Before I get into the review I'd like to mention that I wrote this review while reading the comic so there is a mix of initial reactions and afterthoughts.
Cool. I'm curious, did you check out FS on Comic Genesis or at forsakenstars.com? This is also my first official review, to my recollection, so I would love it if it were posted on a blog somewhere that I could link to? Otherwise, I guess I could link to the CG thread from say my facebook page or twitter account? In any case, thanks so much for the feedback, Scooby, it's much appreciated.
Okay here goes...
Review of Forsaken Stars
- First Thoughts -
First thing one sees when starting on the comic (after something dark and mysterious busts out of a coffin) is the lead character in the shower, now I like non-gratuitous fan-service (and there's plenty here) as much as the next person so this isn't a problem for me however I do think that your Web14 should be above the comic - perhaps on the banner - rather than below it where honestly most people won't scroll to and by the time they've seen the warning it's too late anyway.
Just a little nit-pick here but I'm curious as to why on this page she went past the t-shirt for the little singlet instead? Most girls would grab the quick cover-up of the t-shirt instead in that kind of situation I think.
Though I've lightened up on the nudity, FS is billed as sci-fi, fantasy & horror, but I guess in a world where Goosebumps and Twilight exist as horror for kids and tweens, I guess it's a good idea to post the rating as near the top as possible.
- The Art -
First impressions are of a callback to the pulp-sci-fi comics of the 50s - and I like it, there's a certain charm to the art that's missing from a lot of modern comic styles - but with just enough tweeks to make in feel new.
Thanks! Although I have always considered myself more of a writer than an artist, and early on I realized that I probably don't have the focus, talent or energy to make a living as a comic artist, I felt that telling this particular story required this format and this style, so I'm jazzed you like the look. I wanted a retro/futurist/no-tech/hi-tech look that both paid homage to the sci-fi I grew up with, yet still breathed with plenty of my own concepts, and that fell in my range of ability to draw. I also decided somewhere along the line that it's possible to do this with the idea that maybe I can improve to a degree where I could maybe not make a living for it, but at least someday be recognized for it, even if its a niche audience.
The other big first impression is that the blacks just aren't black enough, they're a washed out gray that doesn't quite blend properly with the background fills or the on-page text. I have similar problems with my comic and would suggest you adjust the levels a bit in whatever editing program you use - since you don't have to deal with colour it will be an easy task.
But as it stands the gray linework on mostly white pages makes it difficult to look at for long periods and honestly gets a little boring after a while, which is a big shame because the artwork itself is very well done. The occasional touch of colour does a wonder.
While I don't want to blame my tools, and I do shy away from both color and true blacks, it turns out my ancient monitor was making everything dark. When I browsed stuff on other computers it dawned on me that my darks weren't as dark as I thought I was making them. So I got a new monitor last week! And it crashed. So I took it back and got an even better new monitor! Everything is really bright now, so I'll see what I can do about making the contrast starker. I really struggle with wanting to do full color for the web, but also knowing I just can't afford to print the interiors in color. Maybe one day...
The character designs are nicely done and usually fairly consistent, even if sometimes the facial expressions don't match the mood.
Unfortunately at times Sera's body looks a little masculine due to the lack of hips, even small/athletic women will have more of a curve to them so this is something you might like to look at, however I do appreciate the small boobs (especially in a genre where big is the standard).
Sera is based on a very beautiful, very young ballet dancer I knew once. I do try to give her hips a little curve, depending on the angle and body positioning, but Sera is pretty lean.
The assortment of different beings that make up the council are an impressive array, to be honest I would like to see more of them outside of the council environment but I'll talk about that later on, so the appearance of more aliens later on was a nice treat.
Aliens! Robots! Elves! Unicorns! Werewolves! Yeah, I threw as many as I could in there and made them "aliens." I've also designed a few of my own, like the Clarus, Vidoru and Quarveil. I've got about 94 total so far, and I hope by story's end I can reach the 200 mentioned in the first issue. You may not see them all in this series, but I hope to put out a
Forsaken Stars Sourcebook with most of them illustrated.
