mcDuff's reviewalicious thread

[McDuffies]

You can do mine if you like. I could use some good, honest critique.

http://fergoandenrique.comicgenesis.com

World of Fizz is a nicely drawn comic, in a good tradition of cartoon animals. Aristically, it handles well restrictions of a dreaded comic strip format. Characters designs could make likeable comic characters, although there's always a danger of mixing them because many of them look very similar (If you happen to think that sister is making out with brother - don't worry, you just mixed them with their parents).

But none of that happens. The reason is, Wolrld of Fizz aims at the safe comedy, safest possible kind, so much that it could challenge any newspaper comic or family-oriented sitcom. There are stories in "7th heaven" that are more likely to offend someone than "World of Fizz". It would be ok, I guess, if it was a comic for children. But it's not, it's just a comic for lazy adults.

Now someone'll say that senior citizens wouldn't like to see a young lesbian couple, or parents caught getting it on in a living room. But that's also safe comedy, updated for our times: topics like homosexuality or marital sex are rendered harmless in recent years. They were daring around ten years ago, though.
Now, I'm not saying that every comic should be a shock comic or discussing fresh controversial themes. I'm saying this: there's never any conflict in World of Fizz. When one character does something wrong, other characters instantly forgive him. Lesbian couple gets in awkward situation during school dance and boy, if only all biggots in the world were that harmless. When a lesbian daughter confesses to her mother and mother instantly supports her and there's not even a tiny bit of awkwardness - that's a nice scene to see in a real life, but not very fruitful one in a comic.

Now you may say that I'm complaining about the whole concept of the comic instead of it's execution, but there are some serious issues I have with this concept:
a) I don't see a point in making such webcomic. We are drowned in this kind of entertainment from tv, newspaper comics, often cinema too... why would an artist who has all the freedom to be an "auteur", add to this massive river of lightest entertainment possible?
b) When dealing with issues, this comic is dealing with all positive sides of said issues, and ignoring all the bad or not so pleasant sides. We never see uglier side of things like lesbianism, parenthood, marriage, wouldn't it be more honest if we were shown that side too? I just can't think of a better word to describe current way of handling these themes, than "dishonest".

Most of all, insisting on safe comedy rendered this comic out of humor. It choked all it's weapons and left us with jokes like this, this or this. These aren't really jokes, and they're not crop of the worst examples, they are quite average.
Most often, in core of comedy is some kind of conflict. Sometimes, we like to laugh at difficulties we've lived through. But, noone in this comic seems to have any difficulties. No family in real life is that functional, and we'll more likely identify with one disfunctional family, reckognizing in it our own faults put through magnifying glass.

Overall lack of depth brings other, predictable problems. For instance, some characters, like Dawn, are brought down to a few basic character traits. Father Dave probably got the worst deal, since he practically has no character. From time to time he is given a trait or two that are applied to all fathers in the world (ie he won't take out the trash) and that's about it, still his only character trait is that he's "dad".
Other problem is that no storylines last more than a few strips. It seems like situations are left alone before their full potential is reached, before all jokes are drained from them.

I think that this strip is great illustration for how the whole comic functions. You set the stage, and then you abandon the stage by making everyone very cool and understanding with each other and every situation resolved in matter of seconds. It also illustrates how this approach robs the comic off it's comedic possibilities. I seriously can't even figure out which part of this strip was supposed to be funny.
My only advice to you: stop abandoning the stage. Put some fire into those characters. Make use of your premises.

You may say that it's my view; certainly there are people who enjoy their entertainment being nothing like real life, who prefere this utopian version of human relations because in it, nothing reminds them of real life. Depends on whether you want that kind of readers. I wouldn't, I consider them lazy readers who take the passive position. The question is whether there are such readers on web in any significant amount. Passive readers read comics because they're delivered in their papers, put in front of them. They don't want to put extra effort to get their comics.

But there's something strange about this: considering how stories are quickly abandoned as if author wanted to get over with them already, and how jokes seem as if taken from one of those "how to write jokes professionally" books that contain lists of templates for writing jokes... I get the feeling as if author doesn't enjoy making this comic at all. Avoiding and depth feels as if he himself doesn't want to involve with his comic too much. It's as if he's not a self-managed webcomic artist, but a professional comic artist who doesn't even feel like doing it already and cranking out another strip for tomorrow is such a bore - but hey, it's a living. I just don't understand it.

I might have seemed harsher on this comic than on others. After all, it's not an unpleasant reading experience - it's like ambiental music, it doesn't bother you, but you practically don't notice it. But it's simply not good, a comic has to leave some impression on you, and this one doesn't.

[McDuffies]

I'm starting to feel guilty, ripping apart people's year's works like this. But, that's the deal.

Would you be able to take a look at my comic as well? I'd appreciate the feedback if you've got time for a critique.

