|
My thoughts: 1. I don't think the second panel really works. It's difficult to tell who is speaking, for one, and I'm not sure I'd familiar with whatever shorthand you are aiming at. 2. Third panel shoulders need a lot of work. Heck, someone odd seems to have happened with the first panel's shoulders. 3. Final panel... I think you need shadows from the figures on to the floor. EDIT 4: Assuming the two people behind him aren't important, you should maybe do something to push them back. Your background is very dark, so it seems like these three are moving forward as a trio. It doesn't help too that all three have the same posture and expression, and they are the same distance behind him, which lends them a certain 'dance troupe'-ness. 5. I also wonder if the layout would benefit from being flipped somewhat. Tap tap tap connotates something going away from the reader, when read left to right, when I assume you intend the opposite. More generally, IIRC, typically action looks faster to the western eye if it follows the line of reading and so goes from left to right. Fangz fucked around with this message at Jun 20, 2011 around 17:20 |
| # ? Jun 20, 2011 17:12 |
|
|
|
| # ? May 25, 2013 11:58 |
|
|
Oh yeah, I was supposed to post the rest of that comic for critique on here like, a month ago. Somebody dropped the ball there (That somebody is me)  
|
| # ? Jun 23, 2011 02:24 |
|
|
My thoughts:KingKalamari posted:Oh yeah, I was supposed to post the rest of that comic for critique on here like, a month ago. Somebody dropped the ball there (That somebody is me) 1) That's not nitroglycerine. That's dynamite. For some reason this bothers me. Probably because she's supposed to have some expertise in this sort of thing. 2) You need to pay more attention to the edges of your forms. If something is made of old worn brick odds are it wont usually have a straight edge like the one you get with a mouse and the line tool. Try drawing real brick and note how the contour is actually ragged. These edges are one of your best tools for depicting texture in a drawing. Don't let them go to waste. 3)If you are going to have scratch marks like this then they need to go with the lines of perspective and be arranged in a way at least slightly resembling what brick looks like. Right now they just depict that your walls have A texture... of some kind. 4)The big-lipped expression doesn't work with this character for some reason. I don't know it just seems out of character. quote:1) Futurama would like a word with you... 2) This effect get's lost in her hair. Sound effects and the like are a great way to convey information. Don't just toss them on as an afterthought. 3) I really like your male character's expression here. Unlike many of your other frames, this drawing really gives him a personality and clearly shows why both of the characters are interesting and how they differ from one another. Try and create moments of clearly defined characterization like this one more. quote:1) If you're expecting an explosion and have ever been near one before then you should always be covering your ears and not your head. Seriously, those things are deafening. 2) OK, can't see why someone who does this for a living didn't think of that possibility... But I digress. You're explosions need work. They don't take the "BAM" icon shape but instead a cloud form with bits of debris being thrown from it. Look to movies for help on this one. 3) Where as your expressions were really good in the last page. Here, not so much. First off, they don't look like their really falling. Second, the expressions aren't really very funny and don't reveal anything interesting or new about these characters. Considering that the building just exploded around them, I think it's safe to say that this would be a revealing moment. For example, the girl could react with anger while the boy reacts with fear. ALSO: You need to stop breaking your frames with your word balloons. Instead plan for them in advance and zoom the scenes out a touch more to compensate. Doing it the way you are now interrupts the reading flow and looks lazy since none of them are restricted by borders. If you don't know how to make a balloon be hidden under a frame we'll be glad to show you how. Overall: You're improving! Also you draw feet and hands which is super awesome! Your major issues right now are mainly that your characters lack much real definition and as a result they're kind of boring. I can't really tell you much about the girl other than she's kind of a dumbass spaz that likes adventuring, and as for the boy I can decipher even less. At least that's what I would say if not for the second panel of page 2. Whether you meant it too or not that panel revealed a ton about him. For example, he's cynical and questioning by nature. He's close to the protagonist, so much so that he's willing to be touched without so much as a reaction. However this lack of reaction also reveals that their relationship is platonic and likely brotherly/sisterly in nature. Compare that to Penny Arcade, in which Gabe and Tycho's physical contact with each other is both limited and rare due to all the hate boiling right beneath the surface: http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2011/5/16/ Keep em coming! I love watching artists improve. Fake edit: Oh! Why is the kid wearing only one glove? I just noticed that and it's bugging me now.
