Before you post

Hi, all! Requesting constructive criticism for Corner the Maze here.

I thought about making a thread like this as soon as I joined the forum, but then I figured it would probably be better to wait until after the applications were sorted through and everything. So, here I am now!

There are a few specific things that I'm hoping to get some feedback on, but I would also really appreciate any general criticism that people may have. I want to do the best that I can with this project and get better in the process, and I figure there's a good chance that there are things that stand out to people as needing work that aren't things I'm knowing to ask about, so please feel free to point out anything that you see! I won't be offended no matter how blunt you are so long as you give me even a hint of how to fix the problem, so I guess that'd put me at a 10 on how much criticism I'd like.

Specific things:

- Lettering/speech bubbles: I've had a few people now mention the lettering as needing improvement, but I haven't had anything specific to work with. I'll admit that dealing with text in Photoshop isn't something I'd actually done at all before I started the comic, so there were definitely some early issues -- I know that I had the spacing between lines all wrong to begin with, and it took me embarrassingly long to figure out to form the speech bubbles more around the words -- but other than that I'm at a loss for what this might refer to.

- Panel movements/flow: This is something I worry about a lot, because I know that I don't always read things in the same order naturally as other people do and I'm hoping I'm not screwing up the panel order because of it. Plus, it's something I have very little prior experience doing, so I'm mostly going off instinct and what I've seen in other comics. This is something I'm pretty sure I need to improve at, but I don't really know how to improve at it yet, or what exactly I'm doing wrong.

- Am I choosing the right moments of action to depict?: I've done more story writing and far more directing than scripting before this, and I keep falling into the trap of imagining scenes as I write them the same way I'd imagine it in my mind while blocking a play -- which is great for figuring out in my mind what's going on, but I worry I'm not picking exactly the right moments of that to illustrate for panels. I hope this is getting better with more of the script written and more practice, but I'm sure specific pointers would also be really helpful.

- Consistency of art: I had one person tell me they thought the inconsistency of the art was messing with the story telling, but when I requested that they elaborate, they just went to saying it wasn't a big deal. So now I'm pretty worried about this, but I can't figure out exactly what the problem is. Am I not drawing the characters consistently enough? Is the shading varying too much from place to place (I know there were some noticable changes when I switched pens partway through, for one)? Is it perspective, which I know I've had trouble with in the past? Is it something else that I'm not seeing at all?

- In-scene pacing: This is the first time I've written a comic script at all, so I'm not very confident about whether or not I'm getting the in-scene pacing down. I feel a bit better about the overall story pacing, but of course if there's a problem with that, I'd like to hear about that as well!

- SFX: Do I need more of these? Do the ones I have work? I was really on the fence about doing them by hand or doing them in the computer along with the dialogue, but I went with by hand... and now I'm concerned that it's kind of jarring.

- Inconsistent narration treatment: This is something I already know is a problem, because I realised while I was doing the most recent scene that had some narrated text that I hadn't done it the same way the previous few times. So, while I'm already aware of this problem, I would love to hear which of the ways I did it worked best: normal dialogue over the panel (like here), all caps with rectangular bubbles (like here), or the normal dialogue font with the rectangular bubbles (like here). I worry that the second one would be confusing because that's mostly what I've used for inner-monologue type stuff, so it might seem like it's Chimalli doing the narration rather than the other character (so far Elke). My instinct is to keep that style for when he's narrating a story, but not when anyone else is, but it could be I should just do something completely different for this for everyone.

I'm working on a buffer of about three months (~24 pages) right now, so it'll be a little while before any changes start actually showing up on the comic, but I figure the sooner I start working on fixing things the better.

Thanks for taking the time to read this -- I know it got a little long there!

Hi, I think I can help give you some examples in a few areas!

-Lettering: Make your word balloons a bit bigger. When the edges get too close to the text it can look messy.

-Art Tips: When you draw the cars in motion I don't get a good sense of them actually being in motion. Try to have them kick up dust clouds behind them or something to imply extreme motion.

-Panel Layout/Flow: Remember, action goes from left to right in comics. On page 68, the car is shown going right in panel 2, then left in panel 3. It's visually confusing from a storytelling perspective. so keeping that consistent can aid you.

I'm going to go through each thing you're requesting critique on one by one and try to be as much help as I can.

1. Lettering: I would bump your text size up by a couple points because it's on the small side. Also a good rule of thumb with lettering in general is to avoid using lowercase at all because it can hurt readability. I've noticed you're switching back and fourth, I'm assuming to try and differentiate thought and actual speech, but honestly I think you're better off either picking a different font for one or the other, and keeping both in all caps.

