Long title, simple idea.

While I do love praise as much as the next person, I also love the critiques. They help me make my comic better. Often, I think people are afraid to offend and so hold back potentially helpful comments.

I hope with this thread we can establish a safe atmosphere for giving HELPFUL criticism to those who post in it. Remember: if you post here, you're askin' for it.

Now, let's play nice.

Sweet! It's a sticky!

C'mon people, be brave! I offer myself up as the first sacrifice. This can only help us!

I'd recommend the use of text bubbles, so that it looks a little more professional. But good comic, otherwise.

Your use of blur is quite creative at times but you might want to use it a bit less often.

You may want to work a bit on anatomy. Some characters seem posed a bit stiffly, or have limbs that aren't proportioned properly.

I actually really like the style, and the only criticism I could scrounge up to mention would be to take more care with backgrounds- sometimes it seems as though all the effort is in the characters, and the background or supporting objects in the scene seem unfinished. But I'm a hypocrite as I find myself doing the same thing. So *shrug*

It's a small petty point. Liking the comic! Nice job.

Good idea Brock!

I love Z and F just as much as the next guy (whoever the next guy may be), -but- I was wondering if it was possible to have constant coloring instead of the black and white tones? I love it when you color this strip (and, to be honest, I had no idea what else I could critique about it!).

Well, the main thing that I notice is that when the character is being viewed at a distance, her anatomy kind of wierds out. she'd have a sorta big head, a good torso and arms, and short legs. so uh, just try to make the anatomy a little more accurate when drawing them small.

work on your narrative voice. it sounds stiff and unlikely.

*that was for nadya*

Till death is good. I read it before. You should make your panel lay outs easier to follow. Sometimes the natural progression is thrown off and it gets confusing.

Ogre needs text boxes. I almost put some in myself, and am still tempted to. I bet I could add in some humerus insights too. Thats my only real suggestion.

Also make lots more pages of it, its very nice to look at.

Good luck finding something wrong with penis. Other than grammar & spelling, (which will always be a problem for me) I sincerely doubt you can find anything wrong with the storytelling narrative, character designs, or layouts. Feel free to try.

You use an awful lot of cutpastes... And your sarcasm in your posts needs to be less obvious.

You also mis-spelled "Because"

You should work on smoothing out those lines. Right now, the lines seem a tad wobbly. Try using thicker or bolder lines.

Wow! I'm totally impressed by all the great critiques in here. I see a lot of genuinely helpful suggestions for making strips better.

Victory Theme has some nice style and some killer choices in color...which is why your text balloons kill me. If you're going to go the traditional balloon route, try making them look a little more natural. Right now, it's all basic oval with triangle tails. It looks odd against your fluid artwork. More naturally shaped ovals and tails with some curve to them would really help. That, and your text is pressing up against the walls of the balloon way too much. Let 'em breathe.

Hard to give you any advice, SuperFogeys is looking very professional. My only minor gripe is the word balloons, but even then, I can read it just fine so its not even an issue. Just update often, and you'll have a great comic.

Well I haven't looked at your comic in a while, Marine, but just a quick glance at the last few comics and I think that you should invest in some cut and paste backgrounds (every once in a while) to go with your cut and paste characters. I think it would give it more detail and interest.

on fireborn, you should reconsider how you draw word balloons. My brother, who doesnt know jack about comics, says that the black outline of the word balloons looks too thick and that the white outline looks weird.

On the Guilty will be punished:

I really like your art, though I think your balloons need a little more work, not in the balloons themselves, but in the lettering. Remember the power of using bold on some words to emphasize...I personally like the Komika font library for lettering. Something about that comic font that makes it easier to read.

Cheers.

Matteblack, you're a hard one. All of your comics are pritty much flawless.
Must say I love the overlapping layout and style of your comic "Stupid Users"!
Quite expressionate, nice range of grey shades too.

RBW, is a very colourful and interesting read. The style is very loose and fun. If I had to ask you to change one thing, it would probly be the lettering. What do you colour this with, mspaint or photoshop? Either way, if you typed the dialoug, it would be much easier on the eyes.

