All night long until the break of dawn!

http://www.drunkduck.com/Gemutations__Plague/

EDIT: I misspelled the comic's name in the title. Sorry.

All categories are rated on a positive number if I liked it. The more, the better. Negative points means I didn't like something. Some categories are made up on the spot. But ending up with a positive number is a good thing.

Art (+1): Flat is what comes to mind when I 'thumbed' through this comic. The art is flat on the page it was rendered on. Work is needed to bring out the scenes and make them more interesting to the eye. Some real life renderings will help Darwin out a bit. This of course means not spending time on the comic, but I feel that if applied from rendering real life objects - and then moving up to humanoid rendering would help alot bringing out the scene. However, there are moments of brilliance and talent here and there scattered throughout the pages and panels. Darwin has a good understanding of the basic anatomy of a human/biped creature and proportions (of course, I'm not sure how the exact proportions of a Germue are supposed to be, but they come from humans it seems). However, the renderings and the scene just come out flat.

As the comic progressed I deffinately see signs of improvement, but it goes back and forth; but always edging forward. More work is needed, and I think some good study of real life rendering is gonna set Darwin on the right track. The basics are there. Just need to follow through all the way and kick out of the flatness of the images. I gave a +1 total because improvement is shown, and the artist has the talent to proceed forward rather than getting stuck on one method of doing everything.

Story (+2) Interering to a point. I cannot say I was intrigued, but the story is workable. Just not riveting. It starts out with a burst and slows down considerably explaining a lot of background and getting the reader introduced to the characters. Improvement in this field is needed. More needs to happen from chapter to chapter. Probably some background processsing of the world, and some more revalations from chapter to chapter. Dialog is nice, but in chapter 2 for instance (Changes); not much happens. I felt like I was just on a Shark Emo trip and I just wanted something to actually happen.

The good news is, what is presented could be used as a springboard to more gripping stories in this marine world. It is at least a solid foundation that can be used to build a good story. For this, I give it a positive 2.

Characters (-1): Pretty much all the characters were explained one way or another for pages and pages. ...and pages. However this was described in the story section. One thing of note and this ties in with art; Faces need more expression. All the characters seem hypnotised. If it weren't for the dialog I really wouldn't know how the characters felt sometimes; and sometimes I still questioned what they were really feeling in a particular scene. Unfortunately, a negative score.

Standoutability (+0): In the maze of webcomics and comic universe, I cannot say this one will catch any notice save for some dedicated fans or people who just love to muse over people's comics. In the future if Darwin takes the time for better rendering and more expressive faces and nails down story flow to make it suck the reader in, then it will have a better chance. As is presented, the appeal is limited. No points.

Fish Sticks (+1): The tilting category! I like sharks! However sometimes the Germue look like horse-sharks - dunna ask why I think that. They are just alienish looking. But I wanna cook them up in a bread batter and serve them to guests! Yum! POint awarded!

Total: +3, In its current incarnation it is just okay - the key here is Darwin has a lot of room, and the talent to improve. So my advice, is do so. Do it! Now! Get out there and start practicing! Just dnt rush it and overload yourself. CHOMP!!! (<-shark bite).

Thanks GaryB for the in depth review. I appreciate the time you took to look at and give constructive crits on the areas that I need to work on.

Backgrounds: This is an area I am trying hard to improve on. I get caught up with the foreground details and often let the background go hang. I am trying to cure this deficiency.

Expressiveness: Not that I am making excuses, but it is hard to get expressive on a sharklike face. Horse-sharks, weee...yeah I've noted that a couple of times and I'm putting effort into continuity of character design.

Story: I apologize for the amount of exposition on this story so far...it may be that my mind is sticking on the "Writers" portion of this and trying to be sure the characters are understandable and "likable." Guess I went overboard on that! I may have to condense some of this to the pertinent matter to the story and move forward.

I will take that into serious consideration for future chapters. Unfortunately this story is more of a Drama than an Action piece (though the end has some spectacular fight scenes)

Thanks also for the positives...Its a boon to know that there is some redeeming quality to my first effort in the webcomic world!

Thanks again for your time!

Darwin

Ho hum.

Right off the bat, I just want to say that the titles and copyright notice on every page are not very attractive. I wouldn't put the titles on the pages at all(readers can easily look at the dropdown menu if they really need the info). Maybe a page number, with shorthand for the chapter, but written out in huge letters right at the top of the page looks unprofessional and is distracting. The copyright notice is more reasonable, but you could make it a lot smaller. There should be a way to get the copyright symbol with a basic keyboard, as well, but I don't recall what it is at the moment(If I figure it out, I'll post an edit to let you know).

