I just finished the first chapter of my comic, hoping for some honest opinions

[juyunseen]

https://tapastic.com/series/The-Chronicler
I've been working on The Chronicler for roughly 10 months now, but I only started actually drawing it back in December and uploaded the first episode on New Years.

Now, midway through February the first chapter is ready and I feel like there's enough to look at to at least get some thoughts on it. So what do you guys think?

It's only one chapter so context is a little sparse, but this is my third outing into an ongoing comic, and as of now I like it quite a bit. I'd love to have some feedback before I dive into production of chapter 2.

Any honest opinions are appreciate.

[Zetsubonii]

Hi! I really like your art and I gotta say that it really looks professional, like something you'd pick up in a bookstore kind

I like the use of the monochrome so far, and the character designs are interesting enough to propel the story on its own. The setting is beautiful, something that I find quite rarely in comics with similar aesthetics, so kudos on that

Here are some things to improve upon tho:
1) The lay out for dialogue and paneling is a bit confusing, I am having difficulty figuring out if it's read from left to right or right to left as well as certain dialogues not making sense together as they feel fragmented and unrelated to each other
2) Who's the guy talking too in the first few pages? I'm getting the sense that the guy is talking to his own stomach, maybe clarify that a bit by working on where the speech bubble's arrow is directed at :U
3) The action is nice, but the motion lines get a bit confusing at times such as in panel 3 of fig 1, the character's postures suggests a static position yet the action lines indicate a vector movement which, when paired together, makes no sense :U
4) Hierarchy, Remember that there is a certain order for western readers where the upper left has the eye's priority leading down to the lower right. With dialogue, this dictates where the reader should read first and indicates who speaks first. Fig 2 panel 1 has this problem where one would assume that the ant is speaking first due to the positioning of the dialogue box
5) Not really an issue, rather a suggestion: Study how black and white is used in comics more to help with the mastery of the aesthetic, I suggest noir films, manga or old comics from before the 90s Your art, although really fresh, nice and clean so far, could benefit from a little touch up with some black, but that's just a suggestion, your art's pretty ok as is

Anyways, I've subbed and I showed my girlfriend your comic where she found it funny and subscribed too I look forward to seeing more from you and your growth as an artist ^^ I find a certain inspiration from your comic, one that I hope helps me grow as an artist myself ^^

Also, if you'd like, check out my comic, Jim's Days, if you're into mysteries

Fig 1

Fig 2

[Pyomatic]

Hey! I've read through the chapter and subscribed, I'm interested to see where this all goes. Anyway here's my two cents:

Art: I love your line variation! Your art is all very clear, I don't think there was anywhere which tripped me up and made me have to work out the order of panels. Plus, action is clear too, you've got a good mix of shots (closeup, full body, etc). What I would maybe say is you could try more with some shading? or with large areas of black? I think sometimes the art is a little sparse in some panels (using fig 1 above me, posted by zetsubonii, imo panel two looks really good because you have some bg detail but your character still stands out bc of the thick black outline but fig two panel 7 feels very empty to me, although i completely sympathise in what a pain backgrounds can be). But like I said on the whole, the arts refreshing, the details in location are really nice especially with establishing-y shots.

Writing: Imo, this definitely improved through the chapter. Once the fight begins its nice to see the differences between kent and tobias, and see their different motivations. I would just say though that the dialogue could use some some work. Again, using above's fig 2, i think you've got a good amount of kent's "voice" in that page, you can tell more about his character from how he speaks, not just what he says (if that makes sense),but at the start there was quite a bit of dialogue simply explaining what was going on. For example, the line 'huh, these guys sure like their statues'. you could use it to show more about character, eg, if you have a sarcastic wisecracker they could say something like 'I mean, I'm no interior designer but a gazillion statues ain't what I call style' or a more intellectual academic say smt like 'goodness, I do believe I have never seen so many third century [old civilisation name] statues in one place before, oh golly'. of course these are rubbish examples but I hope it gets my point across? Like I said, I noticed the speech distinction get better as the chapter progressed, so keep it up!

So basically on a whole, I really enjoyed it! Everything feels nice and neat and tight, there's enough world building but not excessive amounts, nice character introductions and fun action! Keep it up!!!

[KittyHamilton]

I got tired midway through writing this, so I apologize if it sounds too negative. The art is good, and I love that style of shading. Story is decent so far.

There feels like bit of n over-reliance on dialogue? More telling than showing?

Lines like this...

"This must be the place!"
"Some kind of defensive spell? reanimation sounds bad."
"And now that I've some proper light...I can start to translate-"
There's also the whole sequence of Kent explaining every move he makes in the the fight with the monsters."

I feel a lot of this kind of dialogue could be omitted or alteredso it is less on the nose and/or shows more character.

For example, we can intuit why Tobias is lighting the torches the moment we see him light one and start reading heiroglyphics, no text necessary (though stronger shadows could visually reinforce that). And Kent's on-the-nose "This must be the place!" could be replaced by something as simple as "Finally!" or, "Guess I owe that farmer a beer."

relying on visuals instead of dialogue could also help. A close up of Kent looking uncomfortable staring at a weird statue, for example, could get across the idea that Kent finds the ruin unnerving without having to say something like, "This place is pretty weird."

There's also repetition in some dialogue.
"Let's find that key and get out of here" and "I just want to find that key and get out of here." appear on the same page
"I guess I haven't had anyone to talk to for a while..." and "I guess when you've been alone long enough you'll talk to anyone about anything." appear one after the other.

I'd recommend checking out some sources on writing dialogue, and reading what you've written it outloud to yourself.

Some visual stoytelling issues. We never really see their first escape. They go from Kent pulling Tobias out of the way of lightning to casually strolling, having escaped. On the page where Kent slices the eyeball, there's a panel of a torch that breaks the flow. There's also the the panel on a previous page, involving skeleton slicing, with an panel that just has the word Swing.

Good luck!

[juyunseen]

Thanks so much for the feedback! I'm glad you enjoyed enough to follow! Hopefully chapter two is going to see me pushing the contrast more and relying on more solid blacks, this first chapter was a bit of a dry run to get a chapter out as fast as possible so I can get to the interesting parts of the story later on. Chapter two is gonna get multiple passes on the script front.

[juyunseen]

Thanks so much for taking the time to read! Chapter two is going to be much more scripted than chapter one, so hopefully the dialogue will continue to get more engaging and natural.