Sequential Mania 5 – Buffalo Soldier

[Veritas71]

Dan 3000







RonB







Pell







RMHarris and Veritas71

[Veritas71]

Great turn out, guys! Welcome to 'Sequential Mania Alumni' status.

[Archerion]

Had to go w/ Rob his artwork was very nice to look at,

I am confused why it was 1vs1vs1vs2?

Anywho it was really good work all around.

[Orphangrinder]

Nice work, everyone! It's very cool to see the same script interpreted four different ways.

Veritas71 invited me to do crits for everyone in this month's Sequential Mania, as someone who works in the industry. I've only done a few small-press projects, but one of them is a graphic novel series that totals over 500 pages, so at the very least I'm speaking from having drawn a lot of pages.

I'm gonna do these one at a time, because they take a while. Using page.panel format. Here we go!

[Orphangrinder]

Dan 3000

1.1
Nice landscape. The silhouette of Ariel is effective at drawing our attention. Unfortunately, she's so small that it's difficult to tell that she's looking through binoculars. And the town specified in the script is MIA, so we wouldn't know what she's looking at anyway, which is problematic because...

1.2
...we have no context for this panel. ESPECIALLY since it's in silhouette and difficult to read. Who are we looking at? Where is he? Is it the same person from panel 1? We can't see the girl he's supposed to be dragging, and the bottle in his hand could just as well be the binoculars from 1.3. This panel is utterly mystifying.

1.3
Solid panel, though Ariel reads as male to me. Making a woman look strong without making her look too masculine is a tough balancing act, I know.

1.4
Her right arm is getting mixed up in the edge of the cliff in a way I don't like, but the storytelling is clear.

1.5
Good enough, but the silhouette is a little unclear -- it might help if we could read the head and legs a bit. And it might help to have some background in there, to see exactly where she's landed.

2.1
Good drawing. She is running directly down into the 4th panel, though, which pushes our attention down there. When I can, I like to have any strong compositional movement pushing into the very next panel.

2.2
Can't figure out what's supposed to be happening here. No apparent storytelling content. Seems to be a wasted panel. Also not big on the cropped face, and especially the cropped wrist.

2.3
Cropped face is still bad. The sign has some important storytelling info, but it's sliding off the bottom of the panel. I'd like to see it more front-and-center. There's a tangent where it looks like she's resting her gun on top of the sign.

2.4
Fine panel, though it leaves out the details that indicate that a rape is about to take place. The tip of the knife is just barely touching the edge of the panel, which is a no-no. Overlap or leave a gap. Hey that rhymes!

2.5
Fine.

2.6
The close cropping on this make it difficult to tell at a glance what's going on. It almost looks like he's wearing a reflective visor. Pull back so that his hears are in the frame, and there's no mistaking that his head's been blown apart. As it is, though, it could be mostly salvaged with a bit of chunks and gore. The wisp of smoke on the left is curling into his shoulder in panel 4. Watch out for stuff like that.

3.1
Good drawing, though a lot of the content from the script is missing. Since this is a new location, I'd appreciate a wider shot to show the space.

3.2
Good.

3.3
Storytelling works. Pose is a little goony.

3.4
I can't tell what's going on here. The electricity doesn't seem to be coming from her gun, and their poses don't look like they're being electrocuted. They kinda look like they're charging up their own electrical powers or something.

3.5
Another panel of Ariel looking off into the distance at...nothing. Where's the bandit woman and the girl?

3.6
Good.

4.1
Good panel, though they've mysteriously moved from the town's street, with Ariel behind a railing, out to the middle of the desert.

4.2
I think this panel is cropped much too closely. I can kinda tell that Ariel is putting down her gun, but not really.

4.3
Where did that blast come from? No way to tell.

4.4
Good.

4.5
Good drawing, but who's this guy and where did he come from? That's what anyone who didn't read the script is gonna be asking.

4.6
It's clear that she's letting the girl go, but not clear why. I can see the blood dripping down, but I don't know when she was shot, and her hands don't look like "I'm dead" hands, they look like "I'm letting you go" hands.

4.7
The girl's expression is far too placid. She's supposed to be scared, but nothing about this panel says "scared" to me.

5.1
Cropped too close again. There's not much urgency here -- Ariel is just kinda casually turning. We need to see a lot more of this guy, he's nothing but a torso. That's not scary.

5.2
A fine panel if it were part of a londer fight scene. As one of only a few panels the bad guy appears in -- we need to see more. However, it's surprisingly clear what's happening, given the tight crop.

5.3
Fine drawing, but it looks like you left Ariel out of the panel. This leaves us without any sense of her imminent death, and her command for the drone will have to be an off-panel balloon. Not ideal.

5.4
Tells the story well enough. Might help if, instead of the focus lines radiating out from the middle, you had some speed lines pushing the drone into his back, and some blood or bits of armor blasting out the front, to sell that he's been speared in the back. The pose could be pushed a bit too. Throw his head back, flail his limbs around a little.