Well, the main thing is that you really need to work on your anatomy and poses, many times they don't look very natural. Also, you should try to add some more shading to your characters maybe, because they looks sorta flat as it is, like paper.

Sometimes your images look a bit bulgy, like the shadows are imposing themselves a little too much on the light areas. That's really about all I see, unless that's the kind of look you're looking for. I find spooky stories tend to have a better look with a sharper look.

Your black and white is definitely moody, but I think sometimes it gets a little bit too muddy, and it's kind of hard to tell exactly what's going on (one point that particularly stands out to me is actually the first panel of the latest page you have up, but there were a few other parts where I had to squint at the panel for a bit to see what exactly it was).

You may also want to practice a bit with anatomy, especially hands and legs.

Edit: Errr, the top part was for 'Til Death, we posted at the same time, lol. For Your Eyes Only, then:

The main thing I'd say is watch the quality of your lines. It looks like you're inking digitally, which is producing a kind of squiggly look to your outlines. You can probably help with this by zooming way in while you're working (I mean way in - like 300% in, so it's all blurry).

I can't find anything wrong with silent kitty's comic. It looks great, almost at a professional level. I should read it to see if the writing is up the artworks standard...

Scott Adams once suggested there are six things that make jokes funny, and that you need only two of them in each joke to make it work. His list:

Cuteness
Meanness
Bizarreness
Recognizability
Naughtiness
Cleverness

You've got combining meanness and naughtiness down to perfection. Since there are 30 possible combinations, try giving the other 29 a shot if you want to avoid monotony.

Try to tone down on the halftones. It look good in most places, but in others it gets a bit hard on the eyes. Also try using them as shading once in a while. You might like the effect.

Your font choice is just awful, download some comic fonts. Also, you should use comic fonts for your sound effects, not just for your speech bubbles.

Either that or consider handwriting your speech bubbles if your penmenship is any good.

Well, to be honest, when I first clicked on your comic and saw digitally colored people on top of what appears to be crayons in the background, I was turned off. I flipped back through your archive and I see that it's the style the entire comic is done in, so it may be something that I'd get used to if I read the entire archive, but just to an outsider, it's jarring. I think it's possible to make the digital/traditional mix work, but right now, the two seem like two completely separate entities - they're not gelling at all and it's making the comics look a bit sloppy.

The speech bubbles in particular are suffering from it a lot - they almost all have a white, pixelized border around the outside of them, so I'm guessing they were pasted in on top of the artwork? I'm not exactly sure what your process is with them, but you may want to be more careful when cutting them out to avoid that.

..Sorry if that came off a little harsh. lol! The writing seems to be well done, I didn't read through the whole archive, but you have a good sense of humor.

As detailed as your coloring work is, I personally believe there needs to be a bit more variety in the work itself. Regardless of the scenario, whether it's an open field or a dense jungle/forest, you intricately draw pretty much every blade of grass and leaf... and that's it. There's a lot of green mixed in with the occasional brown tree trunk to justify the green.

I can't say I'm the "Master of Color" but try spicing the scenery up with something other than grass such as flowers or fungus or just mix and match the colors like blending a little blue in the trees to give them an old, withery appearance or add red to the leaves to give it a warmer, more distinct appearance. Variety is the spice of life!

Or something...

Still, good story, good art. I can see you going places.

Wickerden Travelogue-

First of all, it would help if your pages were smaller. It's hard to get a feel for the overall design of the page if I have to constantly scroll to see everything. Also, your balloons are pretty stuff. Experiment with anchor points in Illustrator to see what kind of more natural looking shapes you can get.

SuperFogeys

Here's me opinion:
The fact that your word baloons/lack there of change alot, and not consistently with each character, it can be a bit confusing. Example: http://www.drunkduck.com/The_SuperFogeys/index.php?p=218990
I think it would have been better if you kept the guy on the left's dialogue baloons white the whole time and maybe given another color to the third person who steps in.

Overall the comic definitely has a perfect newspaper comic feel to it. Although, I'd almost like to see things a bit larger. It seems like there could be more in those panels if you made them bigger.