A mild critique of the webcomic Aurora by Red
Mild spoilers for Aurora, Witch Hat Atelier, Sleepless Domain, and The Glass Scientists.
Having read lots manga and webcomics, and being an artist myself (though not of manga or webcomics) I have some thoughts on the webcomic Aurora by Red of Overly Sarcastic Productions.
something something these are my personal opinions on art not a personal attack on the artist something something it is not my intention to bother Red with this and you shouldn't either please and thank you
I don't like the tiny gutters. If you don't know gutters are the empty spaces in between comic panels. They help visually separate the panels and are usually white though manga likes to make them black for flashback scenes and you can do other stuff with them.
Here's an example of gutters from the Witch Hat Atelier manga by Shirahama-Sensei. The large gutters and margins make the page layout very clear and readable.
It also seems like manga has larger gutters than webcomics in general (not counting webtoons). Here are some examples from Sleepless Domain by Mary Cagle and The Glass Scientists by Sage Cotugno
Smaller gutters, more detail and color, but the layout is still clear and readable.
The gutters in Aurora however are tiny and sometimes almost invisible in some pages when competing with color and detail.
The paneling is also by and large uncreative (aside from the generous usage of diagonals I suppose which I personally dislike and feel it makes the comic more unreadable). With such narrow margins and gutters we don't get to play with negative space.
Shirahama-sensi does this quite well in Witch Hat Atelier with characters leaning on the edges of panels or escaping them, the panels themselves being picture frames or scraps of paper or falling off of the page; and the way she plays with negative space: turning it into part of the illustrations without making it too cluttered.
You could make the argument that it's easier to do this with black and white and I won't disagree but Sleepless Domain still manages to do some cool paneling and use of negative space while being a full-color webcomic.
It's not that Aurora doesn't have any cool paneling it's just few and far between and Red's commitment to very narrow gutters and minimizing negative space doesn't allow her to do anything cool with it.
I'm also not a fan of the text bubbles in Aurora. The use of both capital and lowercase letters feels like unnecessary detail and the font is not as legible as more popular ones for the same medium. The letters feel crammed with not much space between the letters and the outline of the bubble and the bubbles tend to be very horizontal which makes them harder to read. There's also often a lot of dialogue per panel which makes it more cluttered.
I think this is the most text-dense webcomic I've ever read. Let's compare this to a page of The Glass Scientists.
The font, the more circular shape of the text bubbles, the wider margins within the bubbles, and the way they're comfortably spread over the art makes them much easier to read despite all the talking that's happening.
I have some thoughts about the art style as well. The characters and character acting is perfectly fine, the backgrounds are usually bad and the locations unrealized but it's slowly getting better. The most recent background art being lineless is a big improvement. The coloring looks messy at times but is improving. I think thicker lines to outline overlapping and foreground objects would go a long way to make the art clearer. Red also seems to try to cram as much story and art onto each page as possible and it's my opinion that they need more space to breathe.
The dialogue is fine, sometimes too quippy for me and Red doesn't know how to write children (lol). The plot and characters are good.
I love the random page button. So fun :D. I wish every webcomic and manga website had this
It seems to me that Red's preferred medium is animation, with her history of making videos and her reluctance or unfamiliarity with negative space or fun paneling. I would love to see her embrace the unique artistic opportunities comics and manga offers but I will probably continue to read and enjoy Aurora either way.