I noticed @DualDragons giving out art critiques and I wanted to add some of my own as well, if there are people willing.

Mine will be a little different:
1. I'll do them first come first serve
2. I will accept links to comics, but only to a singular episode. If you just post the link to your full comic, sorry fam, I ain't looking at it.
3. For comic pages, I will also discuss readability, speech bubble placement, and the overall structure of the page along with the quality of the art.
4. Do expect draw overs, if need be, and semi-detailed discussion on what can be improved.
5. I won't hold my punches (unless specifically asked to) so don't expect a compliment sandwich as you might not get one. I don't say this to be cruel, I just tend to get overly focused on what may need fixing rather than what's already working.
6. If you have something specific you want me to look at, please make a note of it.
7. I'll try and do as many as I can. I know these threads tend to get overrun with a lot of links and images. It may not be the case this time but as a precaution, I might not get to your work if it's a later post.

Post away, if you like. I'll keep an eye on this thread but I won't be able to reply until tonight. I have this "full time job" that requires me to be "present and accounted for." Whatever that means.

@NekoSensei So I'm tagging you since I don't replies notify people. I'll do a detailed discussion, then do overall closing thoughts.

Overall, I would rate it as generally good art.

This is a harder question to answer or position to take for a few reasons, but mainly because you're a one person team and I don't know what your educational background is when it comes to art. I would say it has a modern webtoon aesthetic, but lacks well rounded foundation of art fundamentals to be believably professional.

Panel By Panel Breakdown.

When I saw this first panel, I liked it. But it isn't drawn by you, which isn't bad or a problem. This panel sticks out to me since it doesn't blend well, for me, with the character art. And another thing about this panel is that the perspective and the level of detail doesn't match the backgrounds of other panels.

I think the bottom panel should have come after the top panel so to make the reveal more dramatic.

I do like this panel as a reveal, but it's not very dramatic. Honestly, the first time I looked at it I didn't register that she had horns and a tattoo on her chest.

This panel is fine and so are the two following panels. I'll do a draw over later. I really like the colors here.

This is where I'm going to bring up the backgrounds again and say that they lack detail. I'm not saying fill these brief panels with a lot of detail. Rather, I'm saying just add a bit more to make things look grounded. It's this really difficult balancing act, because this next panel has more detail but the characters still look out of place.

There are few things with this panel (that will be detailed later) from the shading, to the perspective, to the speech bubble and font choices that are off to me. Though, that may come down to compression due to uploading.

I'm going to talk bout this panel as well. I skipped a couple but what I want to call out here is the hand/arm of the guy, and the main female lead's eyes. Eyes are a big part of my critique. The eyes are pretty, but pretty eyes will only take you so far. So I'm going to skip this next panel and focus on the next panel.

We're going to talk about this panel.

Draw-Overs

Sorry about the quality, I had to screenshot these.

Proportionally, she's very inconsistent. He head size is fine, but her arms are too short and her legs are extremely long and one of them is wider than the other. The are arms are also two different lengths, and it's not obvious that the one planted on the wall is supposed in perspective:
1. Her entire arm is completely stretched out.
2. She is standing so close to the wall that, if her arm was straightened out, it would be in front of her and therefore closer to the viewer and the hand would appear bigger.
Though I didn't go that route with this draw over

So here, I have her arm up, because the closer you get close to a wall, to compensate for the loss of breathing room, your arm would need to shift up or down. The arm is also slightly foreshortened because it's in perspective. I also made her legs significantly shorter to better match the proportions of the rest of her body.

I think the word of the day for you today is: perspective. Characters have a hard time believably existing in the places you create because the perspective is off enough to be distracting, at least to me. And perspective begets proportions. How the perspective works for a panel will inform how your characters' form and proportions are going to be interpreted. And the perspective and proportions do not make sense in many of these panels.

