Comic Fury Webcomic Hosting - I Will Critique Everything - Art AND Writing!

If there's one thing that I enjoy doing, it's helping fellow artists and writers out. Therefore, I really enjoy writing critiques and giving suggestions on how to improve problematic areas. I don't claim to be a great artist or writer, but I'll give what tips I can.

As far as art goes, I come from a traditional character animator's perspective, so naturally I'll be making more comments on staging clarity, strength of poses, expressions, background layout, perspective, and character design. For writing, I'm trained to think like a film screenwriter, so I tend to emphasize on dialogue, visual storytelling, and story structure. And naturally, as a comic artist, I think I have a thing or two to say about panel layout and comic/website presentation, combined with all the above mentioned.

I'm willing to take on 5 webcomics for critique at the moment. SLOTS ARE FULL! My own comic, Cans of Beans, takes priority over everything, so it might take me a while before I get to writing up your critique. If you want me to critique your work, please fill out the following:

Name of Comic:
Genre:
Intended Audience:
Tagline (1-3 sentence description that will hook your readers in):
Comic URL: 

List O' People & Comics Waiting to be Critiqued
1. Sivrus - House Escape
2. CrackaWindow - Augustos
3. MaNo - Nanny Coozy
4. Guybrush20X6 - Level 30 Psychiatry
5. kyupol - MAG-ISA

EDIT 5/23/12: Wow. I wrote a lot. I'm gonna have to take a break from this thread. If you guys have any questions regarding the critique I've given you or you'd like me to elaborate on certain subjects more, I'll gladly do so. But I don't think I'll be opening slots up again for a while, at least until I get my buffer worked out. Until then, I really hope you guys liked the critique and learned something. Keep on drawing, and keep on writing!

Disclaimer: Just like how my mentor works with me, I tend to mix metaphors in my critique. If you're easily confused by metaphors or find them baffling or cryptic, you might not want a critique from me. I rarely sandwich my critique with praises or kind remarks; I will say I like something if I really mean it. EDIT: Also, due to my background as a writer/artist, I prefer working with long-form comics with a story as opposed to gag-a-day, stick figure/sprite comics and general "funnies." It's not that I dislike these types of comics, but I feel like I'll have less to say about them.

Name of Comic: House Escape
Genre: CYOA/Interactive
Intended Audience: Gamers, CYOA fans, many others
Tagline (1-3 sentence description that will hook your readers in): House Escape is a CYOA/Interactive comic where readers can comment to change the course of the story. It does have a specified direction, but it's very general due to being CYOA.
Comic URL: http://houseescape.thecomicseries.com

NOTE: For the most part, it is sort of a sprite comic. I make all the sprites myself, and they're much bigger than a videogame sprite. But there's plenty of panels I draw with no sprites, and there's Flash Animation panels too. I know it has a slow start, but please give it a chance.

Me, please!

Name of Comic: Augustos
Genre: Action/Adventure
Intended Audience: Young Teen - Mid teens
Tagline: At a time when people are oppressed, it's up to three miscreants to fight and stand up for themselves and for others.
Comic URL: http://Augustos.thecomicseries.com

Name of Comic: Nanny Coozy
Genre: Comedy/Gag a Day
Intended Audience: Mid Teens/Adults
Tagline (1-3 sentence description that will hook your readers in): Nanny Coozy is the meanest Nanny in town, and when she enters your life a lot of weird could happen!
Comic URL: nannycoozy.thecomicseries.com/

Note: I have to admit some pages are bad :/

Name of Comic: Level 30 Psychiatry
Genre: Video Game Comedy. Gag a week with some build up to story.
Intended Audience: Gamers
Tagline (1-3 sentence description that will hook your readers in): Because not all problems can be solved by sleeping at an inn. Updates Saturdays.
Comic URL: http://lvl30psy.thecomicseries.com/

The Writing is done by me, the line art is done by GigaNerd17 and the Coloring by TheMightyBox. The first 4 or 5 comics we were still finding our feet so maybe critique the more recent ones. It's 12/13 comics long so it shouldn't be long.

House Escape

(Writing this as I click through the story) I was a bit skeptical at first, also considering I don't do too well with stick-figure/sprite comics, but I'm slowly warming up to it, especially to the dialogue. I find it really charming and at times, flat-out hilarious.

I'm aware that the art in here isn't supposed to be amazing, but there are areas where I think you could work on, which would ultimately make the comic stronger and more appealing. Perspective is the biggest issue here. It's not that you have severe perspective problems, you get vanishing points and how they work, but there's a huge issue with distortion because there are some areas that are really out of the field of vision.