|
| # ? Jun 23, 2011 05:16 |
|
|
Another thing you might want to keep an eye on is line thickness. In the third panel on the first page your characters have this weird sort of popping effect, like they're sort of removed fro the environment themselves because the environment lacks the depth and character you gave your characters, at least in a superficial sense. Your backgrounds are detailed, but better linework could help "establish" the environment more than it is currently, if that makes any sense.
|
| # ? Jun 23, 2011 06:31 |
|
|
Ok so I'm an idiot, Kyo doesn't actually start out in feudal Japan but "The Realm of Elemental Chaos" which is based on ancient China if there was floating crystals everywhere and the sky was purple and its a city hanging off the side of a cliff and everything is made of machinery. Luckily he'll be drawing a reference for me to go off of because that's literally how much detail he gave me and I don't know what any of it means. (In the meantime does anyone have any good resources on drawing environments and scenery, because I'm about to draw up a whole lot of them. Like that will probably be my entire next post and it'll take me a year because buildings are harder than anime furries) I don't know how much of the story I should go into but it starts off with Kyo as a dumb kid a little after his Mom dies or something. So here's baby Kyo and the maid who takes their Mom's place and pretty much raises them while Dad's busy being a military hero. My friend to make him look like as much of a little prick as possible, hopefully I at least did a good job of that. http://i.imgur.com/Ow3x4.png http://i.imgur.com/1coBF.png King Kalamari I really like your comic, the characters are fun and the way they interact is really cute! They don't fit in well with the background, though. They're drawn in a very stylized way with thick, smooth lines, while the background has a ton of detail and uses thin, scratchy lines. I'd try to find a balance, because both the characters and the scenery look nice, just inconsistent. If that makes sense. Keep it up!
|
| # ? Jun 23, 2011 07:06 |
|
|
Dabbo posted:http://i.imgur.com/1coBF.png Another sweet and warm lady huh?  I still really like your character designs, despite the content. Do you have any other work online?Try this one for size with regards environments.
|
| # ? Jun 23, 2011 11:21 |
|
|
Dabbo, have you set rules for who is anthro in the comic? You're gonna run into a cannibalism or horses riding horses issue if you don't exclude some species. 
|
| # ? Jun 23, 2011 15:06 |
|
|
The Worst Unicorn posted:Dabbo, have you set rules for who is anthro in the comic? You're gonna run into a cannibalism or horses riding horses issue if you don't exclude some species. I never really understood this line of thinking. It's not like humans don't keep other primates as pets or food. Presumably, anthro people are just more advanced than the not anthro animals in their world and have the same division of "person" versus "unperson."
|
| # ? Jun 23, 2011 16:07 |
|
|
KingKalamari posted:Oh yeah, I was supposed to post the rest of that comic for critique on here like, a month ago. Somebody dropped the ball there (That somebody is me) You should think more about the panel flow and balloon placement in your layouts. For example, in the second half of that page, the placement of the "I'm sorry" balloon at first led me to skip the panel I was supposed to read, and its location under the next balloon makes the exchange a little weird-looking. There's a similar issue on the second panel of the next page; I wasn't sure which bit of dialog was supposed to be read first. Generally, if you can do it, you should have dialog that goes first above dialog responding to it, in addition to making it to the left. And remember that balloons that bleed into a panel are likely to be read as bridges to the next panel, so try not to do that if you don't intend to guide the reader to the next panel in sequence.
|
| # ? Jun 23, 2011 16:17 |
|
|
Plus there's no way you're going to be able to go all one way or all the other. Seriously, unless it would be plot-relevant, don't worry about it. TIE fighters make sound in space and furries can ride horses. No big deal.
|
| # ? Jun 23, 2011 16:19 |
|
|
KingKalamari posted:Just wanna say that the expression on both characters in the first panel is pretty great.