It's hard to tell the angle at which we're supposed to be viewing this scene because the perspective is flat, based on the lack of foreshortening. It would be far more dramatic and interesting, compositionally, if this panel was from an ant's eye view, i.e. a bottom up perspective, like from the scared guy's perspective in the scene. Or if she was bent over, which would be more intimidating.

I think this redraw here is more dramatic and intimidating, and puts more focus on her horns and the tattoo, which really don't stand out in the original panel. And you can add more detail like making the flames more prominent

Another thing I personally find amiss with this panel is the lighting. Supposedly it's night time (and raining but no one looks wet) and the two characters are in a back alley. But rather than a dim light coming from the moon or a street lamp that's around a corner and half a block away, these two characters are so brightly lit, it's like she's attacking him in front of a storefront. And not just any storefront, the storefront of a lamp shop, it's so bright. Instead of looking at her horns, I'm looking at her right thigh because it's the most brightly lit thing in the whole panel. So turn down the lights, bathe the scene in dark blues and purples. Looking into lighting references, you can go on pinterest, especially if this comic is going to mostly take place during nighttime.

With this character, there are just things that, again, don't work proportionally.
1. Like I indicated, the knee and the foot of right leg are pointing different directions (look, I don't mind some broken anatomy, but it's harder to get away with it if your characters are more realistically proportioned)
2. The torso is at an awkward length, being a bit too short and the pelvis isn't really accounted for here.

Also, I noticed his left arm is placed very strangely. Okay, peep this. This character is supposed to be leaned back, right? So, how is his left arm are casting a shadow on his leg? The leg that's out in front of him. if he's using his arms to support his weight, and he's leaned back, they would be behind him and therefore, wouldn't cast a shadow on his legs or torso. For his arm to cast a shadow on his leg, he would have to be leaned forward. And who would be leaned forward if you're scared? Anyway, here's the draw over.

I closed off the posture more, because I assume this character is afraid, and also because I'm going to assume most people are not flexible enough to lean back, with their legs wide open and their arm stretched out in front of them. I like the chair at my desk too, but sometime you need to get up and try out a pose to make sure it makes sense.

I will say, in the middle of all of this, I really like the way you do hair. It's so pretty.

Okay, so for this panel, the characters look like they were pasted into the scene, and not drawn with the scene in mind.
1. The character are brightly lit again, even though they're in a nightclub.
2. The wood grain texture looks out of place
3. The shadows are inconsistent (on the glasses on the table and also on the characters whose light sources are coming from two different directions).

I want to get into the head shape of the guy in this scene, but only briefly. It's so round, that it's off putting. No one's head is that round. And the way it tapers at the based of the head makes it seem like his neck is too thin to support the head's weight. I struggle with this too, to be honest, but consider making your necks a little thicker.

Let's hop back onto lighting. I have to assume the light source is above them based on how the shadows are place. But not completely above them, since their faces don't really have shadows. But then, the shadows the glass cups make are very stark. That would mean the light shining on them is very bright and coming from one direction. But then, the pitcher that's on the table is casting its shadow in a different direction from the other cups and from the characters. Moral of the story, figure out your light source before you lay down any shadows so you don't confuse yourself and make your art look extremely amateurish.

Okay so, for this panel I want more focus on the text. I would recommend changing the shape of the speech bubble to a more oval shape, just so the letters aren't so crowded. Also I would move the "BAM!!!" to be closer to the hand and not so separated from 'the action.'

Let's get to the next panel. Okay, two things
1. The hand on the shoulder.
2. The eyes

The hand is too far forward and missing the palm. If he's that close to her, either only the fingers would be on the other side of her shoulder or his thumb would be visible and his fingers would be behind her.

I'll admit, B doesn't make much sense, but it's only because they are suddenly turned away from one another. The last thing I'll touch on here is the girl's eyes. I can accept that they are different in this panel due to an expression change, but the detail in the eyes does not match the detail presented in the rest of the comic. Like I said, yes, the eyes are pretty, but they're also pretty out of place. I would say the art and polish needs to live up to the standard that the eyes are setting, or you should stop making it obvious what you spend the most time on and make the eyes less detailed. Comic are, unfortunately, more than drawing characters and drawing them well.

