First thanks again everyone!
Those who posted links: I'll look at them better when I have more time, I will go through this post very carefully before starting my next chapter.
There are so much things that got unknotted for me today, thanks to this thread. I'm super excited!
So I will start by that (sorry, off topic, but...):
I feel incredibly privileged to have no issue with taking criticism and even asking for it. I know it's not easy for everyone, but I feel like encouraging everyone to do it (unless it's really painful, obviously). There is so much to gain!
1) As I said, I'm super excited and enthusiastic again just from hearing you telling me what's wrong. Because thanks to you, I can now start to imagine the next level. It will be a lot of work, but that's fine. I got quite a few ideas to canalize my work to actually make visible progress. I do feel like positive criticism is important to assess if there is a public for the comic, and it's also a great moral booster, but in term of boosting future improvement, I feel we need to hear the negative.
2) Also, I do find that learning to accept and use negative constructive criticism is helping us disregard negative non-constructive criticism. I don't really have an issue with any kind of criticism anymore, but younger, it helped me. Accepting constructive negative criticism allowed me to distinguish two different categories: instead of negative and positive, it's rather helpful and not helpful. And I have no thought or worries over the not helpful. Unless I decide I want it (I most likely will like/be touched by a positive comment even if it is entirely useless for self-improvement. But I'll discard useless negative criticism with no difficulty).
3) And maybe more important than anything, there is only so much we can do with introspection. At a point we need an exterior point of view. And.. that's when we go back to topic:
When I read that,
my first reaction was, “no way!”.
I understand why you suggest it, and how it could well fix my problem, and make things more consistent; however, I have a STRONG dislike for not realistic proportions. Even as a reader, it goes from completely offputting to something I can deal with. Never better than that. I find it uncanny in a boring way. I know it's restricting me both as a reader and as a creator, but that's not something I can do much about. Strong not very logical personal preference.
And then I read that, with the example:
BAMM! Your two messages together made me realize something I know was there but I could not put my finger on. I think I got it. That's why I need this negative feedback! Exactly for that!
Here is the thing you made me realize: As a creator, I love naive art. As a scientist, I'm all crazy about details and accuracy. Almost all my experience in drawing, and all of my (small) academic art background is about drawing from nature (actually mostly microscope slides and a few animals) and trying to be the most realist and precise and descriptive possible.
And I think that's where I'm conflicted in my drawings, especially with the characters! I don't know how to draw people, I never tried before this comic, and I try maybe to apply this realism which is all I know to my drawings, that, even if I have not clue how to do it. Now I see how it's a bad idea.
So now I wonder if the most comfortable compromise would not be to stylize a little bit, simplify at places, but keep the general realistic proportions. I'm not sure, I'm still trying to make sense of all this new info. But it certainly unblocked something!
Sorry, you now have an idea of the mess in my brain.
Yep, I understand. I should be more.. decided with the shadows.
Not an excuse, but a funny anecdote: in one of the rare panels where I actually remembered about shadows (and finally did a very shy one), I was getting confused how to draw it, so I dragged my spouse to the next little park and took pictures, but the weather was like that: zero shadows. Was like that for the next week, arghh. That's not why I'm bad at shadows, though. It's more about.. still needing to see things, not enough expertise to simply imagine how things (like shadows) should be.
I just realized the issue of the dark night scenes. This is such a stupid mistake.. ah well..
Thanks again!