On and on.

http://www.drunkduck.com/hero_tales/

The Art - Text bubbles are very good. They are varied and clear. I'm wondering what program the artists uses. Other computer effects are also good, like the movement lines in panel 17. Sometimes, though, the difference between the computer generated art and the original art (discussed further following) is to obvious, like the difference between the computer-generated valentines and the hand-drawn flowers in panel 18.

Early original art- frankly, poor. It was all drawn in the same very thick line, and scanned (or drawn on the computer) with heavy pixelation. Characters blended into each other without enough variance, making the story impossible to follow.

Later original art- (I looked at 1-20, and 50-70) A bit better, but still not great. The thick line is gone, only to be replaced by a thin line, with no variance in line size for emphasis of depth of field. The combination of computer effects and hand drawn is jarring, in part because of the quality difference. Look, for example, at panel 59. The first panel has lines crossing over into other parts of the drawing (look at the ears). These could have been edited when scanned. (There are also specks that might indicate the scanner needs to be cleaned- I have that problem). But 59 also shows the jarring difference between computer and hand-done, and the original art suffers by comparison.

63 is another good example of the difference between computer and hand. The hand-drawn is not really improving, but the artist has real talent with computer shading. The hair and the clothes are great, but I don't think anybody would describe the characters in the second panel as well-drawn.

Story - As I noted above, I had trouble following it. Black and white makes it harder to distinguish characters, but even within that limitation, there wasn't enough distinction early on for me to make sense of it all (and I admit up front, it might be a matter of my age and not understanding the story or being that familiar with the style- I might be missing some basic conventions). 1-20 were choppy and hard to follow. 50-70 bridged two different stories, so I really can't opine too much on them.

Conclusion - I just went and looked at the artist's other cartoons. Coloring them makes the same drawings really POP!, and does justice to an artistic style that I think the black and white treats poorly. I have to uprate the artist, but keep my ratings of the art in this particular comic the same. There is talent here. It just gets lost in mushy art.

This comic is all over the place. It starts out REALLY promising with a neatly paced beginning involving a hour-glass and some pretty interesting deep stuff like: "i wonder what will happen when the sand runs out? Maybe it will set me free, but from what"

I don't know, i was thinking it was all rather nice until it all just blows up and the comic takes a strange slap-stick manga hybrid with cute looking Manga characters.
The story starts out slow and easy to follow but later on gets almost impossible to get a grasp on. There are a whole bunch of characters that are hard to set apart and the dialogue gets awkward and sometimes makes no sense at all.

Generally, spelling needs some attention. ( btw, the page comments are so strangely written and spelled i wonder it it is meant to be read at all?.. )

To conclude, kinda funny but confusing comic that lacks direction.

The best word I can think of to describe this comic is "disjointed."

The first thing that needs to be addressed is punctuation. In general, there just doesn't seem to be any. There might be one comma or period every page or so, and there are pretty much no apostrophes. These omissions make the comic as a whole really difficult to read because there isn't any kind of rhythm to the text. It ends up feeling like a string of unrelated words. Spelling is also a problem, but not to the same degree.

The non-technical aspects of the writing could also use some work. I have to admit, after just reading the entire thing (although a few pages wouldn't load, so I did actually miss one or two things, but that doesn't seem to be the problem) I have absolutely no idea what's going on. Nor do I have any idea who any of the characters are. There's someone named No-ran, but I can't tell who that is, so it doesn't really matter that I know the name.
My best guess is that there is some kind of sci-fi or fantasy story going on, but the more detailed explanations in the comic are unintelligible and the ones in the author's notes (which should not be where your readers figure out what's actually going on, generally) aren't a whole lot better. It feels like the author has a good idea of the world they've created and assumes that we know just as much as they do. The story needs some kind of flow and a lot of clarification.

As for the art, it has definitely shown improvement since the beginning. The characters are slightly more recognizable than they first were, and the lines are much cleaner. The tones/shading was also a good addition. It really added to the look of the comic. I think color would be a great idea here, as much work as that would be.
The style is very cute and simplistic. However, it could benefit from a little more careful detail and maybe a little more time taken to smooth out the line work.

All in all, this comic could use a lot of work, but it has improved, and that's always a good sign. And I really do think that if the punctuation is attended to, the whole thing will improve dramatically.

I see alot of enthusiam, but little developed skilled to back it up.

Maybe it is because I'm not overly familiar with this genre (I'm assuming it's part of a genre), but I could not make heads or tails of the characters or what is happening.

The grammar and spelling errors are so incredibly frequent that I was occasionally surprised when there were none. I gather that the creator does not speak English as a primary language, but, at least to me, that is no excuse for such error-laiden writing. It makes it especially difficult when the reader has to continually stop the flow of the story to figure out the intent of the writing.

What I could understand of the writing and prose left me feeling alienated, like I was outside of an inside joke. Maybe it's the genre thing, but I was never sure when something was intended to funny or not.

