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Johns (Web Comic)

medstrommedstrom Registered User new member
edited January 2010 in Artist's Corner
These are a couple of the strips I been working on, my friend suggested I put some stuff up here since you guys actually read comic strips and are fellow artists instead of hiding them in my old ass myspace blog.

I been a fan of PA and never thought to check out the forums.
Reading a few posts here I already see some things I should fix. Wish I knew about this sooner, it seems your are a very good community, I could learn alot. :D

johns22.png

johns13a.png

johns24.png

medstrom on

Posts

  • MustangMustang Arbiter of Unpopular Opinions Registered User regular
    edited January 2010
    Okay some things are not jelling for me here.

    1. The mouths look like red 2 dimensional shapes stuck to the face. It's really quite jarring.
    2. You're charachters display very little in the way of emotion, apart from varying their mouth size it's not doing much else.
    3. Your line-widths are very uniform, dark outlines and thin features. You need to push your self a bit harder in this area because it make them look like cutouts. Which goes back to the mouth problem.
    4. Your choice of font is really quite difficult to read at this size. You might want to consider somthing neater, if not you really need to make it a lot less verbose. As it stands, it's a chore to read.
    5. Your jokes need some fine tuning, always remember if it doesn't make you laugh, it's simply not funny.

    Okay that all sounds pretty harsh, but I'm only offering this up because I think there is definate potential here. So don't take it to heart, I wouldn't offer advise if I didn't think it was any good, they're just some things to think about. Also welcome to the forums. :)

    Mustang on
  • medstrommedstrom Registered User new member
    edited January 2010
    Mustang wrote: »
    Okay some things are not jelling for me here.

    1. The mouths look like red 2 dimensional shapes stuck to the face. It's really quite jarring.
    2. You're charachters display very little in the way of emotion, apart from varying their mouth size it's not doing much else.
    3. Your line-widths are very uniform, dark outlines and thin features. You need to push your self a bit harder in this area because it make them look like cutouts. Which goes back to the mouth problem.
    4. Your choice of font is really quite difficult to read at this size. You might want to consider somthing neater, if not you really need to make it a lot less verbose. As it stands, it's a chore to read.
    5. Your jokes need some fine tuning, always remember if it doesn't make you laugh, it's simply not funny.

    Okay that all sounds pretty harsh, but I'm only offering this up because I think there is definate potential here. So don't take it to heart, I wouldn't offer advise if I didn't think it was any good, they're just some things to think about. Also welcome to the forums. :)

    I appreciate any criticisms on the subject matter, i want to get good at this as it brings me tons of enjoyment.
    Man I been really racked trying to get a good font, I know theres not a "this is the best font ever" font, but do you know of a real great one, I have no problem paying to get a good font that pops.

    thank you for taking your time to check it out :D

    medstrom on
  • BroloBrolo Broseidon Lord of the BroceanRegistered User regular
    edited January 2010
    Art wise you're doing a lot of work with shading, colouring, and that's good, but you need to go back and work on your actual characters.

    The current design you have right now for the dark-haired guy lacks a lot of things that act as "tells" to convey expression or emotion. Things like eyebrows, pupils, lips, cheeks, forehead creases and nostrils can all be used to make your character say things simply with their body language. The face, much more so than text, is the most important way to let people know what your character is feeling.

    The same thing goes for the body as well. Your character has no arms, and while that can work in some cases stylistically, it's also going to be very limiting when you're trying to depict your character doing certain actions or interacting with people. Punching someone, high-fiving or even things like driving will become more difficult to convey if a character's hands are simply circles.

    In the last comic especially, your character looks stiff. His legs are just parallel stubs, and he looks like he was copy pasted from the first panel to the last. Showing his body bending and moving will help exaggerate his actions, and make it easier to tell what he's actually doing with his body.

    Spend some time warming up with simple pencil sketches of both your characters doing actions in different positions. Things like dancing, riding bikes, showing them from different angles. At such an early stage in your comic don't be afraid to switch up their designs as well.