"A Werewolf Story" is a comic that is desperately, even agressively trying to impress us, and overdoing it a lot. These are means with which it's trying to impress us:

1) Colouring:
It is an examplary case of colouring that piles highlights, speed lines, rain lines, shadowy moons and other Photoshop tricks that you can pick up from online tutorials - but without underlying knowledge to measure the use of these tricks.

Highlights are prime example of this: everything is highlighted, even when there's no strong light source around.
Remember, highlights aren't just the oposite of shadow, they are reflections of strong light sources. Depending on the surface, objects reflect light more or less; light sources are stronger or weaker depending on time of the day, how well the room is lit, whether that light is focused or dispersed... in "A Werewolf story", all highlights are the same, regardless of sight sources or kind of surface. They are applied rutinely, always in exact same way.
Check out, for example, how main character is walking through the night scene, and highlighted parts of his clothes look like they're fluorescent. In fact, highlights should have been weaker, if any.

Similar to this, there's little regard to light sources. Artist has to have at least vague idea of where the light is coming from. Take this page for instance, I tried to figure out where light is coming from in scenes, but there were too many contradicting shadows.
Artist has to establish one or a few light sources in a scene prior to inking it, to guide him where to apply shadows. Particularly for scenes that are heavily shaded (such are scenes in this comic) it is important that light sources are consistent.

Finally, quality, softness of objects isn't quite achieved. Cloth folds often look too rigid, like crumpled tinfoul tinfoil. Shadings on muscles of characters often look more like murmur textures, and noses look like snouts. This may (or may not) be a difficulty in aligning shades with lineart which many artists (including me) have. This sometimes appears when you're not thinking about what colour will look like while drawing lineart, so naturally later it's hard to make it all fit.

Now I always moan about how artists saturate comics fith effects to cover poor lineart. "A Werewolf Story" isn't exactly poor although we have examples of chopped back of the head (girl, second panel) or unintentionally silly faces (last two panels).
But it does have good inks, and considering that inks are often the weakest spot of those who pile up photoshop tricks, I contemplate whether a comic would be better in black and white. It would certainly be better with subtler colouring which allowed ink to be seen.

2) Second thing that comic tries to impress us with is dramatic camera angles:
I don't wanna seem like I'm running into my own mouth. I greatly support creative camerawork, including unusual angles. But they have to make sence, to fit the script and build up on it. You have to find in your script something that mothivates you to do this or that with your layout.
This is what I mean: Consider this page. How big is the room? Apparently large, so the script invites (mothivates) to draw horizontally-oriented panels, to make impression of larger space. Instead, artist chose vertically oriented panels, so in spite of his effort to represent casual happenings, it still looks like they've entered very small room. But gratituous camera angle in first panel seemed more important to him.

There's a lot of dramatic angles in "A Werewolf Story" and they make little sense. What mothivates such dramatic camera in this scene? It's a very mundane scene and nothing even remotely dramatic is happening in it (unless it's some kind of foreshadowing, which I sincirely doubt). If it wasn't fot overdoing, such panles could have passed unnoticed and I wouldn't questioned their mothivation. But the way it's done, it just feels like artist is agressively shoving images into our face, or at best, just showing off.

3) Third way this comic tries to impress us is character's phisionomy:
Male characters look like offspring of the most muscular of DC heroes; one of them is alleged body-builder, but even the other one, who is supposedly skinnier, has his neck wider than his head. Female characters also fit in the same universum, with their huge balooney chest such as we see on superheroines.
This agressive character design looks kind of funny so far, because they're supposedly ordinary, everyday young people, and we can't just accept them as such. If the comic turns out to be some sort of DC pastishe or dumb actioner, these designs might in the end work out, because of ironic twist they need.


As far as the script goes, it's not bad: it's obviously an action story just waiting to errupt with gore and violence, but also significant attention is given to characters, dialogues are ok and the plot has potential as an action story. But it also desperately needs adequate art to build up on it, to help the story run smooth and to make it convincing - currently it doesn't.

[Guyford]

Thanks for the feedback McDuffles. No worries on the ripping apart of the comic

Coloring:
Highlights: I see your point here. I do need to work on the "sameness" that things have.
Light source: I agree with you here too. Sometimes I get it right, sometimes I don't.
Softness of objects: I do see what you are saying here, but the crinkled foil look is intentional though. I like the harshness of it. This isn't to say that it won't ever change, but I just like the way it looks so far.
Speedlines, rain, etc: I have to admit this one kind of stumped me. I thought I used it pretty sparingly.

Inks: I actually did think about doing it black and white before I started, but I went with greyscale and eventually color because I figured I could use the practice and it would help me better in the long run.

Angles: I agree with most of what you said here. I do have a tendency to rotate them a lot. It's used for dramatic effect in some cases, and sometimes I do it to break up the straight vertical/horizontal view of things, but in others cases I do it because I can draw the whatever is in the panel larger if I go in a diagonal (I draw on 8.5x11 inch paper) . I do see how it comes across as overkill though and it's something I can work on. But in terms of the first example you used, I used the vertical panels to make things feel cramped since I wanted to give off the impression that there were a lot of folks in that space and I liked the overall symmetry of the panel set up (wide shot entering apartment, start time, party, party, end time, wide shot leaving apartment).