|
| # ? Jun 23, 2011 16:50 |
|
|
KingKalamari posted:Oh yeah, I was supposed to post the rest of that comic for critique on here like, a month ago. Somebody dropped the ball there (That somebody is me) I'm reading the world balloons completely out of order. I'm going straight to the third panel and right into the fifth panel, completely skipping panels 2 and 4. You want to keep in mind that the average westerner's eyes (your audience) reads things from top to bottom, left to right. That includes word ballons, lines of action, and panel layouts. However, as you can see here, the eyes can be easily manipulated and led around the page The male character's body is basically an arrow pointing at the wrong word balloon. I cannot help but read it first. If the second panel's dialogue wasn't breaking the borders, and perhaps if the male character was standing in a more dynamic way, like up on one leg while looking I'd be less inclined to read that one out of order. Also the sense of danger to him would be more palpable. One of things you've done correctly here is the small-small-large bottom row. Normally this is a bad idea, but you've got characters looking down into the fourth panel which SHOULD lead the eyes down into it rather than the inviting, large panel off to the right. I say should, but your balloons wrecked that. Again, the panel breaking with the "I'm sorry". If you butted the balloon up against the panel there it would work better. Also it would help if the background was also pointing downwards into the next panel. This could be done easily if the camera angle was just slightly from a different direction. Also having his dialogue butted off to the side and maybe a little obscured like that would also drive it home that she's not listening. Another note on changing camera directions, I'll go back up to panel two. If you had the "camera" out behind the character it would again make it seem more dangerous for the guy to be standing there, and also have the added benefit of having the background lines pointing, diagonally, at the next panel. I like the dynamite crammed into the column part. It provides a nice stopping point on the page. Oh, sort of unrelated, but related to this thread, here's a post on tumblr about panel layouts I thought you guys might be interested in. It's pretty nifty. Skratte fucked around with this message at Jun 23, 2011 around 16:57 |
| # ? Jun 23, 2011 16:51 |
|
|
Not to steal King Kalamari's thunder or anything but as long as people are looking at stuff, would anyone mind taking a(nother) look at BSF and letting me know what you think? The last time I got a crit in this thread the comic was up to page 52, but I had a backlog going, so while I tried to implement the feedback where I could on the finished pages (I don't really like going back and redoing work that's finished), I really started implementing feedback in earnest starting at page 67. I have really been trying to nail perspective down in a meaningful way, make characters look a bit more 3D (ie no flat feet, less emoticon-y faces, drawing figures in perspective), and play up the character interactions more to make these people more interesting. I am a little bit dissappointed with the pacing, but I can't tell if part of it is that I am experiencing it sequentially rather than archivally. If I go back and read it, the pacing seems OK, but I can't help but worry that I didn't get Seb and co. out on their actual adventure soon enough. I'm trying to push them out the door as it is, but I have a lot to establish beforehand. edit: Here's Monday's page wherein I really tried to pay attention to perspective and actually shading characters so they look like they exist in 3D space (one of the biggest concerns raised last time): 
Fortis fucked around with this message at Jun 23, 2011 around 19:27 |
| # ? Jun 23, 2011 17:27 |
|
|
Skratte posted:I'm reading the world balloons completely out of order. Yeah. I think in general, panel border breaking speech balloons need to be used with extreme caution. They need to be used for special effects, (e.g. if a character is shouting in a way that interferes with what ever is happening in a scene, if a character is overhearing something happening elsewhere, etc) and never as a backup option if you can't make the dialogue fit in the panel, which is what seems to be going on here.
|
| # ? Jun 23, 2011 17:48 |
|
|
Dabbo posted:Kyo doesn't actually start out in feudal Japan but "The Realm of Elemental Chaos" which is based on ancient China if there was floating crystals everywhere and the sky was purple and its a city hanging off the side of a cliff and everything is made of machinery. The twist is going to be that somehow your friend turns out to be the best writer in the world and makes all this stuff work despite how it sounds.
