HURRRRRRRRRRRRROCK!

http://www.drunkduck.com/Hurrocks_Fardel/

Alright! Finally a comic up my alley. Text is a little annoying, being as it's non-comicky. As always I recommend www.blambot.com

But other than that, this comic is pretty darn good.

Artistically I can see the hellsing influence, especially in the eyes and that goopy black stuff on the first few pages. You keep the characters almost always consistant. It's easy to tell them apart, and they're placed in positions which look hard to draw but which don't look akward. Also the hair is drawn well.

I really like this page.

I like the coloring when you use it. This page is the first where you actually use color in the main story, and it looks good.

The story is also good, although there's too much dialogue on some pages which interfere with the flow. But the characters are distinct and likeable even if that whole questioning thing and his reaction seemed a little overplayed.

Ahhah, just when I think somethings getting a little dull, we get a fight.

http://www.drunkduck.com/Hurrocks_Fardel/index.php?p=24972 That page was hilarious, and a good test of how expressions change.

Anyway, this is a nice comic. Change the Comic Sans MS font and it'll be better. But yeah, I really enjoyed it.

Havent done this in a while.

Okay for starters i like how this comic puts in a clean feel to it, textures come in simple and consistent, shadows and folds do not clutter the scene.

Even though its generally black/white/grayscale, the lighting effects gets pulled off rather nicely. Having hints of colors every now and then gives it a nice touch. Although the artist's coloring skills are more than passing, why keep it black and white?

You can see emphasis/usage of line weight, which is good, i am rather distracted when the lines get too thick and is not smoothened out.

The storyline is mostly flashbacks / story telling, i myself find it a little slow in development. But the dialogues in between characters are very entertaining at the least.

There are pages wherein characters get drawn in a pose that is normally hard to do but it gets done, and the ones that are "normal poses" just look awkward.

I commend on hand close ups, they are generally hard to draw but the artist gets it done rather ok.

I recommend on improving your backgrounds/perspectives. I can see the art is continuously improving so im not worried about this much.

So is it good enough to be in my favorites list? Heck yeah.

Okay, here goes :).

Art: Love it. It's very beautiful. The first page was awesome, then the sort of semi-stick figure story was so-so (but I imagine you drew figures like that for a dramatic effect, sort of like scenes in movies that involved little stories that are sort of shown in claymation or whatever). Then once you get into the story, beautiful. Landscapes were very well done in those first few pages when you first see Joan. You do need to make sure there is something to the backgrounds in your comic though. The characters are mostly all very well drawn, but when you leave that white backdrop it sort of takes away from the brilliance of the artwork.
I also liked how you incorporated color into all the greyscale artwork. It's very dramatic and sort of Sin City-ish (only your comic by far blows the stupid movie for that out of the water...). It's powerful.
When it comes to your dialogue bubbles, make sure that your works in not touching the sides or are falling out. Sometimes you have words that touch, or ...'s that cross over.

Story: Love it. Mythology and scifi and fantasy all intermingled, it's just awesome. And I don't know what else I could say :S. More action? lol.

Writing: I'm sure it has been said already, but change the font. Google search Blambot and get some sort of more comic-looking font. Also, make sure not to reduce the size of your font for characters. It gets a little hard to read when you reduce the size to less than 12 point (for most fonts anyway). Bigger sized fonts should be left to sound effects and what not.
Watch spelling and grammar. I know, it's a comic, but grammar still has to come into play and there are just a few lines where a comma should have been used, etc.. There were a few spelling errors (ridiculous has 1 D) here or there, so watch closely so you don't do that. Make sure to cap the first letter of the first words in your sentences.
Don't say "the Hell?" because the phrase is "What the Hell (or hell)?" and it's just sort of irritating :S.
I did have a problem with some of the dialogue as it seems way too dark for your greyscale artwork, though fitting for the colored and flashy stuff. Not sure if that could be effectively changes. Don't change the color either. Stick with black. The grey for the thoughts seemed too light, so maybe a lighter black, but no grey, or something like that.
Now that I've read further I've noticed you changed the font and things got more consistent in the color. So...umm, only for the first chapter does my comment on the fonts matter lol.

Overall: Great comic. Nuff said almost :P. It's beautifully drawn, great story, and good dialogue (setting aside spelling errors and such). Keep it up because this is going to go pretty far :).

Junior thomas is right on the mark about alittle too much backstory and dialogue. Show us the story! Don't tell us! I'm sure it wouldn't be too bad for book writing ,but absolutly not comic writing.

Art:
I like the consistenency of the character styles. The colored eyes look cool. Although...It's so easy to just color the eyes and get the feeling of a colored comic just from that. But... you should try to incorporate other coloring into the comic too like in the flash backs and explanation scenes.
The porportions are alittle off at times. Especially the arms. You need to look where the elbow is at different angles even if the character has long sleeves. Also please have more backgrounds. Even during the big dialoguey pages. Characters drawn so well seem so lacking without a background. BTW: You draw horses really well. ^_^

Story: First gist reading it all... seems like another demon/elf/dragon journey fantasy adventure to me. I'm still looking for a little more substance... like connect the back stories a little better. The "why I have this eye?" questian seemed very apropreate. The rest could have been just a little in a better place.. sure realisticly if two people that are just getting to know each other were on a jouney those questians would be talked about and explained to those details but... dispite the nice pictures, I felt somewhat bored reading it all.
Some of the cross dialogue is hard to read which goes first... and such. I seriously suggest having less dialogue,
having more panals donated to dialogue so less words are in the bubbles or having the characters do something while they talk(your getting better though horse scene had something http://www.drunkduck.com/Hurrocks_Fardel/?p=41317 )

It's starting to get alittle bit better as it progresses now after the knight fight. I want to see... more conflict. Some real bad guys. Who cursed Drake?

thanks you for all the reveiw, they're extreemly helpful.

what seemed to bug people to most was the long-winded explanations. I personaly am geeky enough to enjoy those sorts of things, but I will cut back in the future since they're overwhelming. I've only got one more planned for anytime soon, so I'll make sure to keep that one nice and breif. I'm also planning on adding a separate page on the site for complete explanations, so when I do that I'll go back and thin out some of the earlier pages so that they only contain imformation that is vital to the story.

So far I've reserved color for things relating to Bahamoot, like magic, stories, and flashbacks. I don't think I coulf manage a full-color comic, but I should have more opportunities to add color in the future.

As far as Jillyfoo's comment about it seeming like "another demon/elf/dragon journey fantasy adventure" yes, it does. This is one of the things that bothers me about the beggining of my story. sure, I could say "oh, just wait, it gets better" but that does me no good if folks get tired of the first part and leave before they get to the better stuff. The problem is that I can't get from point a to point B without the bleh-ness in between, so as pathetic as it sound, hang in there, it will get better.

once again, thank you for all the comments, the things I plan to focus on for the next chapter are:

backgrounds
proportions
fix the text by the time the chapter is over (hopefuly by next weekend)
space out text more and tone it down so that the story flows better

please, check in again at the end of the chapter to let me know if I've improved.