page 1 Cosmobear (first post)

[ghostcat]

Hey there, this is hopefully my first of many posts in this forum. I currently draw a webcomic called "Ghost Cat (http://www.ghostcatcomic.com) ", but I'm interested in branching out to a more professional full-page comic book. This is the first page of my newest series called "Cosmobear" (I'll leave you to ponder the plotline for now :))
http://cosmobear.cycomics.com/issue1page1.gif
So I've been very impressed by the artists here and I'm hoping I can get some good feedback on my work. Thanks, and more pages are coming. I intend to replace the lettering with my own hand lettering, but I haven't gotten around to it yet.

[ComicsInk]

damn those russians and their stabilizer rockets! lols..jk..thats awsome dude i love the image of the earth and the shine its prety cool and the rocket is awsome! KUDOS TO YOU!

[Bruce Lee]

Ghostcat,

Welcome to the forum!

The storytelling on your page is clear and the layout works fine, but allow me to point out some minor weaknesses, and offer up some suggestions, if you will.

Panel One: This panel works well. It gets the job done nicely, but the star patterns look a little phony--perhaps the stars are too evenly spaced in places. Perhaps indicating a few of the better known constellations would really help make your star field more convincing. The variety of star sizes is very good though.:cool: I don't care for the font for the "2003" caption. Doesn't say outer space to me, and I think you should consider using punctuation in your caption boxes.

Panel Two: You're more successful with the star patterns in this panel as many clusters occur throughout. I like the layout of this panel. Having the ship at a diagonal and breaking the panel borders gives us a sense that the ship is floating in space and the effect gives us a good amount of depth. What bugs me though, is the inaccuracy of the lighting on the ship. If the sun is coming up from behind the earth as you've depicted, then the side of the ship the reader is seeing should be mostly in shadow, save for a little bit of "edge-lighting", but the ship here is lighted from a lightsource off from the upper left someplace.:confused: That's weird. Keep your light source in mind when planning out such shots, man.

Panel Three: Cool panel, but I think perhaps, that you should have made the controls a little more complex. I would expect to see a lot more gauges, switches, and other such things on the console of a spacecraft. This seems rather simplified, but it's a nit-pick worth mentioning.

Panel Four: I like everthing except the sound effect here. "FOOSH!" is turned in such a way that the little lightning like shape beneath the ship looks to be forming an "S" shape, giving us the illusion that the Sound effect is actually "SFOOSH!", with a badly planned "S" in the lettering. I don't think this is what you wanted (or is it?), so I suggest rotating the Sound effect a little more, or moving it upward so that it is partially overlapping onto the ship's hull. One other thing...you are aware that there is no sound in space, right? Even if George Lucas may disagree...;)

On the whole, things are looking great! The biggest problem is with the lighting in panel two. If you can fix that, you've got a winning page on your hands, in my opinion.

Loston
http://www.lostonwallace.com

[ghostcat]

Thanks for the crits! For starters, I added a few more random stars to the first panel. Also, I moved that "solar burst" that was coming out over the horizon of the earth in the second panel. I had added that as an afterthought anyway, so it wasn't that big of a deal to move it. You were really right about the "sfwoosh" thing, I didn't even see it. I moved it so it's not so confusing anymore. As for the control board in the third panel, I feel that given the space I'm working with, I've got lots of controls and levers already, Also, that's not necessarily the entire panel. :) As I said, the lettering isn't final, so just think of it as a placeholder.
As for the sound in space...uh...um, the sound is from inside the jet stream the rocket is releasing, so the exhaust particles carry the sound waves...yeah that's it. And if that doesn't work... it's just a comic.

Digital inking makes editing fun and easy!!

[Caimano]

I agree with the Loston's feedback. I really like the black and white approach very effective...you can try to add some zip tone, maybe using Photoshop...just to try because the style is really appropriate for this medium

[Siftland]

This page is nice, but what intrigues me most is the title. I'd like to see more of this.

[ghostcat]

two new pages, your opinions would be much appreciated.
http://cosmobear.cycomics.com/issue1page2.gif
http://cosmobear.cycomics.com/issue1page3.gif
later

[brendon]

looks interesting! I can't wait to see what cosmo bear is all about :)

[bleistift]

me too :)
iam really hooked :)

[jeremy dale]

This is fun stuff! I would love to see more. These pages have a personality not too often seen in comics these days. Great stuff!

Jeremy