*whew*

You take a very unique approch to creating a comic. Seriously o_o. It's like an allusion; I feel like the picture are moving but they're obviously not. Critque...I don't have much critque. I like how you fix a lot of action into a small space, but I wish you'd make it a little clearer sometimes. Other then that, wow. :D

Draw through on your characters & objects. That is to say, build them from the frame (skeleton) out. I dig alot of what you have going on, but your figures sometimes look very distorted from, I'm assuming, you drawing them only from the outside. If you build them from a solid frame you'll avoid alot of the odd distortions.

Later,
Chip

TheMidge28
one last thing. what is with the long author's notes?

I always have stuff to say about...stuff.

Because the green foot touches the beige hand in panels three and five, there's this weird white space 'object' created. With a little distance, the hand and foot would be clearer.

bah!

what a unique slant on a political comic...like a genx or whatever the gen is nowadays, comic!!!! the character modeling is nicely done but at times the backgrounds are either forgotten or poorly done...the jokes are funny but seem oneside as it approaches political themes...that's okay because they are your views...but it might be good to take a more ambigous stance like South Park or other comedic works so as to skewer both sides...because come on, we we all know the whole system seems screwed up! really sharp comic though.

I'm sorta reaching here, Midge, but I think you need to push your type back a little. Right now, on many of the pages, you type is much more prominant than your imagery.

That's all I got..

Later,
Chip

I wish I had anything critically helpful to say about your work, instead of just praising you for it. Your inking is simply amazing, as well as the toning/shading. Each style you use for every comic totally fits, from the Pop Art-ish feeling in Terran Sandz to the dark and dirty mood of Dead.

The only possible thing I can think of suggesting is colour. All your stuff is B&W, save for Terran Sandz's covers, so maybe this is something that you could practice more.

*shrug* I tried.

I'm afraid I'm gonna have to reach here myself, o5ooo. I don't like the font you use for dialogue & you might want to layout your panels better so the type has more room. Sometimes your word ballons feel crammed into the panel.

I'm still faving it.

Later,
Chip

Cs3ink,

I remember telling you on Jul 2nd about the page you had up (on 'Broken Things'): "Beautiful style... nice use of negative space." Later on in the comic you still use negative space expertly, using only 3 colors (if you consider white, gray and black colors and not tones) to magnify your artwork. Impressive, most impressive :)

On Terran Sands, your halftones are very consistent, but I think your speech bubbles need a bit of work... more specifically, the ones that have 'static' inside of them, they just need a tad of work to clarify them a tad.

And on 'Dead', it's totally opposite of 'Broken Things', and it seems that you try to fill every panel with something, even if it doesn't necessarily need it... (I know you're trying to show motion, but you did this well on page 7 (the car slamming page) without having to fill up the entire panel.

Anywho... just the raving thoughts of a madman :P

-Bryan

Something Like Life has plenty going on and so much potential...inking the pages would add so much to the presentation and story...some of the angles are off and the figures poses seem drab and need more dynamite...the backgrounds get distracting because too much time is spent in the figures and they don't seem to dwell in their setting...but again there is potential to make this a very interesting and exciting comic!

The DD community project, "Clowns, Spiders and Ghosts: What are you afraid of?" perks my interest. It's a way to get the community together about a topic as well as facing the fears we all have. I'm mostly worried that most everyone has the same fears, or that someone wants to take a comical approach to it (which is sometimes how I face my own fears). But that doesn't mean I don't like it. It's still hardly getting off the ground, but I'll contribute, because TheMidge deserves the luv.

Hmmm, I can't say anything about the art since it's Machinima. The writing is good, although some pages (mostly earlier pages) have sharp-ish font which is kinda annoying. Not too much, seeing as some pages have the font smoothed out. The scene placement is great and makes the comic easy to grasp and understand. There are a few pages that are confusing in terms of direction but reading them over usually clears up confusion.

The flaw with this comic is the gigantic image size. The comic only takes up a small bit in the middle and is surrounded by a extra white space. Be sure to use some sort of photo editing program to crop out the extra space, it'll make reading the comic easier. Although, I must say, the comic page is nicely centered in between all the excessive white space.

LAX is good. I would love to see it in color. Maybe I'm justing missing the point.
I can't say anything negative about it. Nice landscapes.

When you do another update of Andys Nirvana: first, pull in the gutters a little bit instead of cutting off the cartoon right at the edges of the drawings (the other strip you have in your gallery on Deviantart is a good example); second, switch whatever you are using to ink your outlines to something that will create a darker, solid black outline (it will make your colors look better).

