Here it is. Again.

http://www.drunkduck.com/BK_Shattered_Hate

Oh GAWD. This is like the THIRD TIME.
I would review it, but I still have a reputation of being an arrogant jackass who won't touch manga to keep up.

It's really too bad that we had to abandon Obscure by Species because NO ONE WOULD REVIEW IT. I mean, geez, we already have 2 or 3 pages of people wanting reviews yet they don't take the time to review other people's comics. Which is like..part of the point really. Geez...

Anyway okay, here we go. BKSH.

Let me say this; this one angry kid. ONE ANGRY KID. I mean, geez, yeah he might have the soul of a demon trapped inside him, but this is one guy even Tom Cruise would reccommend to take some prozac.

First I'll list what I've found sort of annoying about this comic; it relies too much on color. Unfortunatly the art itself is severely lacking. It looks flat, and from start to finish has problems in proportions (and it's been going on for a while!) A lot of times the characters don't look placed right. It's easy to tell them apart, but it doesn't seem like the creator is trying his best to improve. Practicing more realistic stuff first would help, since this is a story that would benfit a lot from more realistic looking people as it's such a dark story.

Another thing is pacing. I get turned off by the blobs of text in the early part of the story. It tries to draw you in too fast and doesn't take time to give the reader many establishing shots. One thing I try to do at least when doing a comic is pace it out over a number of pages with establishing shots. It's one of the many things that can stop you from feeling something is off when your read the comic yourself (and of course the creator is going to read his or her own work a lot).

The mood of this comic is the one thing that the creator has down pat. Moody colors, moody atmosphere, moody people, despair, death, and all kinds of other stuff are in this. Maybe focusing a little less on the mood and a little more on establishing shots and pacing would make this comic very much better.

All in all I like this comic. It's interesting to see how the story is progressing, and all of these characters are so messed up. There's the angel who I kind of want to die, there's the kid who is super messed up and at the moment going berserk, and that wierd guy in black. Plus that stupid kid who bullies the main character who has since ended up in a bloody pulp.

I'll keep reading it, and there's definitly certain things I've liked about it so far, but that's not to say improvements couldn't be made.

ART
You've improved. A little. See the things is, you can obviously outphotoshop anyone on the block. Your energy and motion blur effects, especially during Cedric's recent transformation are really really cool. Your grasp of anatomy even seems to be better than before, as the profiles even make sense. But there are still lots of moments where the lineart is just wrong, and it's glaring obvious when sitting right next to these jaw dropping photoshop effects. It really doesn't look like you actually go in and plan the figures out using shapes. I mean, when something as simple as an anime style head looks like someone ran over it, you clearly aren't trying heard enough. Things like limbs bent at weird angles (and not just when someone is breaking them) and shirts flapping about in ways that don't make sense just bother me alot. Then there's also the fact that your art looks astoundingly flat. The way you draw and shade the characters, I don't really know why, looks like paper cut outs, especially standing in front of the very detailed backgrounds. I think it has a lot to do with your line art, which is always of one width unless there's and extreme close up. Now, I'm not saying go all ultra thick black outlines on me, but just expreiment a little, make some things thicker, especially when they're closer to the camera. If you look at any professional comic book artist, alomost none of them use only one width of line. So try it out, okay? Maybe a little harder shading in the characters too, because the soft things you've got going on doesn't make them look three dimensional. Try putting a shadow under people's chins, by the way. That will help a lot.

Even with my gripes, the line art has improved, which is good. Some of the action poses are even impessive now.

