Critique on my comic? *looks around nervously*

[Sopheia]

I've started my comic about a month ago, and I have 10 pages now... I read somewhere that 10 pages is the minimum you should have before asking for critique... so... here it goes...

Personally I prefer people to tell me what I should improve rather than tell me what is good. I'm a bit of a perfectionist - if only a starting one. And yes, it's hard to be a perfectionist and be positive at the same time. But it's a good combination, I believe.

I can imagine that the two 'poor me days' are a bit annoying... I figured I could remove those once Chapter One is finished, and put them in a separate archive. I know they aren't funny. They're only supposed to be funny for the people that were reading the comic at that time... which is actually just Lisa.

Here it is: College of Magic

Thanks!

[DarkArtist]

Since it is just 10 pages I will go page by page with my thoughts as I am reading it.

20031107
That is a really beautiful cover page. I love the detail you put in the edging around the picture. It makes a good first impression and makes me want to see what is coming next.
The Text is a perfect match.
The only thing that caught my eye as odd right off is the woman's long hair. It seems very stiff, as if perhaps there is a pole stuck up the center of those fancy clips. It should flow and bend with the curves of her body.


20031108
Again this is a nice looking page. I like how you pull the reader in from outerspace right to the setting. Nothing to fix here. good work!


20031109
Good things...
It is a nice sized panel, gives the reader allot to look at and lines it up in a way that is easy to follow. Nicely done.
The drawing is just 'ok'. Your expressions are nice but the bodies need allot of work when it comes to proportions and limb length. The are stiff and misshapen. It might do you well to get a doll or and wooden artist's model to pose and work from when you draw so you can see what a body looks like in positions you are drawing.


20031115
Argggh! What is this?! Who the heck is Lisa? Why is she stupid. What are these awful computer drawn faces doing here?! What happened to the Story! Why am I reading a comic where the creator insults herself, her friend and her mom?

20031124
Blink blink....
I am looking at someone turning into a tomato and some odd purple fuzzy thing. What has this got to do with the story? The drawing is terrible. The artist is calling herself stupid again. It is distracting and strange. If I were not reviewing this comic I would not be interested in seeing what comes next. I would be leaving. Get rid of these pages ASAP!
If you think you are stupid and tell us all....why should readers waste time reading something done by a stupid person?

20031204
Yahoo! We are back to the story and things are looking so much better now.
I think the Text looks good but could be a bit smaller. Make the balloons and the text just a bit less of the panel focus. Perhaps more over their heads so the could really be giving each other a glare with out all the words between them. Plan on where your balloons will be as you are drawing.
Also I do not care to see allot of text on the bottom of the page that tells me how bad the art is I was just looking at. If you want to make a comment about each of your pages, post it your comic's forum where readers can comment...don't ruin your work with it.

20031208
Again to much info on the non-story things at the bottom of the page. However I did like to learn about the "bitch" and "in heat" thing. I was puzzled by that until I read your blurb. I think you might do well to have a page or two in the beginning that explains the races a bit.

20031212
More blurbs.....BOOOO
Great expressions though. That crying girl is cute. I am wondering though, if he was trying to rape her (he was right?) then when why is she mad at them for protecting her?

20031215
Great drawing....you are getting better fast. The hut is very cute. I always like to see scenery and background, it really helps set the story world.
What does Deaf thistle do?

20031218
They attacked her herbs? *puzzled blink* Why do they want to help this boy anyway?
The text balloons are HUGE and more noticeable then the pictures.
I still love her hair.


20031222
Great text balloon work in the first panel....i still feel the text is to large..but it looks super!!
I think I am understanding it better now. This is one of those situation where teen age boys will do anything because the cute girl wants them too. Am I right?

20031225
Lovely picture. The leaf shadows are super!! Oh oh...I am getting the feeling that the long haired blond is a girl? I guess I better go read the cast list when I am done.

Current comic....
The foreshortening looks very odd on the laying girl. Again I suggest using a poseable model. The fire looks first rate.I am glad that there was not more breaks in the story and the art keeps getting better. All in all it is a interesting little comic if you get rid of those two horrid "stupid me" pages.

Hope I was some help...
Keep on comicing!

DA

[Sopheia]

First of all allow me to thank you for the clear way of reviewing you have done DarkArtist. It's been a great help! Indeed I should keep the comments out, they're only disturbing...

And thank you for telling me those two 'stupid pages', as you call them, should be removed immediately. I had thought they would be bad, but they're worse than I thought. I'll try to figure out a way to remove them. At least they're not in the archives...

