New Comic and Forum Member: Team Jetpack 104

ZackoWacko

Hey guys, a buddy of mine told me that this place is good for getting feedback on comics and art, so I signed up. SWEET!

This is part of an arc I had on my website, which is currently being revamped. I'll post a link for it when its up. Anyways, I decided lately that a full-on graphic novel style fits my comic much better, and so I'm working on my first page on Deviant Art. Here it is:

I would love some feedback, and I know the art isn't anything spectacular, but I wanted to get this out for your enjoyment and my benefit. Thanks!

ZackoWacko

Oh, by the way, I would love some feedback :P

Mustang

Welcome to the forums. You're at a point here where you need to decide how seriously you're going to take this. Art is an unrelenting beast master that will consume your life and generally dominate your free time. At the moment your at the beggining stages, you're soon going to start figuring out that it's not as easy as it first seemed (don't worry, we've all been there).

What you need to do right now, is get back to basics. This means a pencil and a sketch pad and hours of drawing from life, from photographs, from just about any resource you can lay your hands on. It sounds boring but when you start to see your skills progressing it can be a lot of fun. Check out the first page of the Question and Discussion thread, there's a ton of great resources there to help you learn (pretty much everyone would recommend the Loomis books as a start). Post your sketches back here for critique.
Good luck.

ZackoWacko

Wow, I didn't even see that page. There's tons of stuff! That's good advice though. I'm actually having a hard time as it is not letting drawing consume time that I otherwise should be doing more important things. Haha. I'm going to rummage through the tutorials for now.

earthwormadam

Also don't be afraid to scale things back. For example, from the things you posted you don't get any sense of who any of the superheroes are, in terms of personality/traits/powers. Would you lose anything by focusing on just one of the characters and scrapping the rest? You have to take a good look at what components of the comic are worth keeping and scrapping.

Superhero strips in webcomic form are usually just a bad idea, as they kinda require the meat of a full fledged comic setup, so it's good that you axed that idea. The drawings aren't bad but you really need to get some information or a book on how to tell stories sequentially, as you seem to be struggling on what to show in your panels.

For example, even something as simple as a man swallowing a bug in the last two panels does not really communicate the way you are storyboarding. Storyboarding is a pretty hard thing to excel at, and if you keep at I'm sure you'll see some real improvement. I don't really know where to point you for resources in that subject, but perhaps someone else can.

Also lineart is really important when comicking so you should probably look at this, as it is a pretty eye opening tutorial.

As Mustang says it is pretty important to pick up a pencil and draw frequently from life, your characters look a bit stiff, flat and anatomically incorrect.

ZackoWacko

I actually was thinking the exact same thing. The comic book is going to introduce each character one-by-one, letting you get to know them and then adding another character as you go. The comic book format (even only in the writing phase) has allowed me to develop characters and relationships really well. I also can see a difference in my drawing from six months ago (the strips) vs now (the comic book format).