Webcomic: Green Lion

[earthkid]

This is my first foray into illustrating a webcomic, and my writer's first go at writing one! Because of this, we're interested in plenty of feedback and any critiques on the story and images. If you just want to go read it for fun, that's great too, of course. wink You can see all the full pages on our website, but here are a handful of previews to get an idea of what it looks like!

www.greenlioncomic.com

[[Kako]]

Speaking as someone who uses a really large monitor and a high resolution, your header is obnoxiously big. To comfortably read a webcomic I'd like to be able to see more than 1/3 of the page without scrolling. Your page layouts seem to be actively interrupted about this, as I'll read the top-left panel and try to go to the top-right only to scroll down and realise that there was another panel I was supposed to read in-between. The file size of your pages is massive, too, which highlights the huge header as the pages themselves take a moment to load. The first three pages of your comic are each around 1 1/2 MB, which is totally unnecessary. I'd suggest saving the pages as JPGs rather than PNGs, it should result in a much smaller file size.

Your placement of text and speech bubbles could use a lot of work. It took me a while to even notice the text in this page, particularly in the first two panels. The placement of the text is boring and with no speech bubble there's nothing to draw my eye to it. On this page, the tails of the speech bubbles are disconcerting. You don't need to have the speech bubbles always line up to the person's mouth, but generally they should at least end near the front of the speaker's head. In reading that page, I get the impression first of the woman's ear speaking, then the young man's shoulder. Next it's the back of the woman's head, because that's where the tail of the speech-bubble is pointing to. It's not the worst mistake you can make with speech bubbles in a comic, but it can get distracting to the reader. You should also be careful with how you break up your speech bubbles. Because there is a long gap between the bubbles that say "Did you head about Newman's Presentation?" and "Says he found another element!", I perceive an actual pause between the sentences. Imagining someone actually speaking, that's a really weird spot for someone to pause.

I like the art, though I feel as though you could stand to vary the angle a bit. We seem to always be looking at the characters at about eye-level, which can get monotonous. Your noses look kind of flat when seen at certain angles, which is fine on it's own but seems inconsistent with how they are rendered at other angles.

Overall, this is a very good start and I look forward to seeing what you do in the future! smile

[earthkid]

Thank you so much for the feedback, especially about the speech bubbles. I've been fumbling my way through how to arrange them, and hopefully subsequent pages will have the text laid out in a more comfortable way.

I'll also put re-uploading the pages as .jpgs on my to-do list, and talk to my coding person about the layout!

[A Random Cat]

earthkid

I have to say that this comic is stunningly beautiful and also very hard to critique. I have to say my only major complaint was the size of the text bubbles and their placement. Often comics try to vary the sizes of the bubbles to give emphasis on major points. Otherwise the conversation falls flat and may bore the reader. This Page in particular could do with a little dynamic text. Such as the first interjection "HELIX!" could be made big and bold, almost startling the reader, just like Helix.

Another little nitpick is how you arrange it. Proximity is everything in comics, and if your text hangs, the message doesn't always carry. In this page, the lines "and cannot leave soon enough" is introduced right after the first line because the eye is drawn to it. This doesn't allow the reader to grasp the beautiful detail and emotion in the scenery before they move on. If it where arranged so that their proximity was far apart (First line above the angel's head, while the last line can fit snuggly in the white corner), the dialogue is better absorbed by the reader. Just try it and see what you think!

biggrin I'll be reading this. Your art is wonderfully sublime. I have to ask what media you used for the first panels. Watercolor or copic marker, perhaps? Beautiful all the same. Keep it up.

[-2o]

Now it's not entirely your fault as it is partially a function of the fact that what we see here is not a complete work (so I have less incentive to continue since i'm actually waiting) but from your writing (and I understand you are the illustrator, but it's just easier to say 'you' so assume i'm talking to them), I would not continue.