I was wondering which resolution your screen is set at... I've been a bit puzzled by the size of the font... I was using 12 pt most of the time... It looks good on my resolution, but I think it looks big on 800 x 600. Maybe if I use a 10 pt it will be better. It's still readible at 1024 x 768. I'm not sure about larger resolutions though.

I think I actually have a poser doll lying around here somewhere. I have a lot of trouble drawing dynamic bodies/poses, because before this comic I never needed to. It's really something I need to practice on. I do use guidelines though. It makes things a little easier.

I will try my best to work on those things... I'm going to start with cutting the comments on the pages out. I think you're right about adding information about the races somewhere too... I was planning to discuss it later on in the comic, but people may have forgotten about the incident at all, and so the whole 'in the heat' thing will never be clear, unless you read it all over again.

Then I have a question... what is a blurb?

I have also noticed that I didn't convey the relationship Alurwyn/Kandar/Maylin have with Cha'ad very well. I'll have to think of a way to explain it better... It's a good thing you told me so early about it, or it would've been too late.

Thanks again! It was really helpful!

[CodeGuy]

Your archive pages have everything twice. Today's comic, the navigation buttons, etc. Cut and paste error?

The first page is a title page. Personally, I like a comic strip to be the very first thing in the archive. That may just be me, other people may find title pages acceptable. I kinda think of the site itself as serving the function of a title page.

The second page (zooming in through the vista) seems wasted to me. I believe that every strip of a comic should advance the plot or deliver something. If not a joke, then some kind of definable plot beat. That kind of a page is just setup. It works great for a 30 page comic book. With 30 pages, authors can take their time and tell slower paced stories. Comics need to be more compact. I think you could have achived the same thing with only half a page, and spent the other half introducing a character.

Storywise, I don't really get what's going on. At first I thought someone was being kidnapped.

Then there was a fist fight. Someone was put into a coma as a result. Wasn't he just hit in the gut? How do you get put in a coma from that? The page after the gut punch shows one of the characters hitting something, was it supposed to be the guy he just hit in the gut? He's facing away from him! I had to read the archives twice to even guess that he was punching the guy who had already been hit in the gut.

Anyone, one person is in a coma, and then they're off on a merry adventure to cure him. Why are they so merry? There's a guy in a coma. Why are they all friends, I thought this started with a kidnapping or something?

I really just can't figure out who these people are. Do they know each other? They act like they trust each other sometimes, but that seems mispaced other times.

[DarkArtist]

First of all allow me to thank you for the clear way of reviewing you have done DarkArtist. It's been a great help!

You are very welcome. It was fun to do and I am glad it was of help.

I was wondering which resolution your screen is set at... I've been a bit puzzled by the size of the font... I was using 12 pt most of the time... It looks good on my resolution, but I think it looks big on 800 x 600. Maybe if I use a 10 pt it will be better. It's still readible at 1024 x 768. I'm not sure about larger resolutions though.

I honestly do not know? I am really not very much of computer person at all and I am woefully uniformed. When I say that the text looks to large.. i mean in relation to the whole page. It is like reading a large print book for someone with bad eyes. You could make the actual size of the words smaller and still be very readable.

Then I have a question... what is a blurb?

A blurb is slang for a bunch of discriptive words. The chatty text at the bottom of your pages are blurbs.

[Sopheia]

To CodeGuy:

Your archive pages have everything twice. Today's comic, the navigation buttons, etc. Cut and paste error?

*laughs* I messed up a little after removing my two bad pages, and cutting all the 'blurbs'. I accidentally put an html page into the comic folder... well... you saw the result. I'm fixing it now. Thanks for letting me know.

That kind of a page is just setup. It works great for a 30 page comic book. With 30 pages, authors can take their time and tell slower paced stories.

Well, for as far as I know, I'm not going to stop at ten pages. But I can imagine that the page is not very catchy. I'll consider removing it... but not just yet.

Storywise, I don't really get what's going on. At first I thought someone was being kidnapped.

I must be doing a really bad job then. Though whatever Cha'ad was doing to Maylin is not of too much significance... I think I may have 'jumped into the story' too quick. I thought the relationships between the four would become clear later on... but if it is already that confusing in the beginning... I'll try and come up with something.

Anyone, one person is in a coma, and then they're off on a merry adventure to cure him. Why are they so merry? There's a guy in a coma. Why are they all friends, I thought this started with a kidnapping or something?