But about those action poses. You use a lot of motion blur. A LOT. What's bad about this, is that you often use motion blur to give a sense of action to poses that normally wouldn't have it. You're using it somewhat like a crutch. As in, the gesture of the poses would not actually look like it was moving if you didn't use so much motion blur. Now, I understand that sometimes the motion blur makes sense when crazy otherworldly demons are kicking the crap out of each other. But look at this page. http://www.drunkduck.com/BK_Shattered_Hate/index.php?p=6791 Do you really, really need all that blur? 5 out of that page's six panels are blurred! There's not even any real action going on! Just a bunch of glaring! There are other ways to make a moment feel dramatic. Personally, I don't think those two eyes at the beggining need that blur. I feel they would be much stronger without it. On this page http://www.drunkduck.com/BK_Shattered_Hate/index.php?p=6793 The blur is actually hurting the flow of action, as the way you've blurred his foot in the last panel is contradictory to the way it was moving in the previous panel. And then here http://www.drunkduck.com/BK_Shattered_Hate/index.php?p=6794 the flipping and even the panel before that are okay blurred, but then that last panel is not actiony enough! He landed dramatically, right? Have the grass around him billowing outwards or something, cuz the transition between the flipping and the landing is really jarring. And here's a page where you are clearly using the blur as a crutch. http://www.drunkduck.com/BK_Shattered_Hate/index.php?p=6796 Neither of Cedric's poses look like they would be moving foward if the whole world hadn't just gone blurry to represent his speed (not to mention why are we able to see up both of his pant legs in the bottom panel? That doesn't make sense with the way his legs are bent). You jsut don't need to use this http://www.drunkduck.com/BK_Shattered_Hate/index.php?p=6800 much blur. That first panel would have been waaay more dramatic had we seen his evilly glowing hand in perfect clarity as opposed to blurry blur. Here's one last page to prove my point http://www.drunkduck.com/BK_Shattered_Hate/index.php?p=6834 On that page, Cedric looks like he's sort of skipping throught the air, he does not look like he's charging towards Claudita at unimaginable speed, which is what he's doing.

So you get my point right? Your action should look like action even if you didn't blur it, due to the strength of the gesture. A simple punch in the face can look powerful just by the flowing though of the punch motion and the reeling back of the punched guy's head, all without ridiculous amounts of blur.

On a final art note, the persective on the backgrounds has greatly improved. I think you might have even used a ruler! Sorry. Just last time I looked at this, the perspecive was horrible. The corridors of the school were done very well, good job. A note on the trees though, in a few panels we've actually been looking down towards the ground, and the bottom of the trees were NOT ROUND. This made them look like silly paper cut outs as opposed to actual trees. Bad.

Art has improved, but it could still improve a lot more. Keep it up.

WRITING
DRAMA. Drama drama drama drama. I said this last time and it hasn't changed, but there is sooo much drama in this comic. This is not to say I don't like drama. When done well, drama can be powerful and awesome. But the thing about drama, is that it helps to have some non drama to compare the drama to, so that the drama seems way more impactful when it actually happens. But in this comic, there is never not drama. It's all drama, all the time. And the comic is sadistic about it! Whenever it seems like we we're going to get a brake from the drama, it turns out that that sort of happy interlude was just a clever way to give us MORE DRAMA. Claudita met a silly cop, and he was funny. But then Claudita scared him away, and suddenly moaned some more, that if she followed the cop he would probabley have a heart attack, yadda yadda yadda.

On a side note, where you honestly serious with that whole, Klaudia thing? I thought it was sort of a joke, because it was so obviously Claudita in disguise, but then you where all dramatic when you revealed it was her. You really meant for that to be surprising? If so, uh, not good.

But anyways, yeah, this comic never has not bad things happening. And that makes it totally unenjoyable to read for me. It's just bad things after bad things after bad things. If a good thing happened, then the bad things would have more impact.

And also about the drama, there's so much of it, and it's so freaking LOUD. The drama in this comic is always yelling, never sobbing quietly in the corner. Did Claudita really need to freak out for three whole pages when Romeo walked by? Three whole pages of her going "Why Why Why Why Why Why?" while nobody moved, and the motion blur never stopped?

I guess I should say some good things about the story. Well, now that Cedric has finally transformed, and there seems to be a point to all this neverending drama, I'm actually interested. Having a good character in the form of Claudita who I can actually root for makes me happy. Previously it was just Cedric and Romeo beating the crap out of each other, and I didn't want either one to win, just for it to stop, which isn't an enjoyable read. So good, recent developments are interesting.

OVERALL
I don't like this comic. It's soo unhappy that I don't even feel like reading more of it. The art has improved since I last reviewed it, but you still use way too much motion blur as an excuse for weak gestures. See, you use your motion blur that same way you use your drama, (ALL THE TIME) and thus, both those things loose their impact. I mean, just imagine, that all the fights up to this point in the comic didn't use motion blur, and then they fight this guy that is so fast, he moves around and there's a motion blur on him. People would be like "WOAH. HOLY CRAP THAT GUY CAN MOVE." Same things with the drama. "What's that, Cedric is bleeding? But didn't that happen two pages ago? And two pages before that? And before that?" Yes, it did.

