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My First Comic Strip
rimmonhouse
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Just adjusting the levels or curves in your pencil drawing so the gray lines are as dark and clear as the photoshop talk bubbles would help.
1) I prefer micron pens, get everything... They make a combo pack for like $20 that has a .01, .03, .05, .08, and 1.0 (sometimes there's a graphic brush in there instead which is fun to use, especially for laying down heavy black areas. Really though just try a bunch of stuff out. Hit up your local college art store or large art store (not Michael's, they won't let you try shit out before you buy it) where they have everything on display to test, and just play around with different pens until you find something you love that's easy to use.
2) Yes, gutters are the space between panels, you need them otherwise it's hard to tell where the comic starts and stops, especially when you start adding in backgrounds.
Past that, I have to say that your cartoon face construction is really good. I like it. I also like the joke, but consider something. There's 1 comic about video games that makes it's creators a good living. There's about 20 that make their creators a comfortable living so that they don't need an outside job, and there's about six thousand that are just out there, with 100 people reading each one of them.
I don't know if your comic is a video game comic specifically, but if it is, you might want to consider a different subject matter to tackle.
Also, I thought the joke was really funny.
facebook.com/LauraCatherwoodArt
also, the pointing hand has the thumb on the wrong place.
i don't know how bit your originals are, but try to draw them at a lager size to get smoother lines.
Say I came in here with paintings of water lilies. Would you crit them by saying "you know that like, Monet is already super successful at the waterlily thing, right? Can you beat Monet?" Outside of a business standpoint, if video games are an aspect of this person's life, and he/she wants to draw comics about them, then I don't think it matters if other people also do that. This is a forum about improving and I'm pretty sure that the OP can improve, even by continuing to draw comics about video games.
facebook.com/LauraCatherwoodArt
I agree with you on this, to an extent. From a general stand point, if making video game comics makes you happy, and that is what you are looking to get out of this, then absolutely do so. It's important to love what you are doing first and foremost.
On the other hand: generally, people who make comics do it for interaction rather than personal progression. As an art form that is, by it's very nature, designed to be sold or published in mass rather than stand alone, attaching a quantitative critique does not seem to be an unreasonable assessment in my eyes. Even if it were to be a money-making enterprise, it's certainly not impossible to jump into the video game critique market with an appropriate niche (for example Dark Legacy is fairly new and successful, but they found a space not heavily focused on and worked there. Same is true for The Punchline is Machismo.). But having a unique niche is a good idea for developing a reader base.
Again, if that's not the intention here, totally ignore everything above. Fun first.
1) Blambot is the best place to go, and mostly free. Pick something readable but unique to your style. The KISS generally applies to fonts, but not always.
2) There are a ton of resources in the OP of this thread that can help you out: http://forums.penny-arcade.com/showthread.php?t=105734
I agree ENTIRELY that if the goal is just to improve art and have fun drawing comics as a hobby then by all means do whatever makes you happy. Hell if the goal is to eventually be self supported by ads and your readership and book sales then do whatever makes you happy. At the end of the day it's your art.
The only reason I even made the first post is because I had just listed to a great podcast from Joel over at Hijinks Ensue where he, Danielle Corsetto, the guys from Cyanide and Happiness, and a few others did a panel at C2E2 and talked about webcomics as a business model and made some good points, which I paraphrased in my above post.
All I was saying is that if your goal is to eventually make a buck off of your comic, having it be about video game humor has a small chance of drawing a big crowd and a large chance of getting tossed into a very big pool of people who already cover the subject matter and have an average of five years art and writing development over the OP.
From a business standpoint, having a comic based around a more niche concept can help to draw a smaller, but more supportive readership. That's just my .02 cents though. Personally I love the strip above, the joke, and the character faces, and OP I think you've got a lot of potential