    While you're at it, the universal advice that everyone gets here still applies: Draw from life. Get a friend to pose the same way you want a character posed in a panel, and then draw them as accurately as you can. Then take that same drawing you did in a realistic style, and start find the parts you want to exaggerate to make them 'cartoony'.

    Most importantly, keep posting your work in this thread! You'll get a lot of good advice from the other artists here, and as you update this thread people will continue to give you feedback. Good luck and welcome to the forums!

    Brolo on
  • medstrommedstrom Registered User new member
    edited January 2010
    I'll def look to some redesigns, I want to turn this into something better then it is, I'm not around nearly enough artists in my little corn town,I'm glad I can come here, I will def take into advisement what you have all posted. :D

    Hope to be back with some improved work.

    medstrom on
  • CheerfulBearCheerfulBear Registered User regular
    edited January 2010
    You need to fix some of your grammar:

    "John died the way he would have wanted."

    "There's no way John's going to have a better outfit than me at this year's costume party."

    You're also missing lots of commas and such, but I don't want to type those out.

    CheerfulBear on
  • Agent ColemanAgent Coleman Registered User regular
    edited January 2010
    You made a street sharks reference, that's 1000 points right there. Also, in the same comic, it seems to be missing the "punchline". The 3rd panel could be the 2nd panel, setting up the punchline in the 3rd panel. Or maybe if you gave another line to the street shark in the 3rd panel instead. Just seems to be hanging.

    Agent Coleman on
  • ManonvonSuperockManonvonSuperock Registered User regular
    edited January 2010
    don't encourage that. the street shark comic pretty much fails to have a joke, it's based solely off of obscure pop-culture reference and less obscure pop culture reference. There was a guy in here not too long back that suffered from the same downfall in his comics.

    however, that is a pretty solid drawing of Krang's body.

    ManonvonSuperock on
  • L.E.O.L.E.O. Registered User regular
    edited January 2010
    this vector-like style you have would maybe be good for animation, but not for a comic.

    like rolo said the emotion is lacking and im having difficulty believing that those balls are supposed to be hands, i think you should get rid of that "no arms, only floating hands" deal. its looks confusing, when you have multiple characters on one panel theres like 6 floating balls and its just like whaaaat.

    L.E.O. on
  • brokecrackerbrokecracker Registered User regular
    edited January 2010
    I am having a hard time distinguishing your characters from the background. You might want to watch the contrast there, make the background lighter or darker by enough of a margin so that you can see the silhouette of the figure.

    It might just be my monitor at this shitty work computer, but the hair and body of the "goth" character appear to be the same.

    brokecracker on
  • Agent ColemanAgent Coleman Registered User regular
    edited January 2010
    ManonvonSuperock, I mentioned that in my post, how the comic has no punchline. That is much more important then street sharks. I just enjoyed seeing street sharks in a comic is all.

    Agent Coleman on
  • KalTorakKalTorak One way or another, they all end up in the Undercity.Registered User regular
    edited January 2010
    It took me a very long time to figure out what went where in the first panel of the first comic.

    Also it's difficult to distinguish the goth character's body and hair from the floor.

    KalTorak on
  • medstrommedstrom Registered User new member
    edited January 2010
    Sounds like I got alot of work to do If I'm going to get this where it needs to be, I broke out my sketch book and have just been drawing and observing people, then I'll attempt some redesigns. Maby Just a few months of plain old drawing too could help greatly. (Getting away fromt he computer for a bit)

    Dropping the ball hands entirely. (those were for some animation tests I done where I could use alot of the same art) Will look into the background lighting issues as well.

    Well if Street Sharks won't mesh, I better stay away from Insectoids, Inhumanoids, Visionarys, and Mighty Max jokes as well... obscure crap is a huge short coming of mine in real life. ;)

    Perhaps addressing some huge grammer issues isn't going to hurt anything either, thanks all I hope I can bring back something better in the future.

    medstrom on
  • ManonvonSuperockManonvonSuperock Registered User regular
    edited January 2010
    medstrom wrote: »
    I better stay away from mentioning Insectoids, Inhumanoids, Visionarys, and Mighty Max instead of having jokes as well...

    corrected.

    ManonvonSuperock on
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