Full comic critique.

[Kilre]

I'm at the beginning of a new chapter, and I think things could be different. After reading through the pet peeves of comics in the general forum, I'm pretty sure I hit mcDuffie's peeve of "long time to draw 15 minutes in-story" on the head. And, as I move into the third chapter, I'd like to know (read: I'm begging, I gotta know!) what I did wrong with the previous chapters so that I won't repeat the past (too often).

That's plot up until the third chapter, art, layout, character believability, anything. I just gotta know what I'm doing that isn't up to snuff so that I can work on that!

Link here.

[Dr Neo Lao]

I notice that your indextemplate was made by Ping, so I'm going to take a guess and assume that you don't know a whole heap about html (maybe you do and I'm wrong...)

1. I'd put the css into a css file and host it seperately rather than having it on every page.
2. Page layout: Looking at your main page, the eye is first drawn toward's Amber's Panda (the web MA rating / link). It's big, it's black and it stands out from the page. But that's not the main focus for your page!
3. The link buttons (Home, Cast, etc) are a lot smaller than the Panda. If you use the small blue one (near the bottom) then it will 'blend in' to your page a lot better. Even then, the blue Panda is 100px wide and your buttons are only 75px wide.
4. Your banner... A banner is supposed to adverise your site. But it also says "this is me!" on your website. For advertising you need a smaller banner (especially if your going to put it in your sig), but for your comic site it can be bigger. Also, since it's mainly white with pale blue, it just does not stand out from the page. It's the last thing I noticed.
5. The daily index's seem fine to me, you just may want to update the bit at the bottom "hosted on Keenspace" -> "hosted on Comic Genesis".

Now, it's no good me telling you what I think is wrong with your site if I'm not going to give advice on how to fix or improve it.

1. By having the CSS in one place rather than in every page it makes it easier to update, since you only need to change it once. However, this benefit is negated somewhat because AutoKeen updates all the pages anyway. The other benefit is that most browsers will download a CSS file once and stick it in the cache. It'll only save about 1Kb per page, but every bit helps.
2. You need to decide what you want people to look at when they arrive at your site. I'd put the comic on the left and the navigation / shoutbox on the right. That way, the comic will dominate the screen (especially on lower resolution monitors) and will be the main focus of the site.
3. That empty blue gap between the nav buttons and "By Kilre" looks like wasted space. Since you have the newsbox and shoutbox further down the column, the smaller blue Panda may not be appropriate. Keep the current Panda, but make your buttons 140px wide (the same size as the current Panda). I'd also center them in that column.
4. Your banner just looks . . . weak. I'm not being critical of your art or the design, I'm just saying that it does not look like much as it is now. I'd up the size to at least 690px (same width as the comic) and make it stand out from the background. The face is cut off at the top and bottom, but there is no reason for it. The image just ends with no border.
   
   You could swap it with your name so that the bottom edge of the banner is on the top edge of your comic. Then it would look like the character was peeking over the top of the comic. If that was the case, you could also alter the eyes so that it's looking directly at the reader, rather than off to the left.
   
   Even better: make the banner the full width of the page (approx 1050px) and put it at the top of the page, under the ads. If the banner spans both the comic and the nav buttons / shoutbox then it will "unify" the page.

Sorry that I didn't actually give you the advice you wanted, but it'll take time to 'properly' read through your archives. What I mean is that since you asked for feedback on the story, I can't just skim through it. I'll provide advice / suggestions on the story once I've read through your comic.

Edit: also note that this is all just advice, don't panic or assume that I'm telling you what to do...

[Kilre]

I'm going to have to pop a question--or two, or three--in the help forum for about half of the suggestions you just laid on me. Like you said, I'm using Ping's template, and I have no idea, beyond sticking links and images on the page, what I'm doing.

[Dr Neo Lao]

Storywise:

The initial assault was pretty good. Not every little detail is spelt out, but there is enough information for the reader to get the idea of what's going, who hates whom but not why.

Chapter One: Home - starts off with a lot of large comics with virtually zero text. This went on until the 14th of April - about ten straight days with no text. Setting the mood is one thing, but you don't want to let your audience (who is checking in once a day) to keep seeing pretty pictures with no substance. I'd have added a few Narrators comments on some of these pages, or an intrernal monologue. Explosion on the 10th of April looks nice.

A lot of your pages have vast tracts of open space with either simple shading or not much at all. Case in point: the start of Act 2. This page could easily have been 50% smaller and still looked good. As it is, most of the screen is taken up with the white glow of the background, or the (featureless) bottom half of Commander's Jacket.

The next page is a good layout. There is a lot of text, but it's balanced out by the images. Having one large image broken up makes it easier on the eyes and works well. Except the bottom left-hand panel. That needed a little something, maybe a hint of the people in the background, but it's in keeping with your style.

