I need some criticism (negative or not)

[YarpsDat]

I was going to wait with posting here till I move my site to keenspace,
I signed up a month ago, but they haven't activated it yet, and I've just learned they won't for next few weeks.
But I wanted to start the discussion before I put the 100 page up.
So I do it now.

My site's been running for over a year, and there are 99 pages right now.

I'll take any comments, especially negative criticism-
because it's the main way I can see my mistakes: through other peoples eyes
(but please focus on last 20-30 pages -that's the way I draw now)

-----
roadfromnowhere.republika.pl
it's diffrent!

[Smoot]

i hate to say anything negative at all, but your woman [women!] who feels like a woman doesn't really look like one... she's got a man's body.

in cartoony comics, it really doesn't matter if they have a figure or not, but because your comic is a more realistic style, you need to concentrate on the female form a little more.

We have waists!!

[YarpsDat]

heh ^^;

it really shows that badly, doesn't it?

I mean, I tried...
but I was afraid to exaggerate, and end up with ... ^^;
but you're right...

I'll try and fix that.

thanks.

------------
one bug fixed
n-1 to go.
yay.

[Smoot]

hahaha
at the end of the day, it's still a comic

exagerate



but don't exagerate to your heart's content ^_^
and cause your style is realistic, you'll at least have hot chicks

[YarpsDat]

in that case...
would you accept explanation it's just an exagerated tomboyish style?
just kidding ; )

oooor not...

actually I have this problem: when I try to avoid going over the edge way, I end up crossing the other line.
It happened with necks, I didn't wanted them too thin, and they became too thick.
And my main character is supposed to be a bit (a little bit) less femine than an average comic character,
so I didn't wanted to give her too much female traits...and I didn't add enough.
*sigh*

It's really hard for me to balance things out,
that's why I need a lot of feedback.

And I'm still learnig, I wish to draw anatomicaly correct, but sometimes I make mistakes, and I can't see them at all!

So everyone,
please criticise!
If you see something is wrong, tell me about it.

and don't be afraid you can harm me with your negative comments
I feed on them.

[YarpsDat]

Ok, I'm getting worried now.
I got virtually no feedback. :_(

Someone said:
love me, hate me, but don't just ignore me.

Ok, I just want someone to say
"hi, I'm not ignoring you"
it isn't much, is it?

[Megidoth]

Hmm...

You try a little to much to have different view angles(like bird view,head-up view,etc)in the comic.It easy to get lost,since a lot of the comics have a different view angles for each panel.In some i had to stop reading to understand if the character was on the floor or if it is a special view.

The sketched backgrounds give an unfinished feel to some of the comic(compared to the inked one)

For the women problem,you will eventually find a way to make them more feminine.Maybe if you make the waist around the navel smaller...

and that's it for the bad point.(you wanted negative critic^^)

[YarpsDat]

thanks.

ok, nobody asked me to explain myself, but I still feel like it,
someone once told me that static cameras are bad...,
also- drawing from diffrent angles lets me learn more
but I guess overdoing it is bad too.
so I'll just tone it down a bit.

sketchy backgrounds make it more difficult to tell what's going on with the weird camera angles, doesn't it?

I thought the sketched backgrounds were ok, because they are less important than the characters, so they get less detail,
but I guess it won't hurt me to work on them a bit more.


Yes, I do want negative criticism,
I need to know what's wrong before I can fix it.
"so we're fighting bugs?
just show me where they are."


But I never said I don't want to hear anything positive.
; )


---
ok,I got 2
n-2 to go.

[ZOMBIE USER 11832]

I haven't read your comic yet, but will criticise it professionally and thoroughly after I have read it in it's entirety ( at least until it gets to current.) But looking at your latest page I can at least give you a bit of helpful criticism.

Look up the human figure in drawing books (yeah, I know you can draw, but even professionals look in these books...). One thing you will learn is the mathematics of the human body, as well as ways to simplify your drawing technique while maintaining your present detail level, increasing both your abilities and your speed of drawing drastically.