Onwards to the art:
I liked seeing the improvement, particularly in torsos and the faces of the gemues. You've definitely got the shark hybrid look down! You could maybe work a little more on your human faces, though. The eyes in particular could use some work on shape and size. Picture references would be a great help for that.
As for things being flat on the page, two things in particular could really help with that: line width and backgrounds. If you started doing backgrounds, and then used thicker lines around the more important aspects of a panel, it would be much more interesting to look at. I've been working on both of these aspects in my comic over the past few months, and I've found it really improves the look of a page as a whole. Plus, sometimes it's hard to get a feel for where your characters are without being told. Backgrounds will make your job easier in respect to dialogue.

Storyline/Writing:
The storyline is interesting in that the idea itself isn't hugely unique but the whole shark thing is something that I've never seen before. So, woo for originality!
I have to admit I'm not personally very intrigued by the plague idea, but that's because it's just not something that interests me. I expect there will be even more background information on how it all started in later pages, and I think that will make it more interesting. Right now it's more of an alternate world idea where the reader just has to accept that this is the way things are. It would be good to know how they got that way.
Sometimes the dialogue feels a little too expository to be natural. I'm not really sure how to get around that when you have so much information to get across, though.

Other:
In addition to the title and copyright stuff, there are a few more aspects to the pages that just make them a bit jarring to the eye (or, my eye, at least). The speech bubbles don't really fit with the artwork. Maybe make them flat or even try drawing them(you can always resize your type)?
I must commend you on making the text smaller in general! That was the first thing I noticed at the beginning as being really distracting, and it was much better when you fixed it.
And, last thing, I think you could make the pages and panels more compact. They're very spaced out right now and there are a lot of blank spaces (which the lack of backgrounds really doesn't help). It makes the whole comic feel slower. If you had more panels closer together (and in more interesting formations and shapes<--which is better in the last few pages) it would look better and feel more fast paced- which is, I think what you're going for.

That came off rather negative, but there really have been quite a few improvements and you've got some good stuff going so far! It's just not something I'm particularly interested in, so I kinda focused on what further improvements could be made.
Hope I was at least helpful!

Hey! I'm gonna sneak a little review here.

Art: The art style is kinda strange in my taste. It's a little clamped or something. I can't even word what I'm trying to say! XE Arg! It's good, clean and all. Really, it's a good style for you. The digital colors and all is what slaps me away however. :/ There are some digital comics that I can read and not have too much of a problem with. It seems you're still trying to learn how to blend, color, shade, adn all that with cg-ing, I guess? I dunno. Sorry. *dies*

Story: the story is indeed interesting. Sharks that can walk adn talk like people, live up on land and all. That's cool on it's own. :D It's hard to say much about it otherwise. Keep building it though. :)

I really didn't mean to sound so bias and mean about this review. :( I'm really sorry if I offended you. But do keep up. Learn how to work with this comic buisness as you go along. :) Best of luck to you.

Miruku - Chris Chris -

Thank you both for your reviews. Yes for sure I'm still learning and improving my style. I do this for fun, for a way in which to help promote my writing, and just to get some more practice at drawing in general.

Miruku - in reply to some of your review:

- Human faces are boring! LOL No actually I am continuing to improve in that area. My later pages (of other titles) are actually better at the facial expressions and shape than my earlier works here in Plague...they should look a lot better next chapter (which is where I start into the humans again).

- I am horrible at backgrounds so the suggestion to work on that is noted and taken on board. I am also working in the varied line size and thickness to imporve the depth of the panels.

- Panel layout - see this may still be a probelm for me...I tend to do my cells separate from one another and then place them on the page, resize and arrange. I'm not always brilliant on the presentation. I'm trying to work that alongside my other shortcomings.

- Huh, you're the first to mention the title bars and copyrights to me. I hadn't thought of that. I can certainly work that in...sticking too much to the book formats. The copyright I'm feeling is pretty neccessary to me...Not that I think anyone would actually lift my work (its not nearly as brilliant as some here), I'm not taking chances.I can certainly make it smaller, and I will certainly try to figure out how to get the symbol in there (I used to know...my brain is turning into a sieve)

- Story wise - it gets pretty interesting actually the plague is actually a backdrop to the interaction between characters. It moves the story forward but isn't neccessarily the entire thing. Here is the link to what is up of the written version Gemutations: Plague I try not to give exposition, but for this one there is so much backstory that I felt HAD to be there (looking back perhaps it wasn't quite so neccessary in some places). There is actually another book that explains all of the background info...how the world came to be this way...how Tiger and Angelina got where they are, etc. But that would be an entire volume by itself!