Anatomy: This one is the easiest for me to explain I've been a fan of Capcom (street fighter, breath of fire, etc) art for years, and the "everyone is super muscle-y" thing kind of rubbed off on me. I agree that the vibe that this gives of takes away from being totally realistic, but in whether or not it's detrimental to the comic (and I know it's an issue for some folks), that's my style. I do understand where you are coming from on this one though.

One thing I do take a little bit of issue with though is the "tries to impress/overdoing" vibe you got while reading it. In regards to aggressively shoving images in the readers face or showing off, it's definitely not my intention and I didn't realize it was coming off as such. There are always things that I would have like to have differently, change, or improve upon after posting an update. But given my time constraints, I try to make a compromise between the time free time I have and how much time I can spend creating each page (the "sameness" of the coloring is a side effect of this).

I do have one question for you though, if you don't mind. When you were going through the archives, how were the page load times? Someone once said that they were taking really long to load up to the point where the archives were unreadable, but I've never been able to reproduce the issue. I've tried on several different machines and browsers from network connections, but they always came up pretty quick for me.

Thanks again for taking the time to read through the comic and providing a critique. It's very much appreciated. Although there are things that I disagree with you on, there are definitely things you've brought up that I do agree should be changed and improved upon.

[McDuffies]

Speedlines, rain, etc: I have to admit this one kind of stumped me. I thought I used it pretty sparingly.

That's true, but the overal feel is effect-heavy, mostly because of highlights and shadings, and these kind of add on the top.

One thing I do take a little bit of issue with though is the "tries to impress/overdoing" vibe you got while reading it. In regards to aggressively shoving images in the readers face or showing off, it's definitely not my intention and I didn't realize it was coming off as such.

Sure, but they don't always turn out the way we expected.

I do have one question for you though, if you don't mind. When you were going through the archives, how were the page load times? Someone once said that they were taking really long to load up to the point where the archives were unreadable, but I've never been able to reproduce the issue. I've tried on several different machines and browsers from network connections, but they always came up pretty quick for me.

I didn't have an impression that they loaded particularly slow.

[Levi-chan]

Just felt like adding a bit to the conversation.

I feel like Guyford is a bit of a studio-UDON fan (the ones who make the new street fighter comics). It definitely shows in the coloring technique. One thing I'd like to note is that the studio UDON artists are seldom heavy on linework - linework is more of a framework for the coloring, than being the emphasis itself. When you spend time on blending and shading to give a sense of volume, having thick inkwork tends to frame objects, which makes it look a tad garish.

Maybe you'd like to try smaller, more 'organic' linework? Perhaps a different tone?

[Guyford]

McDuffles: Gotcha on the first two points. Thanks for the clarification. And it's also a relief to find that you didn't have any real problems with load times. Maybe my ISP just went wonky during the time said person was browsing.

Levi-chan: I can see what you mean about the Udon stuff. I've never read any of their comics, but I have seen some of their art and I can see how the influence from some of the Capcom artists (Akiman, Nishimura Kinu, and Bengus) definitely shows up in their work. I do have a few Capcom artbooks from the 90s though--some of my favorite books

In regards to inking and coloring, you nailed down my approach to it. Or at least the approach I'm trying to take with it. My main issue with it currently is that I'm pretty heavy handed with inking and tend to lose detail when I go over my pencils. Getting the lines to mesh better with the coloring is something I want to work on.

Thanks again for the feedback:)

[McDuffies]

Just felt like adding a bit to the conversation.

I feel like Guyford is a bit of a studio-UDON fan (the ones who make the new street fighter comics). It definitely shows in the coloring technique. One thing I'd like to note is that the studio UDON artists are seldom heavy on linework - linework is more of a framework for the coloring, than being the emphasis itself. When you spend time on blending and shading to give a sense of volume, having thick inkwork tends to frame objects, which makes it look a tad garish.

That's true. Though I'll usually choose comics which have strong lineart, being a b/w fan and all...

[McDuffies]

Been following this thread for a while now ... lurking though.

I thought, if you get a bit of time, maybe you'd like to give this one a try? http://redshine.comicgenesis.com/

Starcommand is, pardon the expression, rather girly comic. This can be both good and bad. For instance, I think that this kind of sensibility can write much more openly and honestly about romantical relationships than we males are, often, capable of. But when there's too much of it, it can get soppy. Similarly, characteristic giant eyes have certain appeal on female characters, and even with male characters they can work, but when you have an elderly, gray-haired character with same big, girlish eyes, that looks odd. Finally, it is always nice to see an author who pays attention to the design of clothes characters are wearing. But those pink horned horses, wellthey look like something that came right out of "my little Ponny", and that's not a very convincing depiction of alien world.

