Project GTH

Project GTH is the story about a genetically engineered girl made to be a killing machine. After escaping her creators she tries to live a normal life, but her past keeps coming back to haunt her.

Project GTH is about genetic weaponised teenagers who have escaped and the attempts to bring them back in. The story focus is on Lucifer/Lucy who has enrolled at college and she acts like a desperate horny little girl.

Presentation
The overall look is vibrant, the colour work is excellent and it all looks clean and tidy.
There are some spelling and dialogue issues that most likely stem from english not being the creators first language (I think) these are forgivable and seem to get corrected when pointed out. There are also some minor lettering issues such as
panel two here...http://www.drunkduck.com/Project_GTH/index.php?p=680049
There are a number of times that the speech bubbles interfere with the text and vice versa. Not a huge issue but something that could be improved.
Also on the last panel, what?
http://www.drunkduck.com/Project_GTH/index.php?p=696120

Writing.
The story is fairly interesting if not wholly original, it moves along at a lightning pace too. Flashbacks are common and seem to work well. The back story unveils slowly while the present day events thunder along.
The character writing is passable, the aren't deep but do all have some kind of back story or motivation but sadly a few seem a little interchangable. Still with it being an action oriented comic it isn't a huge flaw.
The character relationships often seem simple and too quick, with added awkward dialogue, but as it progresses the central relationship between Nash and Lucy develops nicely. In fact a lot of the writing short comings seem to be an effect of the creator wanting to set the story up fast and then settle in after.
I do find the dialogue unconvincing a lot of the time, but in context with the story and art it does fit. The characters just seem too amused and frivolous for my tastes.

Art.
Overall the art is pretty strong, this isn't to say there are not short comings but the balance is good.
The colouring through out is excellent, as I mentioned earlier it is very vibrant and gives the line work a lot of life. granted it isn't all that atmospheric but then the comic has such a light feel to it that it fits the comic perfectly.
Where the art does fail is the photo modding, it looks terrible and poorly drawn efforts would be preferable to edited photo's in my opinion. The plus side he does get better at making them fit the page as it progresses.
There are times early on where the panels do not flow correctly, a few times I had to check to see if the story read from left to right or right to left.
The line art is pretty good, usually it is clear what is going on and the expressions convey the emotions well. There are some issues with perspective here and there, and some of the proportions are out here and there. The character designs aren't bad either s long as you go with the mangaesque thing the comic has going. Overall I do like the art aside from the photo backgrounds that occasionally appear. The story telling is clear and the art has a nice style, for all my criticism I like the art and it does improve gradually as it goes and it always has a consistent style. I have been critical but please note nothing is terrible, these are just weaker aspects of the art that could do with improvement.


Overall.

An enjoyable action sci fi romp with some decent and consistently improving art. While the writing is a little light and frivolous for my tastes it does tell the story well.
That I have faved it and plan to keep reading it should tell you that regardless of my critique I found something to enjoy.

7.5/10

My Review of Project GTH

Project GTH is reviewed on the following categories:
Writing
Artwork
Style
Originality

Reviewer bias: I dislike most mangas and animes; thus anything that follows too many of their tropes are going to receive a lower score than a series that doesn't.

Writing
My first issue with the writing starts with the set-up. The military might not have the greatest moral track record in the world, but they're still capable of some pretty amazing results and know survival if nothing else.

First, when people make soldiers out of innocents like children, they do a lot of really horrible conditioning. If you have grown soldiers, if it's not pre-programmed you can bet that unless they escaped as children they're not likely to try to escape as teens. Even then, you're going to want to have some sort of tracking device that can't be removed -- we already have the microchip technology available today, nevermind when you throw in secret super-tech in 2006.

And if they do escape, you're going to make sure your under-cover operative has enough intelligence to know how dangerous they are and what they're capable of. Also, one would think that yellow eyes would be a pretty darn obvious sign of a non-human.

Establishing that I figured that much out by page 2, please don't take this personally Andy -- but this sets up a negative review.

The biggest flaw of Project GTH is that it mimics the writing of manga and anime; it actually reads like it was translated from Japanese first. I most typically read lines of dialogue like "I won't allow it", "beautiful battle", or "beautiful brother" from old Japanese video games from the 90's.

