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Blue Dragon at the Spot Market
Hey ya'll, on December 14th I'm selling at The Spot Market at the Lloyd Center in Portland. I'll be doing live caricature chibi sketches and have copies of my comics on hand. For more details, check out my upcoming events!
2nd panel – Rin and Kanna’s heads look kind of funny smushed together like that. Could just be the perspective, though.
3rd & 4th panels – Should have included footsteps to indicate someone approaching. The shadow falling overhead merely comes off as an extension of the inexplicably dim lighting in panel 2.
5th panel – Background texture is fine here (nice touch with the argyle, btw), but some of the other pages can be pretty noisy. You should consider using textures more sparingly and/or adjusting the thickness of foreground outlines.
COMMENTARY:
I noticed Kanna and Rin haven’t had much time to interact with each other before their encounter with the dragon. It’s especially telling that Dragonfriend doesn’t overhear any of their dialogue, or that they don’t resume any discussions they might have been having up until fleeing from the, ah, monster. This has made the pacing seem much faster than it actually is, since our heroes barely do anything before the Call to Adventure arrives. (Or at least leaves a voicemail.)
Also, now that I think about it, why aren’t Kanna and Rin weirded out by the dragon’s use of humxn speech? They both obviously don’t recognize faer* as a friend, else they wouldn’t have scarpered from the scene as they did, and it doesn’t seem like sapient reptiles are a common feature in their world. Of course, maybe people in the Lotusverse have really strong Weirdness Censors** and Dragonfriend is just another a Unusually Uninteresting Sight.
*Using this to refer to Dragonfriend here, since “they” pulls double duty as a singular and plural pronoun.
**If you don’t know this one, it’s basically when normies in fiction observe (or learn about) a weird, inexplicable event and proceed to willfully ignore it.
Panel 2: I was experimenting with something, and it looks weird. If I ever get around to fixes, will probably put a line/gutter there.
Panel 3 & 4: Good idea!
Panel 5: Agree 100% on the busy textures. Once I started having my partner look at some pages, he pointed out I haven’t been the best with contrast. A lot of the overuse of textures was from a fear of drawing perspective and messing up XD But I’ve bitten the bullet and been working on backgrounds and ink techniques in later pages.
Observation: It was just me moving them along to fast. I needed to do more build up, maybe have them talk a bit, hanging out on the sidewalk before dude walks up. Pacing is an issue I have, so that’s a great point to keep in mind. It was more of an attempt to be funny them not being shocked about a dragon, but it was a very juvenile idea that I’ve grown out of 😀 Will take note of that.
2 Comments
FEEDBACK:
2nd panel – Rin and Kanna’s heads look kind of funny smushed together like that. Could just be the perspective, though.
3rd & 4th panels – Should have included footsteps to indicate someone approaching. The shadow falling overhead merely comes off as an extension of the inexplicably dim lighting in panel 2.
5th panel – Background texture is fine here (nice touch with the argyle, btw), but some of the other pages can be pretty noisy. You should consider using textures more sparingly and/or adjusting the thickness of foreground outlines.
COMMENTARY:
I noticed Kanna and Rin haven’t had much time to interact with each other before their encounter with the dragon. It’s especially telling that Dragonfriend doesn’t overhear any of their dialogue, or that they don’t resume any discussions they might have been having up until fleeing from the, ah, monster. This has made the pacing seem much faster than it actually is, since our heroes barely do anything before the Call to Adventure arrives. (Or at least leaves a voicemail.)
Also, now that I think about it, why aren’t Kanna and Rin weirded out by the dragon’s use of humxn speech? They both obviously don’t recognize faer* as a friend, else they wouldn’t have scarpered from the scene as they did, and it doesn’t seem like sapient reptiles are a common feature in their world. Of course, maybe people in the Lotusverse have really strong Weirdness Censors** and Dragonfriend is just another a Unusually Uninteresting Sight.
*Using this to refer to Dragonfriend here, since “they” pulls double duty as a singular and plural pronoun.
**If you don’t know this one, it’s basically when normies in fiction observe (or learn about) a weird, inexplicable event and proceed to willfully ignore it.
Panel 2: I was experimenting with something, and it looks weird. If I ever get around to fixes, will probably put a line/gutter there.
Panel 3 & 4: Good idea!
Panel 5: Agree 100% on the busy textures. Once I started having my partner look at some pages, he pointed out I haven’t been the best with contrast. A lot of the overuse of textures was from a fear of drawing perspective and messing up XD But I’ve bitten the bullet and been working on backgrounds and ink techniques in later pages.
Observation: It was just me moving them along to fast. I needed to do more build up, maybe have them talk a bit, hanging out on the sidewalk before dude walks up. Pacing is an issue I have, so that’s a great point to keep in mind. It was more of an attempt to be funny them not being shocked about a dragon, but it was a very juvenile idea that I’ve grown out of 😀 Will take note of that.