I liked reading Starcommand primarily because of chemistry between characters; I felt that dialogues were flowing naturally, with regard of characters that were speaking them, so verbal exchanges between characters were the stronger part of the comic.
Irony is that I thought that writing in "dreaded" first chapter was sharper, while it went somewhat downhill in later chapters. The reason is, it started falling into mary sue-ish stereotypes. The backstory of main character as the eloped bride from pre-arranged marriage is one of them, and the plot with Kimo biting the bullet for her is another one.
Additional reason might be that the story largely moved from the SF-opera enviroment to the rural fantasy world, "grounding" into a stereotypical scenography. But also, how one such "primitive" society can exist so close to high, space-travel technology, is the question that's been largely ignored, despite being a question I kept asking myself.

Premise of the comic is that main characters are smugglers. Knowing the benefit of flawed characters in general, this premise might be explored further. Easily the story was more interesting when they were scheming for their own gain, rather than risking their lives for altruistic purposes like in later chapters.

While art style is not going for realism, it should have more consistency in proportions. Consider two guys in the first panel and how proportions abruptly change between two of them. Another thing that might be improved is cloth foldings (noticeable when they're not wearing skin-tight space outfits).
Particular big-eye character design can be at the same time good and bad. It's appealing all right, but in certain times it looks more like illustrations from children's books, than a comic with dramatic pretentions.
Bottom line is that while it's not neccesarily bad, it doesn't lend itself to all kinds of stories, and it should be ok as long as is aware of it.

Layouts are always dynamic and in service of the story, but I think that they are strongest when they join forces with the colouring, so some carefully modeled "object" becomes centerpiece of the panel. A few outstanding examples are water surface here, or how this page is unified with leaf shadow patterns.
In general naturalistic scenes are rendered nicely and with lots of care, and it's odd contrast with spaceship scenes or other man-made objects. While it's natural that this is more sterile enviroment, often it looks more like result of carelessness more than intention. One particular page that comes to mind is this - walls are never lit so uniformly in real life, and then, where are the shadows of characters on the wall? One shadow that we can see suggests that light is coming from the wall, which is obviously not the case.

One subject I'd also like to touch is various SF references, such is a party full of SF character cameos, or gratituos mentions of "Hitchiker's guide". While those are fun, you'll want to be careful not to overdo them. For instance, entire scene based on Hitchiker's guide gag (torturing with Vogon's poetry) is im my opinion overdoing. Your aim is to create your own mythology which is more difficult if you're borrowing other's.

[Risky]

not to mention elfquest references. <_< elfquest is linked, but the art style is pretty exact, even to the copying of exact character models.

[Redshine]

Starcommand is, pardon the expression, rather girly comic

Well, that's mainly 'cause I am a girl, or was until I had a bunch of kids, which I guess makes me an old wife

Finally, it is always nice to see an author who pays attention to the design of clothes characters are wearing. But those pink horned horses, wellthey look like something that came right out of "my little Ponny", and that's not a very convincing depiction of alien world.

Okay, I wasn't really happy with them either but I couldn't come up with anything else apart from giant elephant-like creatures which somehow didn't fit.

I liked reading Starcommand primarily because of chemistry between characters; I felt that dialogues were flowing naturally, with regard of characters that were speaking them, so verbal exchanges between characters were the stronger part of the comic.
Irony is that I thought that writing in "dreaded" first chapter was sharper, while it went somewhat downhill in later chapters. The reason is, it started falling into mary sue-ish stereotypes. The backstory of main character as the eloped bride from pre-arranged marriage is one of them, and the plot with Kimo biting the bullet for her is another one.
Additional reason might be that the story largely moved from the SF-opera enviroment to the rural fantasy world, "grounding" into a stereotypical scenography. But also, how one such "primitive" society can exist so close to high, space-travel technology, is the question that's been largely ignored, despite being a question I kept asking myself.

So, the first part was uplifting to read and I'm glad it didn't bore you to death. I'm a bit sad though that you found the character's background stories and their actions to make them mary-sue-ish. Maybe it's because I'm an incurable romantic but I kinda like that premise of a guy putting himself on the line for his girl. As for the co-existing of primitive cultures with some that are high in technology and the lack of explanation thereof, that's a good/valid point. I'll be looking into that.

Premise of the comic is that main characters are smugglers. Knowing the benefit of flawed characters in general, this premise might be explored further. Easily the story was more interesting when they were scheming for their own gain, rather than risking their lives for altruistic purposes like in later chapters

Well, the premise of them being smugglers will be explored again once I've got the second half of the team back on his feet. However, I disagree with the altruistic purposes since Penny purely went along cause she had a gut feeling of what actually was in that mine and needed a way to spy it out. In the end, it has the potential to provide her with something to smuggle.

While art style is not going for realism, it should have more consistency in proportions. Consider two guys in the first panel and how proportions abruptly change between two of them. Another thing that might be improved is cloth foldings (noticeable when they're not wearing skin-tight space outfits).

That thing about proportions and cloth foldings is something I'm aware of and working on, though the desired progress has eluded me so far.