-Speech bubbles - I've downloaded Blambot speech bubbles and will be beginning to use those here shortly. you should see style improvement in that area as soon as I start into some dialogue. Those ones on Adobe Photoshop are not the greatest or that aesthetically pleasing, but at the time I didn't know how to get around it. I'm still learning (obviously)

Definitely helpful and I appreciate your time that much more in that this wasn't a genre or a plot device you were jumping for joy to read. THank you

Chris Chris -

I am unique in my art style yes...it is not the best lent to a webcomic, but as I mentioned above I'm not really trying to get published I'm just expanding my horizons artwise - and I like storytelling. Some of it is just my style, some is my continued learning in Photoshop. Believe it or not making this story in graphic form has given me some help with how to pace the story and even how to tell the story that is different from what I have. There have been sections that I have gone back and rewritten because I liked better how it is done graphically than what is in the written version.

When you mean the digital colors slap you...do you mean they are not blended well, do you mean they aren't typical wecomic color schemes (IE sharp contrasts between one shade and the next vice what I have).

Thank you I'm glad that you are enthusiastic about the characters at least! LOL! I like my characters, and it was one of my goals to write something atypical from what I've seen (both written and in graphic form). My stories are (hopefully) unpredictable and border on unique ( I can't claim total uniqueness, but I try to handle even a cliche situation in a different manner).

Again thank you both for taking the time to read the comic and review on it. I knew I was going to get kinda beat up over this one, being my first and all...still the suggestions are very good ones and I will take them on board!

I'm currently following 'Gemutations: Plague' and enjoying what I've read so far so I hope it won't make me biased here ;D


Modern day sciencegoneawry and shadowy corporations aren't usually a topic I'd go for reading but Darwin's sharkoid (is that even a word? if not it should be! :D) protagonists were what immediately piqued my interest in this story. Besides sharks being a rarity, it's refreshing to see a creature typically typecast as 'evil' playing a different role.

The art has been steadily improving as we go, which is nice and I'm sure that trend will continue. Rather importantly - this being a comic and all - Darwin's panels are coherent and it's easy to see the flow of the story from panel to panel. Speaking of which the page layout's been getting more interesting too. Having read Darwin's responses there to the previous reviews I'd suggest planning the layout before doing the page - the value of roughly-scribbled page thumbnails should never be underestimated ;), and maybe drawing out the panels on the same page rather than separately.
I know backgrounds are a pain in the bum to draw (I hate doing them, myself) but they are a necessary evil. They're not needed in every panel but it would be great to see more of them. There was a useful link someone had posted in the forum earler to a site called 'morguefile.com'. Maybe get some practice in working off references from there so they can become easier to work in? Another ace thing for backgrounds is a book called 'perspective for comic artists' (or something along those lines). Possibly a bit more dynamic lighting could liven things up too?

The 'plague' story itself seems to take a back seat to the stories of the characters. Even if that's the intention and it has given space for character development, backstory exposition and interaction - which are all good - it has kind given the feeling of slowing the whole thing down a bit. I guess I'm with GaryB when he said 'more needs to happen from chapter to chapter' so there can be a sense of things progressing.

And finally my favourite bit: I'm really liking the characters. They're unique and are all individuals in their own right (there's few things worse than stuff with samey characters in). For me, they're what carry Gemutations: Plague the most :) Good stuff!

Drakhenliche-

Hey thanks for the long review!

Sharkoid...interesting choice of words. I used to call them shark crosses, but as I got more comfortable with the "Mue" suffix I started calling them Sharkmues, (dolphimues, Whamues)

Ah thank you for recognizing that these are "creatures" typically reserved for terrorizing others("Creature from the Black Lagoon" that dreadful "Creature" and that latest "hammberhead" or whatever it was called)...yeah I was trying to go for the "intellegent" creature when I created Tigershark. Granted he started out as a bad guy, but he was always well spoken and intellegent...just a bit meaner than he is now.

I actually did a panel layout when I started BSR with the dream sequences...it worked out really rather well...I will have to be patient and do that again. If I freeform the cells I tend to do the whole page as well. I will have to give both of those another shot.

Yeah I need to actually sit down and do JUST backgrounds, separate from trying to create a webcomic page. If I have some environments I might actually be able to follow through. It does pay off For Example: Changes Page Five in the third cell with the kitchen. I took a lot of time on the details of the kitchen, the coloring on the floors and walls...that paid off huge for the feeling on the page. Unfortunately I get lazy...its sad to say but I do. I'm still trying to overcome it.

I am still formulating ways to get to the point...hee...I am thinking about doing a see saw effect between two chapters for the next session...between Tom and unravelling the virus and Tiger and Angelina going to track down Marlin Cortez. (The former is plot development; the later is both PD and action). It really is more about the virus and the steps both groups take to figure out what is going on. I know it took a long time to get there...and I apologize, but I think what happens in future chapters would lose meaning if I didn't get the reader interested in the characters lives.

Thanks again Drakhen for taking the time to read and review it...its always easier when you're already following it, ne?

Take care!

Darwin