045) āOops Comic Adventureā by Potoo Gryphon
Mint:
I noticed that there are two of you working on this. Great job on the teamwork!
Iāve never seen someone who has executed āshow, not tellā as well as you. That is a very important aspect of drawing webcomics, yet many artists tell more than they show. Everything Iāve read up to this point was so dialogue driven that it feels great to take a break from seeing so many words when reading your work.
Iām surprised you can convey a lot of emotion with your characters even though their eyes are simple dots.
You have three coloring styles: black-and-white, grayscale, and colored. Referring to the black-and-white version only, sometimes you shade the characters and background and sometimes you donāt. When you donāt shade characters and backgrounds and leave it as an outline, the panels feel empty even if you included a lot of line art details. As you can tell, I prefer that you include shading in your backgrounds and characters so the mood isnāt empty. Another problem with sometimes shading and sometimes not is that it causes an inconsistency with the style, so it would be best to stick with one or another.
Speaking of inconsistency, I mentioned that you have three coloring styles for your webcomic: black-and-white, grayscale, and colored. I personally prefer the black-and-white version of your webcomic because it takes less time and also because youāve already set the mood for the audience in the beginning as a black-and-white style so it would be too drastic to change in the middle, which you did. If readers begin reading it for the purpose of loving the style you set from the start, they most likely will expect and would like that same style to continue on. Although I do love the colored pages and grayscale pages, there are several reasons why I am not in favour of it. I dislike the grayscale because when the empty colored characters show up in a part where there is a colored background, like panel 2 of āCh 5 :: Part 5ā (and throughout that whole chapter), the characters are disconnected from the scenery because of its only outline. I love seeing webcomics in color, but a reason why I dislike it in this one is because the backgrounds have a different coloring texture than the characters, making both aspects disconnected once again. I prefer the black-and-white because you executed characters and backgrounds very well and made the two blend together and because it was what you presented to your audience in the first place. But, it is truly up to you two to decide what coloring style to use; my suggestion is to to pick one and stick with it for the sake of consistency.
Moving away from the bulk of the criticism, usually people just slap SFX onto their webcomic without knowing what it means. But you incorporate it perfectly, since you already seem to know that SFX work alongside with the scenery instead of simply describing and floating around the scenery.
It is difficult to pick my favourite panel, but I would like to mention about how much I absolutely love the last three panels of āIssue 3:: Part 4;ā the way the layout interacted with one another was awing to me.
Hey, youāve done amazing work on your webcomic so far; it was a pleasure to read āOops Comic Adventure.ā Thank you for requesting a review, and I wish you the best for the future of your webcomic!
āā- Mint
Glass:
Up until your recent updates in the story, itās just adventure after adventureā no focus on the characters themselves or their feelings and development. There hasnāt been a moment for Oops to think about what has happened so far or self-reflect about the situationā any normal person would be overwhelmed, especially after learning about being able to cast magic. This webcomic seems to be about the adventure itself, but neglects the actual characters in the adventure. In other words, the journey and events are elaborated and creative, but the characters arenāt well-rounded and have development. In a story, characters and their development are important as well as the plot. Focusing on characters and their feelings are important in a story for the readers to connect with them and feel like they themselves are going on the journey with the characters. Itās also important because it makes the story not sound like a history textbook explaining a series of events.
Whatās strange is that, shortly after learning he can do magic, he isnāt very surprised. In fact, he barely even shows a reaction. This is a bit unrealistic, since not only has he just found out that he has magic abilities that are forbidden in the city, he also turned a small rat into a large talking oneā which can be rather scary. What Iām trying to say is that his reactions and actions themselves arenāt very realistic, and in fact, Plague is a more rounded-out character than Oops as of the most recent episode. Plague has been shown to portray a huge variety of emotions and actions.
So far, it seems like the main character is being dragged around in the story (particularly by Plague) instead of being proactive and actively pushing the story in a particular direction. Iām not sure if this is on purpose or not, but it seems that thereās a message being conveyed that the powerful ability to speak up (or speak in general) is important in order to take control of oneās own life instead of being pushed around. If itās on purpose, Iām pretty impressed by how you conveyed it. But if thereās a moment that the main character really needs to say something, I suggest that you can get him to try mouthing the words he wants to say. This makes communication a bit easier. Although people canāt lipread very well, itās better than simply miming. But by miming and mouthing the words that he wants to say, he can communicate with his team a lot better. But on a separate note, Iām also confused as to why Oops hasnāt tried mouthing his words yet.
Try to keep the coloring style as consistent as possibleā particularly in the middle of an episode (example: Ch5 part 3). To be honest, I liked the colored version better, but if it takes too much time, just stay consistent and do either greyscaled or black and white.
And if youāre doing a grayscaled episode, try to keep the coloring tools/style consistent. Itās more obvious in grayscaled compared to colored, but whenever you use different brushes/textures for the background and the characters (which you usually cell-shade), it displaces the two from each other, making the characters look out of place from the background.
Haha, I kind of chuckled when the āDark Kingā was mentioned. Iāve never heard a more antagonistic antagonist name, but itād be a nice twist if the Dark King actually had some good traits to him. Nowadays, going into the antagonistās backstory and showing a good side of them seems to be popular, especially since it demonstrates that there isnāt a solid line between āgoodā and ābadā.
You have a very elaborate and creative plot, and I personally donāt think that the title of your webcomic conveys this clearly. Your current title makes your webcomic sound like a gag-a-day, so it attracts the wrong audience to your webcomic. I hope that didnāt come off as too offensive, but Iād like for you to receive the right audience and attention you deserve.
āā- Glass
pixelskylines
amandla