More or less the same as I said before - I had no idea it was so confusing.

This is what is actually going on:

Alurwyn and Kandar are best friends. They are practically inseperable. Kandar's not much of a talker, so Alurwyn usually decides upon everything they do. They are a team.
Maylin is a girl they both like - they both consider her their friend. Sometimes they quarrel because of her, but ishe has never stood in the way of their friendship.
Maylin's mother is a Caenigh Be

[DarkArtist]

Thanks again. I am wondering that maybe the font itself is not such a good idea. It's an all capitals font... So that may be disturbing as well. I thought it would work well, because most of the real comics I read are in caps. I thought it would look better that way... more like comic.

What do you prefer?

I think the font itself is very good. I use an all caps font on my comic as well. They are very easy to read.

[CodeGuy]

That kind of a page is just setup. It works great for a 30 page comic book. With 30 pages, authors can take their time and tell slower paced stories.

Well, for as far as I know, I'm not going to stop at ten pages. But I can imagine that the page is not very catchy. I'll consider removing it... but not just yet.

It's not that the story is short. A webcomic story can be massively longer than a 30 page comic. It's that each individual comic is a complete thing unto itself, and it needs to work that way. Most modern comic books tell stories that span several issues, and several TV shows (even sit coms now) have story arcs that last over several episodes. However, the good ones always have some kind of payoff for each issue or episode.

In fact, TV shows are even designed so that there is an emotional high point right before every commercial break, and there's often a tiny little recap when they come back. So before the commercial they'll say "Oh my god, you [something]" and when they return that same character will say "I can't believe you [something]". Back to back these statements would be redundant, but when they bookmark the commercial breaks, they break the show up into individual segments.

Comics need to be the same way for every single strip. If people are seeing it as it comes out, then a page of setup followed by an entire day of waiting is a horrible story flow. If someone is reading your archives, they know they're reading a comic and they sometimes have the same expectations of story flow as if they were reading it one day at a time. I just read <a href="http://loxieandzoot.keenspace.com"> Loxie and Zoot</a> yesterday. This strip is a great example of this. It doesn't always end on a joke, but there's always some plot advancement for every strip.

So that's why I suggested a faster pace than the fly-in strip. I think you could have accomplished the same thing in about half the space, and gotten some actual plot development into the comic.

[Sopheia]

Thank you again, DarkArtist.

As for the storyflow... thanks for the insight, Codeguy. I'll try to work towards a better use of space and flow... though I think it will be quite difficult, since I already put so much time in each single page.

Which do you think is better: more picures in one page, but less updates, or more updates but less pictures in one page?

[Jyan]

Hey =) I haven't had too much first hand experience in making comics but I'm developing one and I've spent many hours observing other people's comics.

Lol, first off, when I get my comic up and running I want you two to critique it Or at least some people like you guys. The advice was given relatively harshly, but that is what you actually want when you receive a good review. If you get a review and they say it is completely perfect, then you had better ask someone other than your mom to critique it

This comic seems like it has a good start. The main things I believe a comic need are motivation, creativity, and persistence. From reading your comic it is evident that you have the motivation for it. You have thought in-depth about the setting and where you are going to take your comic. This preparation is invaluable to the comic because if you, as the creator of the comic, know the entire world you have made up then you are not restricted with what you manage to come up with at the time you conceive a new scene. I believe what makes pictures, stories, and pretty much anything aesthetic good is the details, and when you know the entire world then you know the details and you can easily put them in. The details draw in the reader and allow them to immerse themselves into your world. And it is pretty clear that your world is going to be very creative, although I feel as if we have only scratched the surface of it.

I am putting the persistence in a different paragraph because I feel it is most commonly ignored as an important trait. I have been trying to develop a comic for a few years now. During those years I have been jotting down notes and ideas I have thought up but I never really got on the ball on put it all together until about a month ago. I just lacked the persistence to stay on topic of the comic and because of that it never got done. It is a huge task to make a comic strip (So I have found out ), but the only way it is going to proceed is if you regularly produce work. I am sure we have all experienced the

[Jyan]

All right, I am not sure if you wanted technical help on the actual drawing but you asked for a critique and didn

[Sopheia]

I'm sorry I didn't reply before... I didn't expect more critique

Jyan, thank you a lot for the critique and tips you offered. I am sure it will help a lot.