Last one, finally. Something tells me you mainly draw women and feminine men. And there's nothing wrong with that, but it then does make drawing more masculine or harsher features on characters very difficult.

With the red draw over, I followed your lines and I noticed the the eye closest to the camera is significantly bigger than the other eye by not in a way that is proportional. The face lack structure; the are planes to the face that inform the placement and proportion of the features. The eyes are on the front of the face and are the same size. Here, they're not even looking the same direction. The nose would protrude a little further from the face and it's kind of unclear where the chin ends. Now my redraw isn't perfect, but the placement and size of the features are more coherent and proportional with each other.

We finally made it into the clearing. I'll wrap up here and detail into a couple more things. Overall, this is good, though I wouldn't say professional. I can tell you more of at a beginner/intermediate stage in your art journey. You're taking on more subjects than just characters from the shoulders up or fully drawn, posing without a background. You are good at what you do, but you're in the phase of trying to do more than what's in your comfort zone. There's a learning curve in comic making and the things I would say you should focus on for now is anatomy, perspective/proportions, lighting, and composition. Pinterest is a great resource and there are plenty of artists on youtube that have videos going over all of those things. I say apply the things I've said here to future chapters and don't go back and redraw this. Nothing about this prologue is severely off putting and I think you'll gain a sizeable audience. But anyway, good luck and I hope this helps!

Sorry it took me so long to get back to you, I was doing errands all day.

I can't really put my finger on it, but it just doesn't fit the vibe I feel like you're going for. I use dafont.com for my font and after scrolling through their free fonts, I landed on Insomniac Comic Dialogue or Anime Inept. There's nothing specific about them that makes them better fonts other than being a little more unique.

As far as I can tell the dialogue is fine, granted I didn't really focus on that.

@delladz
Obviously, I can't do the same amount draw overs due to the sheer amount of panels, but I'll do my best.

Overall, the readability is fine. I'll get into the details later, but for now the thing that stick out to me that are hurting the readability are the font choice, the speech bubble size, and the crowdedness of the panels.

Honestly, I prefer these shapes for speech bubbles over ovals because they fit english text better.

Panel by panel

Like I said, I can't go over every panel but I will go over the one's that stick out to me. Generally, the word I would use to describe the flow of your comic is frantic. There's a lot going on at once and there are no gaps or space, intentional gaps or space they give the reader time to breathe and take in what is going on.

I'm using this panel, along with a later one, to indicate that the perspective, scaling, and amount of detail are off. I'll point it out but I can't tell if this room is supposed to be in one-point or two-point perspective. Then this room is extremely bare, but that's probably for the sake of inserting the title.

This is just me harping on the bareness again, but I have another point about scaling and perspective.

Again, I'm going to discuss several things in with these two panels. I get the effect your going for here, but I personally don't think it was successful.

This is too much. There's too much that being crammed into these panels. I feel like there's not enough editing being done to cut out excessive information.

Draw Overs

Okay, so I know this looks confusing, but what I want to draw attention to is the inconsistent perspective. I have perspective rulers with my drawing program and I used the blue lines as guidelines. What should be happening it that every line in the scene should follow the same guidelines, but they do not. All the lines, regardless of if the perspective comes from two points, like it should in this scene, should have the same horizon line. The red and green lines here lead to seemingly different horizon line. Let me go over over perspective a little bit to further explain what I mean. It'll pretty simple since I hate perspective as much as the next person.

1 point perspective has one vanishing point at the horizon line. All the guidelines lead to the vanishing point, but you can move the horizontal line up or down depending on the angle you're going for.

please excuse the poor quality, 2 point perspective can be confusing.