I pulled this out and drew over it really quickly to establish the eye-line/horizon line with the background in mind.


What I found was that a LOT of your room elements are really close to the main vanishing point, right at the door, which causes this distortion. Generally, the closer your objects are to the vanishing point, the more distortion it causes. The room is also unnaturally deep and not very wide, which also makes your flat character look really, really out of place. I whipped out this quick drawing.



Some things I did: I made the horizon line a bit lower, I made the room less deep by widening the angle of the room, and I put a very basic amount of perspective on the character himself. What this does is that it makes him seem a LOT bigger than the room (since he is in an itty bitty room), and because the room is slightly wider, the stuff in the room looks less distorted.

Also be really aware of your panels' composition.

This one made the non-existent graphic designer in my cringe. Consider tangents your worst enemy at the moment. Tangents are what happen when two objects/shapes are brushing up against each other but without any visual cues if they're the same shape, different shapes, or in front or behind from one another. They cause unnecessary tension to the eyes and they just don't look very good. This applies to edges of the page too. The best way to iron out tangents is to either space your objects out from other objects or make sure that they overlap in some way.

Here's a really quick fix on that to elaborate.

I shrunk him down so that he isn't dangerously close to the edge of the panel and I spaced the words so that it's neatly in between the door and the edge. There's obviously better ways to present this, but consider that a quick fix.

I can't really comment much on the story since I'm largely ignorant of this style of storytelling. I think it's a really interesting concept, but I'm not sure how it'll play on the large scheme of things. So far, I feel like this comic drifts a bit, going from one random scenario to another. If that's your intended purpose, then cool, you do have something that does appeal to video game fans. But because of the pacing and extreme meta-ness of it, it's hard for me to be totally drawn in, which is why I'm stopping at comic number 66. Still, kudos to you for trying out this largely-unexplored area of comic genre.

=====

Phew I think that'll be all for the day. Will critique Crackawindow tomorrow!

Thanks, and yeah, with that tangent thing, I hated it too... But I was too lazy to fix it because that panel was made in Paint and Paint can be annoying. I didn't put all that much work into it until more time went by, and I haven't been using perspective points; not the best decision on my part. I am disappointed you didn't like it too much, but everyone has their own thing, so I understand.

May I suggest getting freeware image manipulators like Gimp or Paint.net? Just anything with layers. Paint was never really meant for doing actual artwork/comic work. Heck, even the creator of MSPaint Adventures doesn't actually use MSPaint. Make things easier on yourself! Remember: pain is temporary, film comics are forever.

Don't take it too harshly, I'm an incredibly picky person and, as you said, everyone has their own thing. For example, everyone on the internet likes Homestuck, but I can't really get into it. I think for what it is, House Escape works for its intended audience. I'm just not in that intended audience.

Name of Comic: MAG-ISA

Genre: Science Fiction / Spiritual

Intended Audience: Didnt really have an audience in mind. But based on experience, this comic seems to attract "seeker" types (aka "indigo children", "old souls" or whatever you wanna call em) and people who seem to have IQ over 120. I've got readers who have contacted me who are as young as 15... all the way to late 40s to early 50s.

Tagline (1-3 sentence description that will hook your readers in): A comic about a loner, an angel, and a psycho cult with a sinister agenda

Comic URL: http://mag-isa.thecomicseries.com/

Oh, I normally do use Paint.NET, it's just that it isn't always available...

Augustos

My first impression was that it reminded me of One Piece with a bit more cartoony influence, but still retained some anime-like qualities, especially in the story/baddies/situation. I can definitely see this as a comic meant for teens, so this works for its demographic very well. The characters are pretty likable and their designs are appealing. The dialogue is pretty fun and campy, much like One Piece or any other shonen manga.

My largest concern was perspective. The backgrounds rarely match up with the characters, props, or background details; it's either slanted the wrong way or just plain distorted. There are times where it would be impossible for a character to stand like that, unless there's a perpetual out-of-view hole or platform. Here I've pulled a random panel from a newer page, since your work has improved since then, but there are some mistakes that keep showing up.



You have to keep in mind that when you're drawing anything, you're drawing a 3-dimensional form on a 2-dimensional surface. In this case, a bulldog warrior in front of a building, on a computer screen. Everything has depth, nothing is flat, not even paper. As an artist, it's your duty to give this illusion, that your reader is peering into a world where cowboy androids and anthropomorphic creatures are believable. You don't have to shade/render or color to give this illusion, you just need to stick to certain rules and abide by them. In this case, these rules are classic draftsmanship and perspective.