Also to expand on J-Nelson's comment about making your word balloons bigger, actual practice in the professional comics realm is to make sure the space between text and balloon edge is about the same size as a letter of your font. Obviously this isn't super strict, but it helps give things more room to breathe.

I'm also noticing quite a few tangents where word balloons are lining up with art. This isn't the only spot I'm seeing this but there's a pretty major one in the bottom section with the final word balloon against the sword: http://cornerthemaze.net/index.php?page=24

I also feel your balloon outlines could be a little thicker just to help them stand out more against the art.

2. Panel Movement: I am noticing some issues with this, and one way you can improve it is when you're doing your preliminary sketches, lightly pencil in a line illustrating the flow you would like things to be read, and try and keep everything flowing through the line, including word balloons, direction characters are looking, etc. The smoother the line is through each panel, the better. It's not always possible to get EVERYTHING exactly on the line or 100% serving it, but as long as the line is always kind of the focus in every panel, it should help your flow a lot.

3. Action: I think you could vary some of the action up a little. When I first saw this page: http://cornerthemaze.net/index.php?page=28 I assumed this was one person slowly stabbing the same demon and thought it was strange you would put a panel in the middle like that separating the action, but then I realized this is probably supposed to be several different people and different demons. I'd recommend in moments like this just varying up what the action looks like, so maybe one dude's stabbing, another's in the middle of a swipe, changing the actual angle more so that it doesn't look like a steady zoom in on one slow stab, etc.

Also this page: http://cornerthemaze.net/index.php?page=27 It looks like the guy knocked the demon in the head with the butt of his sword and then held it there because of the middle cut there with the hisss. When it's important to see how a person or creature is reacting to an action, try not to crop it out. (this is happening in the third panel of the previous example I showed as well, where the creature is so cropped out but we're not given enough focus on the attackers face either)

4. Consistency: Honestly, this is something a lot of people worry about that isn't mega important. As long as you can immediately tell who each character is supposed to be in every panel, whether you're drawing them exactly the same everywhere doesn't matter as long as they're not so off they look like a different person. I personally don't feel like it's a problem in your comic, as I'm not struggling to tell who each character is, and your style isn't dramatically changing anywhere I'm seeing.

What I do feel could possibly use some improvement to help the art feel a little clearer is making some of your textures less "noisy", and varying the line weight more between characters and environments, things that are closer and further away. I think you have a good start on both of these things, but I think you could push them both further. For example on this page: http://cornerthemaze.net/index.php?page=73 on the last panel, the steering wheel is getting lost, but blacking out some of that area that doesn't need all that detail would help it stand out. Just places like that where it helps your focal point be more focal.

Also I'm noticing on your chapter pages that there's usually so much texture and noise going on that your titles are getting a little lost.

5. Scene Pacing: I think my earlier critique on action would fix up most of the issues I'm seeing here, so I don't have too much else to say on this. If someone else has thoughts, they should definitely give a holler.

6. Sound Effects: I personally think what you have is fine. Any spots I would think having them would be necessary to help tell what's going on could be fixed by following J-Nelson's tip on just giving things like the cars and anything else that's moving and hitting things more of a sense of motion. (Also maybe I'm just looking on the wrong pages, but the only one I even noticed was the hiss from one of the demons? )

7. Narration treatment: I do agree with you that having both inner thoughts and other character narration both in rectangles can be confusing. I think you might need to put narration in the more rounded shapes just to avoid that.

Anyway, I hope this helps! Let me know if you need clarification on anything.

Thanks a lot, both of you -- this is really helpful stuff!

I'll try to reply more based on topic so the quotes don't get out of hand here, but the short of it is that I really appreciate all the advice and I'll start following as much of it as I can as soon as I can. If I don't mention something below, it means I saw it and thought "great idea! I'll start doing that". I just have a couple of questions:

Lettering/Word Balloons: The lowercase... I went with that because I actually have a very difficult time reading large amounts of uppercase text, especially if it's also sans-serif. I know it's weird and goes against what most other dyslexic people say works for them, but lowercase text is a huge amount easier to both read and work with for me, so I just reflexively avoid all-caps as much as I can. I did avoid sans-serif fonts here because I know that looks weird in comics, but I always forget that other people find uppercase easier to read rather than harder.

I'll consider changing to uppercase for everything, though, it'll just make things take longer to proofread -- I'm not my own audience, after all, and I know most people don't have the same problem I do. It's just that in my head "readable font" equals "lowercase font, preferably serifed".