Particular big-eye character design can be at the same time good and bad. It's appealing all right, but in certain times it looks more like illustrations from children's books, than a comic with dramatic pretentions.
Bottom line is that while it's not neccesarily bad, it doesn't lend itself to all kinds of stories, and it should be ok as long as is aware of it.

Well, I'm not having any illusions about this comic giving me a huge publishing contract cause I know it won't. However, what I do want to do is, tell a story that some folks might find entertaining enough to continue reading it.

Layouts are always dynamic and in service of the story, but I think that they are strongest when they join forces with the colouring, so some carefully modeled "object" becomes centerpiece of the panel. A few outstanding examples are water surface here, or how this page is unified with leaf shadow patterns.
In general naturalistic scenes are rendered nicely and with lots of care, and it's odd contrast with spaceship scenes or other man-made objects. While it's natural that this is more sterile enviroment, often it looks more like result of carelessness more than intention. One particular page that comes to mind is this - walls are never lit so uniformly in real life, and then, where are the shadows of characters on the wall? One shadow that we can see suggests that light is coming from the wall, which is obviously not the case.

Thanks for the panelling/layout comment. I'm working hard to keep that interesting.
The contrast between naturalistic scenes and man-made objects / architectural stuff is mainly because I'm still struggling with the latter. Eventually, I hope, I'll manage to nail it. There's no excuse for that particular wall except for that I was experimenting and had no idea what I was doing.

One subject I'd also like to touch is various SF references, such is a party full of SF character cameos, or gratituos mentions of "Hitchiker's guide". While those are fun, you'll want to be careful not to overdo them. For instance, entire scene based on Hitchiker's guide gag (torturing with Vogon's poetry) is im my opinion overdoing. Your aim is to create your own mythology which is more difficult if you're borrowing other's.

not to mention elfquest references. <_< elfquest is linked, but the art style is pretty exact, even to the copying of exact character models.

The first chapter of this comic I did when I was still in school, nearly 20 years ago. At that time I constantly did spoofs on Star Wars, The Hitchiker's Guide and Star Trek. I've tried to scale that down over the last few chapters though for the reasons you mentioned above.

As for the Elfquest references ... Chapter 2 sort of was to get me back into some art stuff after not having done any in a long time and was more or less meant to be a fan service for Wendy & Richard Pini's art. In the end, however, the story took on a life of its own but I couldn't just axe the characters from one page to the next. However, I DID check with Richard Pini about the whole matter and as long as it's not in the EQ universe (which it isn't) and it remains a non-profit thing (which it also will) it is totally okay with him. So yeah, ultimately, I'm phasing it all out, I guess.



At any rate, I wanted to thank you to take the time to do this review because it's always good to get an objective opinion on something that you are personally very partial to and it helps to work on those bits and pieces that need work/improvement. I know I'm too old to make this my carriere but it's still something I like doing and I just don't want to totally suck at it.

[McDuffies]

As for the Elfquest references ... Chapter 2 sort of was to get me back into some art stuff after not having done any in a long time...

Wow, cool. There are a few people whom I'd like to get back into art after twenty years... but somehow I'm not very successful mothivator.

[Eve Z.]

That blonde looks alot like Michelle from my comic. I mean she has something from her.
The features, I'm sure.

[Redshine]

Well, seeing that I designed her about 20 years ago, perhaps she's Michelle's mother

Though, admittedly, her present hairstyle only was defined in 92.

[McDuffies]

I'm planning on a new comic, and am hoping that I learned enough from my previous project to make it good. But additional insights from you could be good. Can you check out: http://hopscotch.comicgenesis.com, if you have the time?

This might be the best deal for a reviewer, I'm in situation to influence a whole comic, instead of suggesting to someone to change halfway through something.

Hopskotch is coloured in hazy, dreamlike, aquarel-mimicking colours. A lot of attention has been given to shades and textures which might even get unnoticed, so the comic is more interested in quality of things, inner life, rather than material representation. This would almost make up for weak script - almost but not quite.
Colouring, though, manages to make up for some problems in pencil. Sometimes, anatomy is not quite right, mostly it goes unnoticed, in a few occasions it sticks in the eye, but in most cases colour manages to make it irrelevant. Author could still try to iron this out.

But the whole story is underdeveloped. There's only one authentic idea in entire comic: the plot twist. The comic was concieved to exploit this idea, and no other ideas have been added to put some meat on these bones. What else does happen in this comic that isn't straight-forward? Writer could have, for instance, done something to make idyllic romance that makes about 2/3 of the story more realistic, lifelike. Instead, we have countless images of them just hanging around, while the narration keeps telling us what to think (which is not the same as making us think that).
This main twist is the same as in the film "My sassy girl" (albeit with a happy ending), which, I've learned, is based on Korean film, and has a strong soppy-romantic-manga feel to it. While I was not terribly impressed by the film, author of hopskotch could learn a few things about concieving a story from it (apart from movie's sleazy ending): how characters were made life-like, how eventful the story was, how in the context of previous events, the final twist actually made sence. Events in Hopscotch occasionally appear awkwardly because we haven't witnessed the development that leads to them.

