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Jan 17

Hi guys for some background I'm PE and I'm currently working on my series Mena And The Gargantuan island. As a semi new Webcomic Creator, I know I'm still have a long way to go. I would like to get honest feedback about what you guys think of my comic and ways to improve.

I do just want to note a few things, there is an art style shift in the first episode. I had to take a break, but this is the only time the style changed and from now the style should remain consistent. I also work by myself too.

Here's a link to my comic, your feedback will definitly be helpful!!

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    Jan 16
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    Jan 17
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It's still a beginning webtoon so can't really give a fair assessment.

I dunno... why do I have a feeling the kiddy cartoonie style is a bit deceiving and it won't be p
G rated. We'll see...

Thanks for the response and I guess your right about it being to early to give a fair assesment.

And on the second part looks can certainly be deceiving lol. Best comparison I can give it to would probably be The Promised Neverland.

While there isn't much to say narratively, there's plenty you can gleam artistically.

Firstly, your comic looks good. The characters are expressive and well drawn, the choice in location is cool, and the story sounds like it'll be really interesting.

I like to get into the nitty-gritty of design and stylistic choices, so if this comes off as harsh, I understand. I may or may not use some of my comic pages as examples, since I'm in the same genre as you, and I'll probably pull some panels of yours.

Color Choice

Your comic being set in a typical jungle raises the chance of the reader getting lost in sea of green and brown; it hinders readability. Things end up looking flat because the depth isn't clear in some panels.

  • One way to combat this is to have the setting be a more fantastical color palette with contrasting color: reds and greens or blues and oranges. A great example of that is Namek from Dragonball Z with its blue grass and trees, orange dirt, and bright green skies.

    *To be fair, this can get repetitive but it is generally more interesting to look at than your standard fair of green grass and blue skies.

If you want to keep the color palette, then I would recommend upping the contrast between elements. Have the value, the lightness or darkness of a color, of the ground be significantly brighter or darker than the bushes, and then same for the tree trunks and the canopy.

If you're okay with the jungle kind of blending together because it's supposed to be dense and confusing, then I would recommend something I do in my comic which is coloring the line art of the background all the same color, instead of having the character and background have the same line art color. Then I would overlay a blending layer (either overlay, soft light, hard light, etc.) to marry the colors together more. That way, your character stands out more against the similarly colored background.

I had the same issue of readability with the first run of my comic, and the mostly came down to how saturated my character and background colors were. They were of similar saturation in the first run and the line art was all the same color, so things ended up looking pretty flat which isn't inherently a bad thing, but it's not what I was going for.

Paneling and Speech Bubbles

Your paneling isn't bad by any means, but it's pretty simple. And I think that's perfectly fine, I have pretty simple paneling in my comic. As long as it gets the job done and it's easy in your workflow.

I can tell that you hand draw your speech bubbles, but you are using a font.
Two things:

  1. Change the font. It's not a bad choice, it's legible, but it's too thin in some bubbles making it hard to read on phone (which is where most Tapas readers are). I would recommend either Blambot.com or dafont.com if you don't use them already. Blambot has more of a focus on comic fonts and dafont is just for all variety of fonts. Look at some other comics on the platform and see what fonts they're working with, and try to go for something similar. If you really like your chosen speech bubble font, then see if you can bolden it and reduce the text spacing so the text fits in the bubbles a little easier.

  2. Plan your bubbles, if you don't already. Not when your sketching the page, but when you're thumbnailing your pages. I mean, I hope you're thumbnailing. For one, it allows you to plan the amount space you'll need for the text without compromising the art. And for two, it'll make sure you order the speech bubbles in a way that makes sense. For example:


    • I know the correct reading order is in blue, but someone could easily read the red path just due to how close those two bubbles are. It's not egregious, but some people could get confused.

Generally, your bubbles and text should be bigger so it's easier for the reader to see. Also, and I see this a lot, but your speech bubbles don't have to be enclosed in the panel they come from. They can break the panel border, it's fine, lol.

Lastly, your speed/focus lines and sound effects (SFX). They are not bold enough to really push the action. I would recommend adding a white border around your sfx words just so they don't get lost on the page. They're supposed to add oomph to the action, not drown in the background.

It can be hard to break a figure for the sake of pushing a pose, and I'm speaking from a place of experience.. I'm going to take a panel from my comic for this example of "character breaking" for action.

I'm not going to show this full page because I found an error, so let's not talk about that.

See how I drew this character's leg so it looked so fast, you can't even see her foot for this kick. I made divots in the leg to ad to the idea that it's moving quickly.

Mena, aside from her hair, tends to look pretty stiff and that in turn slows down the action. And the speed lines that follow her blend in with the background. For example:

Here, I almost missed them because they practically line up with the tree in the background.


And I almost missed them here too.

I did see how you used motion blur for movement but personally, I don't think it's as believable if you draw something like normal and then add a blur on top of it. It reads kinda cheap, kinda lazy, but that's just me.

This is just a nitpick, but your gutters between the panels and the panel borders stick out to me because the gutters are pretty big. That's not a bad thing. It's a stylistic choice that neither helps or harms the comic, I just like to keep my borders and gutters relatively thin.

I did have a bit more to say but I'm out of time right now. I think you have a good thing here, it looks like a lot of fun to make and will be a fun read. So, I hope this helped you and got you thinking for the future.

Thank you for the feedback, this was a long read but it was worth it. There are definitly things that you pointed out that I can definitly improve from, especially the coloring, text, and movement. Again thank you much for taking the time to give feedback, I'll definitly will be experimenting more to improve.

You're welcome! All that matters is that you got something out of it. I think your comic is going to go a long way!