With two point perspective, there are two vanishing points on the horizon line and the guidelines lead to both of them. You need to account for each vanishing point when planning out and sketching a panel. And this it where my point about too many panels is going to come up. It feels like you're throwing a lot at the wall with these episodes where the art in each panel suffers and can look lazily done. Even in the next panel, the perspective doesn't line up between the fridge, kitchen counter, and side table in the room.
But to be fair to you, you can cheat perspective, I've done it a few times in my comic.

So, the next thing with this panel is the detail and flatness of the scene. Even if you don't want to add artwork or texture to the wall, you should still do something to not have it be so distracting. If there are a lot of things going on visually with an illustration, the eyes look of a place of rest, which it usually a flat wash of color. But when it comes to visual storytelling, we want to guide the readers eye to what is important.
Here's a slightly edited version with some notes.

Last point will be about scaling. That bed appears to be massive, and the fact that he's hanging off the bed means that he's a big guy. But he's not, he's average sized. Scaling is something you have to learn with time as you practice perspective, so just keep an eye out of things are abnormally large or small in comparison to other objects.

There's nothing wrong with the horizon be that high, but at that point the baseboards on the floor should be visible.

Here's where I'm going to bring up a major problem, again, regarding readability. This speech bubble is too small! You have all that space and the bubble barely even takes up a fraction of it. Also, the bubbles are too tight on the text, to a point that some of the text is almost touching the edge of the bubble. Th make for an awkward read. Make the bubbles bigger, at least in panels like this, and make sure there is enough of a gap between the text and the edge of the bubble.

Over next few panels are going to get into a couple things:
1. the values of the panels
2. the lack of references used

I have to assume that it's established prior that the big tree is a landmark for the station, otherwise the comment he makes doesn't make sense. Also you could easily miss this comment because the speech bubble is so small. Light is a very interesting aspect of our lives and capturing it in art is a feat of its own. But here, the values in these two panel are muddy. Muddy, so similar that they overlap and look similar. It's nighttime, but outside isn't dark enough. I appreciate the effort put here, but the effect for me falls flat due to the values not being dark enough. I understand that this is a greyscale comic, but the suit he wears later is darker than the night sky. You could go darker. Also his arm and the blinds should as be visible if the rest of him is reflected.

(Okay, so I came back to this point because context clues tell this is morning time, which makes this moment all the more confusing. Not that you can't see your reflection in the daytime in a window, just that it's difficult to. Like I get that it may be early morning, but it's close to 9 am, so unless it's a cloudy day, I don't know how accurate it would be that you would see such a clear reflection. Usually the whole reflecting in the window is a nighttime thing.)

I'm not fully convinced that you use references for the cityscape, though you might have, but I know for a fact that you did not use a reference for that tree because what is that. Yes, I also see trees everyday when I go outside, but that doesn't mean I can't look up a reference photo just to be sure. Okay, say you did look at a reference, may you thought it was overly detailed and wouldn't fit your style. That's the point where I would go on pinterest and look at how other people stylize trees. What's so egregious to me is the texture of the bark that looks like an afterthought. It does consider the forms of the tree, it makes it look very flat. And there are no branches that are pointed at the camera.

Sorry if my redraw is a little messy. My focus here is adding more texture and dimensionality so the tree doesn't look so flat.

So, this last point I'm going to make is going to be over the sheer amount of stuff (panels, artwork, dialogue to a lesser extent) that is crammed into these episodes. It's to the point that I want to redraw this whole episode and edit out the things you don't need... Sike! I almost did it though. But you have to take it for my perspective; this is one episode and in the same amount of panels you used (44, I counted) I could've made about 5-6 episodes and been about halfway into a chapter. I think it really come down to efficiency. You have to edit how many panels you make so you're not spending more time than necessary on a singular episode. And so that you can give yourself a little more room to give extra love to the detailed/special panels. This may be a symptom of how Webtoons expects so and so many panels per episode from it's premium creators, but that's not a standard you need to be beholden to. This also may just be your writing style, but I'm still gonna say cut the fat where you can, (I assume) you're making this for free.