When talking about undercooked story, consider, for instance, how little we know about the girl in the end of all this. In the first scene she is notably wearing old-fashioned clothes, but this is mentioned nowhere later. It's not really a character trait - it's a gimmick aimed to make her look cute at first. After reading, we can't think of words to describe this girl, no character trait of her.
Things like these can be partially blamed on picture-book storytelling style. Narration says "we talked" but we never hear the actual conversation, and rather than hearing about how great time he had and how he liked her, we'd like to hear actual conversation and make conclusions ourselves.
This is why we never connect with anything from the story. For a comic that is so drenched in emotions, it is a surprisingly soulless comic, it's like reading a short newspapers article about described events. We are constantly being told how to feel instead of being made to feel something, and no amount of metaphore-spattered narration can change that.

Sad ending is probably one single good thing about Hopscotch's script: so much are we being told that the end of romance is the end of the world, and that it's a matter of life and death whether these two people will be together in the end, that it's refreshing to see a story in which characters just move on eventually.

After the comic was over, author posted three questions in newspost. These questions were in nature rhetorical: answers were contained in them. This was last attempt of author to tell us what he didn't manage to tell in the comic. Had the comic been properly developed, these issues would have been developed too, and we'd been asking ourselves these questions without the need for author to ask them.

[Levi-chan]

Dang. That's probably the most useful review I've had, ever.

I originally wanted the narrative to be in the 'slice-of-life' format - just normal happenings, with nothing really significant. The goal was to generate a texture of being in everyday life - but I just realized now that it comes at the expense of not being engaging at all. Maybe there's a right way to do it, but I'm not aware of it at the moment.

Also, the storytelling format obviously has a lot of limitations - the 'telling what to think' part, mostly - but I want to keep the internal narrative present, to an extent. What would you suggest? Or is it more of my weakness in using the format itself?

[McDuffies]

You could have narrated dialogues more, or include speech baloons besides narration, perhaps, the trouble is that would render some of narration redundant. I felt that in narration your primary interest was writing style - how to say something in the prettiest way, to find most impressive metaphores, so proportionally less space was dedicated to describing actual events... though it's still a better style than 75% of first person narration I read in comics. Picture book is a tempting and interesting format, but it's also probably much more difficult to pull off.
Personally I'd like your next comic to be more speech-baloon oriented. I think that your colouring style is too peculiar, and it does most of the job so narration and one-panel-per-page aren't neccesary to give a certain impression, in fact a bit more classic format could be interesting combination with current art. Though that would probably take much more time and effort.

I originally wanted the narrative to be in the 'slice-of-life' format - just normal happenings, with nothing really significant. The goal was to generate a texture of being in everyday life - but I just realized now that it comes at the expense of not being engaging at all. Maybe there's a right way to do it, but I'm not aware of it at the moment.

Normal, usual happenings and everyday life aren't neccesarily unengaging. In your everyday life, you'll find a few events every day, that could rightfully be a food for comic (just today, I escaped from the dentist's office because I couldn't listen to screams of the previous patient). If we take back to the page I reffered to earlier, the "we talked for hours" page, if one of them was remotely interesting character, even ordinary dialogue could be interesting, even more because it was driving the story somewhere.
I suppose the difficulty is to make difference between events that make good comic food and those that don't: if a man watches tv, it is something that happens between man and tv, something that doesn't have an outter manifestation that reader could be involved in. When two characters are talking, that is something that potentially might involve the reader, as the silent participant in the dialogue. I felt that a lot of events in Hopskotch didn't have this outter manifestation, things were happening inside (as being described in narration) but actual scene was almost non-moving. I think that it's better when outter representation tells of what is happening inside, because that's when comics, as largely visual and dialogue-based medium, are used to full potential.
I think that the greatest strength of real-life comics is that they can be truthful in a more universal way, through one love story, you may be telling of thousands of other love stories. Observing things and experiences of other people, finding those universal truths around us, is a part of being a writer with inclination for real life (as oposed to adventure-based) comics.

[McDuffies]

Ok, I guess it's time to see what needs done to my little slice of webcomic pie.

http://www.beyondgoodnevil.com

I have a pretty decent archive, but be warned, this comic is in a constant state of flux.
You'll see the transition as you move through the archives. I've only started in the last few years to find myself as an artist, to the point that it drove me to start art school at 23, which I'm only a few weeks into. You'll see the style steadily change, as it's still doing now. It is by no means something I'm content with. I plan on taking the art and style in new directions, including making it more dynamic and visually appealing(i.e. getting away from the "side view of two guys talking" thing) so it's a perfect time to get some criticism on what I already have.

