Yep!

http://www.drunkduck.com/Dare_To_Dream/

The first word I'd use to describe this comic would be 'young'. The creator only just turned fifteen (many happy returns to her). As you'd expect, though this comic feels inexperienced and lacking polish at times, there's impressive growth and improvement going on. More than that though, there's a really solid grasp of the most essential, important and basic ideas of comicry, which says to me that Rubygem will be one to watch in the future.

The artwork starts out very, very simple, without backgrounds or much tone, and with very simple character shots. From there it's started to build, first adding a bit of tone and backgrounds, then into partial colour, then to full colour, and slowly increasing the variety of poses used. The colours, when first introduced, start out a bit on the garish side, but then have settled down a bit more recently. The marker colouring is improving and getting smoother, which is a skill which involves nothing more than lots of practice, so it's sure to get better. Rubygem should also get some thumbs up for her smooth, clean line quality. The lines are very precise and confident.
Where improvement is needed is putting in more impact and, most importantly, depth. Right now, things are quite flat looking, like things are cut-outs laid on flat backgrounds. What needs to be done to improve this, and it may sound a little weird, is gaining a better understanding of space. Thinking of a room as a cube, or better, a box, inside of which the characters are standing, and thinking of an arm as a tube or pipe, around which, there is fabric, being pulled by gravity. I'd recommend looking at objects and people, and thinking of them as three-dimensional things as the next step onwards (If you want to hear me say more ridiculous crap like this feel free to PM me). Once this is sorted, it should be possible to produce much more varied poses and a better sense of movement and drama.

The storyline is fairly stock material. Secret world, magical beings who avoid humans, strange dreams, magical pendants... But though the concept isn't treading new ground, it's handled pretty well. The story is told in a straightforward, no-nonsense way. The simplicity of the plot allows for more time to be given to the characters. In this case, that's a good thing, since the characters are quite likable, especially due to the artist noticing the little things in life, like the heroine brushing her hair and going 'ow!'. Thw dialogue is simple, but funny in a whimsical, free flowing way.
Occasional spelling and grammar errors to be taken into account, mainly confusion of things like 'their', 'they're' and 'there', which are commonplace in a lot of comics. Also, a strange tendancy to write 'preson' instead of 'person', and 'brithday' instead of 'birthday' which is either a mistake that stems from Rubygem perhaps having an accent, or she could be dislexic (I dunno, I don't know her!). The frequent mistake made by americans of writing things like 'intire' instead of 'entire' is here too (Americans seem to pronounce it 'intire', so it's an unsurprisingly common error). The speech bubbles, sometimes could be a bit of a nicer shape, but the handwritten text is very easy to read thanks to nicely defined, neat handwriting.

I was pleasantly surprised by this comic. It's simple, and still growing up, but it's enjoyable, mainly because it doesn't try to be too deep and meaningful or too clever. Even though it's not hugely sophisicated, I like it 'cause it's not stuck up it's own arse, it's not trying to be clever, it's just fun. If you want to enjoy a fantasy comic that does exactly what it says on the tin, here you go.

Yeah, this is definitely a "young" comic. Basically the person sticks to one camera angle and no background with characters that don't really have any features that make them look unique. It's basically a person trying to emulate manga without any kind of grasp on the basics of drawing. But hey, we were all there at one point.

My suggestion would be to start practicing drawing from life and from pictures if you want to become a better artist and from there a better comic artist. This comic is technically readable, but I don't want to read it. The writing also is clumsy and on pages like this there's just a ton of empty space.

Keep working on making your art better and get a sketchbook to practice with. I'm pretty sure I used to draw like this too but I've gotten marginally better through practice. So keep at it. However you need to know that your work now is far off from the level that people will go out of the their way to read it. You might get a modest readership of people with similar skill levels, but those beyond that or those not looking to become artist themselves probably won't read your comic the way it is now.

