. Possibly the worst fantasy book I ever read was Prophecy of the Stones, it made Eragon shine. Whyyyyyyyyy. And let's not start on romance novels. Or, even better, romantic fantasy novels! Waahhhhhhhhhgah.

I've read books that should never have been published. Ones that make me go 'okay, I feel GOOD now'. Good about my FIRST novel. Ones that make Lightbringer look like a pretty good novel, actually. Yes, the dialogue too, not just the story. I can't name names because I've scrubbed most of them from my memory with sandpaper and then soaked my mind in acid. Yeah, it needs improving, I critiqued it, but there are some very, very, very, very poorly done published things. XP

[VinnieD]

I am probably going to regret this, but as I'm not taking any studio art courses this semester I'm quite starved for any form of artistic feedback.

So I'll ask for a review of AntiBunny
http://antibunny.com
It tends to be confusing so you may want to limit yourself to either Just the Gritty City Stories or Just the Nailbat stories. Though they do intertwine in places, either can stand alone. I'd advise making use of the archive page to avoid confusion.

Yes I already know the art is inconsistent, and that again it's confusing. The inconsistency I'm still working on, confusion is by design. But I should leave you something to tear asunder.

[McDuffies]

For me, a script isn't that hard to create and I haven't seen that many BAD ones...

Many people think that script is not hard to create, that's why web is full of wannabe comic writers who are looking for someone who can draw. And physically, it indeed isn't hard to create - we all know letters, right - unlike drawing, which makes impression for many people that writing a script boils down to making up some characters and some plot and then going on with it.
But script includes so many elements, plot, characterisation, pacing, rhythm, dialogue, subtext, atmosphere, etc, and writing a good script means balancing many of those elements so that it makes something larger than the sum of it's parts.

Yes, I believe that writing a good script is harder than drawing good. When you're writing, you have to have entire story in your mind, all it's elements, and every new element you include reflects the entire story. Writing takes significant organizational skills. When you're drawing, the current page is everything that interests you, and perhaps a page before and after.
This is not the general consensus, however, because professional writers will get away with sucking at what they do much easier than artists.

The first thing that hit me was that you should've been writing a NOVEL, Lightbringer, not a script. Your writing isn't suited to be a script. There's character there, but it's wall of text. Text jammed, in a small size, into speech bubbles.

Well, copious dialogue is generally a bad idea in a novel too. Mostly.

- Joel Fagin

Yeah, but they can get away with it more.

I was gonna say the same as Joel. Novel has to have it's rhythm just like a comic, and you don't want, for instance, action scene to be constantly interrupted with expository dialogue either. You don't want to be redundant, to explain the same ideological viewpoint over and over. And lots of Link's text would still be overly dramatic. Most of problems I mentioned would still stand, perhaps all but the one about relying on narration instead of images.

I've read books that should never have been published. Ones that make me go 'okay, I feel GOOD now'. Good about my FIRST novel. Ones that make Lightbringer look like a pretty good novel, actually. Yes, the dialogue too, not just the story. I can't name names because I've scrubbed most of them from my memory with sandpaper and then soaked my mind in acid. Yeah, it needs improving, I critiqued it, but there are some very, very, very, very poorly done published things. XP

Well, you know how paperbooks are written, specially romance novels. Novels like those are written in under a month, starting with stock cliches and storylines - I remember an article about a writer who'd write about twenty novels a year, and really the only thing he was changing from novel to novel was a setting (picked from a stack of travel magazines on his shelf) and occupation of characters. They're earning their money with quantity, since they're very cheap to produce, and they were never meant to be well written in the first place.
Lightbringer, on the other hand, is taking three years of work so far and is one person's sincere authorial effort.

i have read almost everything anyone here has said about fonts and believe me i have made efforts to get away from the standards but try as i might i have yet to find one that did not look blurry by the time i had the comic reduced to it's final size and so i will always welcome any advise on this i can get.

