Pummel entry

[Solace]

I have major issues with how the rushed coloring came out, and the missing elements that were meant to be added in that stage (snow, effects, etc). I would appreciate some feedback to apply to my next set of sequentials though.

How does it flow? How's the panel layout (working wide instead of tall was really challenging for me)? Do the height/distance/position relationships seem consistent?

All feedback is appreciated.

[Pifalo]

I think this looks pretty good, and I can tell you put a lot of work in this.

The thing that really jumps out at me is the strange tangent between page 1 panel 1 and panel 3. It looks like the head on panel 1 is connected to the body on panel 3.

[Solace]

Oh wow, you're right. I hadn't noticed it before you said it, and now I can't unsee it.

[alfred183]

You should be able to nudge the head a little to the left or add a gutter below. I hadn't noticed the tangent earlier either.

You know, I'm pretty sure I voted for you to be a heavyweight. This is REALLY solid work.

[Solace]

Lol, thanks. I was like a hair away from lightweight, so I'm pretty happy to be doing as well as I have been in PUMMEL.

[ThreeEyesWorm]

Hey Solace,

I know I lost the Plummel so I hope you won't mind if I give you some critique on your piece. I was hoping that you would start a thread for this because I didn't want to critique you where people were voting.

First of all, I would like to say that the art is great. It is consistent and a lot of the details were well done. Yes, I can tell you rushed the colors. I would say the biggest problem with the colors is the flatness of the backgrounds. but I am sure given more time and practice the colors will come more naturally. There is also one minor eye sore on Panel 10, where she is jumping using the guy's arm. The red on the guy's arms is too bright, especially the left arm. It doesn't look like it's part of the arm any more.

Now, where I feel you need the most critique is the story-telling. To be honest, the story-telling is quite confusing. And the audience has to do a lot of work figuring out what's going on in the panels and between panels. In other words, they don't get to imagine what is in between panels fluently. And in comics you want to make sure they can do that (especially in action transitions. With non-action transitions, you can make it a little more vague and poetic and let the audience figure out the poetry of it). They should be able to look at one panel, looks at the next and naturally imagine what's going on in between the two panels. I would say in this piece, there's quite a few spots where the audience have to think "Okay, in order for this panel to get to this panel, then I guess this would have to happen?" It's unnatural and takes the reader out of your world. There are several cases of this.

First of which is in panels 6 to 8. Where the guy runs into the wire and gets cut. At first I had no idea why he got cut. Then I noticed the wire in panel 7, then I had no idea why there's a wire there. Then I looked at the panel 6 again and saw that she was throwing a wire. Then I thought okay, the only way this can happen is if the wires that she threw stucked and tightened to the walls. But I had to backtrack and figure it out. You don't want that. First of all, her throw in panel 6 didn't have any force in it. The wire looked as if it was just going to fall on the floor. Second, it doesn't indicate at all how it stuck to the walls, She just threw it to one side. Was it stuck to the other side already? There's no way the audience would know any of that. So it would really help if you show her throwing the wire with greater force and showing the wire sticking to the walls on both sides. The glass on the helmet is a neat idea but I don't think it came out well. It looks collage-ish. For panel 8, it is hard to tell where he was cut. The audience knows he's cut but where? When the audience cannot imagine it you are disrupting their flow and taking them out of the scene.

Now for panel 9, initially I had no idea where the green guy came from. I had to scroll back up and find the green guy hidden in the background in panel 3 behind another panel. The green guy also blends into the background in that panel because he is dark and so is his background.

There's a panel missing between panel 10 and 11. How did she knock him down? Did she do a back flip and knock him down? Or did she just lifted her legs and stomped on him? You don't want the audience to imagine such a significant action.

Panel 12 to 16 are great. No problems there.

But how did the two fighters go from panel 16 to 17? All of a sudden she is in front of him and elbowing him? Big jump. Initially I also didn't know if I was to read to the right first or down first after panel 17 because the way you've set up the panels. Usually if you want the readers to read right first, in this case, you want to make sure that the bottom gutter of both pabel 17 and 18 line up and that the right hand gutter between 17 and the one below it doesn't line up. The eye usually follow where consistency dictates. I would have also liked to see more movement (whether by actionlines or dramatic poses) with these action. They currently look quite static. It's as if they are in poses in each panel, not in movement.

I love how she looks in panel 20 to 22 but I am confused as to what happened to the guy, where is he and what he's doing in panels 21 to 23. Also her feet being extended into panel 19 from panel 22 is awkward and disrupts panel 19 a lot since her feet covers their hands. How did she go from panel 22 to jumping upwards in panel 23? Her movements are missing between there. Also, how come the guy is floating up in the air now as well?

I consider myself a sequential story-teller first and drawer second. So when I look at comics, if the story and the story-telling are poorly done, it's not a good comic, even if the art is great. Sorry if I am harsh. But you seem to have good sportsmenship in the plummels so I figure you would be able to take critiques as well.

Hope that helps!

[Solace]

Great critique! It's exactly the kind of thing I was looking for.

In panel 7 the wire hits the wall and goes taunt. I combined it with the visor shot so I could get his reaction as it hits the wall. The throw was meant to be understated, but it looks like I forgot to color the anchor tip (set up in panel 1 where she's taking it from the spool) in panel 6, which was the part she threw. A thread/rope/limp object will hang limp along it's length until it's fully extended, but I agree that it isn't shown well that it's what's happening. The line is shown in panel 9 going across from the cart to the wall, however I can see how it would be overlooked in the background.

The green guys does blend in during his first appearance. I tried to pop it with the black and red of the arms, but it was something that occurred in the coloring stage that I didn't have much time to work out. One of the biggest things I learned in these pages was that things that work in pencil don't always translate to color, and this was a prime example.

10 and 11 represent a continuous motion. There's not a missing panel, I actually removed the speed lines showing her rotation movement in 10 at a friend's suggestion, because he thought it was overdone and the motion worked on it's own. An transitional panel may have been the way to go. It's definitely something that I'll need to work out one way or another, since it seems to throw people off either way.

Do 16 and 17 really seem that far separated? I used the arm in 14 to attempt to show how close they were to another, which in my overheads (I do overhead layouts of all sequential characters on a 'map' of the area to maintain consistent positioning) was around 3-4 fee, or about 2 steps together to close the gap. I'm not sure how that could have been handled without a filler panel.

I don't mind 22 breaking 19. Their hands were established in the two preceding panels, so the overlap on the arms (hands are still seen on the other side of the break) doesn't mask any necessary information. The guy is kicked into the air in 22 (another case of the background color eating someone I guess), I cut a panel from the last page showing her jump because 23 seemed to cover the idea that she moved into the air and set up the last shot.

Thanks for the in depth crit, it's given me a lot to think about in terms of decompressing the flow of action.

As far as the rank matches go, depending on the number of new middleweights, it looks like we'll probably be going at it again next month.

[Enigmanaut]

The only real critique I can give is that I'd probably desaturate the environment/backgrounds a bit, so that your characters stand out from them a bit more.

Not an expert, so grain of salt.