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PopCoutureComics Moral obligations advice/critique
Gallann
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Drawing is... well, the drawing! Which you stated is not of your own creation.
Presentation is what I consider to be more of a graphic design skill. For a solid presentation, all elements need to fit together. At first glance, the element which doesn't fit is the speech bubbles and text. Compared to the line art and the lines that make up the panel, they are very thick. It's almost as if they were place there as an after thought.
On the subject of fonts... pick one, you're using 3!
I'm not big on the art because everything looks like a diagram. I suppose that would be great if I found this in the back of an airplane seat, but as it is, it's the Internet.
Don't be disheartened. Critique here can seem very harsh, but it is always meant constructively, unless you're being a dick.
That's what this place is good for, getting better at art.
However if your response to honest critique and a few sarcastic jabs is to instantly shut down, you'd probably do well to just cut your losses and quit.
The tracing is fine. Go with it. Develop it. Do your thing.
Artistic merit is great and all - but if everyone was Pixar, no one would be South Park, Aqua Teen Hunger Force, Space Ghost, or Waking Life/A Scanner Darkly.
The presentation doesn't HAVE to be slick. When you dress up Punk Rock it's no longer Punk Rock - it's Blink 182.
One of the things you'll run into when you're going in a different direction is that people who put there time and energy into becoming amazing illustrators will tend to feel some degree of derision that you're not. It's human nature and we all do it. I'm a composer/musician and I'm guilty of it sometimes.
Sometimes people that aren't fellow creators will look at it and say "well that's not what it's supposed to be" - but it's exactly what it's supposed to be, it's whatever you want it to be - so keep at it.
One of my favorite webcomics is Married to the Sea:
http://www.marriedtothesea.com/
As far as I know they just caption existing public domain illustrations.
Anyway - that's my advice/critique.
But - and I don't want to discourage the OP from posting their work, but this is true - this forum is predominantly geared towards artists and illustrators. If you post on here the artwork is gonna be the thing most of us pay attention to. So I think you're being a little bit disingenuous here; there's lots of places to get feedback on comics and if you post on an art forum then it's usually presumed that you want critique on the actual art.
All that said, if we take it that you're not going to change up the art method (and mind you, while I think you could make more of it, I've seen much worse 'traced' comics), then we're still going to want to talk about the other visual aspects of the comic. MagicToaster is right, presentation is really important. Drawing is only a subset of what makes a good comic. Font, speechbubbles and layout are also really important, and these are all things that you can work on - that you need to work on - which don't have anything to do with the art but could quickly and radically improve people's first impressions when they look at your work.
I think you should heed Magic's advice about fonts, he really does know what he's talking about. There's a lot of clashing elements here. I'd also suggest you look into guttering between your panels, the format you're using here is detracting from the overall impression of the strip.
I don't really want to have that discussion. But I think it's more accurate to say that being that the forum is geared towards artists and illustrators the process is going to be what most of y'us pay attention to.
I was going to link a blog that I used to love - it was a music blog but the design was busy as hell, a million different sized fonts, neon pink and green and yellow. It was this amazing gaudy mess. It looked like an Atari 2600 ate a black and white copying machine and vomited up over an infomercial from the seventies. It was like nothing I'd ever seen and I don't think it was intentional. I just went to the page and it's been redesigned. Neat rows, uniform fonts - it looks like every other blog out there including my own.
There's a reason for design rules, and the OP posted to get feedback.. but when everyone goes down the same road they tend to end up in the same place. I think that's a shame.
..anyway.. not sure that's really relevant to the thread but since you quoted that line from my other post - I want to make sure it's known that I didn't mean to say anyone was being mean-spirited.
Just that it's a natural inclination for peers to be a bit biased.
Happiness and Butterflies, y0.