[CLOSED] Giving your comic honest feedback/reviews

I'll try to get to them a little quicker this time, but I won't make any promises I might not be able to keep.

Well that's good I didn't make any promises...

Starting with the artwork, it's pretty good. I'd say to focus more on practicing to draw human characters. There are certain panels which feel6 a bit off3 (I found that the characters faces were "shrunk" on a few panels which would be fixed just be enlarging them a bit3) but nothing that stood out as bad. You also mentioned that your art is "missing something" and I can definitely see where you're coming from. I personally think it's the colouring; there's a lot of flat colours used. Introducing some slight gradients on top of shading might make things a little better.

To me it looks like you started the comic following a more traditional page format, but decided to switch to vertical scrolling partway through. I had some feedback on how to format the text better although that became obsolete with the new format. If you're asking why I'm writing about it if there's no feedback to give, I wrote several points on it while reading and I'll be damned if they go to waste!

Onto actual feedback about the text, add a thicker stroke to bubble-less text. It's currently extremely difficult4 to try and read. You should also either make the bubbles slightly bigger or the text slightly smaller (I'd suggest using a smaller font size personally) so the text isn't pushing up2 against the border of the bubbles. You want a little bit of white space around the edges. On another note, there's a few typos here and there so maybe look into a reviewer who'll skim through your panels before you post.

The story seems like it could be interesting. I've always been a bit of a sucker for "normal person gets special powers" trope so there's probably a bit of bias though. Nothing stands out as super unique yet but like almost everything I review, there hasn't really been enough time for anything to develop. My one complaint is with the exposition. It's difficult to balance giving the reader feedback without forcing information in a way that feels unnatural, but yours seems to be falling closer to the latter (Breath Devoid 72). In the future, try to incorporate information more naturally so it isn't just a guy giving out information unprompted.

Sorry but I'm only reviewing comics in this thread!

Well that took a lot longer than expected, but I'm finally caught up so reviews are open again! Like usual I'll have 3 slots available and it'll be first come first serve. As a reminder, I won't be critiquing your comic if you don't follow the format posted in the OP.

Honestly I'm not too sure. I guess I'll stop when doing these critiques start to feel more like a chore than anything. I've been slowing down how often I do reviews so I don't get burnt out (plus classes picking up has eaten a lot of my time) so hopefully it's not any time soon!

To start things off, I really enjoyed the paneling of your story. I found that the panels themselves flow pretty well into one another and give focus where it's needed. For the bubbling, there are definitely areas that can use some work. Take this example3, the text seems to be crammed in the the box making it awkward to look at (not to mention the text itself is off centered.

The art itself is also not bad. The backgrounds are nice and vibrant although I'd say that the character design and facial expressions could use some work. I see a lot of people have difficulties drawing faces specifically (which isn't surprising considering they're extremely hard to draw), especially from different angles5 so that's something you should practice. I'm not an artist myself so I can't really give any specific pointers or point you to any specific resources to help out, but I'm sure there's a plethora online if you go looking for it. Most of your front facing shots4 are good though. As an aside, Jack's Spirit6 kinda looks like you just pasted an image of a skull onto the page. I don't know if that's actually what you did or not, but it feels very jarring and out of place because of its shading.

The story is probably the weakest part of the comic. It seems to be all over the place, jumping from the present to flashbacks and location to location without really any room for the reader to breath. This is mostly the issue with improper pacing since it feels like your foot's been on the gas the entire time. I know the desire to get into the meat of your story, but it's important to build up the world around you first. The dialogue is another aspect that should be looked at. There's quite a few moments where it's forced5 and sounds like it would come from a Shakespearean play rather than a kid's internal monologue. I've brought this up in many of my previous critiques, but writing natural conversation is hard. The amount of times I'll write and revise something just to revise it again is too high to count. It's especially helpful if you can have someone else read your work over since it's a lot easier to judge someone else's work than your own.

Before I mention anything else for this review, you should really get an editor to look over the script. The grammar makes the comic extremely hard to read and I found myself struggling to get through each update because of it. From the looks of it English isn't your first language so it's understandable that things would be awkwardly translated (at least you're able to speak another language - that's more than I could say), but I wouldn't be surprised if the poor grammar is the number one reason people wouldn't stick around after reading the first update.

Looking at the layout of your comic, most of it is really good. Each panel is different from the last and you do a great job at using space. There are some spots where the flow from panel to panel is a bit confusing though. Take this page4 for example. If you need arrows to point the reader where to read, it probably means the panelling is unintuitive and requires a change. The bubbling is also good for the most part, but there are some spots where you shrink down the font in order to fit the bubble rather than enlarging the bubble to fit the font. There was more than one spot where I had to squint4 to read what was on screen.

In terms of art, the minimalist vector style for the first chapter was really cool. I actually have a bit of experience with that style so it was fun to see. The normal art style is pretty solid as well since it complements the panelling.

The story itself looks to be a little generic right now, but its still early on so I'm sure things will begin to branch out once you get the ball rolling. Speaking of which, the pacing is solid. Things are moving quick enough that I feel like progress is actually being made but not so fast as to lose out on important world and character building. On the topic of characters, they (similarly to the story) are pretty generic. You have the oblivious MC, mean bully who pretends to be the MCs friend, the girl who becomes friends with the MC, and the "nerdy" character who commentates from the sidelines. Again though, there hasn't been much time to have any sort of development, just keep in mind that things are seeming to be too "cookie cutter" right now. Lastly, you do a good job at making believable dialogue between the characters (barring the poor grammar).

Overall, you seem to have a really good comic that's held back by poor grammar. If you find someone who's willing to help out, I'm sure you'll be able to grow an audience.

This was a bit of a longer comic so I mainly focused up to the 10th chapter and skimmed through the rest.

To begin, the art itself is the weakest aspect of your comic. For one, it seems like a lot of the art (especially early on) was cropped and pasted due to the white outlines3 around the figures. I'm also personally not really a fan of the brush effect on your lineart although that may just be personal preference. Another thing you should never do is use external2 textures2 because it really clashes with the rest of the art and breaks immersion. There are some panels that don't blend together3 which should probably be fixed if you want a seamless vertical scroll. Other than that, it's just a matter of practice and improving your artistic abilities. Everyone starts somewhere and I've definitely already seen improvements from the first chapter and more recent ones.

The panelling is fairly well done, albeit a little generic. There's nothing that particularly stands out, both good nor bad - it just seems like your standard run of the mill vertical scroll. One thing I have to praise though is your bubbling. Your comic is one of the few that I can't complain about the speech bubbles or font. Both are perfectly placed and sized.

The story right now looks like a pretty generic superhero story where the MC is a "chosen one" and fights the bad guys the rest of the world doesn't know about. Between the "shy girl who gets bullied" and "friend who fights on MC's behalf but MC doesn't want them to" cliches, I can't say there's much originality as of now. Like I say for everyone else, that could change in the future and a lot of people focus more on character development and world building before mixing things up and throwing in twists.

Speaking of characters and character development, the characters are probably my favourite part so far. Looking past some of the cliches, the characters seem to bounce off each other well and the dialogue makes for some entertaining moments. Even the internal monologues are fun and gives personality to the characters.

Overall, I enjoyed what I read so far. Even though the artstyle isn't exactly "stand out" and the story isn't super compelling just yet, the characters and conversations between the characters made up for it.

And with that, reviews are open again! It only took just under 2 months to get through the last three, let's see how long it'll take to finish the next.