The only character design I have problems with is Azzi, a monster like him should be menacing - and I think you've tried to write him that way - but I just can't look at him and take him seriously. And it just gets worse as the story goes on, he becomes almost muppet-like.
I'm sorry you don't like Azzi. The concept is that he used to have a very expressive face and he is now reduced/has reduced himself to an immovable mask as a form of self-punishment and a way of removing himself from society, although I have tried to make his eyes as expressive as possible. We'll see if the mask ever comes off.
Also something I noticed is that occasionally in long shots like the last frames here the simplified character design clashes with the detail of the rest of the page, including the background of the same frames.
Your action sequences are reasonably well drawn (better than mine that's for sure) but on occasions there is a lack of power and knowledge of fight bio-mechanics, for instance in the page I linked Azzi's arm would be more bent - plus as a tip from a former martial artist his long talons would make an effective fist impossible, I'd suggest a strike with the elbow or heel/blade of the hand.
The space-battles on the other hand are beautiful - I could see full colour wallpaper of that being very popular.
I try to act out the fight sequences as much as I can and look up reference material or chat with my buddies that are more adept at the fight game than I am. And ha, yeah, I'm aware of the length of Azzi's claws making a fist impossible, but I err on the side of artistic license. If it were a movie, yeah, he'd be backhanding or using his elbows or just kicking a lot.
Last word on the art - I'm not sure whether your shading is done with pencil or ink but (aside from a few place where it looks rushed) it works, there's a loose flowyness to most of the linework that I find appealing - I find I lose a lot of the looseness in my art when I ink so kudos to you.
Thank you, thank you, thank you. I draw on 8.5" x 11" cardstock, so sometimes I give myself hand cramps trying to get it all inked. I've gotten some finer pens that I hope help that, and on my next project (which I'll be doing concurrently) I'm going to a larger size paper. But basically I try to enjoy every step of the process. Sometimes that means taking my baby sweet time about it, but I'm glad it shows.
- Story -
I hate to say this - and I'll admit it comes mostly from personal bias - but I did not enjoy the story that much.
Which was a pity because I really like the artwork and the pulp-sci-fi type world - I liked just looking at the pages - I've actually been looking forward to checking out you comic for a while so I was disappointed to not like what I found
I'm not into proselytizing or theological opinioning - which is how Forsaken Stars often reads - and there are many points in the first two chapters (particularly with the council) that this occurs and it became hard to keep reading. In fact the overwhelming theological overtones to the story are a major turn-off.
However, for what it is, it is well enough written and there is definitely an audience out there for it. However I think you've made the opposite mistake to what I myself did - information vomit as opposed to no info - there is just too much trying to be said early on and it's about things that should be the undertone of the story instead of feeling like it is the story itself.
Big themes need to be treated delicately in a medium such as webcomics, where the storytelling is ongoing, unlike books or movies you can't edit the finished product for balance before release.
The story isn't for everyone, though I hope as many people as possible give it a shot, but it's a story I don't think I've seen done before in quite this way. It's built upon everything I learned growing up, and everything I've unlearned as I continue to grow up. I hope to show several points of view before I'm done, but in the end I'm looking at this as a kind of sequel to the Bible and well, every other [genre] story that's ever been written, so it's not for the faint of heart, gag-a-day, or non-spiritual people. That said, I still want to make it an entertaining and fun adventure story, and I know that it started so high concept that it's a tough one to get off the ground. I tried to make the first issue a sci-fi/horror story, the second issue a sci-fi/romance, the third issue sci-fi/action, the fourth issue good ol' space opera and the fifth is sci-fi/biblical, each conveying a chunk of the overall puzzle that makes up the whole of the story, hopefully requiring less and less exposition with each chapter.
Now I said it was mostly personal bias, the other problem is that the characters just aren't that likeable, which becomes a bigger problem as it becomes apparent that Azzi's story is one of redemption, for the story to work you need to care about the characters and by the time more of their back-stories come out it takes some effort to care.
The early characterization of Sera makes her seem little more than a spoilt teenager than the captain of a ship that runs less-than-legal missions - a character should be shaped by their experiences - and even though this improves as the story goes on there are still moments where she comes across as a Hollywood cliche character.