Tip for the female body: the hips will usually fill out to about the same distance as the shoulders are apart, unless you are working with younger female characters or "non-well-endowed" characters. Also, think about the physics behind everything and learn the balance points, muscular structure and pivotal points of the human body.

And keep the manga-esque camera angles. Regular angles, such as face forward, profile, and 3/4 angles are weak angles for action. The angle of the knife thrown in your latest comic (#106) is superb for an action sequence, and you did it well.

I may be a manga artist mainly, but I still do realism sometimes.

And my avatar sucks... every time I try to use a pic that roxxor, it looks all pixelated when I shrink it in PSP7... meh. If you have any suggestions, please let me know...

[ZOMBIE USER 11268]

Your site is so hard to get around! Half of the links were dead, and a bunch of the pictures were missing. All I got to was the first 5 or so, and the last 4. For cripes sake.... you've gotten so much better in that time. However, I suggest keeping a style now. It used to be all done in photoshop.... I think.... because I see a bunch of over-used little background tricks. I can't exactly criticize you on that... because it's all done in pencil now. The sparse colors, as cool as you think they may be, really distract from the rest of the picture. It may be there to do that, but I don't think its a very good idea when the rest of the comic has so much action.
Sometimes the girl has the wierdest looks.... http://roadfromnowhere.republika.pl/nr103.htm .... that girl looks like He-man suffering from a rad laxative. But I don't know. I don't like He-man. I can't draw realistic women. I can say, however, that your problems with defining women lie in the manly face and the inconsistent body structure. Sometime's she's anorexic, and others she looks like.... um... a fat person. (insert fat person) Also.... sometimes.... I shouldn't be noticing, but the stripes you use to indicate stretch marks in the clothes... the one's you use to show that she truly does have boobs... makes it look like the knockers are 14ft in front of her to the point that she can't see.

But oh well.... it's all negative, but I can't help it.
Don't shoot the messenger.

-chris 'c'

[ZOMBIE USER 11832]

Aye. Study the physics of cloth and shading. They help greatly. ^_^

[YarpsDat]

thanks for your comments.
especially 'inconsistent body structure'
I know I have a problem with this, and I'm trying to work on it,
but I have some serious lack of time problems.
is there some good comprehensive webpage about body proportions?
(I don't think any book you could recommend would be available in my area)

yes, I used cg a lot at the beginning,
"cool colors" is supposed to be something weird, impressive, more interesting than anything else and distracing.


and about navigation problems, well I've just checked it, and everything was fine,
the server's in Poland, and I think the data got lost somewhere between the server and your computer. try hitting "reload" repeatedly.

anyone else had the same problems?

[Smoot]

And my avatar sucks... every time I try to use a pic that roxxor, it looks all pixelated when I shrink it in PSP7... meh. If you have any suggestions, please let me know...

i think it looks great ^_^

then again, i'm sucker for *most* things anime (i have a major problem with annoying female protagonists that have NO redeeming features- and yet males all fall for them anyway)

yeah, you're not going to be able to shrink and keep all the detail. at least it's not indredibly pixelated, or really really bad quality. or a bad picture.

[YarpsDat]

ok, I'm currently experimenting a bit.
and my art is undergoing changes,
so I'm going to need more comments,

perfect comment would sound like:
[something] on page [number] [nth] panel, is good.
something else is bad.

that way I'll know which experiments turned out good.

[RebLaw]

hmm.. to be honest... I only saw couple pages, and what I saw, the style is there, but not the substance, I'm refereing to your art, you know how to draw things, but it seems you're having trouble peicing everything together right so it looks perfect. it's the fault I've noticed in most webcomic, even my own... I'd recommend trying to just draw shapes that look like people for a bit, not focusing your detail on any part, that's what screws me up, I work on getting the face or the eyes to look perfect, and I completely forget to put them in perspective of the rest of the body

oh well

RebLaw

[Electronblues]

I really like what I've read of your comic so far. I skipped around to sample just the art, so I can give you a critique on it without blowing the story for myself.... anyhow

WHAT I LIKE

1. I love the different angles! It makes for a visually exciting layout.
2. You're not afraid of detail, and when you do backgrounds you can make very nice ones (taxi's, cafe tables, some street scenes)
3. Hands! You draw very expressive hands.