When I first started the comic, it took so much time for me to draw the characters, and figure out where and how to place them, I simply didn't want to use backgrounds at first. I was still figuring out how to make frames and speech-bubbles. But going over my comic myself, I did think the background was lacking. My final intention is to actually draw the background itself on paper, like the characters, and then add it to the comic. I am not sure how the backgrounds work that I added now. They are completely drawn on the computer, and I think it is pretty obvious too. Is the difference between the two too great? I don't know...

As for staring with bone-structure, adding muscles, and then drawing clothes... that is what I have been doing from the beginning. I think the problem is my style - when I was a kid I used to draw really thin girls because my best friend was really skinny. I guess it never really passed. Sometimes I draw an arm a thousand times over, thinking 'too thick, too thin, too thick, too thin' until I just give up.

I never thought that drawing different angles and different positions would be such a big problem for me. I have drawn so many girls throughout the years (front view), I never realised how limited those drawings actually were...

As for the fire-and-Maylin thing... I can't see how the fire changes places... maybe it shifted a little back and forth, but it's always been on Maylin's right side (from her perspective that is). The only thing that really changed there was the angle from which we view it... Or am I totally confused and off?

Anyway, thanks for the great review, advice and help! I will definately broaden Chapter One with a couple more pages, where the relationships and feelings of the characters will be more clear. Thanks!

[Jyan]

Now that I look at the fire it does match if you change the angle to look from the back. It just threw me off because I don't think you have changed angles before then. It is a powerful tool though and if I had noticed it was actually correct it probably would have helped. One thing that you could help from keeping people mixed up when you change point of views is by adding bearings in. Like you could have showed an elbow from the guy next to her poking from the side of the screen. It is harder to tell what exactly happens in the change of view when there aren't many things to orientate yourself.

Yea, when I think about it I can tell that the background is CG, but that doesn't really matter. I like those backgrounds better than any of the other ones you did. If you can produce better looking stuff from CG then I recommend you use CG, but if you manage to draw a good background from pencil then that would be great. But a few things are certain, almost any background is better than none at all and if you produce a better product by doing something a different way then do it that way.

As for drawing characters all skinny, well, both my female roommates do it and another artist whos work I comment on a lot does the same thing. I don't want to be hurt or anything by saying this, it seems like something that is quite normal for females to do when they draw =P I don't think my sister did it but she has always been good at proportions. I am not sure how you can fix that. I think maybe if you just drew from a photo or proportionally accurate cartoon/comic/anime/whatever characters then that might help you get familiar with them.

I was disappointed when I didn't see any more posts for your comic up =( At least you are still working on them =) I'll be eagerly waiting for your next comics! =D

[Sopheia]

Well... considering the amount of time it saves not to make a background... I'll try making drawn backgrounds more often, as I would prefer them above CG.

As for the lack of new pages... I have just updated the site and added an actually -coloured- page. It took a lot of time to make... but... it looks good! I just wish I'd have some good technique to combine both blue-ish-night-time-atmosphere-colour as the warm-buring-fire-light-colour. Now it seems as if the fire's not there at all.
Uhm, and my drawing style has changed a bit. I am also going to receive two new drawing books soon... which will probably make a great difference.

I was curious... what does everyone think of the coloured page?

[Jyan]

Doh! Took me two weeks to respond lol. I got to check that e-mail account more often
Yea, I noticed a change in style and i can tell that you worked pretty hard on the last one. You show a lot more detail and I just love the shading you did. You are dividing the scene up dynamically so it keeps me interested more.
As for the background and the fire/night thing I see what you were talking about. Although I don't see any bluish shading in there from the night, or red/yellowish light from the fire. I am not quite sure what program you are using but it looks like PP. I would put a mask on the object you are working with and get a HUGE brush with 100% feather. Then I would get a yellow/red color and softly brush in the light from the fire. As for the night color, basically everything that the fire doesn't touch is black, for the things that it hardly touches it is the darkish blue (maybe a little bit of purple in there too, which actually makes it look darker). But there probably isn't going to be a very big line of blue/black/purple that divides the firelight and the darkness. In other words I don't think that when you get out of firelight the shades of black will be as subtle as the fire's aura. There would hardly be any green. Although I am thinking of like there is no light what so ever other than the campfire. In the black shadows every once and a while put a curve representing a partially visible figure of a tree or something. But not too often, it is hard to see in almost pitch black

Page 11 has your best quality art so far! You just keep getting better =) Keep it up for a while and you will be able to do all of this in a fourth the time and produce 10 times the quality stuff. I promise =)