So keep these things in mind for the future series you plan on doing. Happy (or at least normal) things should balance out all the drama, and then the drama will have much more impact. As opposed to now, where horrible things happen constantly, and I just don't care anymore.

Thank you, and good luck with your comic.

damn egg, that is one long and detailed review

I do these things. Have you not seen my custom title?

<<< It's over there.

Just as a one final thing here, I want to say that although Eggbert can be harsh sometims, his reviews really help. For example when he reviewed my comic a while ago he really summed up a lot of things which I notice now and say 'you know, he really was right'. It's nice getting critisism that, even though it seems really harsh at the beginning, can be applied later on. And of course I haven't fixed all the problems in my comic, but I feel better about it because of what developments I've made thanks to the critisism.

So yeah, don't get your hopes completely down about this. Finish up BKSH, and improve things as you go along, and then when you start a new comic keep Eggbert's critisism's in mind. He's knowledgeable about these things, plus he tells you straight up what's wrong without covering it in a bunch of flowery crap.

So yeah, yay for improvements!

Just so you know, I'm not actually like that. I wanted to see how others react to it, but they didn't, so I'll get to my own little review section. I only read the last two chapters, but I think that's valid enough.

SO.

ART:

What can I say? It's bad AND decent at the same time. First off, you can make some pretty kickin' backgrounds when you want to. Thumbs up to that! It's more than what I could do anyways. You DO know how to use Photoshop filters pretty well, such as clouds and textures. As for the bad, sadly, that's the the important part. Like Kent said, you need work on your figures. I have this book called "how to draw the Marvel way", and it shows action drawings. There's actually a "spectrum", if you will, of action poses to draw, with the action ABOUT to happen on one side (say, the windup in throwing a ball), and on the other, after the action DID happen (the ball thrown, arm extended). Marvel (excellently) suggested that the best way to make it look like action is to go with drawings that are on either side of the "spectrum". And, unfortuately, you tend to draw actions in the middle of the spectrum, when the action IS happening. Technically, your character might not be moving at all, and there's no way to know for sure, which is why you rely on Motion Blurs.
Which brings me to my next part. It's not just the blurs you rely on. It's EVERYTHING. And you certainly don't need it, I assure you. Gradient shades where there should be regular shading. I personally use a kind of Cel shading thing. Sort of. See? I can be eclectic! Moving on... When you use a gradient shade, you can't imitate the folds of clothing! You keep using it for pant legs and such. You really, really should not. It makes your people look like robots. I think you should really work on depth, get a good eye for light, that sort of thing. Try drawing without Photoshop! I do that sometimes, it really helps.
I don't think you used this too much but DON'T use the Cloud filter. Almost everything involving vapors can be done with the airbrush tool.
I actually know a LOT about photoshop. My comics take FOREVER to do, because I spend most of the time just fooling around, seeing if I could do something another way. I usually don't do it. I try to do most of the comic on paper... It can sometimes take a weeek for me to get the line art right. I don't think you do that. I think it takes you about twenty minutes on paper, and the rest is done on the ol' compy. I think that's something you need to work on.

WRITING:
My comic is ENTIRELY gag-based. When I think something is funny, I make it. I don't care how many heads are lopped off in the process or how much blood is strewn 'pon the walls when it's all done. I HATE censorship... nothing spoils a joke like "shit" turned into "*@#$".
But God DAMN, man, do you REALLY have to curse so much? I mean, this is turning me away, and I'm the kind of guy that doesn't mind a curse every once and awhile. It's really, genuinely getting to me, and I can't imagine who else to. Sheesh! It's like you're sailing a pirate ship! You're substituting what could be a good show in litearary ability for a 10-year-old's potty mouth! Something you should work on. And like I always say, BIG WORDS ARE FUN!
Yes, the DRAMA is also a big, big problem. Maybe it's just me, but you need to throw a little bit of comedy in there. That's why I like Eggbert so much. When Eggbert's engaged in a life threatening chase, it's always relieving to see the same three eyed, one eared blue guy get psychologically mortified once again. And chickens! You can't go wrong with chickens.
But REALLY, this is one sad, sad tale. Nothing but bad things over and over... honestly, I could see the same stuff on SoapNet. You need to work on the postive side. Also, how could there POSSIBLY be anyone that even gives a crap about Cedrick if he's just a total asshole to EVERYBODY? I've never seen THAT happen beforel, except for Tim Buckley to all his fans (ba dum CSCH!). It's not very believable.

