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Aug 2022

It's been a while since I reviewed stuff and I like to believe my critical eye and skill has improved somewhat. So feel free to share your comic here for feedback!

  1. I will most likely focus more on art than story, and only really touch on story if I feel something is super out of place.
  2. If your art is better than mine you'd probably not get much feedback haha
  3. I will do this in chronological order.
  4. I can ghost this thread anytime
  5. I will only do 5 at a time

To review:

Godchain
Story of Olivia
Terra Prima
Final Realms

Reviewed:

Realmwalker
Mukhtar
sausade
Lyza's Sandstorm
Shatterswap
Lavande
See the stars
Dan
A bunch of love stories
Knight of Hope
Age of Darkness
Larvae

  • created

    Aug '22
  • last reply

    Sep '22
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There are 62 replies with an estimated read time of 12 minutes.

Oh yeah I should probably update it haha, just a minute

Okay, it's Realmwalkin' time

So looking at your comic, I can tell you have made quite some leaps when it comes to the art. There's a lot more polish on your characters and the panels are more clear. This one in particular is my favorite because of the shading and pose/more dynamic approach

That said, I do still have some issues to point out.

The backgrounds and props feel really flat, and I noticed most of the time they aren't even in the same panel as the characters. They are nearly always in separate panels. This means your characters never really interact with the environment. And yes, while Merlin does technically interact with the environment by fixing the stones it doesn't actually feel like he is there, there is no shot of him in the same panel as the stones. The only way I know that he is fixing them is due to the purple on the rocks and him saying he is here to fix them.

This is one of the exceptions but the background props are still not nearly what they could be. The perspective is shabby and it doesn't really sell me on where they are other than maybe a village. Because there is nothing else here. No roads, no benches, trees etc. Just houses and some dots for stars

I would suggest that you try to work on your backgrounds to make the world in your comic feel more alive. Yes, characters are important but without some interesting set pieces it is as if they live in a blank canvas almost. I recall some people saying that you should treat your backgrounds as characters.

Now there are some other things that I could point out like how you could make use of different angles to sell the action more (you have action listed as a genre for Realmwalker after all) but I think upping the background level has more priority here. You could make your backgrounds more interesting by adding more props to them. Does that mean you have to draw every blade of grass and leaves? Nope! You can just use shapes instead!

I grabbed this piece of Adventure Time online as an example. If you look past the shading and lighting and purely focus on background objects you can see some shapes in the background.

As you can see, certain background elements are just simple shapes. The small trees and the mountains are triangular, the boulders are round, not quite circles but still simple shapes and even the plateau with the city on it can be broken down into cone shapes.

Now I'm not telling you how to draw your background, but if you want to spice them up you could always just use simple shapes to convey objects easily and still have some more substance to your backgrounds. Right now they are mostly looking empty and could use some life in them.

I hope this is somewhat useful to you

Alrighty alrighty is is time for Mukhtar!

So right off the bat I think you have a solid comic already. The characters are expressive, the anatomy is solid in my opinion and I think you handle the shots inside the panels well.

That said I do have one big gripe and a few smaller ones.

The big gripe is that the panels can get super crammed. Take this recent ish page for example.

The panels are crammed against one another and together with all the speech bubbles it feels really claustrophobic (if that makes sense). There is barely any room to breathe and let your eyes rest.

I think your comic could benefit greatly if you space out the panels quite a bit in a vertical way, along with the speech bubbles for those panels. It would make the pages more like a scroll format and I think it would really work out for you.

A small gripe (and this is me nitpicking) I would have is that everything is really detailed. Which is not a bad thing, but I mean that things that are further away in your comic seem to also have a lot of detail and can make the page busy and flat at the same time since everything having the same amount of detail gives of the impression that everything is at an equal distance to the point of view.

Take page 18 from chapter 1 for an example. The doors of the buildings in the second panel have a lot of lines that represent the lines in the wood, but I think with the doors being further away you could get away with leaving those lines out and it would look cleaner and less busy, allowing the eyes to draw more to the characters.

I think it would be great if you focus detailing the things closer to the point of view and use more simple versions of faraway objects and characters. I'm not saying you have to but it could help with bringing in some depth.

Hopefully this is helpful!