Hmm... do you flatten it before resizing? Try leaving letters as a text layer and resizing it like that. One issue might be the quality with which you save your images, if letters come out blurry perhaps you should crank compression settings up a bit?

[VinnieD]

I don't want to take this thread off on a tangent but on the subject of fonts, I'm doing something that I known to be frowned upon and do anyway. I reduce before doing text. That way I know as soon as it's typed if it will or will not be readable. It's not been a problem really as long as I don't forget the script. It's worked out well so far...balooning is another issue entirely though.

[Metruis]

I was gonna say the same as Joel. Novel has to have it's rhythm just like a comic, and you don't want, for instance, action scene to be constantly interrupted with expository dialogue either.

Oh, I know. I'm a novel writer. I'm good at what I do as an amature and I have plenty of critics to say that I am. I'm just saying. Novels get away with bad dialogue easier than a published comic.

I know. I've read them. I'd swear I've read all of them, I had to stop reading, I couldn't take it anymore. I couldn't find any new good books.

Many people think that script is not hard to create, that's why web is full of wannabe comic writers who are looking for someone who can draw. And physically, it indeed isn't hard to create - we all know letters, right - unlike drawing, which makes impression for many people that writing a script boils down to making up some characters and some plot and then going on with it.
But script includes so many elements, plot, characterisation, pacing, rhythm, dialogue, subtext, atmosphere, etc, and writing a good script means balancing many of those elements so that it makes something larger than the sum of it's parts.

As I said: for me, a script is not that hard to create. Dialogue comes naturally to me. I wouldn't say I'm amazing at it by any means, and where I can write dialogue I fail in other places. I'm aware of this. I've opened up to critiques on other sites, on writing, and my criticism is almost always the same things, and it's description based. Ah, my lovely flaw, my gaping, glaring flaw. Working on you. (pats it)

Writing dialogue is like composing a picture, though. You have to convey something important with it, or you waste space. You have to make every word count--to write a GOOD novel--which means cutting out the things that you went 'oh, that was so funny!' at, because it's not either showing something about the character or advancing the story. You can't have a conversation in the middle of a duel... no matter how neat the banter may be. It's music. It has to flow. It definately isn't easy, I agree. But it's not hard for everyone, either.

Maybe I'm just jaded about novels... but I haven't read a good, new one, in a while. (Of course, pathetic local library doesn't help)

I haven't read a lot of comics yet, and so far the ones I've read have had good scripts. I think it's because it's hard to find the bad ones. It's hard to find some good ones. So far, Lightbringer has been the first one I read that had such a heavy script to read. The art was definately better than some I've read. I see a lot of bad art in comics.

Well, you know how paperbooks are written, specially romance novels.

(sobs) I know. It's so cruel. It mangles my art form. It makes me bleed inside.

/cliche

I've written novels in a month. Nanowrimo, yay. They're not publishable quality, but yet... they're more art than those... sad... excuses... for...

Excuse me, I'm going to go and sob in a corner for this mockery they call writing. In memory of good novels. Maybe then I'll stop procrastinating.

You too, go back to reviewing, I love reading it. This thread makes me happy. Also, the hijacking should stop in favor of reviewing. We should make a new thread if we want to continue this debate on what constitutes a good comic script.

[Joel Fagin]

Novels get away with bad dialogue easier than a published comic.

I don't think they get away with bad dialogue more easily. I think they get away with lots of dialogue more easily. Comics, being visual, are faster to absorb so lots of text would slow them down much more. Novels are text anyway so it's no biggie. However, bad dialogue would grate in either.

- Joel Fagin

[McDuffies]

Word.