So all in all... bleagh. I don't like it. But I'm sure you CAN fix it someday. You just gotta be flexible, and you've already shown that you can be. Now act upon it!

Giando makes an excellent point reguarding action poses. The windup and the swing are always more interesting than the actual moment the ball hits the bat. And in a punch, the actual moment the fist hits the face isn't as interesting as the moment when the arm is fully swung and the guy punched is reeling backwards. A good thing to keep in mind.

PS: Giando, as much as I love complments, and hearing bad things about CAD, please try to refer to less sources outside the actual comic being reviewed, okay? Okay.

'Kay!

True. But unless we eventually see the followthrough (i.e. the swing) after the impact, the impact won't make sense.

Also, showing the windup in one panel, and the swing in the next, implies that the impact did in fact, happen, even though it was never actually shown, and this is easy for the reader to follow. Sequential art, and all.

So I'm just stressing the importance of the followthrough here.

It's important.

For me, overdoing it is key... and that's something I don't really see in Kyupol's (?) work.

None of the poses or artwork really takes me over the top. Some of the writing does... occasionally, but the art is plain, and usually, as everyone has made clear here, overblurred.

Why not just gaussian blur the whole thing? You'll get the same effect.

But I kid. To be brutally honest with you, I've never seen a comic go so long, with such little improvement. Any comic that ranges over 100-200 pages usually has a notable difference... that's just something I don't see here.

Blah, blah, blah, there isn't anything else someone hasn't said before me that's left to be said.

Good luck with BKSH. (Sounds like a sound effect.. *BKSH*)

Hey, for extra fun, try reading my review again, but this time, replace all the times I used the word "drama" with "llama".

Eggbert
LLAMA. Llama llama llama llama. I said this last time and it hasn't changed, but there is sooo much llama in this comic. This is not to say I don't like llama. When done well, llama can be powerful and awesome. But the thing about llama, is that it helps to have some non llama to compare the llama to, so that the llama seems way more impactful when it actually happens. But in this comic, there is never not llama. It's all llama, all the time. And the comic is sadistic about it! Whenever it seems like we we're going to get a brake from the llama, it turns out that that sort of happy interlude was just a clever way to give us MORE LLAMA.

Yeah!

Haha, considering the llama, you should check this out

haha, this thread has nearly become Top Drawer-worthy.

Best. Thing. Ever.

You both just linked to the same thing.

Yeah.

Cory, you copycat!

:P

And I'm still laughing.

I was agreeing with Mazoo.

That's why I linked it again.

wow. nxt time i better do a comic about llamas... so that eggbert will give in a 5 thumbs up rating... :lol:

Man, if anyone did a comic entierly about llamas, I would give it a five just out of principal.

May I ask what "Brood Knight Shattered Hate" means anyway?

Never really got the title.

.: SpANG! :.

Eggbert
Man, if anyone did a comic entierly about llamas, I would give it a five just out of principal.

OK, now you're tempting me to do one. Maybe next time I do a Fusion panel it will have to have a llama in it.

It better!

Oh god what have i done to this thread?

Nyehehehe... llamas rock! Who woulda thought yeh could turn an entire review into llamas XD

SpANG!
May I ask what "Brood Knight Shattered Hate" means anyway?

Never really got the title.

Brood Knight = Cedrick is a Brood Knight. Some kind of alien-demon thing...

Shattered Hate = Claudita's mission to destroy the hatred in Cedrick's heart, which is where the Brood Knight gets its energy.

But the word "shatter" can mean 2 things. Shatter as in "destroy", or shatter like a broken glass and make it more dangerous for people who step on that thing... and make the liquid in the glass spread...

Hope that explains it.

Eggbert, If you go take a look a Fusion 12, you will see a llama as promised. :P