It is sausade time (I almost read that as sausage sorry :sweat_smile:)

Honestly I don't really have a lot of gripes here, what it has going for it works. The characters look nice with solid anatomy and the backgrounds while being simple work well enough to establish a sense of place (you could always spice up the backgrounds if you feel like it with a poster and the like but you don't have to)

The only gripe I have with your comic is the speech bubbles and font. And this is just my pet peeve, but I feel the elliptical speech bubbles are not the best choice for your comic. They feel too artificial (which is probably because they are made with a tool I am guessing). As well as the font, which looks like a MS office font. Here is a example of a site with some fonts but there are probably tons of places to get them.

https://www.dafont.com/theme.php?cat=102

I think if you changed up your speech bubbles a bit (like making them a bit more rectangular for example instead of perfectly round) they could fit your comic better. And I would advise you (not force you) to maybe change up the font to a different, looser font. In my opinion if you overhaul the speech bubbles and font I think it would really enhance your comic more.

I will take your review for granted, As I update new pages, I will separate the panels who are attached to each other and keep them at a certain distance for more space.

This goes the same for the text bubbles.

Maybe keeping the panels, and text bubbles away from the edges of the page.

However, I can't reduce the size of the fonts because some viewers are reading my comics on their phones rather than computer.

That nitpick is going to be very hard, I have a guilty pleasure of making so much details whenever I have the chance, or opportunity.

I will make the changes of already updated pages on Tapas once I finished my first chapter.

Great :grin:

Yeah I understand keeping the fonts a big enough size, and I'd leave the speech bubbles as they are. I had someone tell me that a year ago too so I have been keeping an eye out on text size

Okidoki it is sanding time!

So right off the bat I have to give you props for not cutting corners on really anything. You try your hand a lot at backgrounds and different angles and I can tell you put a lot of effort in your comic. But it is not without flaws.

The first one is detail, the same nitpick I had with Faisalhussein is a gripe I have with yours. A lot of the time there is too much detail, so much so that it becomes hard to distinguish characters from the background.

I can barely tell the characters apart in these panels.
Of course not all pages of yours have this issue. The latter parts of ep 8's fight are easier on the eye because the sandy ground doesn't blend in with the characters. It's mostly when they are inside the overly detailed buildings that it becomes hard to tell them apart.

I would recommend to go a little easier on the details of the environment if there is a lot of action happening. Don't be afraid to simplify things in those panels, because the main draw of them is the action happening inside them.

I don't know if this was intentional, and it is a cute idea. But the guy hanging over the panel above and into the lower panel really messes with the perspective here, which could've otherwise been a great shot. I think it would benefit you if you spaced out your panels more like I said in the Mukhtar review.

Lastly, the faces feel quite warped from time to time. Take Lyza here for example

Her face doesn't feel quite right in this drawing and angle. I'm not sure if you are using construction lines or not but I will share this anyways

If you use construction lines and shapes like this you can keep control over your character's heads and faces. This also applies to noses and other face elements. In the panel Lyza's face is seen from below and her nose should be protruding from her face. But instead it is facing downwards almost. I think if you construct your faces you can avoid them warping out of control.

So from what I can tell you are pretty much a beginner when it comes to comic making. Which is completely fine, but it leaves me with the thought process of what to recommend to you.

I can tell you did put a lot of effort in this. Because there are all these little details in the characters that become visible once you lay your eyes upon them. However there is also a lot that could be improved upon.

The first (and I think I touched upon it a while back) is that you tend to use differently colored text and fonts for different characters. And as nice as it is aesthetically wise, it just does not help the readability of the comic.

the "yeet" here is pretty much invisible against the dark blue background. The dark blue text of the monster isn't much better either. I would really recommend lowering the aesthetic here and going for readability, as it makes the comic more accessible for readers. Readability is one of the most important things in a comic, if readers can't see or understand what is going on then they are more likely to drop the comic and do something else.

I also am going to touch on your art program. I know you are using paint, and I'm not saying you should change it but I really recommend you to do so. Because paint is severely limited in options.

Instead, I will recommend you atleast give medibang paint a try. It is for free and it works well. Reason why I am saying this is because it has options like layers and the magic wand tool that make drawing a lot easier. If you do want to keep ms paint that is fine, but I do really recommend downloading medibang and drawing a thing or two in it to experience it for yourself.

https://medibangpaint.com/en/app-download/1

There are a lot of gripes and nitpicks I have with your comic aside from the previous points. The character anatomy leaves a lot to be desired, the backgrounds are almost completely void leaving me with no idea of where hey are and the cover doesn't really tell me what is happening in the chapter. Because there is so much to improve on I'd say to just take one step at a time, and the first thing I would improve is readability like I mentioned. Once you worked on that you can slowly work on each area to improve on it.

Not currently, I have one slot open again at the time of my reply here. And even if it is closed you can still leave yours in this thread