Th_Mole
When you do another update of Andys Nirvana: first, pull in the gutters a little bit instead of cutting off the cartoon right at the edges of the drawings (the other strip you have in your gallery on Deviantart is a good example); second, switch whatever you are using to ink your outlines to something that will create a darker, solid black outline (it will make your colors look better).

Thanks for the info.

I'm using a brush to ink my work right at the moment.

In your color strips, apply more color theory. The lack of it tends to muddy up & flatten your strips.

Later,
Chip

Chip,

I don't how in the world you find the time to produce 3 books at once. And with such different art styles! Broken Things is my favorite, but I took this opportunity to check out Teran Sandz a bit more. I like the energy of Teran Sandz, but it's not really my speed. While I love your artwork, I think you go a bit too far with the digital effects on TS and, for my tastes, it comes off as confusing and ugly at times. Sometimes I would just rather see the great drawings, but instead I get digital effects. They're nicely done, I suppose, but they interfere with the storytelling for me.

Brock you make things really hard for us in this topic, your comic strip is nearly perfect, and I say nearly because everyone is able to improve at something always, but I'm no expert as to detect what could actually help you to improve.
I just found that sometimes your dialogs are to long, really few times, so I can't say its a mistake, but you could try to avoid it.
The other thing I found is that over all the quality of your strip is excellent, but here and there we can find some panels that are less detailed, enougth to be noticed, again not a big mistake, but just an advice so you don't fall in the trap of: "aa today I'm lazy so I'm just gonna do a few quick plain pannels, anyway none notes the lack of the quality" (first panel strip 51, maybe you wanted it to be like that, but that wheel chair could have been more detailed, for example, the inner part of the wheels shouldn't be white, we should be able to look across them).

You have a great strip there pal. =D

yadiel,

You show some nice promise. You've got a good start over all. Keep at it.

I would suggest the same thing for you that I would suggest for any new creator: keep producing pages, & draw from life. The simple act of drawing storytelling pages over & over will automatically improve your skill level & confidence. Your backgrounds & some of your anatomy suggest to me that your "schooling" comes from your inspiration (comics or anime). This is great for getting you out of the starting block, but terrible for helping you become a truly talented storyteller. Draw EVERYTHING around you. OFTEN. Draw your friends & family. Your bedroom. Your school. The forest. A bush. EVERYTHING. While some find this tedious & boring, it is nonetheless essential if you want to become a solid visual storyteller.

Later,
Chip

Chip, you are a master story teller. Your three comics are wonderful and vary so much. Dead is my favorite right now and the one I will address...if I can. There are some tiers which seem weaker than others...such as the page 6 and 7...compared to the others they stand out weaker...may be time constraints, compared to the other pages they don't have the dynamic angles which your other pages really bring, in my opinion. Also maybe some additional panels showing the progression of the fall. All in all I am hooked on the story and love the cross-hatching skills you have! Keep it up!

I love BloodHound Midge, have since I've seen it. Awesome writing, enthralling story, and the color palate is one of my favorites. The only issues I can even bring up are the word bubbles in the prologue threw me off and seemed awkward at first. And it's sort of hard for my eyes to adjust to the color scheme until about page five. Other than that I have no gripes so far. Maybe add some more substantial design to the backgrounds? Don't know, it can be kinda plain from time to time. Like page three of chapter one. It was good but it seemed kinda one dimensional because of that. But that's just how I saw it of course. Either way your comic is one of my new faves so keep it up mate. ^_^

ShinGen: your comic is hilarious. The waffle thing is great. I think your art fits the tone of the story... I have been sitting here for 5 minutes now looking at your pages and honestly can't think of anything you should be doing differently. Keep it up.

Gavin:

I found your comic to be quite confusing... However it is still in it's early stage so I really don't have much else to say...

...whoa.

First thing is first, the site design is abit abrasive on the eyes. The repeating logo background hurts the eyes and makes reading both the Author's Notes and the Comments hard without having to highlight them.

Replace it with something else, like a standard HTML color.

That said, now to the comic. Sorry to say, but it's pretty messy in appearance.

It's neat how you create most of the backgrounds, that's not something you'll find in other sprite comics. That said, the backgrounds are too bright. Bright as in the colors are too strong and hurt the reader's eyes. Use colors like seen in the Mega Mart, the red room? That's waaaay too strong.

