Out, damned spot!

http://www.drunkduck.com/Emma

Lady Macbeth! ....okay, the Shakespeare quote is distracting me from the point. The comic! Emma!

I just read through the whole archive, a little quickly..and, I enjoyed it. But I am a bit confused with the plot. I understand she's focusing more on character development, anyway. That's a funner path, in my opinion..probably why I stick to character development in my comic, too.

The style is nice, though the characters do look wonky now and then. (oh God, I used the word "wonky"...I must be tired) The inconsistency with the coloring bothered me a little, but maybe I'm just being nitpicky. And anyway, she's sticking to flat coloring now. I think it looks best!

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't remember any chapter separations. Has the story only been one long chapter? I don't think so..it would be nice if there was some indication that there's a new chapter.

One last thing: the comic artist seems to have to explain quite a bit in the description. Comics really should be able to speak for themselves. (I should really start taking my own advice) Overall, it's very cute and fun, even if it's slow at times. :)

I, um, didn't read the description, so I'll just hop to it then.

I like the way this comic flows. It isn't hampered by chapters or anything, which allows it to move at it's own pace. The art is good, the coloring is better, and although at times the story kind of lags a little bit, it retained my interest and left me with the urge to read more, which is saying a lot because this isn't really my kind of comic.

In summary, I liked it and will countinue to read it.

Hmm.. A "slice of life" comic. I kinda like it. The art is OK as you can see that the artist is making an effort in backgrounds etc. Proportions are off but the artist seem to be productive so the art will probably improve over time. The writing is realistic, although in my meaning a bit too realistic. The story could move forward a bit quicker. The mixed black and white vs. color pages seem a bit irregular and threw me off a bit. I would expect the color pages to be, the first in every chapter or some such, but I don't think that it is really planned. It feels like the first 50 pages was just warming up for the realtionship that are about to begin in the last couple of pages and I expect the comic to become more interesting now.
In summary: Promising but a bit too slow for me.

I'm leaving for the airport soon, so I gotta make this quick: The art is pretty good. Nice backgrounds, fairly good proportions, etc. However on a few pages I wasn't sure if I was supposed to read left to right or right to left. Anyway, the story is progressing at a slow but reasonable pace and the coloring is okay, even if it's only flat colors.

Overall keep it up. You're characters are fairly consistant and you're improving.

My goodness. I love this comic. It's just so natural and emotional. I can't remeber the last time I read comic dialouge that sounded so much like actual people talking, and was staged and paced so wonderfully. I truly care about the characters. All the characters have a unique way of talking as well. Emma's talking to herself and her cat is at the same time charming and sad. All of the personalities are just so solid! Really, it's just on of the best written comics I've read in a long time, you pull of life and its drudgery with amazing believablity.

The art is equally delightful. The people look like people! That full body shot of the guy's sister is a great example of this. She wasn't an anime babe or anything, but an actual woman, with some meat on her bones. Also, the way you draw freckles is adorable. The faces are expressive enough for the story to drive along. Another thing I love is the perfect amount of establishing shots. Almost every time we enter a new scene you pull the camera way back to let us figure out where the characters physically are. Your pacing and visual flow is also wonderful. The series of pages where Emma played her violin and wept was beautiful. Really, you're using the medium of comics in a perfect way to develope your characters. The coloring is fine flat, though I won't deny it doen look better when you add some depth. However, you linework is stong enough that you don't really need to color if you don't want to. The only thing that's really a flaw in your art is when you sometimes forgo backgrounds and just stick a shot of the characters from waist up in front of a random color, like on the page where the man comes out of the bookstore. Also, you really need to make your chapter titles more obvious. Bolder or bigger, because I almost missed them every time they happened.

This is truly a wonderful comic. Totally made my day. Keep it up!

Oooh, boy I was nervous about this.

Thank you all so much for the helpful info. Happily, almost everything mentioned is something I am already making an effort to improve. The colors switching around so much was a matter of me trying to figure out what worked best, and, for now, at least, I'm sticking with the flat colors.
Art is, of course, a constant struggle, and everything else (i.e. slow moving storyline, lack of and/or retarded looking backgrounds) are things I'm working to improve in the next batch of pages.

One thing I really hadn't realized was how inconspicuous my chapter titles are, so I'll make sure to make them more obvious in future (just to clarify, the third chapter has just started).

On a side note; Eggbert, your review absolutely made my day!

Aaaand I'm done.

I don't usualy go for "slice of life" comics, but I've been reading this one for a while. I think I like it for the same reasons that Eggbert was praising it. It's not realying on wacky hijinks or terrible calamities. It's real people living out real lives, which is rarly seen in comics. I like the slow pacing of the comic personaly because that's kinda how life is. The characters are beautiful and come off as real people that you can care about. Lovely lovely comic.