SECOND UPDATE! (Replies 7-11)
***Tagging people now, ‘cause there are a lot of replies to wade through…
***If you don’t say ‘+react’ or make it explicitly clear that you want my honest thoughts on your work (‘tell me if you like it’ does not count) I will err on the side of caution and not say anything. So if it looks like I’ve forgotten you, that’s probably why. Just let me know.
Written @WinterFall
-This is a little awkward. The sentence structure…
-I kinda like the present tense narration. But you should keep it constant; it’s VERY jarring when you break tense.
-Aaand now the present tense is just…gone…?
-Reading before bed isn’t uncommon…in fact, I would say it’s the opposite…
=Okay-ish? It’s not unbearable, but it feels like the introduction of a very cliché anime girl in prose form. Yeah…I would say the writing definitely feels like anime stream-of-consciousness. That’s not a bad thing in and of itself, but in prose it’s harder to take it seriously when the MC is freaking out about her sister stealing her toast…there are no visuals to lend weight to these mundane events.
Oh, and you really shouldn’t weave in and out of present tense like that…people don’t often write in present tense, so it’s very noticeable when you just keep turning it off and on. Honestly, I would recommend just retiring it altogether after that ‘dreamlike’ first part.
Alternate You!niverse @Siromany
-So the first ep is basically just an instruction manual…? I guess it’s not that bad (fortunately it’s not too long), but I’m kinda feeling like “do I really need to remember all this…?”
-I like the way you draw this girl’s hair; very flowy~. It looks like you have a good sense for motion, but the actual composition of the figures could use some work…I had to go back and reread ep 2 before I realized I was supposed to have witnessed a chase scene.
-Are all the blue-haired guy’s lines supposed to be that corny…?
-Welp, looks like I DO need to ‘remember all this’…back to ep 1…
=Meh…I feel like the cursing mixed with the corny dialogue gives off an amateurish, ‘this person is trying really hard to be edgy’ vibe, y’know…? But overall, I guess I didn’t hate it…in particular, I really enjoyed the facial expressions of the Interloper that did all the talking; those were actually really good.
Also, I feel like I should warn that, if this is gonna be a combat-heavy comic (I assume so) those action scenes are gonna need a lot of improvement. I wish you luck with that.
Fires in the Alley @AHaplessFool
-You recommended I start with the latest 5 episodes, so I did do that.
-You should be careful with overlapping speech bubbles…when a bubble from another panel interrupts the current one, it reads as a ‘look here next’ signal. As a result, I found myself constantly reading dialogue in the wrong order…
-Don’t be afraid to let speech bubbles float within the panels; constantly squeezing them into corners and borders makes it look as if the text isn’t really part of the comic. Ngl, there doesn’t seem to be much of value in all the space they’re apparently forbidden from taking up…
-All the dashes and dots and whatnot around the speech bubbles were kinda distracting…the technique might work better in a comic with a more minimalist artstyle, but this comic in particular already feels pretty cluttered…the funky bubbles just add to that feeling.
-The dialogue from black-turtleneck guy in particular is REALLY unnatural. Like, ‘Google Translate had a VERY bad day’ unnatural. Honestly, it doesn’t even look like the work of translation software, it looks like someone trying to write in English when they’ve never really heard it before. I don’t know what’s going on, but maybe…try to fix that?
=I will say this: your fire effects are good. And in a comic with fire as a central element, that’s a very good thing.
Tanidreams @Tanidreams
-Beautiful first page~
-Why does this remind me of The Little Prince…?
-The tiny panels with all that blank intervening space feels like a bit of a waste, tbh.
=Overall, I don’t have much to say. It feels like the kind of comic that’s just ‘things happen’, carried by the art and atmosphere. There’s nothing wrong with that, but keep in mind that the line between that and a comic that kinda just never goes anywhere is very thin.
The less dynamic content your story has, the harder the art and atmosphere have to work to make up for it, and I feel like that’s an area you may want to strengthen, to hold readers’ interest.
***If you want to post your story and haven’t yet, don’t be shy! I promise I’ll get to everything, and I fully expect this to take a long time. I started the thread with the intention of spending a couple weeks on it at least; you’re not burdening me, I swear.