As I said: for me, a script is not that hard to create. Dialogue comes naturally to me. I wouldn't say I'm amazing at it by any means, and where I can write dialogue I fail in other places. I'm aware of this. I've opened up to critiques on other sites, on writing, and my criticism is almost always the same things, and it's description based. Ah, my lovely flaw, my gaping, glaring flaw. Working on you. (pats it)

Writing dialogue is like composing a picture, though. You have to convey something important with it, or you waste space. You have to make every word count--to write a GOOD novel--which means cutting out the things that you went 'oh, that was so funny!' at, because it's not either showing something about the character or advancing the story. You can't have a conversation in the middle of a duel... no matter how neat the banter may be. It's music. It has to flow. It definately isn't easy, I agree. But it's not hard for everyone, either.

Dialogue is not the hardest thing about writing. What is really hard, is organizing the story, making it so that it adds up to something. In which order things happen, in which order to present them to the readers, how to start and how to conclude scenes, picking up all the inconsistencies and illogicalities, how to follow through the plot and yet make your characters act realistic and consistent, etc etc etc.

[Komiyan]

Won't ask for a crit since I've previously had two from Duffies, but seriously heed his words, he's good at this and it helped me a lot.

[McDuffies]

Thanks very much, Komi. I always had this irrational fear that I'm better critic than I am author ('cause I'm rather be the second one).

All right, I'll play along.

You know where to find it.

Frankly, every time I tried to read "Last Resort" before, I was put off by the mere design of characters. Furry webcomics are often a ground for various fetishes, with very morbid, yet sexualized characters and obsession with deformed anatomy. "Last Resort is not the comic of that kind, but it does include very grotesque characters: giant lizards, centaurs, amputees, and many characters with grotesquely big ears. While this wasn't done to appeal to various fetishes (nor particulatly sexual in nature), I can see how fetishists could be interested in it.
But then again, this is internet. There's a fetish for everything.
This can be turned upside down too. Many of these designs are interesting, original. I just felt like warning you that it could possibly put off some people like it did me.

Anyways, the comic starts with an interesting premise: a sort of leathal reality show not unlike the one in "Running man". This kind of survivalist theme is quite interesting to me. Everything that's happened so far seems like introduction (forming teams, getting to know the characters), and the game is about to start. 94 pages, I think, are a bit too long for an introduction, but I guess on the trength of the premise and some of the characters, I would follow the comic up to this point.

However, narration turns out to be rather confusing. Characters are introduced rapidly, faster than we can remember them all. Dialogues are often ambigious, and clarity of the action is often sacrificed to dramatic panels. Right now I have a feeling that I fully understood about the half of what happened, and some of the rest of the story I picked up later, from the aftermath. As for rules of the contest, to far they seem confusing and sometimes contradictory. (perhaps if I reread, some of these things will clear out).
Then there are various species and customs of this world which I don't understant, but at least I have a feeling that I'm not supposed to.

But hands down, the worst thing about the comic is the amount of speech baloons.
I've talked about the importance of editing and cutting out unnecessary text twice in this thread so far. This doesn't mean that I think that text should be bare bones: text that isn't story-progressing is important too: it gives text life, has it's rhythm, and generally avoids the impression that the reader is being rushed through the story. Writer has to find the balance: how much text is actually needed for the whole story to run smoothly; some of this text will certainly be unneccesary for the story, strictly speaking.
"Last resort" has different problem with text than earlier examples. It doesn't have big, boring blocks of text, it has small, one-sentence baloons scattered all over the pages. It doesn't have a lot of splithairing exposition, it has a lot of smalltalk lingering in the air.
The worst consequence is how these baloons visually impact the comics: frankly speaking, pages are ugly and unreadable, and speech baloons are the only reason for that. Characters are half-covered by baloons, and reader strains his eye to figure out what's going on from pieces of scene, butchered by these baloons. We see characters as if through a keyhole - or trying to figure out the whole scene by what we see through multiple keyholes.
You put a lot of effort in this drawing these pages, then cover them with baloons, thus completely ruining your entire effort.
Now, what to do about it part: The most obvious advice is, cut down on some text. You could easily cut down on those half-started sentences that characters often utter, which seem to imply something, but reader doesn't know what. In mass scenes, you don't have to have every character say a word or two of his own. There are a lot of other places too, where it seems like you had to record every sigh or sound that characters made.
In scenes like this, it would be good to split dialogue scene into several panels, instead of putting it mostly in one. Comic would benefit from it in other ways too: it seems kind of lazy because you make an entire scene and get away with drawing characters just once (webcomickers do it often, and usually to cut down on drawing), but also, it is static, as if only character's mouths are moving and everything else is frozen.
Finally, you should think about not chopping the text in separate baloons so much. I know that conventional comic wisdom says that you should separate larger blocks of text into smaller baloons, so that reader can read them easier - but surely reader can digest more than one sentence at a time. Sometimes, a bit larger blocks of text are fine, and in your case I think that they would help you significantly decrease the space that baloons cover. More smaller baloons also affect the rhythm: I had an impression that your characters were constantly stuttering.
Placing baloons at the corners of the pages might also be good. Often, they are covering characters while there's a lot of unused space around them.
Basically, and way you find to decrease the number of baloons will be an improvement.
One thing I liked, though, is an interplay of baloons of characters in different panels. Speech baloons will cross borders and actually belong to one panel, but be spoken from another. You use the fact that it's often the placement of baloons that leads the reader's eye, and manage to control the order in which reader reads them gracefully.

