Before you post

Hey guys! This will be my first time applying to Spider Forest and I was hoping to learn as much as I can from the experience. I've been an artist for a while, but only started making my comic in the last year or so. It's been a lot of trial and error.

Anyways! I'm looking for a couple types of feedback.

1) How engaging is the comic as a whole? As a reader, would you come back to see how the story progresses?

2) What does it do well and what's holding it back?

Here's my site: www.witchofdezina.com
and thanks in advance!

(note: there's a scene I inserted after the fact, so there will be a small style jump that disrupts the continuum... >>)

Hi Kay!

I'm new here too, but here's some constructive crits on your comic, speaking specifically to what you requested.

While I'll admit, the fiction isn't something I'd normally be interested in, I found myself reading your entire comic. Which is a good thing I think. I'm not really sure where I'd like to see the story go myself. But the world feels grounded, and I think you're taking it down the right path.

I think what you're doing well I mentioned previously. The characters, and moreover, the world itself feels like it has weight. Even though plenty of fantastic things are going on, the world feels like it could exist. I particularly like the way you write dialogue, which I think is one of the hardest things to write, at least well.

Not that you asked, but I'm more qualified to speak on the art than anything, I'm the illustration part of our team. I think your artwork has showed continued improvement, which is always just awesome to see. So stick with what you're doing, keep drawing what the scene calls for. Too often (I'm so guilty of this) we make lots of compromises in our panels based on what we CAN do, instead of what needs to be there. I think you're drawing what needs to be there.

Thanks for sharing your work, I hope you found some measure of this useful.

Cool. Thanks!

I just read through 34 pages at a stretch as well, and while the art was pretty rough in the beginning, it wasn't a dealbreaker because the interesting writing more than compensated. As the pages went on though I started really digging the art style, can't wait to see what page 100 looks like! Like TheSpectraChronicles said, dialogue seems to come very naturally to you, a sort of naturally meandering banter sprinkled with jokes and awkwardness. Just the way I like it. But I did have some thoughts for you to consider.

Character design wise there are a bunch of shaggy-silver-haired males, so in the middle I kind of lost track of who Achtayver was in the middle. Unfortunately, skin complexion, clothing and eyes aren't really helpful markers, because depending on the emotion and lighting they're changing constantly, so it's basically hairstyle that determines a character. Having a few more character indicators up your sleeve like head shape, body shape, permanent skin marks or accessories, all go a long way in the audience remembering who's who.

Story-wise I think it's quite compelling and enjoyable, it feels like it's leading up to something cool. I was a bit lost in the initially because there are all these terms and names and words I don't understand. It got easier over time, but maybe that's something to keep that in mind, to not overwhelm people with too many proper nouns / technicalities. Obviously it's important to lay the groundwork of your world, and you're doing an excellent job of that, but just remember anytime you drop a word like Pepali or Boratan, the reader's flow is interrupted to try and remember some word in case it comes up in the future. Don't do it too often or I'll be pulled out of the story emotion, if that makes sense.

Ah. The character design issue is one I hadn't realized. Thanks for pointing that out. I did try to keep some costume elements the same to help readers, but I do have a lot of people moving through the panels (as well as scene color changes) so I can see how that's would get confusing.
The two guys are *supposed* to have different body types, but I'm sure I haven't been capturing that very well so far, so I'll try working on that.