Here are some simple rules about perspective:
1. In 1-point perspective, the height and width are vertical and horizontal, respectively, and completely straight. Only the depth runs to a vanishing point.
2. In 2-point perspective, the height stays straight, while the width and depth[/b] are now running to vanishing points.
3. In 3-point perspective, all three dimensions are running to vanishing points.

So what does this mean, in layman terms? If you want to make things simpler for yourself, just make all your buildings stand straight, unless you're giving yourself a sweeping 3-point perspective view. Avoid 3-point perspective shots unless they're absolutely necessary, and don't complicate things by slanting the room, building, or environment a certain way. I think this will make things easier on you.

I understand that perspective is one of the most difficult things to grasp for an artist, but I highly recommend you read up some perspective theory and apply it outside your comic first, as a drawing exercise or otherwise. I recommend watching this excellent tutorial on basic perspective to get an idea of what you should be shooting for (trust me, it's not that scary!). Another suggestion is to get a copy of Perspective! for Comic Book Artists as additional reading. Perspective can be a chore, but just like practicing your scales over and over on the piano, you'll eventually incorporate that into your mind, and it'll make piano playing, or drawing, that much easier.

Anatomy is a concern, but I think what you should focus on more is classic draftsmanship, which goes hand-in-hand with anatomy and perspective. When you're working in a simplified style, such as in Augustos, you're probably not too concerned with every little muscle and bone in the human body, which is fair enough; I'm no anatomy master either. What you should know is how to work simple forms (not shapes. Shapes are boring 2-D idiots). I'm sure you've seen how-to-draw books where they tell you to draw a circle and then put on some cross hairs and then make the body into a cube and so on. They're actually right, sort of.



Sleeves, clothes, hats, hairs, stripes, etc. can all tell the body's form. You don't necessarily have to know anatomy, but you need to know this simple principle: ll things can be simplified into simple constructive forms, and if you learn these forms, you can work out the kinks of your drawing. This video and its continuation can show you how this all breaks down. I highly recommend you get yourself a 3D model or a photo, just like how this artist is doing, and break it down into simple forms. And then apply this knowledge to your comic and characters.

When you get to a certain point of understanding classic form draftsmanship, you, as an artist, will probably get a strange craving to learn anatomy. I can gladly point you in the right direction when you get this appetite. :)

Now onto the more minor problems. Expressions work pretty well in this comic (once again, it harkens feelings of One Piece), but there are times where I feel they're too much. They work for comedic and actiony sequences, but when you're going for a more dramatic tone, stuff like crying feels melodramatic. Push yourself to learn more subtle expressions, and I think you'll be golden. Be also very aware of facial anatomy when you're doing subtle expressions. When you're doing zany expressions like jaw drops or eyes popping, you don't need to know anatomy that well, but when you're doing something like a woman trying to keep herself from falling apart, you'll need to know how the face muscles work in relation to each other. It's a simple as looking at yourself in the mirror!

Word balloons and the text that goes with it is a consistent problem. It doesn't quite deter me from the reading experience, but there are times where I feel like the text could be better centered or just looks odd. The best way I know of is to do the text first, and then make the word balloon in regards to the text. If you choose to hand-letter, you need to invest in something like an Ames Guide and read up on classic typography. Otherwise, a quick solution is to just print out the text, cut it, and tape it on your paper, and then make the word balloon from there. That way when you scan it in, you know exactly how the text will fit.

I'm afraid to say that I'm not too fond of the coloring in the newer pages. But that should not keep you from continuing to color your pages. It has mostly to do with color theory and how it melds together. For example, on the newest page, the scene should be at night, but the ground is still very red and the characters look like they were lit by stage light. When you color, figure out the dominating background color, such as the night sky, and lay it down, and then choose your palette based on that. I guarantee you'll get stronger color choices that way.

I'm sorry that this is a mouthful of critique, but I sincerely hope it helps you. You have a pretty interesting comic in your hands, and I just hope that your abilities as an artist will improve tenfold so that your story can really shine.

Extremely well done critiques!

Thank you! Although, personally, if I was given critique like that, I'd be kinda intimidated. XP

No way, you're very diplomatic and non-aggressive in your approach, and it actually really excites me to know these things that I can work and be given resources that are particular to my weak points. I'm actually someone that gets really defensive and insecure about my work and if there's even the slightest hint of a personal touch in a critique, I get hurt. I often have to talk myself down from making excuses about my artwork or writing or whatever.