If you don't mind, how much of an issue would you say the lowercase is? Is it really hard to read, or does it mostly just stand out and look odd?

Motion: I've been trying to add some motion lines like the first panel in this page more consistently with recent pages (I think those will start going up next month), because I did eventually notice that it was hard to tell when the cars were moving. I'll play around with that more, maybe add in dust clouds and such! I admit I was afraid that motion lines for cars and swords swinging and stuff like that would look too cheesy, but I'll banish that fear henceforth and start working on all that. Clarity is really important.

Panel Flow: Is the left-right thing basically the same as the 180 degree rule in film, then? I feel kind of silly that I know that rule and still did that, but... hey, live and learn. I'll definitely keep a more careful eye on that in the future! The flow line thing should really help.

I'd love some advice about keeping track of where the word balloons are going to be in the end. I've been struggling with that, since I add them in digitally after I've already inked and scanned everything, and my awful handwriting scrawled in the thumbnails doesn't translate well to how much space the font takes up in the end.

Action: Actually, that was supposed to be the same person killing the same demon... but looking back on it, it does look really weird. That and the cropping, I was trying sort of for dramatic close-ups and slow motion, but that clearly doesn't read well!

When you say the same stuff applies to general pacing, are you talking mostly about keeping things in the same panel and not splitting them off into close-ups or the like, or do you mean that it's mostly the action sequences that are the problem?

Texture/Line Weights: For some reason I've been kind of afraid of using solid black anywhere, so I'll try and get over that and make better use of it! I can definitely see where that'll help. I've been working on trying to thicken up the foreground lines a bit, so I'll push that more.

I'm actually planning on going back and redoing all the title pages later, maybe with colour, because I've been noticing that they aren't working out very well. I'm sure that is one of the big reasons why. I'll try and clean the next few up for sure in the meantime, maybe go back and see what I can fix up digitally in the earlier ones.

Again, thanks so much to both of you for taking the time to give your advice, and for all the advice itself! I assure you I'm only making such a long reply here because I want to make sure I really understand it all so I can apply it.

I feel the same way you do about uppercase. I hate reading it, and I can never proof read it. While "traditionally" comics are done in all caps, you don't have to look very far to find very popular webcomics done with mixed case font. I think the key is readability (kerning, relative size, line heights, placement, avoidance of tangent lines) more than the font case.

Before changing your font to uppercase, you might want to:

• 1) experiment with improving the breathing room around your text (more space between words and the edge of the balloon), as has already been said
• 2) increase the spacing between the letters (for example, in your latest page, "roll" looks like "rol" because the l's are too close together. This is a problem that doesn't exist with uppercase lettering)
• 3) Increase the line height so no letters touch each other between lines (y of your and last d of decided, in your latest page)
• 4) increase the weight of the font (it's really thin)
• 5) and definitely definitely increase the stroke line thickness around your balloons, as has already been said. Word balloons lines should be equal to or greater than the line width of the line art, so they jump to the foreground instead of getting lost in the background (thick lines = close, thin lines = far away).

I'd advise trying this all on ONE page before you go redo more. If you're really attached to your font choice, we won't pry it out of your fingers. But, I do heartily agree your font choice makes your comic very difficult to read due to multiple lettering faux pas, some of which can be fixed by changing spacing, and some of which can't. I'd probably more than anything recommend checking out free comic fonts over at Blambot or Free Fonts (WARNING, some of these are SOUND EFFECT fonts only), as these generally have had all the lettering kinks ironed out so you don't have to do it the hard way. Also, Blambot has a really great resource for comic lettering here.

In the end, it matters if your audience can read your work more than if you adhere rigidly to rules.*

*my opinion as a webcomic reader only

Thanks a lot for all the font and lettering advice, Kez! That was really useful. I've bookmarked that Blambot advice page to refer back to; there's a lot of stuff there I didn't know. (Obviously I should've done research on lettering before I started the comic. Hindsight!)

I've started trying to apply the advice I'm getting here with the two latest pages that I inked and lettered (everything but panel movement/layout stuff, since these were already pencilled -- I'm working on that with the new pages I'm pencilling), and I found a new font that is at least to me very easily readable and still lowercase. I'm attaching two of those pages, because I'd love to get some second opinions on the font in particular!

I haven't changed the car's dialogue font because it seems more readable to me than what I had been using for the rest of the dialogue, but if I'm wrong about that, I'll try and find something new for it as well.