Critiques and Opinions for Comics?

[Moley 0]

Hello, everypony, I've been making comics for a few months now and figured I should try and get some feedback from a wider audience. There is suprisingly little of it on DA if you don't get some exposure, in my experience...

 

Anyway, http://mole-y.deviantart.com/art/I-like-your-face-325512852

 

This'd be my most recent comic.

 

The rest can be found on my tumblr if you care to look. http://ask-moley.tumblr.com/

 

My goal basically boals down to trying to get one posted on EQD. I'm well aware that I have a decent amount of ways to improve still but... I sort of feel I more than close if not already there to at least get something posted... But I don't even get replies to the emails so oh well. Anyone have some advice or something?

[Planty 1,053]

Well i read the top one... and i dunno.

 

I don't really buy into pinkie being crazy in a murderous way tbh.

 

I didn't really see the joke first time and the last panel i really didn't like.

 

Overall your comic style is good and the writing and drawing is good (apart from the last panel).

 

For me if you just changed what it was about i would love it !

[Pix3M 607]

Hello, everypony, I've been making comics for a few months now and figured I should try and get some feedback from a wider audience. There is suprisingly little of it on DA if you don't get some exposure, in my experience...

It seems to work in reverse on dA. There is so much 'crap' out there that people with a discerning eye won't have the energy critiquing everything you see. Everybody there is only there usually to try to get attention themselves, not give attention to artists out there. If they are in a mood to give attention, they're most likely going to give it to one of the more popular artists.

 

Anyway, http://mole-y.devian...-face-325512852

 

This'd be my most recent comic.

 

The rest can be found on my tumblr if you care to look. http://ask-moley.tumblr.com/

 

My goal basically boals down to trying to get one posted on EQD. I'm well aware that I have a decent amount of ways to improve still but... I sort of feel I more than close if not already there to at least get something posted... But I don't even get replies to the emails so oh well. Anyone have some advice or something?

 

They once declined featuring my work which got a DD on deviantART. (first world problems *sniff*) Just sayin'

 

Anyways, before you start reading further, this is coming from a guy who's taken the time and found flaws in this work which itself also got a DD: http://fav.me/d195pka If I sound too harsh, don't take it too personally as even some of the greatest works can have flaws.

 

I'm more of an artist than a writer, so I'll mostly comment about the art style (which IMO, can really break an otherwise good comic).

 

One thing that sticks out the most is that your pony anatomy doesn't resemble the actual show enough. Avoid drawing from memory if you can help it, at least until you got pony anatomy down. Look at a pony and draw what you see - it will greatly prevent you from tripping over numerous mistakes. You can do this many times for practice until you got accurate pony anatomy firm into memory.

 

For example, in the first panel, Fluttershy's eye is shaped like a diamond. It could have had a smoother curve. Her nose also reminds me of the simpsons as it's so rounded. Pony noses mainly curve up and don't curve that much at the tip. The outline that defines the bottom of her head also stops to curve along the neck, which makes her look flat. If you extend that outline so it doesn't turn to start defining the neck and have it go deeper, you'll create an illusion of having her head in front of her neck a little bit so it more closely resembles a pony. Her front leg that she is holding up is also not bending right as she's missing a first joint. Her back legs appear to curve in front then curve back. Pony legs actually only curve back when they're standing up right. Those legs also seem disproportionately fat.

 

I also noticed the weird quality of the backgrounds. Did you draw them on MS paint and scaled them up with cubic interpolation? o_O I can clearly see square jags especially on those tree trunks which are pretty characteristic of aliased lines. I particularly do not like aliased works like these carelessly scaled up with algorithms that only acceptably work on photos and other pictures of similar quality.

 

IMO, looking at this, there's quite a way to go until it's something I can enjoy without noticing all these oddities that makes them look very different from their show-accurate counterparts. Other people might not see everything I see, but you can be surprised with what sort of errors people will catch that you won't catch yourself (I once saw an error that Harwicks didn't see. No insult to him, he's still awesome enough to make me stop, absorb his work, and notice such a mistake to begin with)

 

You also have to be careful with people who don't really have a discerning eye giving you praise. They won't help you very much when you're trying to improve.

Edited September 9, 2012 by Pix3M

[Moley 0]

You also have to be careful with people who don't really have a discerning eye giving you praise. They won't help you very much when you're trying to improve.

Yeah, I don't want to sound like too arrogant but basically everything I've seen on DA has been a simplistic "nice job" which is pretty annoying. Hence my looking elsewhere.

 

I also noticed the weird quality of the backgrounds

I do hate backgrounds. I find them daunting to draw with my tablet. Those forests were worse than my average bg, but no, I'm not very good at them. I used the pathing tool from GIMP and then scaled it up because I was too stupid to think ahead, but the process is still very tedious. If you have a better method or some advice for just drawing backgrounds that'd be a huge help.

 

As for the rest of it, I do see it now. It seems surprising that I couldn't see that earlier... Humbling, I suppose. Thanks.

Edited September 9, 2012 by Moley

[Pix3M 607]

I do hate backgrounds. I find them daunting to draw with my tablet. Those forests were worse than my average bg, but no, I'm not very good at them. I used the pathing tool from GIMP and then scaled it up because I was too stupid to think ahead, but the process is still very tedious. If you have a better method or some advice for just drawing backgrounds that'd be a huge help.

I think the only advice I can give is to just practice. You'll eventually find larger projects to be less daunting, then you'll work at a faster pace when you get used to it.

 

See my avatar? I drew it pixel-by-pixel. It's kinda funny that I took so long to make really small game sprites around the beginning of this year, then now I grew to have the guts to spend 14 hours or so to make something as large and obscenely detailed as that. (Even then, I still gotta learn how to work faster if I wanna start professionally offering my skills for people). Just remember that some of the best pieces out there took a long time to make.

Edited September 9, 2012 by Pix3M

[Castoro Chiaro 181]

I actually burst out laughing at a few of your comics and I don't usually laugh so hard at pony comics. You've got a great sense of comedic timing and turning a situation to make it funny.

 

Really my only suggestion is to work on how you draw the ponies, because sometimes the anatomy gets pretty wonky and it distracts from the joke. Consistency is very important in making comics.

[Moley 0]

I could never muster enough time and effort to do detailed pixel art like that, but more would be a good idea...

 

I think my humor is funny but it doesn't really mesh super well with MLP. The traits that I like aren't very common. Sadism for Pinkamina, naive stupidity with the fillies, hurtable with the fillies too. Technically naivety can justify almost all character flaws, thereby also allowing for any sort of painful end result. So I do a lot of fillies...