Though the comic does seem "young," its really not horrible, espically for a first try. The art needs work but it is improving. In the begining of the comic it was hard to tell the difference between certain characters, the lack of backgrounds was annoying, ect. Now the addition of color has made the comic much better. Its much easier to tell whats going on and it just makes the comic more pleasing to the eye over all. I'd sugest investing money into a coloring program like Photoshop or buying higher quality markers like Prismas, it will make the coloring neater. Colored pencils might even do the job, though sometimes they don't scan well. >>'

One of my biggist problems with the art is the eyes. They look like a bunch of shines with the pupil in no definate spot. Like the pupil isn't where the character should be focasing. I'd sugest looking at some pictures of real eyes, or even your own, and just sketch them. See where the shine falls, the pupil, the iris, ect. Once you get that down, just stylize them. Its not a good idea to just copy eyes out of a "How to Draw Mannga" book, it will set you back in the long run. D:

Another thing that nagged at me a little while reading the colored pages was how close in color Mellisa's and Shebly's hair and eyes are. I don't know, yellow hair just kind of annoys me for some reason, blonde hair comes in many shades but not yellow. Try making one's hair darker blonde and the other's lighter blonde. Changing their eye colors to different shades of blue would help too. ^_^

Besides that there are a few common spelling mistakes (Darth Mongoose has pointed those out already) and some big white spaces in the begining of the comic, but you seem to have stopped doing that lately.

Over all, it could use improvement, but you're doing good. The story is cute and I'm going to continue reading, I really enjoyed it. ^_^

The Good:
-The characters. For the most part, you've got your stock girls' manga characters here: the heroine, the heroine's friend, the heroine's love interest, et cetera. But even with such a "been there done that" cast, the artist still writes them off in an amusing and fun to read way. Melissa is a down-to-earth character who is easy to relate to (Kate already mentioned the panel where she expresses pain at brushing her tangled hair, but I have to bring it up again, as that was one moment where I really felt "wow, I know what that's like..." ) Shelby is a fun character with cute antics, we as the reader feel sorry for and give sympathy to David. The artist does a good job in capturing the essence of the characters, and not getting too caught up in mysterious "you'll-find-out-later" personalities that I've seen a lot, not just in webcomics, but in published media too.
-The dialogue. Like I kind of touched on above, I like it. There are some things that are sort of awkward - a few spelling and grammatical errors, some lines that just don't seem to flow right, an on-and-off use of contractions? While it works for most things, sounds stiff and robotic at others, like on this page .) But overall, I think it works well for the characters, and really shows off their individual personalities.

The Neutral:
-The artwork. The artwork does show definite, and extreme, improvement between its latest and its first pages, but the fact of the matter is, the artist seems to be basing her anatomy off of already-stylized manga anatomy. To quote a quote I've heard dozens of times around the art community, one needs to know life anatomy before they start to stylize it. The presence of backgrounds and colours in the newest pages are also a plus, because I found myself unfortunately lost by how empty and flat the first pages seemed. Having backgrounds really helps establish what is happening with the characters, as opposed to just having characters against a blank background; we can't tell where they are or what's going on with the latter one.
-The story. Like the characters, the artist takes a story that's been done a thousand times before, and does it in a way that's not entirely eye-rolling. However, there are still parts of the story that I find bizarre, and out of place, such as the arcade battle. Aside from the blackout, I have no idea what the whole scene served for the story, and even then, the blackout probably serves a purpose that I just don't know yet.

The Bad:
-The handwritten speech. My apologies, but I had trouble reading a lot of it, especially when the speech bubbles were small and the words were crammed together. The writing is cute, of course, but I find that the letters are too stylized to be easily read. I'm naturally taking in the fact that my eyesight is just plain shoddy, but the fact of the matter is I had a lot of difficulty reading a lot of it.

RESULTS
Good: 2
Neutral: 2
Bad: 1

I am NEUTRAL to this comic, but it is well on its way to becoming GOOD :) Being so young is an advantage in and of itself, as one is much more maleable at a young age, and Rubygem can improve greatly in just a short time! Best of luck with your comic, Rubygem :)

(edited a spelling mistake)

This is a cute comic that I'd term as 'developing.' It's not very original, and the art is still getting there. Even so, being harsh about this comic in any way would really be kicking the proverbial puppy. Even with its problems, it's hard not to like the sincerity underlying the work. My advice on the artwork would mostly be 'keep drawing,' but guess what? That's already happening, and we're seeing some early results. Good job.

I agree with most of what has already been said. Let me just touch on a couple of points that I think need clearing up before you can take this strip to the next level.

Lettering: Hand lettering is fine, but never underestimate how hard it is. Comics are a visual medium, and the words on the page are part of the overall look. Badly lettered words can ruin a beautifully drawn page. Legibility is also an issue, as having to squint at the text has kept me from reading some very good comics. Most recently, Oni Press' Queen and Country leaps to mind. A good book, but the latest issue was in a font size so small that it was almost unreadable. It was a downright embarrassing mistake that hurt their sales and the series' reputation.