5.5
Decent panel, but all the storytelling information has been sucked out of it by the silhouette. What about her bloody, african-american face? What about her braids?

5.6
It's not specified in the script, but I think we should at least see Ariel's hair in this panel, because we didn't see it in the last panel, and that's what the dialogue is referring to. I would have no idea what she was talking about.

IN SUMMARY:
Your drawing is pretty effective most of the time. Your major problem is with framing and storytelling. You consistently crop much too close, and frequently leave out significant storytelling info from the script. It's important to include clues in each panel -- props, spatial relationships, etc. -- that help tie them together with the preceding and succeeding panels. Try to put yourself in the shoes of someone who doesn't know the story, and ask yourself honestly, whether you would understand your pages. Storytelling clarity has to be your number 1 priority. Hope it doesn't sound like I'm being too hard on you. You did some good work here. Your spot blacks and tones in particular, are really nice.

[Veritas71]

Had to go w/ Rob his artwork was very nice to look at,

I am confused why it was 1vs1vs1vs2?

Anywho it was really good work all around.

I brought the idea up early in the SM5 thread with the idea of allowing teams to compete in the next event. When RMHarris wanted to join in at such a late date, I asked her to team up. Everybody was cool with it, and I lucked out.

As you might have noticed, I got the big guns coming in for in-depth critiques (thanks OG!), so I just wanted to hit the highlights of what I really liked about your work.

Dan 3k – I really like your use of grey tones and silhouettes. Your use of both helps to separate the elements in your panels for a really easy to read page. You also capture the action very well. I really don't need words to know what's going on. Which is a testament to your camera angles and panel work. I really like 4.1. Really captures the feel of a standoff at a really cool angle.

RonB – Your work gives off a 'Heavy Metal' vibe. Your page layouts, especially the 1st page with the binocular's panel are very well done (I struggled to find room for the binocular 'info', and finally had to leave it out for readability). Like Dan's, you really use silhouettes to good advantage, and you spot your blacks very well. This is evident in 2.6's death scene. It would be very easy for it to turn out a giant blob of black, but it is very readable (and cool).

Pell – First off, I love the title being part of the mountain range in the first panel. Your style lends itself to humor and even with the bloody stuff, you managed to make me laugh (P2.4 - the girl fist pumping and the guys eyes when he gets shot). P3.3 - the window's shadows on the floor as Ariel kicks the door open are very well done. I know these pages are pencil, but that would look cool inked up. Really good stuff for the time crunch you were under.

I really appreciate seeing you guys hard work, and can't wait for the next one!

[Pete Tha Creep]

You must spread some Reputation around before giving it to Orphangrinder again.
You must spread some Reputation around before giving it to Veritas71 again.

The other guys will get their share when they post in this thread.
I am totally blown away by the art, the panel by panel(!!!!!!!) crit, this is the Shizz!

I also gotta give it to Ron, with Veritas and Harris being a close second. And I don't gave it to Ron for doing the job alone.
This is SICK dude!!!

Since Orphan will cover the art with his crits, I am going to add some thoughts to the story.
I got a feeling of Story of Ricky's ending in the first page.
"Yeah I spend 5 DAYS watching these guys kill and rape everybody, while I could have done it day one between lunch and coffeebreak"
It didn't become clear to me why she had to wait to wipe those raiders out.

Maybe it would help to outline the mission a bit better: Salvage and rescue, scout and research, and embed her decision process into the background story.

"I had to wait because I couldn't compromise my position / being here"
"I couldn't interfere because the outpost belongs to a different administration"
"usually I don't like the Gennies but enough is enough"

some reasoning would also give a feel of the character.
Is she disobeying direct orders to help those Gennies?
Is punishing the raiders within her duty / has she the admission to do so by the authority to which she answers ?
Does she even care for the Gennies, if they are no humans? why would she risk her life for them?

Also she is talking about a guy that is never seen in the whole comic.
That is space where you could have make her motivation and character more clear to make me bond with her right away.
As is, I don't know her, I don't know the victims, and I don't know the abusers, so ultimately, I don't care about the characters.
She is alone, ok, but telling me that the guy left doesn't make her more alone. Showing him leave her alone would have an effect.
But that would take another page which you didn't have.
It also confuses the mission aspect. So she is on a mission with this dude.
He can just say "screw it" and settle on his ranch and that's it? And she stays?
Why is she even completing her mission, and not asking for reenforcements?
How does she feel about him leaving her in the open?
Is she going to report him?

All those questions lead to one conclusion:
Lose the sidestory about the guy and focus on what you are showing!
Make me believe she is staying out of discipline, honor, good will, whatever you thhinkup for your character.