Art is definitely colour-driven. Lineart is decent but clunky, I has a strange impression of it's artificial nature, as if it was done with vector graphics. Colouring is rather good, and helps cover all flaws of lineart. This will be enough for average reader, but a reader taught to appreciate black/white comics like myself, will not be able to help but see any underlying problems that lineart has. Basic problem is, I think, that you need more confidence with drawing, mostly with facial expressions.

Finally, "Last resort" has an interesting premise and story, at least a few characters we get to like and be interested in, agreeable art, and well, we're yet about to see what the plots and drama are going to be like. If a problems with baloons wasn't fixed, though, we might end up missing the whole story even though it happes right in front of us.

[Linkara]

Well, nothing like two reviews in the same thread reminding me how I suck to discourage a guy. *Slumps over*

In any case, thanks to both of you for taking a look and giving me tons of helpful advice. Only two points I really want to address in response, since obviously I can't try to respond or acknowledge every single point both McDuffies and Metruis pointed out.

Metruis: I DO pencil first. Everything else is inked, colored, and shaded via computer in photoshop and PSP with a mouse.

McDuffies: Wasn't I at least getting better with the text in more recent pages? I made a conscious effort recently to try to reduce the amount of words-per-panel with only a few exceptions due to panel size.

[Evil Jamie!]

Nice topic, 'Duff. I think Fancy Adventures is a little bit too young to be reviewed yet, but I'm definitely taking note of the do's/do not's that are mentioned here. *thumbs up*

[McDuffies]

Why, thanks.

Well, nothing like two reviews in the same thread reminding me how I suck to discourage a guy. *Slumps over*

Well you asked for at least one of them. The reason why I don't go around making unsolicited reviews is, I don't want to discourage people. I don't tend to say things like "but hey, keep going!", everybody else seem to be saying things like that. If I pick a comic apart, it's to make a list of things that have to be improved. I'm sory if the list is long and intimidating, but that's the way it is.

McDuffies: Wasn't I at least getting better with the text in more recent pages? I made a conscious effort recently to try to reduce the amount of words-per-panel with only a few exceptions due to panel size.

There's obvious reduction of unnecessary text there and improvement in some other areas, yes. But I didn't know which to attribute to conscious effort and which to the fact that the introductory part is over and current part is more action-based.

Metruis: I DO pencil first. Everything else is inked, colored, and shaded via computer in photoshop and PSP with a mouse.

You ink with a mouse? You'll have much better results if you start inking by hand and scanning after that. Now that your art is improving, there's no reason to hold it back by mouse-inking.