So, along those lines, two things. Break out your rulers and make sure sentences are on a straight line and not crowded together. The more chaotic a page is, the more neatness counts on the page. Also, when sketching out a panel, plan ahead for the dialog. That way, there's hopefully room for everything.

The second big thing is storytelling. While I think the device of having an arrow and a label indicate what someone is doing is fine, it is overused here. I think it's overused because, without it, we frequently would not know what's going on. Try to find other ways to show action and convey information. Likewise, the transition between panels is sometimes very difficult. I'm often able to infer what's happening, but it's not natural. This is improving as time goes on-- for example I mostly like the action on this page . However, just a couple pages later things get very hard to follow again. This is all part of the learning process. My main advice is to show action and movement, or imply it between panels. Don't describe it verbally, or through another character's exclamations. Seeing someone fall engages the audience far more than hearing "Oh! She's falling!" Sometimes your instincts on this are very good, but it's worth consciously considering whenever you're creating. Also, it'll force you into some more challenging artistic positions, which is a great way to learn.

Looking forward to what happens next.

Most of this comic was so far away from my world (40-something political cartoonists reviewing teen-something fantasy-bio, yeah, right), that it's just not even fair to the artist to comment on the story, so I won't.

Artistically, the first thing that leaped out at me was the anatomy, particuarly hands. Bad hands, four or five lumps at the end of the arm, will make any cartoon look amateurish, and these arms either ended in stubs or lumps. That, or the artist hid the hands to avoid drawing them. Work on the anatomy, not just of the hands, but everything else as well. Somebody noted above, it might be best to cartoon from life, not from other cartoons. Other discussed the eyes, so I will just second the observations.

The balloons and handwriting were distracting, particularly where the angle of the writing did not match the line of the 'toon. The writing also seemed to ocassionaly get squeezed into the balloon- it might be better to write first, balloon later, if you hand-letter.

Spelling and grammar were poor. The first cartoon I saw was the last cartoon, and the highlighted word, in a spiked balloon and with an exclamation point, was "Idoit" as in "Nick you idoit!" The cartoon the day before has "uaslly," "traing," "appers," and an incorrect "your" (instead of "you're"). The occassional mis-spelling will happen (I missed getting a cartoon published in the Indianapolis Star because I spelled Alberto Gonzales' name ending with a "z"), but when it reaches a point that you can't read through the cartoon, it becomes fatally distracting.

And finally, almost all the poses are face-forward or full sillhouette. Life is not that neat, credibility gets lost, and it gets boring, because you're looking at pretty much the same thing day after day.

As I said above, I can really only comment on the art and technique, because the story is lost on me. On an up-note, the story, which might be wonderful, seems to have a loyal following. That alone indicates talent, and good reason to keep going.

This kind of drawings look exactly like how my characters were when I was Rubygem's age. Since I've made comics since I was in 4th grade (which means I was like 9), you have jumped a number of years art wise if you compare it with me personally. Kudos.

Art:
The art is "young" as everybody has stated. Nothing really I could add that others haven't said. Watch your placing of some things. Things seem to be floating in the air rather than being in the background. example:
http://www.drunkduck.com/Dare_To_Dream/index.php?p=140671 with the door

There art tons of artbooks out there on backgrounds and such. I suggest you just pick up one. Also, there are tutorials online that help with art. You are im proving though. examples:
http://www.drunkduck.com/Dare_To_Dream/index.php?p=208630
http://www.drunkduck.com/Dare_To_Dream/index.php?p=212902
- the huts look like they are going into the background -

The cast is cool though.The characters definitely have distinct looks to them that help make sure they don't blend together. Shelby's cat hat. Everyone's distinct hair style. It would also help to have a consistent size for your comic. Just one of those little things that look for in a comic.

Writing:
I've never been a fan of hand written text. Unless you are like a professional at this, I would recommend just placing your text by computer. It saves you lots of time and helps things be more consistent and readable. There are also some spelling problems, but we all slip up at times. The dialogue for characters sometimes seems to bland. example:
http://www.drunkduck.com/Dare_To_Dream/index.php?p=148299
-This also is is example of my next point. Sometimes you don't need to have the character say what occurs-

Overall:
I think this comic has potential. It's not really innovative, but if you like more of the same old good stuff, it's worth a read. Please continue to grow. The art is becoming better and your writing isn't bad. I'm actually going to favorite this comic. I want to see what Nick is planning. :) (3/5)