Honest Banner Critiques please

[ninedux]

Genre: Sports / Romance / Comedy

Please help point out any mistakes or problems... Also would love it if you had some tips regarding background / effects for banners? I just roughly did a soft white brush around the characters

I lost all objectivity after about hour 4, eyes blurry at the moment... the vertical version is just the two lead characters.

[Yulek]

Ookay, here's some formal things I spot

Blur/airbrush looks mostly weird in small view. If you want to separate the characters from the bg... You can select them, expanse selection by idk. 10 px or whatever, and put a white fill layer behind them

The lines on the icon are too pixely!

Try drawing them at a normal resolution and then scale them down!

Line thickness in the banner also seems a bit on the very slim side!

I hope that helps~

[ninedux]

Thanks!! Let me try that, yea I noticed the lines look really jagged for some reason, maybe I resized it incorrectly.

[Yulek]

Eyy be sure to post your series link (and put it in your bio. I had to scavenge for it lol)

Now that Ive read several chapters (and subbed) I gotta say.... The banner is way too static.

Like, right in the first episode you totally caught me off guard with how awesome your action shots are. Heck this is perfect for a sports comic.

And while having a group shot is nice... It doesn't really show off what the story will Excell at.

I thought it'd be a sports flavored romcom or sth. Where the sport is just there for the sake of setting.

But it actually centers a lot around the sport... So yea. If you were open to redoing this.. I would really recommend going for something action-ish. Even if it's just the Mc taking a long shot at the hoop!!

[Eiranyx]

Regarding the horizontal banner:
- since you already used a blurred background to achieve that depth of field effect, it's enough for the characters to stand out. for me, the white soft brush part isn't really necessary or if you insist the glow effect, maybe lower the opacity of it as well as the thickness around the character --- it's because too much white glow is a distraction to the text/title , they are the same colour, if it was going to be viewed on a smaller scale, the title is a bit unnoticeable or can be confused as a part of the white glow.
- mind the placement of the text, for me, it looks kinda meme-ish --- unless that's what you're going for?.
Regarding the vertical/ the cover
- Since this is a sports themed work, although the font can look sporty, maybe try to experiment on the placement to make it more dynamic to look at to match the theme.
- you can also consider a more dynamic pose or more action pose that features the two leads to show that it there's sport in the genre.

That's all, I hope it helps ^^

[rajillustration]

Is this the correct aspect ratio for a banner? A Tapas banner is 1280 x 460, and this feels rather tall.

[ninedux]

Thank you!! Yea I think I'll compare with different fonts and placement, it was done a little last minute but it's supposed to be a sport-ish font.

And good point about the white glow, I'll clean that up so it's not everywhere.

[ninedux]

Thanks Yulek for the suggestions and sub! I added the series to my bio
Yea! definitely for the next cover I'll try to come up with a more dynamic action pose...this was just first thing that came to mind.

[ninedux]

This was for WebComics submission, but I made it large enough to resize to other platforms.

[rajillustration]

Oh good! Just checking to make sure you knew.