The second wake-up page is a good sample of how a page can be good, but can be made better with a little tweaking. The text and layout is quite good and the whole page looks nice, until the bottom. There is a large area of "wasted space" across the bottom of the page. The image should have been cropped along the bottom edge of the last text panel, or maybe just below the tip of the tail.

Then he stops to talk! Ug, monologuing! Anyways, it's fine for a comic, but five pages? And then he starts talking to the chap he's about to kill? Obviously he's not planing o going through it, or having second doubts. As plot devices go, it's old, but it works.

By the time I got to June, the story had enough meat to keep me going and enough missing to be intersting. The bad part is that since I'm reading it through at once, it keeps me interested. If I'd been reading at the time of writing, the drop from near-daily updates to once-a-week updates would have made me wander off.

The first few pages of act three are another example of wasted space. Seeing a huge 690 x 935 pic at 156Kb with one sentance would have made me leave if I was on dail-up. If there was more detail in the image, or the artwork made me want to sit and stare at it for five minutes then that would be okay. But this image has about 30% flat color with noting of interest in it. The entire image could be shrunk down by 60% and still have the same effect.

If I'd been reading this through at the time of publishing, having seen that page and then seen the following pages would have made me run screaming from the room. It's a very fine line to walk, but there needs to be enough text / story to be interesting, but without so much that readers go "Ah! Words! Make brain hurty!"

If you have a large page that is all art, follow it up with something that pushes the story forward. In the three weeks from the end of June to the start of July you have .... 47 words. That's a lot of time to expect the audience to stay interested.

By mid July it looks live you've stopped caring. The story has dropped to one or two short sentences per page, and the already spartan details in the artwork has dropped to a very minimalist style. None of the faces are fully outlined and the backrounds are barely hinted at.

What's going on in this page? I'm not sure what's being conveyed here.

This is a good page. There is a dramatic pause at the top, action in the middle and story at the bottom. The story itself isn't being advanced, but there is good background information on the characters and their motivations. It's the nfollowed up with this page, which hits some really strong emotional strides. This is good stuff.

The end of Chapter two was running quite well. The Cover for Chapter Three is quite impressive and then the first page of chapter three reverts to hand-lettering. Why is that? Through December and into january, the triple storylines running concurrently worked well. There was a good level of dialogue, emotion and exposition. Not many suggestions to improve this area.

Through feb and into March it goes downhill again. The action scenes with Ark fighting Istheen (spell?) in the Ether are good, have decent cinematoraphy but little to no text. You then bottom out with this page - large open areas and zero story or hooks for the reader to grab hold of.

However, what is a problem in those areas becomes a plus in this page. The absurd style in the top panel (absurd as in the situation being depicted, not the artwork itself) followed by the incredulous reaction in the bottom panel is pure gold. Which is why a lot of work is very subjective and it's only by experience that you can really judge when something works and is good.

You took a small hiatus through April, I'm sure there was a reason for that. But the pages that were updated were very sparse on story. It takes just over a month to cover a twelve-second confrontation in a hallway.

The story line through July and into August was a little confusing. Initially you had different fonts for the two races which made it easy to tell who was who. Then Ark "upgraded" the others and there were two ArkGeno/clones running around, plus the astral fight. It made keeping track of who was who and were they were quite difficult. Pretty much all of Act three felt like a bad acid trip.

The internal monlogue through October explained a few things and was mostly well-paced. It could have done with a little beefing up, but worked well for the most part.

The first page of the prologue for chapter 3 looks like a random sketch page, or at least the top half does. There seems to be little purpose to the top half, and the impression given is that the page started as a scribble pad but ended up being used in the comic because you ran out of paper.

In the latest page it's not very clear as to what's going on. Obviously it's another jump and we've left Ark and his captors having fun and we're now off to meet some new characters. Here there is just enough infomation to let us know whats goin on (bored youths playing extreme games) but not enough to be 'bashed with info'.

Overall your style works well, and the main suggestion I'd give is that if you are going to have a series of pages with little or no story, then drop in a few pages that do have text to keep the reader hooked.

[Kilre]

Thank you! That is exactly what I needed to read.

I'm going to bookmark this page for reference.

In poor defense of my early pages, I mainly used the shading as a crutch to cover up what I didn't feel like adding in. This was usually the background, which I'm just starting to get the hang of drawing.

The silent pages, in the beginning of chapter one, and anywhere else, are pages I put in to stagnate the current plot. When I first put up the dream sequence in the first chapter, I wasn't really thinking of the readers, for I was pretty sure I didn't have any at the time, but I was thinking of adding in a flashback for the character being introduced.

So far, I'm prone to dragging things on for months...that's my main problem, and that's what I'm hoping to fix with this next chapter.

Thanks again for the help.