Please criticize my online comic!

[Jürgen Hubert]

I've recently started an online comic, which you can find here. I'm still fairly new at this (drawing in general and computer graphics in particular), so I'd like to hear your professional opinion on my first five strips.

The last one was done in a different style than the first four. I have recently worked out how to use layers and have been experimenting with them, but using them is much more time-consuming than what I used in the first four strips, and I don't know if I will be able to maintain it...

 

[Storn]

There is a charm about your work that is quite nice.

But if you want to invoke another world, you got to nail some of the basics down. Here are the 4 things I want you to work on and think about:

Anatomy

Cloth and drapery on Anatomy

Perspective

Lighting.

That's all... grin.

Okay, on the first 3, there are some decent books. Dynamic Anatomy by Burne Hogarth and Dynamic Folds by the same guy are both dated, 40s, but teach great foundation stuff for comics.

Perspective, there are tons of books on perspective. Perspective is very easy to learn... it is just time consuming to implement. But it really "grounds" the work. Without it, you will always have an amateurish, flat look to your panels.

Light is everything to art. Light bounces off objects and then hits our eyes and then gets transmitted to our brains. Because different objects reflect differnt wavelengths, our receptors (rods and cones) see different colors, value etc. But you are doing black and white comics! Why does this apply? Because light is even more fraught with carrying the mood and defining the structure of the objects within the panel.

Start freeze framing some Noir or old B&W films. Look to see how they use shadow to define spaces.

lastly, Understanding Comics by Scott McCloud will help you figure out how to do transitions between panels, what is needed in your panels etc. I think you have a decent handle there. But I would still like to see some more design thought to the idea of pushing the eye to the next panel.

Good luck.

 

[Ilium]

I won't presume to add to Storn's art advice (if you haven't seen his work, it's amazing). But I want to comment on the basic idea here: Brilliant! The links to all the background material for the strip will get people reading about Urbis, which I assume is an important goal (in addition to your stated ones).

Not enough there yet for me to have a story opinion, but when I do you'll hear it.

You might want to check out another online comic by a guy that gives lots of detail on the techniques he uses:

http://dungeondamage.keenspace.com

It's also a fun read.

 

[XCorvis]

It's less like a comic and more like a heavily illustrated story or children's storybook. Perhaps you should change the focus a bit? Concentrate on the story, and illustrate only key moments.

 

[Jürgen Hubert]

It's less like a comic and more like a heavily illustrated story or children's storybook. Perhaps you should change the focus a bit? Concentrate on the story, and illustrate only key moments.

The "terms of use" of ComicGenesis explicitly prohibit that. The kind of text-to-art ratio I have is probably okay, but altering that would be pushing it.

Thanks for the advice! I am certainly going for a "noir" feel here, and I will try to follow your suggestions.

And as for the McCloud books, I actually have them - but they are in my parents' house, and in the four weeks in which I have been drawing I haven't had the opportunity to get back and fetch them...

 

[Tuzon Thume]

It's a great start to what could be an awesome story

But dude, It is more akin to storyboards than comics.

Don't stop. I bookmarked it with the other web comics I follow reguarly

 

[Tuzon Thume]

It's a great start to what could be an awesome story

But dude, It is more akin to storyboards than comics.

Don't stop. I bookmarked it with the other web comics I follow reguarly