Untitled Story Pages

[Ian Miller]

These are some pages from a story I did with PJ member Westley a while ago. We only have 7 pages done, but I'll post up most of them probably. Here's the first one. I'll scan the rest once I get some more time. C&C appreciated!


Story: Wes
Pencils and Inks: Me (Ian)

http://www.ultimatepride.com/images/PageOne.jpg

[Westley]

There are words to go with some of the frams, but we haven't added them in. ;-) We are not for sure if we want to add them ourselves or have someone else do it.

[Ian Miller]

Here's page 2 of the story. And my thanks go out to Wes for being able to put the sections of the pages together in Photoshop!

C&C would be greatly appreciated, as well.

Story: Wes
Pencils and Inks: Ian

http://www.angelfire.com/comics/imartups/Wes_Page_2.jpg

[Josie70]

Great work Ian! I like what's there and there's still room for growth. Facial expressions are good and basic story telling is good also. I'd like to see more backgrounds though. Keep pushing! You've got skilz!

J70

[Finnegan]

k... let me just start by saying that i LOVE panel one of page one. it's simple, graphic, and concise.

after that i lose what's happening. :(

in panel 2, be careful where the eyeline is. Even if a lid on one eye is half closed, the eye is still synced up with the other as to where they are looking. if they are not consistant, it gives the viewer the impression that the character either has an extremely lazy eye, or a glass one (if this is the case, emphasize it).

panel 3 is cool. i'm assuming that it'll have some exposition in it? Because if it won't, it doesn't seem entirely necessary.

panels 4 and 5 don't read well to me. i don't understand what the figures are doing, and where they are doing it. Give your viewer reference points, to help ground themselves in the geography of the scene. sometimes the result of not doing this is disorientation, and that is what i am experiencing here.

panel 6 is another one that seems to be relying on text to be included to tell us what is happening.

comics is a visual medium. Ideally, the visuals should be able to tell the story without words... and when you have the synthesis of both words and images is when you hit the ball out of the park and kiss the girl. Study film. I watch movies with the sound off sometimes (wasting my bitchin surround sound system unfortunately) to see how well the actors portray the emotion of a scene. you can almost always tell what is happening even though you get no exposition.

keep an eye on how the director keep you grounded in the environment, and how visual landmarks of the surroundings are used to keep you oriented in the scene.

also... get a mirror handy when you are drawing expressions. i use one all the time. when you're drawing angry... get angry. sad for sad, happy for happy. feel how your body expresses emotion and use that to help your character portray it better.

i have issues with page 2 as well but i listed many of them above. all i can say is to keep drawing. have fun with it. never let it get ya down. you have the skills... just exercise them


=BoB=

[Ian Miller]

Wow, thanks a lot for the comments!

Josie- Thanks for the kind words. Yeah, one of my bad habits is making very detailed characters, and either hiding the backgrounds in shadow, not putting any detail into the backgrounds, or doing a Jack Kirby and just drawing it blank so that the colorist could put a really neat block of color behind the character or characters.

Finnegan- Hopefully I'll put up some more pages, but until then, the story is kind of hard to talk about. These pages were done a few months ago, before I really learned what I do now about pacing and establishing shots in panels and keeping the story flowing. In panels 2 and 3, the character wakes up from being konked out, and is semi-conscious in those panels. In panels 4 and 5, he crawls over to a window of a shop or soemthing and examines himself. The purpose of doing this is that the character is disoriented and doesn't know where he is, so I had to draw very vague surroundings in order to show that he doesn't know where he is or whatever. Maybe I could fix up the art, though. There are hardly any word bubbles or captions at all. Page 1 only has one word bubble in panel 6, and he just says one word. It'll all get explained later. I'll probably put in little dialogue balloons and caption boxes later, so it'll help with understanding what's going on.

Hopefully I'll put up some more sequentials later, or more pages from this story. And I'll keep drawing, also, cuz practice makes perfect!

[dear_pentagon]

Very nice job with this work. I do have to agree with the eyelid/eylineproblem that was brought up, however.

Just be careful with certain proportions though. In that last frame, the dude's left arm is about twice as thick as the right.

The only other problem that I have is in your fists. The only part that you actually show of the fist is the back of the hand. More detail to seeing parts of fingers and such would enhance the pictures more, IMO. Also, the marks made for the bones and veins in his hans (mostly just in the fists) are too dark and noticable.

[psychoheat]

I liked your work, but you have to be careful with the out lines of the panels be more consistent on them if you want you can perfect them using the marquee tool on photoshop.

There´s something strange with the hand of panel six of the first page the thumb looks like a normal finger also the face looks a little to big

Keep up the good work