The art, while certainly manga-influenced, suffers from a lack of understanding of visual storytelling structure and basic anatomy (cartoon style does not mean an artist can get away with murder).

The design & flow of the page sent my eye all over the place, & too often actually off the page. The page design need to much better implement elements that keep the eye flowing through the page. The direction a character is facing or the simple use of black could seriously aid the viewer in moving through the pages better.

Very often I could not tell what I was looking at at. Was that a hand? A piece of candy? Is that an eye? I had a very hard time figuring out what I was looking at.

All these problems keep the reader out of the story. Everytime a reader has to stop and figure anything out you've lost them. In this story there are simply tons of things that take the viewer out of the story.

Later,
Chip

Should we be reviewing just "Hero Tales"? I checked out herio's profile, and his/her other comic "Sky Fallen " appears to be a revamped version of "Hero Tales" that addresses some of the concerns raised by the reviewers so far. It has color, and cleaner art, for one thing.

However, that comic still has significant grammar and spelling errors, and few pages are uploaded so far (only 4). Still, I think reviewers should look at it and take it into account when they are considering "Hero Tales."

-ML

TITLE: Hero Tales

FIRST IMPRESSION: The cover has an interesting assortment of colour and the art style seems very loose and fun.

STORY SO FAR: After the first 10 or so pages, I began to have difficulty understanding what was going on. The story also became extreamly dry, untill around p 50; but that only lasted so long.

ART: I'm not sure if it is just your style to draw like that, but it became distracting, especially when you were trying to be serious and the images were of almost chibi-like description. There was a lack of detail. Many times, it looked like the art was thrown together at the last minnet, in hopes of updating quickly or frequently. At some points it looked like time and effort were put into it, but this is rare.

DIALOUGE: I found many run-on sentences. And many times it was hard to understand what the character were talking about.

SPEECH BALLOONS: Many times the words were fighting for space. Also, almost every time, the balloons were touching the speaker, making them look conjoined.

LAYOUT: The pannels were easy enough to follow, but and pages without dialogue (specifically those flashback(?) pages) were impossible to understand.

COLOUR/TONING: What was done in colour (the cover) looked well enough, but the greyscale pages needed work.

OTHER NOTES: I noticed there have not been any updates since late March. That is a problem if you want to keep readers. Several times, you had writting in which the font was so small, that it was impossible to read; you would be wise to stop doing that. All in all, this comic needs work; but that is my oppinion.

Review: Hero Tales * 1/2 of *****

Premise: What premise?

Art: Existential at best and atrocious at worst, the art of the comic does nothing to sustain the story and quite frankly appears to be whatever the artist feels like drawing regardless of the attached dialogue. I have no problem with black and white, and I don't even really have a problem with this style, because at least it is original. The problem that I have is that it contributes a void of any sort of coherency whatsoever.

Writing: This is the thing that really puzzles me. The creator apparently has a whole concept for a story. He or she seems to have thought of a big picture, but the there is no execution here. I can't even call it sloppy execution. There are missing pages which does nothing to further destroy an already impossible story to follow, and then there are some notes on crucifixion halfway through the archive. Uh.....? This comic is a chore to go through and I do not see any sort of point in it other to waste my time.

Editing: Editing was last spotted somewhere 50 miles south of Hero Tales. It is unlikely to be seen anywhere near it ever again.

Conclusion: This cartoon is a celebration of unbridled modern art collaborating with oblivion and having a rendevous with illiteracy.

Ways to improve: Start over. Write the story in a notebook and fill in all major plot points with coherent dialogue. Match corresponding action in the graphic sense with the appropriate dialogue and make the characters distinctive. Spell check. Add color. Don't celebrate page milestones with commemorative art. ever. Avoid random explanations of ancient methods of capital punishment. Rinse and repeat. Read Vindibudd.

*my first review*

First thing that pops into my mind when I look at the first few pages is "why is everything misspelled?" Just a pet peeve... but the very first page has "Hero Tails" where the comic is called "Hero Tales" (I assume this was just a play that didn't pan out with the characters having tails?)

ART

Personally I do not like the art at all, from the very beginning it is heavily pixilated, most of everything is out of proportion, and its drawn rather sloppily. It seems like it would be something easy enough to fix though. The mistake most people make when they start drawing is that they start with one point and draw out from there instead of making a light sketch of the overall shape. So draw that overall shape, such as the head, and place the features accordingly (and from the looks of it, its drawn on a computer, making it all that much easier to edit). The speech bubbles are clear at least.

STORY

I don't know what is going on. At all. Its jumpy, throwing you in without really giving you any base to go off of. Even Tarantino eventually tied things together.
I would suggest planning things out before going balls out and drawing the page.

To end...

This to me seems like you just took a bunch of doodles you did during class/work and added speech bubbles. Sure the characters talk at eachother but I'm not sure what about. Edit the art before you post up a new page, plan out a story and make it coherent.

(cool, Sky Fallen does seem to be the updated. Color fixes the problem with art blending together, seems neater art, and so far things are making more sense. Lots of spelling/grammar errors though)