WHAT CAN BE WORKED ON

1. Consistency-- I'm talking about body proportions here. They are contracted correctly usually for your special angle panels, but they are often inconsistent in static shots. I remember one picture where I think Kate was taking something out of a box (pg 99, maybe?), and her back was way too thick. That contributed to a no-waist look. There are other times when the torsos look too short to me too. I would recommend deciding exactly what the characters proportions are and drawing a few model sheets that you can keep on hand to make sure you keep them on target as you draw. Figures are usually measured by the number of heads high they are, and that number determines where the body features fall.

2. I'd like to see more backgrounds used. I don't think you need one for every panel, but it's nice to have a sense that there is a world around the characters. So a couple of backgrounds on a page is good.

3. Your color pages. When you do the color pages, I think the skin tones look off to me. It may be that they need highlights on the skin, but the color choice just doesn't look like a natural color. I think some were orangish and some were a little greenish. If you're using a web safe color palette that would probably explain it, because they don't really have a good color selection for flesh tones.

[YarpsDat]

Thank you for your comments.

RebLaw, do you mean heads?
'Cause I noticed folowing thing: when I start with the sketch, I put the 'standard issue egg' where the head should be, but when I try to put the actual face, hair, ect. on it, it sometimes ends up in a diffrent place than I oryginally started. Not sure what causes it.
If you mean some other "things", please say something more specyfic.


Electronblues,

3.skin tones,
well, as far as I remember, I used the fleshtone palette I found at http://www.polykarbon.com, and for 107 I took the tone from a picture (the only use I found for a shampoo ad I got in my email)
maybe I somehow broke the color during procesing -my monitor may be
"misscalibrated", but then again, so may be yours. ; )

2.backgrouds,
well I'm kinda lazy, so I work on backgrounds whenever they're important.
sometimes I don't have enough time for them, but I always try to put at least a suggestion of the backgrouns,
and sometimes I have a lot of spare time, and get crazy with it, then I put a ton of details, just for fun. Glad you like it, I have one more reason to do that more often.

BTW, maybe I'll make a poll about it,
do you think
two updates a week with top-notch bg, is better than
three updates a week with just some perspective lines (so that characters don't float in an "endless white space")
?


1.consistency in body proportions...
I kinda know about it, ^^
I do believe making some sort of character reference chart would help,
but... I'm still trying to get the proportions right, I think I'm improving,
looking at pictures I made month ago I see mistakes that I think I managed to overcome,
however I'm afraid that in a month I'll discover more mistakes in drawings I'm making right now (including any reference sheet have I made one)
(and I can't copy one from a book- my ref.sheet has to be in order with my way of working, not with theirs)


but, maybe I'll try it

BTW:
smoot, I think it's your cue to check my progress
Uber_agel, wher's the profesional thing you promised
(you can't access the site too?)
Megidoth, you still dizzy?

[YarpsDat]

I hate posting two times in a row.

But I have an important announcement.

I got a site on keenspace.
My new site is on:
http://nowhere.keenspace.com

It will propably need some tweaking
(like: I need to change all the internal links that appeared in my rants),
so report all the html errors you notice.
I already noticed thers an "a" next to the buttons, sorry can't
fix it right now.

(of course, if the site doesn't work at all, report that too ; )

[Heffaloop]

woohoo! You seemed to have improved on drawing women alot!

Although now, I'm noticing that everyone's heads look a little to small for the bodies, and look kinda.... funny.

[YarpsDat]

great, now you tell me.

you could have saved me a month of work.


it will propably take a few weeks before I have heads
under control,
so check back every now and then, and criticize some more.