|
| # ? Jun 23, 2011 19:24 |
|
|
Fortis posted:Blasphemous Saga Fantasy I know it's a lot of extra work, but I would love to see this comic in color, especially after seeing You Encounter A Monster (which is awesome as an Earthbound fan).
|
| # ? Jun 24, 2011 06:37 |
|
|
oldyogurt posted:I know it's a lot of extra work, but I would love to see this comic in color, especially after seeing You Encounter A Monster (which is awesome as an Earthbound fan). I've considered it a couple times, and I might transition into it as the story gains momentum. Color is one of my strengths I'm not playing to at all with BSF, which seems kind of silly when I think about it. And thank you! I was actually inspired to start YEAM because of Mother 3. 
|
| # ? Jun 24, 2011 15:40 |
|
|
Hey Scurvard did you still want to help out, I got three characters I have to design but I refuse to have anything to do with their creation.
|
| # ? Jun 24, 2011 16:27 |
|
|
Dabbo posted:Hey Scurvard did you still want to help out, I got three characters I have to design but I refuse to have anything to do with their creation. If not, I'd also help out, as long as they're not sexual. D: That's why you're refusing, though, isn't it?
|
| # ? Jun 24, 2011 18:54 |
|
|
Fortis posted:Just wanted to say that is a really nice transition in those last 3 panels. The shadows across the faces in panel 2 are noticeable enough that you don't have to look back for them, but they also don't scream super-obviously at the reader. It's hard to pull off something that balanced in so few panels.
|
| # ? Jun 24, 2011 18:55 |
|
|
Ooh, ooh, Dabbo! You can post the descriptions and let the thread try throwing designs at it.Fortis posted:I've considered it a couple times, and I might transition into it as the story gains momentum. Color is one of my strengths I'm not playing to at all with BSF, which seems kind of silly when I think about it.
|
| # ? Jun 24, 2011 18:56 |
|
|
Fortis posted:edit: Here's Monday's page wherein I really tried to pay attention to perspective and actually shading characters so they look like they exist in 3D space (one of the biggest concerns raised last time): Echoing that the color here is really nice. The perspective's kind of off, though, but I don't think anyone would notice unless they were looking, which is totally good enough. Your character design is still adorable, since they were so flat I wasn't sure if it would work but it doesn't look like they're fighting the 3-d space. And do color, if you can that's awesome!
|
| # ? Jun 24, 2011 19:00 |
|
|
They're not sexual, just terrible. Basically three bullies that give Kyo a lot of poo poo for being rich and sucking at fighting and having a dead Mom. Their names are something like Jimmy and Billy and adjfalksdjfafuck Ones a puma with short brown hair, he's the leader. The second is a raven, shes the girl. And there's a fat bear kid because "you gotta have the fat one". Their uniforms look like this but rattier and they don't have white belts. That's all the information he's given me. Have fun~~~~
|
| # ? Jun 24, 2011 19:21 |
|
|
bigbigtruck posted:Just wanted to say that is a really nice transition in those last 3 panels. The shadows across the faces in panel 2 are noticeable enough that you don't have to look back for them, but they also don't scream super-obviously at the reader. It's hard to pull off something that balanced in so few panels. Thanks! I'm glad it comes across well. One thing I'm definitely trying to do is be a bit more succinct so I don't have to essentially waste multiple pages showing something happening (unless it's something I want to stretch out), so that's good to hear. Crisco Kid posted:For what it's worth, I think your efforts to improve atmosphere and setting are paying off, but if color is one of your strengths, you're a lucky minority and should definitely play to it when you get the chance. Bright colors would complement both your chunky, cartoony art and the story tone. Thank you, and yeah I think I agree. The more I think about this the more appropriate color seems over what I'm doing now. I guess I was thinking about print when I decided to do monochrome but the more I think about it I'd rather be doing every service to the art that I can while its in its current form. The Worst Unicorn posted:Echoing that the color here is really nice. The perspective's kind of off, though, but I don't think anyone would notice unless they were looking, which is totally good enough. Your character design is still adorable, since they were so flat I wasn't sure if it would work but it doesn't look like they're fighting the 3-d space. Thanks! I'm glad that the characters fit in with the space, that was one of my bigger concerns. Can you elaborate more on what's off with the perspective? As I look at it now I think The Slime King might be too low, and thus looks like he is kind of embedded in the ground, but I wanna know what you're seeing specifically in case there's something else I can work on.
