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Well Equipped
Firia
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
I recently drew this. I'm working on building manga (japanese comic style, for the uninformed) styled comics, and am practicing some one pagers. Since I'm playing Twilight Princess right now, LoZ became my focus. 
I hope those in the know of the LoZ worlds will get those joke. Its become obvious that those that arn't familure with the world... just don't get it.
There'll be more at my DA as I make them. This is posted at a smaller ratio so as to not freak forum-goers out. The full sized version can be found at my Deviant Art site.
I hope those in the know of the LoZ worlds will get those joke. Its become obvious that those that arn't familure with the world... just don't get it.
There'll be more at my DA as I make them. This is posted at a smaller ratio so as to not freak forum-goers out. The full sized version can be found at my Deviant Art site.
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One thing though: your characters seem to just stare into space, and the person who is not Link looks... wonky. Study anatomy before you get into this manga thing (or japanese comics for the uninformed).
I second this entire post. By way of emphasizing the "study anatomy" part, i cannot stop looking at the guy's pose in the bottom left (bottom right in japanese, for the uninformed) panel. Like some sort of frog, or pelican, he is.
But yeah, the general idea is pretty hilarious.
Link is a rupee thief.
Well I'm glad you found love where you expected to find hate.
Please be more specific with this wonkiness. The only panel that I eer felt sketchy over after the whole think was done was panel 1, where it looks like the guys belt and pants are riding a little to high. Not that I like to point this thing out at all. :P
Plus, unless his mouth is mammoth cave, his teeth don't look right.
The belt is really the least of it, although those pants ARE like six inches higher in the first panel than in any other.
In the second panel, heads don't turn that way, looks like his neck is broken. This is because you show so much of his back and still present the face in a nearly straight-on perspective. Also the shirt wrinkle on his left shoulder makes his arm look broken, like it starts in one direction and unnaturally curves in another.
Fourth panel, his right hand is weird but it's overall serviceable.
Bottom left panel, as i said before, i cannot stress enough how weird his head and neck look here. His head seems to have taken on the shape of an enormous soup can, with this big, round, flat bottom that the neck attaches to like a hinge. This is a tough angle to pull off, but it can easily be solved by taking a snapshot of someone looking up and using that for reference. For best results, your reference subject's head should not be a soup can.
In the last panel, man...where to begin. I won't even bring up the teeth, because i think i know where you were going with that. But that face is just all kinds of wrong. It looks caved-in and flat, you just kind of abandon everything you had previously set up for how the character should look. Looks like you were just kinda trying to cram too much into the panel and ran out of room. To free up some space, i'd suggest that you don't really need the second panel on the bottom row. You've got Link jumping off the cliff with the chicken, and you've got him picking up the rupee. In a one-pager, that's all you need. An extra shot of him falling is extraneous.
Also upon further consideration, i think the "WTF" should be replaced. It just doesn't fit, either in manga or the Zelda universe.
I hope this helps. As everyone else has pointed out, it's absolutely imperative that you get anatomy down before you pick up that "Learn to Draw Manga" book. Just because the characters are stylized doesn't mean they don't have bones or any other rules to follow.
In manga, it's like opposite land. Right is the new left, up is the new down. ;-)
Oh.
Oh no.
Only to find you getting all huffy in your journal entry because people criticized your anatomy.
Classy.
As far as i can tell, there are two reasons to post artwork online. One is to make money. Two is to be open to constructive criticism, to want to better yourself at your hobby or career of choice. Because if all you want is an empty congratulations and a pat on the back, that's what friends and family are for.
I've only been here, like....a week and a half, myself. But if you actually browse around, get to know some of these people and their craft for like, ten minutes, you'll quickly see this isn't a place that exists to hand out gold stars. Everyone here takes their time to offer their own unique voice, experience, and expertise. My advice? Don't take it for granted.
In the first panel we have a large heavily shaded... blob? Which I assume is supposed to be a rock? And some deciduous-looking leaves.
Panel 2: nothing
Panel 3: A line which could represent a cliff and then some sort of grassy area with a fence that makes no sense at that angle... (I'm assuming that since he DROPPED his rupee, we're looking *down*, unless somehow the rupee magically floated up above his head, which would make the perspective make more sense, but then the text wouldn't make any sense.)
Panel 4-6: no background
Panel 7: Pine trees and clouds. The pine trees are nicely done, except that there haven't been pine trees in any of the other panels, so it's like dude, where'd those come from? The clouds are at the wrong angles.
Panel 8-9: no background
Panel 10: smudgy lump of ground. Link looks like he's about to fall off a cliff... and why is he missing the back of his shirt?
Overall, I think this would be much better if you spaced it out so that the content of panels 1-6 (with real backgrounds actually showing the terrrain) occupy the entirety of the page. Link pulling a chicken out of nowhere is funny enough to be the end of the page right there. Then you can expand the last four panels into their own page, giving the reader enough information and better views of the characters (seriously, the last panel makes no sense) to make sense of the punchline.