You're doing too much telling. We're told the main character does not like all the commotion of the holidays but we see people walking down the street in an orderly fashion. We are told people disapprove of his lifestyle, and he seems rather annoyed about it, but other than some really mild ribbing, we learn the extent of this disapproval by his friend, whose name I can't remember because all he did was play the role of exposition dump for a scene. Your writer wasn't very subtle in this regard.

We watch him go home brooding. He remains there long enough to have his father show some general disapproval and then he instantly heads back out to go to the bar, only we don't see him actually do that, we just hear the conversation which conveniently dumps exposition, and then we leave the scene to go to Niagara Falls.

So we don't see any commotion, we dont see any real disapproval but we are told both of these things are there. We do however, get to see the main character brooding about, which really doesn't interest me in the slightest.

Additionally, I don't know who wrote the characters pages, but it is really far too much information. Now it's not quite on the level of rattling off things like blood type and all that, but do we really need to know what the last book any of these men read? Do we need to know their height and weights? Does it need to be stated, about a picture that is in color, what their color their anythings are? Now i'm guessing that their tarot cards are plot relevant because otherwise why would it be there, but do we really need to know the full layout of these characters lives so far?

Now I damn sure don't speak for everybody but if a cast page is going to have info on it, i'd like it to be A) relevant and B) describe something that the comic has told us already. It's not so bad with Ryan and Helix, but holy s**t Adam? There's no way that your comic isn't going to have to explain that info again, so why saddle your bios with it? A character page is supposed to be succinct, and tell us the basics and interest the reader in the people who are supposed to be center stage.

Your writer has used it as an info dump and has given far too much away far too soon. Maybe i'm more character oriented than some of your readers, but I would've liked to be able to have "discovered" (by virtue of reading of course) that Adam learn how to make great tea or that Ryan is affable or yadda yadda. Too much telling. And here's where the fact that its an incomplete work screws you- I now know a bunch of s**t that has not been introduced in the comic, so I must wait until your comic gets to information you've already told me. And I have no particular desire to do that.

[earthkid]

@ A Random Cat: Thank you for the advice! I see what you mean about the text emphasis and placement. And thank you for the comments about my art. The first handful of pages were done with comic markers, but that got too expensive to carry on with.

@-2o: I think the vast majority of your problems would be resolved if we had another 30 pages out for you to read immediately. The next chapter or so will expand more on a lot of the themes that you felt were lacking emphasis. You might be mistaking what's just being introduced as a developing storyline as something that's abandoned too quickly. (For instance, the main character's relationship with his family.) If the story just isn't your thing, then that's fine, no need to check back in when we update.

As for the character bios, well, they're a fun little device to give extra information to the readers, and I think for most people they don't give or take much from the experience. The tarot cards are thematically important, and the books are for enriching the setting and saying a bit more about how the characters interact with the time period. None of the information featured is a "spoiler", nor is it completely superfluous.

[-2o]

earthkid

@-2o: I think the vast majority of your problems would be resolved if we had another 30 pages out for you to read immediately. The next chapter or so will expand more on a lot of the themes that you felt were lacking emphasis. You might be mistaking what's just being introduced as a developing storyline as something that's abandoned too quickly. (For instance, the main character's relationship with his family.) If the story just isn't your thing, then that's fine, no need to check back in when we update.

As for the character bios, well, they're a fun little device to give extra information to the readers, and I think for most people they don't give or take much from the experience. The tarot cards are thematically important, and the books are for enriching the setting and saying a bit more about how the characters interact with the time period. None of the information featured is a "spoiler", nor is it completely superfluous.

I actually agree that the incompleteness is what drives a great deal of my critique, but that telling instead of showing is a tendency your writer is displaying early, so I just wanted the two of you to be aware of that. Yours is the kind of comic that i'd probably not 'check up on' but i'd give it a look once it was over, it seems like the kind of slow developing story that would lend itself better to that kind of reading. As for the character bios, I will simply agree that it's a matter of personal taste and leave it at that. Still, good luck with your comic.