Material in "Beyond good and evil" isn't much different from the run-of-the-mill absurdist cartoon - you know the kind, dozens of them get started by day, they're usually described as "wacky" or "random", and their shtick is replacing humor with absurd, that is, believing that any absurd is funny in itself.
What sets "Beyond good and evil" apart from others is the drawing style, which can be best described as "organic", but also "psychedelic", resembling of some 60ies underground comic. With this kind of art style, absurdity starts to make sence because we can see the entire comic as a sort of LSD trip as lots of the comic has hallucinatory mood.

Whether this was the intention or not, it's good in a way, but it also doesn't let the comic develop, because it doesn't allow for continuity, development of characters, or growing complexity. It comes down to what the author wants to make out of his comic.
As if to illustrate, with this art, sometimes it's hard to tell what's happening in the panel. In fact, whenever characters are not just standing and talking, we need a second look to figure out what's happening. Figures often melt into backgrounds, and limbs and other objects get difficult to tell apart. For a psychedelic comic, this can be good because it increases confusion. But if we look at the comic in more conventional manner, it is not good. Similarly, the fact that a set of characters are thrown in without introduction, and we're expected to act like we already know them (while in fact, I can still tell apart only about two of them) - adds to the confusion, if confusion is what you want.

The most important actual complain about the comic is it's update schredule, which is very irregular. I think that it would have been better if, instead of throwing out two weeks of comics and then pausing for months, author made a realistic schredule (if only once a week).
I believe that after a pause of several months, it's like starting anew both for a reader and the author. It doesn't allow the comic to develop, and it doesn't help author's artistic style to develop, because they're both being taken back to the start every time a longer hiatus occurs.

My impression is that, while this comic works the way it is, it's not something that one can get dedicated to seriously. Eventually author will want the comic to grow in complexity (remember, complexity doesn't neccesarily mean drama) and he'll want to talk about characters and not just sketches. Probably the most serious task will be finding an art style that preserves organic feel of the current, but is easier on the eyes, more readable, and able to convey more complex imagery than current style.
Switching from side-view to more exciting camera angles is a good idea for start. To start with it, one can write stories that lend themselves to such camera work, more visual, and in which setting has a more important role. Remember that side view somewhat commands reader to stay uninvolved with the story, as an observer from afar, while dynamic choice of camera commands him to feel like a participant in the story. Of course, this will directly affect how the script is percieved by the viewer, but better idea is to start with a script that is less passive towards it's characters, then the script can actually inspire you to play with camera more.
Depth of the field is something that usually comes with creative camerawork. In your panels, characters often blend with the background and art has general 2D look. It would, perhaps, be a good idea to work on creating more sence of depth in panels, that might be beneficial for panels with more complex composition.

[SpasticDisaster]

Thanks for the good advice. I'll have your suggestions in mind with my redirection.
I felt you were pretty fair. Totally on par with my issues about it.
You got my style pegged down, too, the whole hallucinogenic quality of it all.
When I started it, it was over two years ago, and I just wanted to do some surreal comic "for fun". Make it all weird and, like you said, a trip.
The problem is, something happened in the time after I started "Beyond Good-N-Evil". I really started to enjoy cartooning. I focused on other drawings, and left BGnE on the back burner. It's like, I don't want to let it go, but I knew it needed a significant change. I don't think what I set up over time was near enough. I never gave it time because I wasn't sure where I was going. So, after starting art school, and learning a bit more about technique. I've worked something to do. I'll try to legitimize it a little bit. Get some actual themes and characterization. Keeping it surreal, but now there will actually be a point to it all. I was going to mark the change with a change in direction, style, and a switch to low saturation color scheme with greyscale having a role in the story. I'll be splitting Lance up from the rest and bounce back and forth, so they can stand out more. Not to mention slow the pace a little bit. I was always in such a hurry.

[McDuffies]

Wow, am I happy I came across this just in time!

I would very much love a review, harsh is good, so please be honest.
My comic is Chasing the Sunset, a fantasy strip with chaotic pixies and snarky dragons. It celebrates its 500th update today, so there should be more than enough to get the gist of the comic.

Any potential readers also welcome, of course.

From the family-tragedy-drenched introductory page, I didn't get to expect what I would be getting, and what I got was a comedic fantasy. Unlike many other fantasy comics which favour humour only as a comical relief in between storyline, "Chasing the sunset" is primarily a comedic story, full of mildly Phytonesque anachronisms, where comedy strongly affects the plot, but also keep it in second plane.
It's a good comedy, I think. It can make you laugh, but more importantly it's clever and sometimes insightful. Stories are imaginative, there's a lot of good ideas in there, most of which describe different creatures or cultures. Some of these ideas are original, some are standard fare, but they're usually diven a personal twist, at least in making those creatures actual characters. Every character that the group meets along the way is interesting in his own right, and it is very good that backstories of these characters aren't forced upon the reader and don't steal the comic away from the main characters and plot.
One more interesting side of the comic regards satirical observations about social structure of both wood and city cultures. These, I find, are the most clever: when a gang of pixies riding kitten arrives, that is a nice idea that works both on visual level and as a subversion of preconcieved notions about gangs, kitten, pixies. But when these pixies state that they are introducing laws to fight the opressive anarchism, that is what really makes you laugh.
Finally, despite the plot being, in it's basis, a stereotypical quest story, I find that the plot is stronger than the average fantasy story. Of course, creativity I mentioned earlier affects the plot, and ironic distance that the comic has from stereotypical fantasy helps it being self-conscious. What also helps is that the story, while it doesn't avoid emotions and drama, it is not drenched in it.