|
| # ? Jun 24, 2011 19:51 |
|
|
Fortis posted:Thanks! I'm glad that the characters fit in with the space, that was one of my bigger concerns. Can you elaborate more on what's off with the perspective? As I look at it now I think The Slime King might be too low, and thus looks like he is kind of embedded in the ground, but I wanna know what you're seeing specifically in case there's something else I can work on. I'd be glad to. :3 I think you are plotting the floors of your scene as if they are gently rising, instead of laying flat. If I assume the horizon line's about where the top of the stairs are, Seb would be as tall as that little red thing with eyes I drew in the background.  Then again, maybe that's not oversight and the whole building in the background is very big?
|
| # ? Jun 24, 2011 20:46 |
|
|
Dabbo posted:They're not sexual, just terrible. Basically three bullies that give Kyo a lot of poo poo for being rich and sucking at fighting and having a dead Mom. Their names are something like Jimmy and Billy and adjfalksdjfafuck 
|
| # ? Jun 24, 2011 20:55 |
|
|
I'd say lose the patch. Patches are endearing - they say I've had a tough life but am trying to make it. Are these major characters or just single panel mooks?
|
| # ? Jun 24, 2011 21:06 |
|
|
Agreed on dropping the patch - instead make her hems frayed or ragged.
|
| # ? Jun 24, 2011 21:07 |
|
|
Oh it's a kung-fu bird off now. Hide your shiny things.
|
| # ? Jun 24, 2011 21:09 |
|
|
Brannock posted:Agreed on dropping the patch - instead make her hems frayed or ragged. I like the patch. Why can't a bully have an endearing character design but a malicious personality?
|
| # ? Jun 24, 2011 21:10 |
|
|
^^^Too poor to even get a matching blue patch! She has to hide her insecurities by abusing other students, all unveiling psychological depth n' poo poo. I like how the pseudo-Chinese raven bully girl was the most irresistible character. WE ALL KNEW IT. Crisco Kid fucked around with this message at Jun 24, 2011 around 21:14 |
| # ? Jun 24, 2011 21:11 |
|
|
I like her inexplicable pigtails.
|
| # ? Jun 24, 2011 21:12 |
|
|
fat kid fat kid 
Grantaire fucked around with this message at Jun 24, 2011 around 21:46 |
| # ? Jun 24, 2011 21:35 |
|
|
  It's fun to draw animal characters, but it sorta feels like stealing cookies or something. 
|
| # ? Jun 24, 2011 21:51 |
|
|
Grantaire posted:fat kid fat kid I expect him to break out into the truffle shuffle. Also, I just realized, these are technically fan art. The comic isn't even out yet and it has fan art.
|
| # ? Jun 24, 2011 21:59 |
|
|
It even has people waiting for updates, the comic's a guaranteed success!
|
| # ? Jun 24, 2011 22:01 |
|
|
I'm looking forward to Alternate Universe spinoff fanart.
|
| # ? Jun 24, 2011 22:12 |
|
|
Is the fat kid named William Van Landingham?
|
| # ? Jun 24, 2011 22:54 |
|
|
Magnus Condomus posted:I like the patch. Why can't a bully have an endearing character design but a malicious personality? Because that suggests depth that you need to match with your writing. If you aren't going to spend substantial effort fleshing out and explaining stuff, then that's just going to confuse and disappoint the reader. I mean character design is all about communicating how the character considers himself, and how the reader should consider the character. In this case, it's probably best to smoothly convey that these guys are arseholes. IMHO.
|
| # ? Jun 24, 2011 23:54 |
|
|
|
| # ? May 25, 2013 11:58 |
|
|
Lemme in on this unironic furry drawin' action Sorry for the sloppy colouring, working with a 1.5"x3" touchpad.
|
| # ? Jun 25, 2011 00:45 |
|