Thank you so much. The whole reason I started a comic was to give myself an obligation to draw every day and improve, because I was stagnating, and I knew a comic would force me to draw things and situations that I wasn't use to drawing or didn't want to draw (ie perspective). So yes, I greatly appreciate it! And I know, my color theory knowledge is very weak, I knew that my night time scene was very off because, like you said, all the characters look like they have a spotlight shining on them, or like they're glowing. I'm just a guy who likes to have things look good in a thumbnail and am afraid to darken too much. But I will definitely work on that, as well as everything else! Thank you!

Also, what do you mean when you say "lay it down", when referring to a dominate background color? Just set it as my starting point?

I'm really glad you found my crit useful! I try to be accommodating with my critique. I'm all-too-aware that, as an artist, I'd be given critique and told something about my work is wrong, but then I'd be given no suggestions on how to work on the problems. It's frustrating as heck, and I don't want other artists to feel the same way.

As for the thumbnail concerns and laying down the colors, I did a really quick paint down on my own comic to demonstrate.

When I do the thumbs, I already start off thinking about shadow composition and how the elements will be placed. So I do a slight amount of shading when I do my thumbs, just to get a general idea of mood. That way, I have a general direction of where every panel is starting from.

1. After doing a full sketch I do something called a lighting plan which is a slightly more specific way of figuring out where the light and shadows hit. It's technically an animation-related term, but I don't see why comics can't use it too.

2. This is the "color laydown" I was talking about. Basically, just fill the whole panel with the most important color that you'll be relating everything else with. In this case, it's the night sky, which I chose to be a dark blue.

3. Using that color, I start pulling out colors based on the blue, and I found a gray-green color scheme to work quite nicely with the concrete. I have a color model sheet for Carl, but his colors are really saturated and would look ridiculously out of place, so I used the color model sheet as a basis, and then manipulated it so it's desaturated and slightly more appropriate for the dark blue color scheme.

And now you know my secrets. D:

Ah, okay, I see, I see! That's a great technique. I can see what you mean, my colors are just too saturated in general.

Awesome! Thank you so much.

when you get a chance, critique Erzsebet please, these crits you give are real helpful!


Name of Comic: Erzsebet
Genre:Dark Fairytale
Intended Audience:People who like the sandman, fantasy and disney movies
Tagline (1-3 sentence description that will hook your readers in):Two demon chicks try to summon the Beast of Apocalypse, get the spell badly wrong and accidentally summon in the Beast of Utopia and World Peace, and are forced to become his regents.
Comic URL: http://erzsebet.thecomicseries.com/comics/12/

Sorry man! Right now I gotta get through these first, and I don't do waiting lists. Just keep an eye out if I open slots again. :)

Nanny Coozy

I'm sorry to say, but opening the website for the first time was kind of like a punch to the eyes. Not because of the art or the comic, but because the website design makes it really, really hard to even look at the comic and concentrate on what's going on. It's so distinctively fuschia and a mixture of other ridiculously saturated and bright colors that it fights for your attention with the comic.



Amongst other things, the background design is way too detailed, causing a conflict between your navigation bar and the text itself. And your link colors blend in with the bottom part of your background design. The first time I opened this site, I had no idea there was even a first/previous/next/latest link on the bottom.



Graphic design is not one of my strong points; in fact, I know next to nothing about website design, and my own webcomic certainly isn't a shining example of goodness. However, what I do know is how other webcomic work with their own webcomic sites, and they all have some shared or similar traits. A good webcomic design is supposed to enhance the comic-reading experience, not deter from it, therefore they tend to side with simplicity rather than complex designs. Their background colors tend to be more desaturated and somewhat more predictable. After all, your comic should be the most complex looking graphic in the entire website, aside from maybe the title/logo. If you keep the elements simple, your readers' attention will automatically be directed toward your comic. I'll link to you a few webcomic sites that I think do a great job demonstrating this.

The Abominable Charles Christopher chooses a desaturated brown background color with a simple graphic on top, highlighting the title graphic. This makes the white links and white blogging area stand out. The comic itself chooses a blue color scheme for its shading, making it really stand out compared to the rest of the site.

Cucumber Quest has a tiled design for its background, similar to Nanny Coozy's, but the design is very graphic and pastel-on-pastel; it's barely a whisper on the page and otherwise very gentle, kind of like a nursery/baby room's wallpaper. Banner (at the moment) is a light orange-yellow, which makes it stand out from the background, and the comic itself chooses a yellow-blue color scheme which complements the website design.

Gunshow probably has the simplest design compared to the others, but it's pretty versatile. It's just a black background with a white graphic highlighting where the comic is, and a banner on top. That's it, but that might be all you need for yours.