In general the characterization improves as the story goes, they're still not quite likable enough - and this has nothing to do with niceness, bastard characters can still be likable - but they're becoming more entertaining which is a step in the right direction.
While I won't go so far as to say the characters write themselves, I do try and create characters and plot that are intermeshed and not cookie cutter. I think about how each character has been created by their heredity and their culture, the world in which they live or they've been forced to live, and all these things dictate their actions. Sera is very much an of-the-moment character until she receives this paradigm-shifting pile of Azzi's memories that shakes the very foundation of her world. So she decides to take a chance on this guy and see where it all goes. XTL has a wealth of evidence given to her that has her on this path that she is
sure is fated to align with Azzi's, so when he turns her help down, her world is shaken and she isn't quite sure what to do next, although she tries to put on a brave eyeface. Azzi has his moments of self-indulgence, petulance and emotion, but they typically happen when he focuses on how close he is to redemption. He has to tell himself to sit back and relax and let things unfold, yet knows he must balance that with action and initiative to get where he feels he should be. And President thinks he knows what is going on, but he doesn't have any real clues to go on, so he must speculate based on the Azzi he knew three hundred years ago.
That being said I found the chapters after their escape from Ohmworld far more enjoyable - even if the light-hearted turn it takes is a bit jarring with the earlier stuff - with those beautiful space-battle scenes, this is where I started paying full attention again.
The addition of Fabius has me intrigued. As does the sudden crispness of the writing - so I certainly won't be giving up on the story (consider it bookmarked & linked) - I hope that you keep it up as it is flowing much better now.
Thanks again! I do try to put myself back in the mindset of when I was seven or eight drawing those
Star Wars
space battles. Many more of those to come, I think I can say with some confidence! I'm really glad you are intrigued by Fabius. We need someone who is more powerful than Azzi to give readers that "oh, shit," factor, and yet he's insanely tricky to write when it comes to the moments where he's dangerously close to our heroes.
Supernatural went the route of anti-angel spells, and Neil Gaiman has pretty much written the modern day book on angels, so I know I've got my work cut out for me on making Fabius unique. I imagine the sudden crispness of the writing can be attributed to the sheer simplicity of Fabius' tale, but I hope it's also because I've been thinking more about the webcomic format and making sure it doesn't get too wordy. Which is hard for me. 'Cause I can get downright Dickensian. Fortunately, back in November 2010, I joined the Fresno Sci-Fi and Fantasy Writers and they have already given me invaluable feedback on issues five and six, so hopefully my writing will get even crisper!
- Final Thoughts -
There is a lot of promise in Forsaken Stars - the artwork alone is worth giving it a try.
Almost all of the problems I had were in the first three chapters, I think Forsaken Stars suffers from the same problem that mine does which is a weak beginning - in your case it's due to lumpy dialogue, the beginning is a real hard slog to get through - but there is something really promising building up in there. So although I didn't enjoy the read through I do have hopes for where it is going.
Also don't forget to darken those blacks.
A final nit-pick, the bunch of fan-art at christmas and other places in the middle of the story kind of ruins the flow, it would be best to archive it or move it to between chapters where a reader can just skip over it.
Keep at it dude,
Thank you, once more. I plan on writing a prologue or short story that might take the weight of the first few issues and as time allows, I might take a crack at a re-write & draw. I'll see what I can do about the blacks and contrasts and maybe add a touch more color to the online version. I hesitate to archive the Comic Genesis fan art, since that would bury the links to the artists that contributed their time and effort and talent, and I feel that the best thank you I can give them is to showcase them on the main viewer, but I do plan on re-organizing the forsakenstars.com fan art a bit, since most of the artists have links in the side columns.
. That's no excuse though, and it's something I do need to keep working on. Although Cecilia is supposed to be considerably masculine looking (which is tangentially explored in a coming chapter) and Marie is intentionally androgynous, they often come across moreso than I want them to, and for Clarabelle and Aggie there is no excuse whatsoever. 