Now it's not to say that all the problems stem from manga/anime influence. It also has characters talking far too much during the action sequences. It's bad in Western comic books, bad in Eastern comic books, and it's bad here, too. Just because Marvel and DC do it doesn't excuse the fact that it's poor practice (if it's any consolation -- I don't like the publishers either). If you have enough time to say "Too slow!" then the other person does NOT have time to say "Damn it". You don't even have enough time to say "Too slow". Ever try to talk while backflipping? There's a reason why people don't do it, and a military-trained individual will have killed you by the time you finished saying "Too slow" after you've landed.

The characters also seem like they were taken from different manga as well; they don't have their own motivations or personalities, they're just archtypes.

So, if you think my criticism is valid, what now?

If you wanted to make this beast your own, it's time to do some thinking. Look into motivations. Give characters odd quirks to set them apart. Don't go by what you've already read or seen in media or you're just repackaging someone else's interpretation of life, which might just be a repackage of yet another person's interpretation.

Do some research. I would recommend reading up on child soldiers for the kind of psychological scarring that might occur.

Most importantly, work on your villains. They need real motivation other than "I'm evil" If the prototypes are supposed to be merciless, then read up on how sociopaths behave. Change some of the methods of operation, and ensure it matches with that particular character's motivation. Read up on actual historical bad guys.

By doing the research, it will change how you approach the story and the rest should take care of itself.

Artwork

The artwork suffers greatly in the emote department. Characters always look more than a little drugged up, and it's most glaring in combat situations.

In the last panel, you could change the dialogue to "Let's go get a drink at the bar", and "Sure. I think I see my favourite brewer!" and it would match their faces better

They should look more focused. They look like they're daydreaming. In that fighting sequence nobody looks like they're paying attention and everyone is doing too much grinning.

Whatever is your source for your battle sequences, stop using it. If you're not using any source, get one.

As far as character designs go, the males have little masculinity in their faces and many characters all have the same base design. Mix it up, do more life drawing, and the work will improve. On a technical aspect, try using variations in line thickness -- took me years to figure that out.

On the positive, there's good attempts at different angles and poses, so it's never boring -- which is important. Characters don't stand there statically while talking -- a problem of a lot of other comics.

Style, Originality
The comic is styled completely after anime and manga. As stated, I have biases against that so that's all I say here.

Overall
I don't enjoying tearing apart a work like this, especially considering the time and effort put into it, but I honestly didn't like it. I can't recommend it to anyone who shares my tastes.

Overall:
I love the concept of the genetically engineered assasin, but the synopsis and the fact that the main character is also named reminded me a little to much of Elfen Lied, a show that I didn't particularly like. This gave me something of a bad first impression. However, while the first few chapters were rather hard to get through, there is enough improvement in the later pages to salvage my opinion of the work and keep me from giving a completely negative review. Yes, there is still room for improvement, but it's come a long way since it first started, and is likely to improve more still.


Art: The mere fact that this comic is in color is a big plus in my book- I tried (and failed) to make a color comic, so I know how much more effort it takes to color the pages. The style is nice and unique, and you can really tell that the artist is trying. However, when you look at the pages as a whole, things often seem stiff or blocky. I think a large part of this is how text-heavy the pages feel. This page right here is a perfect example: http://www.drunkduck.com/Project_GTH/index.php?p=679669
When conversations are blocked so densely like this, it's easy to loose track of where you are or who's talking, and any emotional impact that should be brought on by the conversation is severely dampened by this.
However, his seems to have gotten ALOT better in recent pages, so much so that it dosen't really seem like a problem anymore. However, those first few chapters can be pretty difficult to get through.
Speaking of emotional impact, the artist could really enhance it by adding more facial expressions. The faces can sometimes feel frozen and don't really show what the characters are feeling. This problem, while it has gotten somewhat better, still needs alot of fixing in my book. I would recommend that the artist try to fill out the 25 essential expressions meme on Deviantart, or at the very least try to draw some more facial expressions.