For the sake of general color theory, saturated colors should be only used sparingly, and this goes for pretty much anything with colors. Saturated colors is much like someone shouting for attention; they grab your attention because they are screaming at you. If everyone is shouting, then shouts lose their meaning and power. Shouting only means something when everyone else is talking at a normal level, and shouts are definitely even stronger when everyone else is just whispering.

If you want to go with pink, I suggest going for a cherry pink or something much lighter. Just make sure that the prev/next links stand out and that the navigation bar and your title is readable against the background.

Another (minor) website problem was just how absurdly large the pages are. I have a very large monitor, and I still had to scroll left-to-right. In the grand scheme of website designs, it's okay to make the page stretch forever top-to-bottom, but the moment you make someone scroll left-to-right, you're automatically doing a disservice to anyone coming to your page. Making your pages smaller (but still readable) will be to your advantage.

Speaking of which, readability in the comic itself is also a bit of a problem. Generally speaking, you don't want to switch between too many fonts in one page, it makes the page look confusing and there's a certain lack of cohesion. I highly recommend avoiding the main font, the one that's white on the inside with a black border; it's too detailed/complex looking, and it distracts from the art itself. Get yourself a proper comic font, such as the ones from Blambot. Many of them are free!

The expressions are kind of flat and lifeless. In this page, a woman is just about to be grabbed by a giant claw, and her face looks no different than her smug-dissatisfied look in the previous panel. If she's supposed to be surprised and screaming, there's a million ways to portray that. And don't forget body language, the face only tells half the story, but how the body is reacting can really sell what's going on. Here's a great tutorial on facial expressions and here's a very in-depth tutorial on how to choose expressions that work by one of the storyboard artists behind Tangled.

As this is a gag-a-day, I can't really comment on the story, but I'm not really drawn to the characters at all. The brown-haired girl, Lila, seems like she'd be the voice of reason based on the later pages, but the first comic she stars in starts her off in chains and talking about how she's high (and I have to say, that's a really, really strange situation to start your comic with). Granted, you only have a few pages worth of comic, but I'm not sure how to feel about these characters. It seems almost contradictory. Even after going through all the pages, I'm still not 100% sure who or what exactly is Nanny Coozy, or who the rest of the characters are in the starting page.

One of the reasons why I can't tell what's going on is because the dialogue from each character sounds so similar to each other. If someone read out loud the script to me, without telling me who's reading what, I might actually think that it's all the same character. When you're working with distinct characters, it's very important to make sure that every character has their own unique voice. Learning to write great dialogue is a matter of trial-and-error, and a lot of practice. However, what I can suggest is getting the script of your favorite film (or a film regarded as great) and just reading through it. Read it out loud. Notice how each character has their own way or talking, or the way they talk is based on their motive.

Put it this way, I, as your reader, have no idea who your characters are and what your comic's about. It's your job, as the storyteller, to show me the characters and general scheme of how the jokes play out so that I can get your comic. You might show me a title card with all the characters on it, but I still don't know who they are until they're introduced in the comic. And when you introduce them in the comic, you have to give me a reason, through your writing and jokes, why I should care about these characters. And unfortunately, I'm finding it really hard to care what happens to them.

Gag-a-Day is a difficult type of comedy, mainly because you only get one page or strip to make your audience laugh or like it. Your set-ups and punchlines have to be within that one page, or else the joke falls flat. And honestly, I haven't laughed at a single one of these pages, because of a combination of the above. The characters are not particularly interesting, the dialogue mushes together, the situations jump all over the place, I have no idea what the "normal" setting is, and it's just really, really hard to read.

I really tried to read this comic as objectively as possible, but there were too many elements that distracted me from reading your comic, which is why I spent such a long time critiqueing the website design itself. Underneath that, your comic is salvageable but it will take a lot of hauling to get it to work well. I suggest to get yourself a group of artist-and-writer buddies, not just your friends or family members, to look over your strips and scripts as you work on it or before you publish it. You need someone with a critical eye to bounce your ideas off of. I personally could have never made Cans of Beans possible if it weren't for a ton of criticism from my I-will-tear-you-apart peers.

If this is the first time you got such intense critique, I apologize for the sheer length of it. I sincerely want you to become a better comic artist and writer, and I know that a critique like this can really sting. Just keep comicking but keep the advice in mind. But first, fix the website now. You'll get a lot more readers when you make it easier to read, I promise.

I see what you mean by everything. I really do need to change the whole of the website, and with the facial expressions, dialogue, color, and such I need to practice a lot more on all of these. But I also need to find a more decent program to color with than gimp but really I can' afford any good programs for now. But anyways thank you for an honest critique!