Comic

[Igor]

I just took a job to draw monthly comic for some magazine and for the first month i did the table below. I would especially like to hear your opinion on coloring. First i wanted it to be more subtle (no shading, flat look), and with more washed out colors, but after i got critic from writer, i decided to make it a bit more "plastic" and dramatic. Coloring is a bit of compromise between speed (around 4-5 hours for all table) and attempt to not make look too cheap. What do you think?

[MadReizka]

Oh my God!

Igor, you are the god!

That is great.

I love the blue shading a lot!

[Pet Terry]

Looking awesome as always. Excellent!

[AJA]

That's just great. As always... How much do you get paid for that one?  :

[Gord10]

Looks great. But can you tell us what are written there?

[Phemar]

Is it just me, or does that guy remind me of Slartibartfast from Hitchhikers guide to the galaxy by Douglas Adams?

Anyway, great stuff!

:Zor

[Darth Mandarb]

First off, excellent work as always!

I particularly like the use of yellow in the 4th pane.  It totally gives the impression that he's made a deduction/discovery.  Excellent use of color there.

As well as the lack of background in the final pane leads me to think that the woman (from the previous pane) has debunked him and he's feeling dejected.  (I've officially depleted my list of 'de' words!)

The first pane ...

I think might have just a little too much of the same shade of blue ... it adds the impression that he's deeply concentrating/focused, and makes the yellow pane more dramatic but what about some different hues on the foreground or background blues?  Might add some contrast between the elements.

Aside from the 'blue' feeling I got from the first pane, this is very profressional and excellent.  I 'feel' the story from this without the words ... and that to me is a success!

Great job!

~ d

[Erwin_Br]

FAN-TAS-TIC!  :o

Use of colours, shading, the lines. It's... fantastic!  

Hmmm, the only thing I would've changed is the third frame. I would have mirrored it because 1) The hands in frame 3 and 4 make the up-right corner very busy and 2) I like it to see the character facing another direction once in a few frames.

--Erwin

[Scummbuddy]

I love it, I love it, I love it.

I like the coloring, and I like that you aren't stuck up on such a wonderful job you did, and how great you are.

The only problem I see, is that you don't see the globe fall, or bounce out of frame, and to me it could be thought that there wasn't any globe, and it was all his imagination and the yellow frame is when hes coming out of his dream cause his wife is yelling at him to get to work.

I know whatever magazine you'll be working for will get you a cult following and many many letters to the editor complimenting your work. I've been doing it for years. (complimenting you)

[Rincewind]

Holy poop on a stick, man! That is awesome... It is indeed worthy of two of these, which I stole/borrowed/whatnot from the doom-metal.com forum:

Worship!

[Igor]

Thank you everyone for great feedback! Appreciate it a lot

AJA- Not as much as i'd want to It's not bad at all, but if you compare the work that goes into one comic with work that goes into illustrations, you find out illos are the way to go, while comics are more for your soul.

Gord10Ahmet- I'll try to translate it in English (even though, honestly, i suck at translations, heh).

DM- damn it, i don't know how you did it, but your interpretation just made my day! You almost wrote an overview of comic without reading a single dialog =)
Agree about "blue" feel. Actually it was even stronger (more annoying) in previous version and i tried to eliminate it a bit in this new one. I'll play some more with different hues!

Erwin- thanks! Great point about third frame! Now that you mentioned it, those two hands really make that corner look a bit busy. The only difficulty is, i'd have to re-draw pic a bit diferently to make composition work when mirrored. But i'll keep it in mind, if there'll be some time left!

Scummbuddy- Appreciate your comments, thanks man!
About globe- that was actually one thing that i was unsure about too (it was left out because of my bad planning and it was too late when i realized there won't be any space to squeeze the globe in), but to my surprise nobody mentioned that, so i wisely kept my mouth shut

[Esseb]

I have no further comments to add to the comic besides what DM, Erwin and ScummBuddy pointed out, I'm just curious as to what kind of magazine you're doing this for. Is it a monthly comic magazine, what other comics are in it and is the readership big?

[Erwin_Br]

Hmmm, I don't know about the blue, Darth. I think it's good because it draws the eye to the (more colourful) globe-guy. Too much variation in colour/hue might ruin that attention... I don't know...

--Erwin

[Penguinx]

Igor, I am, as always, humbled by your talent. Comic style drawing is my first love. I do all of my inking with Pigma Micron technical markers and am considering moving over to brushes. Might I ask what brushes you use? Your varied line widths look great!

[big brother]

The old man reminds me a lot of something from Asterix and Obelix (especially his skinny arms and large, bony hands). Great work, though!

[DodgeR]

looking real good! i like the lines.  I think it would benefit from some more contrast thought to make things pop out more.  seeing as how you want to keep the colours subtle i think maybe some solid black shading in the foreground objects in the first panel and some shadow in the background of the others to pop the characters out.  

[Igor]

Thanks again!

Esseb, it's for National Geographic Junior magazine. It's National Geographic for kids. There's one page dedicated to comic.

Penguinx- thanks! As you probably know i admire your work as well Actually i'm using markers too (Staedtler Pigment Liner). I bought brush quite some time ago (a bit difficult to get used to and it takes some time to get results right... it pays off later though), but after i got more in animation i stoped using it completely and got so used to markers, that i decided to use them for this comic too. I kinda like the control you have over lines with them, even though it might be a bit tedious sometimes to make them look spontaneous.

Big Brother- yeah, i always liked bony (old?) hands- it somehow makes them more interesting

DodgeR- Agree about contrast! I'm a bit sceptical about using pure black for foreground objects though. I was never fan of that in colored comics. The play of black&white, as light and shadow work amazing in b&w tables, however it somehow lose its appeal when the comic get colored  (that's one of the reasons i like b&w comics more).
Pure personal preferences

[SLaMgRInDeR]

Wowsers! Double wowsers! and tripple wowsers! (I've never used the word wowsers in my life and probably never will do again)
Thats awsome!!! i love the character ( the old guy) and the other is one of those characters that makes you hate her as soon as you see her!

[Penguinx]

That is really impresive line work for having been done with any type of technical pen or marker. I'll try and post something in a PM to you that shows a few of my experiments with trying to create varied, spontaneous lines with pens.

I definitely would have believed that your line work was done with brushes. That's excellent work!

I don't think you'd need a pure black for foreground objects here. The heavier lines around the closer objects properly dictate their distance/closeness. I'd much rather see all the neat lines in this instance.

However, black and white comics are most definitely my favorite to draw (and the cheapest to self publish). Occasionally I use red as well or another single color and do two color work. If you use the secondary color for just focal points it works really well.

[jaz]

That´s impressive,

really professional. Absolutely nothing to complain about (maybe aplying another perspective to third pane would help, but it work this way just fine.) I admire cleanlines and sharpnes of your pictures. Comics is my great love and any time I see a good one I feel like I should throw everything I am working on at the moment away and immerse into world of panes and bubbles once again. Well, it hapenned to me today.... But I will resist and just admire your work.
What colours do you use BTW? Five hours, thats pretty quick. I was never able to do one full page under ten hours (using more colours though - but you managed to make it look colourfull enough with limited palette, hats off.)

Last thing. You are incredibly talented Igor and you probably know that if you post anything on AGS forums you will just get endless WOWs and COOLs and no constructive critique at all. I consider myself an OK artist but even I cannot think about any worthy sugestion to help you improve your work because it´s just at a different level. There are plenty of other forums on the net to get real C&C. But, please, any time you make something, post it here too and share it with us, fellow AGSers.

jaz