Speaking of the Mega Mart, that's a huge window. And that of course leads to another problem with the backgrounds. Aside from the furniture and whatnot, the walls aren't in proportion with other objects by being massively tall.

Likewise, the speech balloons aren't good. They've improved from the first page, but they're still bad. Keep trying and keep experimenting, since it seems to be what you're doing. Also, LowRes made a fantastic tutorial on making speech balloons in MS Paint.

(I'll assume you're using MS Paint.)

Keep trying and keep experimenting. It'll do you good. :D

Hey Terminal, I am not a reader of your comic as you know or don't know or who cares...the comic is well done. I especially like the banner which I noticed changes as you switch through pages. How freakin' sweet is that. I really love that they are in color...that would be my one and only critique, I think your work looks so much better in color than the gray tones currently used. I think as a soap opera which I believe is what you are creating, that colors would add so much...I was a closet The OC fan and the richness of the colors on the show would add to your soap opera comic. Just my two cents.

I don't know if this will be helpful, Midge, but the purity (sp?) of the colors is really overwhelming to my eyes.

While the pages are well designed, & the concept well executed, I actually feel overwhelmed when viewing the page. If the red was a little less perfect, and the other colors the same, viewing the pages would bother my eyes less.

Like I said, I doubt it's helpful, but there you have it.

Later,
Chip

Okay I'mma go with Death on this one. Seems like your newest comic so you'll probably want more pointers with that than the others since I'm kinda in a hurry this mornin'.

First things first. This crosshatching shading style is really nice to see. I've seen it before but never to this extent. It gives it a grunge feel that really sets the tone for the story and the characters. That being said, sometimes it can be a little too much. I like how the density of the crosshatching varies due to lighting which is awesome but sometimes that means that two objects, like a floor and a character, can often blend in together due to the positioning and the density of the crosshatching. So in that sense sometimes it can be a little difficult to understand what is where. Also while each page is intriguing and holds your attention, after a few pages it just seems like there needs to be more. Maybe that's just because it leaves the reader wanting more. But either way it feels like maybe adding a second panel of the same size per page wouldn't be a bad idea.

The writing is so over the top you can't help but love it. And that's not a crit. Over the top is exactly where the storyline and the dialogue needs to be here. So in essence that's my favorite aspect of this comic. The panels themselves are choppy and inconsistent and normally that would be a bad thing but here it just plain works. I like this comic more and more as I read on.

I'll comment on Dreams of Leetness since that's the one you've been updating.

I'm not much of a gamer, but I can get your jokes, which is cool!! obviously your strip doesn't have much of an archive (yet!) but it seems pretty promising, especially with the crazy-weird humor like that strange molesting-waffle!! haha.
however, you have some typos you'll probably want to fix up: (I'll go in reverse-order)
in "Absent" he says "Late" which should be "later"...

in "New Student" it should say "on its skin" (it's is a conjunction between 'it' and 'is', whereas 'its' shows ownership...) and also "sulfur" is spelled wrong.

in "Introductions" the word 'tolerance' is spelled wrong twice.

the first strip doesn't have any typos! yay! (although some words are randomly capitalized.. sorry!! haha I'm really nitpicking, huh!!)

I'd have to say, as far as art goes, you should probably work on your color-schemes. it really helps a piece's congruity when the colors kind of match... when there's less of a rainbow of colors on a page, it makes it seem more solid. This color scheme index is kind of helpful... it's a good tool to utilize when choosing the colors for the objects you're drawing.
Along with that, sometimes it looks nicer to do cel-shading (here's a cool example of that if you don't know what it is the picture looks better and is easier for the eye to register because the outline of the shoe is a lot thicker than the details on the shoe. it just makes a piece look more dynamic.
things like improving on anatomy will come as you draw more, so I'd say, just keep striving to make each page better than the last, and keep up the good work!! ^_^

Misfit Assassins- I'll tell you right now that I'm no manga fan. There, now that that's out of the way...

I think the biggest problem I see with your comic (233 pages--wow!) is the overuse of head shots to tell the story. Try using the place the characters inhabit in your storytelling more, you'd be amazed at what you can communicate by changing up the camera angle and going wide or focusing on some object or thing off to the side. Don't be a slave to the close-up.

I think a scene with some Twinkies & pop-o-matic Trouble would really help Superfoeys. It would liven the strip & pull in more readers.

Later,
Chip