There are, of course, things to be smoother out. For one, after a while some jokes became very redundant. For one, there's only so much jokes that you can make about how pixies are annoying and dangerous, and they've all been circulated several times already. Resident pixie, being largely a one-dimensional character, gives oportunity for about three types of jokes which, given that pixie is central in large part of the scenes, have all worn out by now.
Also, dialogues sometimes appear too distracted and lengthy. It seems like they are written in a "throw everything at the wall, hope something sticks" fashion. They would have benefited from some selectiveness.
Finally I'm never buying into a "humans are bastards" shtick a lot, and in this comic, it seems like wherever characters encounter woodland creatures, be it amazons, trolls or dragons, thiese creatures turn out friendly and good natured, or at least excusable like faeries - too often the same plot repeats: a) group heads into some creature's territory, b) they encounter a creature, c) creature turns out to be not dangerous.
In oposition, humans are often presented from their worst side, and at best, they're scheming and sneaky. It feels like they're left being the only antagonists


That was script. Art, on the other hand, leaves a lot to be desired. First thing we notice is that art style does not support the comedic nature of the story, and in fact contrasts it with realism and pretty static layouts without a lot of camera shifting. This might not be bad since it creates a deadpan tone that can work well with satyrical comedy, sometimes we are reminded of "Little nemo in slumberland" and it's deadpan manner and distant camera. However, "Little Nemo" kept distance from it's characters so it wouldn't detract from rich worlds that Nemo was passing through. In "Chasing the sunset", however, characters are primary, worlds themselves are plain woods or cityscapes, and backgrounds through which they are expressed, and poor to nonexistant. Yet the fact that camera almost never gets closer to a character of change from the usual side view, creates a distance between the reader and the character, so it takes long for us to start seeing them as real people.
I was contemplating whether a bit more grotesque style would suit a comic better, or perhaps it would make it just more generic. In any case, it would be better if the idea of the marriage between comic script and realistic art was more clearly intentional, and that would have been if the artist was more confident with her art.

While art has improved over time, some problems from early days are still present: one of them is inconsistency in drawing characters and their proportions. Bodies, sometimes drawn extremely realistically, seem like they are traced from somewhere, because heads don't have the same level of realism, and can be drawn rather clumsily. This was a serious problem through most of the archives, though it appears less in recent days, I still feel that drawing heads, knowing their structure and adding some detail to them should be the primary concern of the artist.
Backgrounds, similarly, improved from the beginning when they were often not more than some gradient. This is good, but artist should be working in direction of making them richer, more lively. Being that in fantasy comics depicting different worlds is a major concern, backgrounds are an important tool for this - even if "Chasing the sunset", commendably, preferes to observe worlds through their inhabitants.


I was somewhat bothered by site design. Namely, menues are solved through popup windows which pop up when you slide a cursor over the buttons, and being large, they cover a good part of the comic. This caused problems to me when, while reading, my mouse would accidentally slide over one of the buttons.

[McDuffies]

Hey, I know the week is up... so this request is if you have time, or are bored... I'm sure you won't feel pressured to do it if you don't want to.

http://www.eandmu.com

There are only 72 single panel comics. Probably about 20 minutes. I suggest starting at the beginning.

Cheers

E & Mu is definitely one of more confusing comics out there. It's characters seem to be drawn largely using symbols (for one, in "everyman" of the comic, I reckognize an omega, a zero, two root signs and 69) and they speak disjointed conversations, often vaguely philosophical.

What I'm confused is, what does this add up to? For instance, whether symbols characters are made of are indicative of their role, or are just elegant graphic solutions. Question sign in the middle of "omnipotent" character can clearly poing towards it's mystery, whether it's taken ironic or not, but does this symbolism expand to other characters?
Due to this symbolic context, we are likely to percieve characters as representations of something more universal. If comic leans towards popular philosophy, for instance, we are going to expect that different characters will represent different philosophical standpoints. If there is such tendency, I didn't reckognize it. If the comic adds up to something more than series of vignettes, then I've missed it.

I have to commend though, how your characters, through consisting of separate elements, still maintain unity and there's never a danger of losing clarity and mixing, for instance, character's symbols with speech letters. Letters are easy to read but hand-written, which seems to be important, being that they occupy the largest part of panels, comic's dynamism seems to depend on how dynamic these letters are.
The whole set and the script give the comic interesting ethereal feel that is funny for a while. But as the comic itself says, "there's more to life than recording odd ideas that you have".