Writing: The pace of the story is very fast, almost too fast at the beginning. I mentioned already some of the problems that I had with the early pages dumping too much text on us. Once again, this has improved immensely since the beginning of the story. There are some plot holes (wouldn't these highly dangerous killing machines have tracking devices implanted in them in case something goes wrong) but overall, they are forgivable. However, the dialogue often doesn't really feel like a conversation with actual people, and is sometimes rather stiff, but again, this has improved since the start of the comic. My main gripe with this story is that I don't really feel very emotionally attached to very many of the characters. They don't really feel believable to me, and while we get alot of flashbacks, none of them really worked for me. I personally dislike flashbacks in general, so that might be something of a personal bias.


Final thoughts: Overall, it needs work, but it's getting better. The massive improvement in the pacing proves to me that you are trying, so my advice would be to keep it up and keep getting better! At the moment, I would mainly focus on improving the variety of character expressions, and on trying to 'show' not 'tell'. Do this, and the quality of the comic should increase yet again.
Good luck!

an interesting read. part anime, part independant film experiment. some charictors do seem a little flat at times, but as more of the series hammers out, that should only improve. the artworks is a little rough, but improving as the page count increases. all in all a title to watch

I like Project GTH and follow it's updates, but there is no denying that it has some serious problems, which mostly has to do with it being rushed to the extreme. The comic has for the most part daily updates, so the theme "quantity over quality" is evident. The author has a story to tell and wants to tell it quickly so perfect artwork isn't a priority.

The story is entertaining and almost as a soap opera touch to it. It is dramatic, has romance, betrayal and really evil bad guys. It's definitely fun and the fights that go along with it should probably not be taken too seriously, but be fun entertainment and it works.

The character designs are all great and have a "Street Fighter" touch to them. The women tend to blend and look the same at times, which was mostly a problem early on when not even the facial expressions changed. This has gotten better and gets better all the time.

The artwork style is cool but have a very sketchy nature, the linework is flat and often the background leak into the lines or make it jagged.
**http://www.drunkduck.com/Project_GTH/index.php?p=732846

Now and then we get some more attention to the lineart but that is sadly rare. Pity since the pages really look so much better and cleaner.
**http://www.drunkduck.com/Project_GTH/index.php?p=706797

The background are nearly non existent, and when we do get one it is when it is absolutely necessary like in the recent fairground scenes, any other time we get different colored voids or rooms that is supposed to be airports, apartments or streets. Early on there were some photoshopped pictures as backgrounds but that has gradually gotten better although we still get the odd cloud patterns in it's place. Also note the odd paint scribbles at the end panel.
**http://www.drunkduck.com/Project_GTH/index.php?p=741589

So all in all a fun title that for me sadly suffers greatly because of it's rushed nature. Perhaps that is the price for doing such frequent updates, but one can't help wonder how a page at the artists full potential could look like. Now and then we get a issue cover that has drastically better artwork, so the skill is definitely there.
**http://www.drunkduck.com/Project_GTH/index.php?p=722857

GTH's art was hit or miss. Some of the faces were really well-drawn, but then in the next panel they look awkward and strangely-proportioned. A lot of the faces look good from the front, so I know the author is capable of drawing well. Sometimes the drawing looks good, but it's all slanted to the side. If the author would take more time to draw, and maybe use some references, it could really look great! I would especially recommend working on profiles, since they often look weak (and I personally know how hard they are!). Like everyone else said, you could improve backgrounds and battle poses a lot.

For me, the lines and coloring were a little too rough and blurry. I like clear, confident lines, not sketchy, thin ones like these, but maybe that's just my personal preference. Still, I think thicker, more solid lines would make it look a lot more finished and professional.

I liked some of the character designs a lot, like Snake and the guy with red hair and black lips. However, since characters are often drawn in a rush, they sometimes look generic.

Some of the dialogue was "unnatural," but I didn't mind. Personally, I don't care if dialogue doesn't sound exactly like modern American English. So, lines like "I'm dying to hear why you shot your girlfriend," were fine and sometimes amusing for me, but many people may disagree and think it sounds bad.

The story is slightly run-of-the-mill, about a bunch of sexy teenage killing machines. It's not very realistic, either, but again, I don't mind- I see no reason why people need to make a story that could really happen or that follows all the rules and history of the real world. That usually works out pretty boring.

I'm looking forward to the author taking it a little slower and producing some pages at his or her full potential, even if it means a slower production rate. At first it might be frustratingly slow, but once you do that a bit, you will get faster at producing higher quality work. Good luck!