To be fair, this is not the only place I posted my artwork, and not the only source of people telling me that my anatomy needs work. I get it. Enough people tell you, there might be something to it. However, being that this wasn't the only art forum I've posted in, I was more irritated by people telling me that Manga is not art. I think I have plent of reason to get a little huffy. Some would same can be said for nude photography, or surrealism if you were so inclined to feel that way (which I do not).
So thank you for your critisism. I do appriciate that, and it does help me grow. Your sarcasm towards any offence I've recived elsewhere, you can save.
Secondly, some of the cats posting above had detailed what's wrong with the anatomy in your comic, and given the opportunity to go back, you have just that very opportunity. I encourage you to sit down and redo this comic focusing on fixing the parts that have been pointed out. Yes, Manga is art but very routinely its bad art. But with any art, if something looks wrong than it's wrong, this applies even to Manga.
Heh, :P yeah, I do agree. He came by about a week ago. I appriciate his intent (which was to perk me up), but I didn't feel like he had anything useful to say.
Well, when I say, "give the opertunity," I'm mostly thinking about time and energy. I did this page when I had a fair amount of spare time. The coming week (this weekend included) lacks that free time. For energy; on one hand, a group of people have given me a list of things I could use here to improve! That's good stuff and I'll see about keeping it in mind. On the other hand, I've been told off based on my work (not so much in this forum), and that really knocks my enthusiasm down a peg.
If you're willing to give this huffy brat a chance, take a peek at my DA scraps. Some of those are a year or a year and a half old. I am listening to advice to improve, and it shows (a little self pat on the back). I'll check back here after I've employed the tips offered above.
It's an anime thing. When someone is angry or yelling they do it, goto ...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=43ZCAt7Bw-g
1:29/2:51 and you'll see it happen and 1:59/2:51 will show it from normal teeth to 'mammoth cave' teeth. Just a trend for that style and he was following it.
As for crits on the comic, I really can't saying that has already been said. I found it funny because I've played the Zelda games too long to not get the joke.
I don't suffer from Insanity. I enjoy every minute of it.
I took a look at your scraps. You'd be amazed at how fast you could improve in the next year and a half if you seriously studied some anatomy. Also take a gander at art outside of Japanese comics, the more broad your inspiration and skill, they more tools you'll have to make the best manga you can.
Okay, so I did that to help me explain things a little better. No one's mentioned your lettering yet, so I'm going to cover it. It appears you have the technical approach of constructing balloons and placing text in them down, which is good, however you appear to lack the aesthetic of choosing correct balloon shape and placement.
Why do you use a completely different font for the balloons that the green arrows point to? You should use as few fonts as possible, reserving font variance for very specific situations. i.e. a robot character speaks in a digital font, the main character's narrative thought captions are in a different font, etc. On top of that, your alternative font uses lowercase letters where the main one does not. Avoid doing that.
The tails of the balloons should point towards the mouth of the character that is speaking. I've drawn Cyan lines extending the tails of the balloons that do not do this, illustrating my point. In the first panel, NotLink's forehead is saying "huh." In the second panel, it appears as if a character off-screen is stating the line. In the fifth panel, it almost looks like the emblem on link's sword is screaming "no problem".
Why is the text with yellow arrows pointing at it using a different alignment than the the rest? The first balloon mentioned is using "left alignment" instead of center, and the last balloon appears to be using center, but it looks like you have a space after "wtf!" and before you hit enter, throwing the spacing off.
The Red-Orange circles point out when you have an awkwardly large white space in your balloons. The Magenta arrows point to places where your text is too close to your balloon. All text should have room to "breath" meaning that usually, there should be enough white space inbetween the text and the balloon that is equal to roughly the height/width of one letter from the font you are using.
If you are lettering fully digitally, which it appears you are, you should type your text first, making sure to keep the text in roughly the desired shape for your panel, then make the balloon behind it. If you are using Illustrator, you can hold down alt so that when you drag your oval it is being drawn from the center and not from the corner, that helps a lot.
If you read a lot of Manga (or Japanese comics for the uninformed
I strongly suggest if you are interested in Japanese culture that you pick up at least one Usagi Yojimbo book. Stan Sakai is a native born Japanese, but studied in Hawaii, and produces his comics in the U.S. He has won multiple awards for his lettering skills alone. Buy at least one of those books. It's less than 15 dollars, and what you learn from there will be priceless (and they're really good).
It's a subtle mistake, but I felt it should be pointed out. However, I see what you are saying, my phrasing may have been a touch harsh. No harshities intended at all, just an exaggeration, to explain my point.
Also, does anyone actually say "WTF"? I've never heard anyone say "doubleyou tee eff". Write out the actual phrase or choose different dialogue. You would never see something like that in a movie script, and it doesn't belong in a comic.
Some of the drawings are pretty good, so keep on working hard on that.
I use a program that plots out work ballons based on their contents. So if anything looks cluttered, to open, or whatnot, it's the programs doing, and I was just ok with the result.
The fonts however, a mistake.