So, the red boxes here are the panel I cut out that I don't you need (based on the context I have of this episode). You can get away with 4 panels, you don't need 7, especially if all that's happening is a surface level conversation and one person getting onto a train. We already have a panel of him running to the train doors, we don't need a panel of him literally walking through those doors. We already have a panel of the train moving, we don't need to of them. Do we really need a panel of him looking out the window, no we don't unless it's narratively significant. (also if the train is already moving his view of the outside would be blurry, not crystal clear. I feel like you're giving yourself more work unnecessarily.

Last thing I'll touch on very briefly are shape of the panels themselves. I can tell you draw them by hand due to most of them not lining up with each other. I'm fortunate enough to use a drawing program that has specific guidelines for comic pages and carving out panels. What program do you use? Oh, and obviously I didn't go much into the characters, just know I did confuse Ryn and Harrison for a good two days of looking at this episode.

Okay, now I'm done. Sorry this one took so long, I didn't expect my errands to be so exhausting yesterday.
I think you're doing fine, you've previously redrawn some of you comic and your progress is inspiring. I appreciate that your comic is greyscale and that it's doing this fantasy secret agent thing; that's super interesting. And I really respect your drive and effort, you should be very proud of that. For you in the future, I would recommend practicing a little more perspective, using more references for things like nature and cityscapes, and learn to edit; don't be afraid to cut things to make the process faster.

If you don't like the templates, you don't have to use them. It's really a matter of finding the work flows that work for you. I say practice the perspective tools with simple shapes and illustrations so you can slowly get used to them.

Thanks! I'll probably take a break and post again on tuesday

@miyaskya

I like the the rough sketch look with several caveats that we'll get into. It evokes an ancient feeling of sequential art made centuries ago. I'll admit, I'm not the best person to asks about screen tones since I've only used them a few times in the past. This may also be a case where I'm not doing too many draw overs either.

I don't need to do a draw over on this one, I just wanted to point how the second panel looks great because the action lines were made with a ruler or were pulled from a material library. The first panel looks like you hand drew the lines yourself. There's nothing wrong with drawing these things yourself, but make sure it's consistent. I recommend using rulers and materials because it makes the process easier and give a consistent and professional look. But if you prefer the roughness of hand sketched action/focus lines, then don't switch to another method a few panels later.

I want to talk here about how you go about stylizing and details. Also references and research as well.

Okay, so I only pulled this panel because of his mouth. Why is it shaped like this?

I want to use these two panels to discuss anatomy and construction of the face and head. I've noticed a trend in how you construct faces. There's always a slant to the right when you draw faces head on and I'm going to try to get down to why.

We're gonna talk about that hand.

Draw Overs

Before I get to the draw overs, I do want to preface with saying I do like 'rough sketch' style you're going for and that me doing these draw overs isn't me trying to get you to change that, this is just how I draw.

What I want to get into here is the lack of detail, especially when it comes to texture. There's already something about having your completed comic be so rough, that some may perceive it as unfinished. What really makes it look unfinished are the lack of details. I have to assume that behind this inn is a mountain, but nothing is really informing me of that. The vague shape of a mountain is drawn, and then texture comes in the form of sketchy lines made back and forth.

And then the lack of details leads me to believe you aren't looking at references. Maybe you're doing so for the outfits and horses, but past that, I'm left not really getting a sense of what the setting is. I'm presuming this is a fantastical version of ancient China, or another asian country, based on the use of chinese phrases by the characters. If that's the case, the inn that the two main characters stayed in could have referenced ancient asian architecture, but with a twist, further cementing the setting of the world in the reader head. The generic architecture is far more reminiscent of something european rather than asian. I'm calling this out to tell you to not make the same mistakes I did when I first started making my comic; do your research for your worldbuilding, even if it's just to make your fictional world the slightest bit more unique than any other fictional world. My draw over here it just an inn referencing chinese architecture, but still keeping it simple enough that I could be something you'd draw for the style of your comic. And to be fair, the region that they are in could not be in china, but my point stands.