[Komiyan]

Metruis: I DO pencil first. Everything else is inked, colored, and shaded via computer in photoshop and PSP with a mouse.

You ink with a mouse? You'll have much better results if you start inking by hand and scanning after that. Now that your art is improving, there's no reason to hold it back by mouse-inking.

Wow yeah. Linkara, it would be interesting to see what you can do with a pen, you'll likely find you have a LOT more control over it.

[Linkara]

You ink with a mouse? You'll have much better results if you start inking by hand and scanning after that. Now that your art is improving, there's no reason to hold it back by mouse-inking.

Wow yeah. Linkara, it would be interesting to see what you can do with a pen, you'll likely find you have a LOT more control over it.

It's one of the reasons why I was thinking about getting a tablet. Wait a second, did people seriously think I was doing EVERYTHING on the comp?

Well you asked for at least one of them. The reason why I don't go around making unsolicited reviews is, I don't want to discourage people. I don't tend to say things like "but hey, keep going!", everybody else seem to be saying things like that. If I pick a comic apart, it's to make a list of things that have to be improved. I'm sory if the list is long and intimidating, but that's the way it is.

Nah, it's alright, I'm feeling better now and I did ask for it. It's just I thought I was making progress and then you listed off things no one had commented on before and yet you're right about.

There's obvious reduction of unnecessary text there and improvement in some other areas, yes. But I didn't know which to attribute to conscious effort and which to the fact that the introductory part is over and current part is more action-based.

Entirely conscious effort. Reviews blasted me continuously for it and I realized it was a major screw-up, so I started to look for ways I could simplify sentences and basically try to limit myself to 29 words per panel (I can't remember where I read that that was the optimum level...). That'd vary a bit if, say, a page had two panels in it. Recently I've also given up on trying to fit everything within the outer border I set up on a page, since people can read it just fine within that white space as they can in the panel.

[McDuffies]

It's one of the reasons why I was thinking about getting a tablet. Wait a second, did people seriously think I was doing EVERYTHING on the comp?

I thought you were doing it with a table with pressure sensitivity off. My best bet would be turning to pencil inking, since you'd need some period of adjustment to tablet, and inking on paper is just an extension of penciling. Some nice markers can be bought around.

Nah, it's alright, I'm feeling better now and I did ask for it. It's just I thought I was making progress and then you listed off things no one had commented on before and yet you're right about.

That's because I'm da macDaffies, fear of all that writes and draws.

[McDuffies]

I could always use some harsh critique! Although my comic, too is just starting out....

http://whatnonsense.smackjeeves.com/com ... family-01/

"What nonsense" is beautifully drawn comic. There is a happy marriage of antropomorphic and realistic, so animals asume human roles while still being realistically animal. There is a richness of textures which are instrumental in creating comic's peculiar atmosphere. Artist is skillful in drawing both landscapes and cityscapes.
Because of accent on textures and inking quality, I don't think that colour is doing justice to the art. I think that this comic would look good in black and white. If anything, you should pay more attention to overal colour tone of the page; one character doesn't always have to be coloured with exactly the same tone, and it can be adjusted to fit the tone of the entire page. This way, pages are sometimes just too colourful and playful for such gritty comic.
Another complain that I might mention is that sometimes, objects drawn with the ruler, with technical precision, strongly contrast with the rest of the page, drawn in nicely loose inking style.

Story is so fat too short to judge it. There are many things that are yet to be put into context, together with the actual mood of the story. In fact, what stroke me right away was how dark and depressing first pages were, and how tone changed abruptly into comedic. I generally don't like some elements of the beginning, what with the description of brutal murder - it seems forcefully gritty and brutal, and not very convincing: as if you wanted to shock the reader right away, instead come out overly dramatic. And then, for instance, scene with family of giraffes in the car is hillarious and quite a sight, but to soon after that disorienting tone change, I'm not feeling like laughing at it.
The story so far seems interesting. If nothing, we want to see how all these pieces are going to fit into the whole.