My New Webcomic, FANTASY HOSPITAL

marchert

Hi AC,
I just released my webcomic, "Fantasy Hospital."
I'd love to hear what you think. :-)
~Jusitn

P.S. - Sorry for the previous post that linked to my site.
Hopefully this one is posted correctly.

Iruka

to post images, you need to use the url that ends with ".jpg", on tumblr, you need to right click you image and click "copy image url"

I fixed this one for you.

marchert

Thanx Iruka,
Think I've got it all straight now.
:-)

Grifter

You really should've drawn that first panel completely instead of using a filter over another image. It's really not appealing and sticks out against the rest of the comic. It comes across as lazy.

marchert

Yeah, I have another artist drawing backgrounds for me, but she wasn't going to have the castle ready in time for release, so I went with what you see. But I also thought, it kind of looks like an animated feature style, say "Bambi," in which the backgrounds are in a completely different style from the characters.

Iruka

Is this just a hobby for you, or do you have some goals and aspirations you'd like to share?

This is the kind of thing where its hard for me to tell what sort of feedback you are actually looking for. Personally for me, its not really all that interesting, but I'm not really into gag strips. The art is serving its purpose but could use a lot of improvement.

If you are looking to get better at drawing, I suggest posting some of your drawings from outside the comic and working with critiques from the members.

marchert

Hi Iruka,
Fantasy Hospital began as an animated webseries that I'm still working on.
I decided to multi-platform it into a webcomic this year as well,
which has been a lot of fun (And of course takes less time than animation).

Iruka

Let me break down my last post into some questions.

-Is this mostly just a hobby?
-Are you looking to improve your general art skills?
-Do you have any not-comic related drawings you can post?

Answering these questions will help people on the forum critique you, and set you in the path of the appropriate resources for your skill level.

marchert

It's a career goal (I can't call it a career at this point, as it doesn't pay).
I am looking to improve my skills.
I'll have to look around for not-comic-related drawings.
Comic and animation-related are all I've worked on for a while. :-)

NakedZergling

So, people that do this stuff for a living can draw outside of what the material IN the comic calls for. You having to "look around for not-comic-related drawings." does not bode well for the future of your strip. You will be doing yourself a great service if you sort of put this project to the side or the back burner, and focus on the basics of art. Right now you're trying to emulate a style, and that won't help you grow. I know drawing apples, and models, and still life doesn't seem like it will improve your comic art, but it will. You have to learn to "see" and understand lighting, volume, line weight, etc. Then when you come back to drawing your strip you can incoperate what you've learned. If you do learn those things, your art and strip will never get past the level of where it is now.

marchert

Thanks for the comments, NakedZerling, Iruka and Grifter. I've made a move to work on my traditional (non-computer) drawing skills by volunteering at 2D studio "Animate For the Cel of It" in L.A. First session was very interesting -- I spent 5 hours making a ball roll down a hill.
Below is the 2nd installment of my webcomic.
P.S. - Does anyone know when the "Penny Arcade: Strip Search" webseries begins? I just learned of it today. Thanx

Tor_Hershman

BANNED

brokecracker

Welcome to the AC,
If you are looking to improve in skill my advice is pretty general: Draw from life and draw a lot. Figure drawing classes are the most valuable tool to getting better quickly. I know a lot of people who want to ignore figure drawing and realistic drawing because they want to draw cartoons, but trust me when I say that learning how to draw realistically only helps your cartoon work. It would be great if you would post some non-comic related stuff so we can gauge what advice to give. All of that has become my pretty standard advice around here but it almost always merits saying.

As for specific advice, your strip has a kind of cut and paste feel to it. Sometimes the features change on the characters but the poses and outlines of the figure don't. I would recommend not doing that. Draw each panel from scratch. Sure copying poses from one frame to another will save you time but it will do nothing to help you progress. With that in mind always remember that progress>speed. You could also benefit from line variation. All the lines being the same width give it an antiseptic feel. Line width variation creates visual interest and also helps perspective.

I know all of this is going to seem like a lot of stuff to work on, just post some non-comic art or drawings or sketches and we will do our best to give more specific advice.

Pifman

Personally, I'd ditch the drop shadows on the panels. They're just distracting. Also try making your URL and copyright info less distracting? As for the art, I think there's a lot of room for you to grow, but I'm having a hard time knowing exactly what to tell you. It's just... stale? It just looks like it's all cutout from construction paper or something. It's just really hard for me to put my finger on it. It's all so, ultra-flat.