This is my only note

So, this it what I mean when I say that when you draw heads from straight on, there it a slant to them. I take issue with this because honestly, it just looks weird to me. Like her face is melting or something. Now, this really only applies to your straight on on faces since, from what I've seen, you draw faces at other angles just fine. Ways to combat this, if you want, is to flip you canvas in your drawing program so that you don't get so used to seeing your art from one perspective. You can also draw one side of the face step at a time, and at each step, copy, paste, and flip what you've draw so it lines up with the other side. I'll say this now while I have it on my mind, your two main characters look very similar.

So this next one, I sketched over your male lead from a profile view and the sketched my own version, still trying to keep your style in mind.

So, sketch A is drawn straight from your comic, and the areas I wan to focus on are the ears, the forehead, and the jaw. It's fine if you want your characters stylized with sloping features, but keep things in proportion. The ear is very high on the head and the jaw is quite narrow, when it does take up about 2/3 the width of the side of the face. The forehead is extremely long, he kinda looks like the xenomorph from Alien (I mean, he doesn't but imma leave this in). In my sketch, I shortened the forehead; it's still kinda long but proportionate. I made the ear lower and bigger, because I noticed you tend to draw the ears very small. I also made his brow protrude more, just because that's how men are stereotypically drawn, though you don't have to do that. And his chin is also a bit more forward. Making the forehead smaller also means that the hairline needs to be brought down as well. And in this panel, even though this character has a middle part in their hair and we're viewing them completely from the side, their part has shifted to be closer to the camera. Sometimes, when I look at your art, it feels like you chose this style because you haven't gotten to a place where you're confident to make more concrete, darker, and cleaner lines. This may be a style, but it also feels like a crutch as well. Clean lines aren't necessarily the way to go, but a cleaner overall look, even if it stays sketchy, may be something you should consider.

Now, we get to the reason I feel like you're using this art style as a crutch... What is this hand?

This is where I come in and say, use references (I used my own hand in my draw over) and take your time. And do anatomy studies. I don't really like doing them either, but they are important in shoring up your skills. And here's my draw over.

I really didn't want to overstep my bounds here because our styles are so different. I really like to draw in cleans and I didn't want to make you think that's the only way to draw. Also, I'm cognizant that this style may also be due to a physical condition. I know another artist here on the forum has a more sketchy style and they have expressed that they have condition that affects their fine motor skills and that could be your situation also. I'm not sure, I just wanted to account for that.

Here are my final critiques: I think you're giving yourself a lot of unnecessary work. This isn't a matter of editing, I'm again coming back to the cleanliness of this style. All the extra sketching and lines in the hair, the clothing, the backgrounds. It feels like the lines are added haphazardly without intention. And that lack of intentionality makes the art look amateurish.

When it comes to screen tones, I'm going to reiterate that I'm probably not the best person to seek advice from but I will say this, your lack of self assuredness with the tool comes through in the comic. It's used very sparingly and somewhat clashes with the watercolor brush you use to paint over the characters. I say, take the time to learn more about screen tones, either through watching tutorials or reading through several manga since that's where they're mainly used. Or scrap using them, and shade with different watercolor/ink brushes.

Speaking of brushes, I would recommend changing to a different brush and brush thickness. It looks like you're using a regular round brush at what, 3, no 4 pixels thickness and at a reduced opacity. Maybe it's a sketching brush. Either way, change to a pencil or ink brush that has some texture to it. Increase the size to about twice that to what you use now. Lastly, if your drawing program has correction/smoothing/stabilizing, turn it to like 5-10. Practice with that a little bit and try to use less lines when it comes to final lineart.

Also, at least when it comes to the characters and some backgrounds, I don't think your values are dark enough. The two main characters technically have different hair colors, but if I wasn't paying attention, I would think they were the same person. I know you my want to keep things light... but stop wanting that. Black is your friend too.

Okay that's all I have. I think this is good work with it's own perspective. Just practice a little more, reference a little more, and research a little more and it's all gonna fall into place.