I read the process thread and people are asking you about the acronyms you developed for your suits and gear,
you have a lot of info in your script that is not going to show because there is no room to explain it properly.
You are writing for a visual format. Try to translate everything into pictures or actions that are going to transport the feeling you're after. It is inspiring for your artist, sure, but you are not guiding his inspiration by making up acronyms that are interchangeable, and are not being explained in the story or make a difference to the outcome of the story. hence every suit and gear is looking totally different despite the overall aztec theme.
There is one instance where there is a glimpse of meaning of the suits. When she says "Oh crap, military grade POND armor"
I get that this is dangerous. You could have played this card even earlier, by giving the gear more room. Have her examine the weaponry while she's observing the bandits. "oh, they wear ... gear, they probably stole it from the colony on ..., it can tear my ... suit to shreds with it's... guns / weapons"
" i hope the oxygen / energy supply of my ... suit will suffice to complete my mission."
That way you can guide the artists, to include distinct parts of the armor, to give it more detail, and you make the whole story and environment more consistent and believable.


So all in all, if you put more focus on the initial setup, and try to incorporate your ideas into the action and dialogue, you can develop your story more freely afterwards, while keeping the artist and reader close to your vision.

I hope you like my crits, I really enjoyed the story, and think we'll hear a lot of cool stuff from you in the future.
Thee are just the thoughts of a layman, so take it with a grain.

Thanks to everybody again, this thing is a treat, and I will look at these pages a lot more in the days to come!

[Veritas71]

Great crit Pete. You're right about having very little time to set up/introduce/'hook' readers in a 5 page story. That's a challenge. I wish we could do longer stories, and we might in the future if teams are involved. Spread some of the work around to speed up the process. Someone inking the pages, while the penciller is still working would help a lot.

Caption "But Marcuse racked up his pod and bought the
farm on the side of one of these damn mesas."

I interpreted it as he crashed his drop pod into one of the mesas, and died (bought the farm).

[Pete Tha Creep]

Dan 3k – I really don't need words to know what's going on. Which is a testament to your camera angles and panel work.

Of course, you read AND drew the script
I had the same on SM 3, I couldn't crit the works objectively, the script was burned into my head and I subconsciously added the details that were missing. ^^

This time out, I didn't read the script thoroughly, but just flew over, and I gotta say, Orphan's crits are spot on.

Don't get me wrong though:

"You must spread some Reputation around before giving it to Dan3K again." ^^

Edit:

Lol, thanks, I didn't get that farm pun. Gotta work on my english it seems
Argument still stands, if it's not in the pics, it's not worth mentioning in a short.

[Veritas71]

Of course, you read AND drew the script
I had the same on SM 3, I couldn't crit the works objectively, the script was burned into my head and I subconsciously added the details that were missing. ^^

Ha, you're totally right. Hard to distance yourself from the source material when you worked on it. Fresh eyes are best for crits.

I agree with having a good succinct story without any extraneous details would be ideal for a short.

[Huerta]

I picked Veritas & Harris.

My crits will be short and in general, but for Veritas, his pages were dynamic and had clearer story-telling. The most important thing to me, when it comes to comic pages, is if I can tell whats going on without the dialogue. Another thing that Veritas did well was his rendering of human anatomy and facial expressions. All really important parts that can make or break a comic book.

I'll crit the other members later.

[Pete Tha Creep]

Only twelve votes after two days??? You gotta be shitting me!!!!

[Veritas71]

Slow time of the month, I guess.

[Huerta]

Only twelve votes after two days??? You gotta be shitting me!!!!

Slow time of the month, I guess.

The site has been slow in general. We're getting old.

[Orphangrinder]

RonB

1.1
That rainbow or whatever it is coming out of the mountains in the background is a nice compositional detail. To me, this panel suffers a bit from the same malady as Dan's: a tiny silhouette figure that's difficult to read. I also feel like the town gets a bit lost, bumping up against the next panel like that. It would be more noticeable if it were more of an "island" in the middle of the desert, with some empty space all around to frame it. Come to think of it, a lot of the other stuff going on the background is competing for our attention. Maybe if you moved some of those mountains out to the edges of the page, so they're not so front-and-center...

1.2
Good panel. Tells the story, and I like the panel's visor shape and crosshairs. It does seem to be unnecessarily mashed on top of the previous panel. I'll say right now that clutter is the major issue that jumps out at me about your whole story.

1.3
Ariel looks powerful. The binoculars-device in her hand kinda looks like a coffe can, though. This panel is a bit cramped. If Ariel were a bit smaller, you could have some nice negative space around the borders, you wouldn't have to crop at her ankles, and the balloons would fit in the panel.

1.4
Silhouette is hard to read, partly because her arms are lost in the cloak. When you're doing silhouettes, try to keep as many body parts as possible sticking out at different angles. The pose also looks more like she's freefalling than actively jumping down. Subtle distinction.

1.5
Works well enough. Maybe lacks a bit of impact. I'm not buying the pose/anatomy. Did you draw through under her cloak? There's some really weird stuff going on in the shoulders and trunk area.

2.1
Good silhouette. Looks a bit more like she's skiing than running. I'd like to see the action pushing into the next panel, rather than down into the 2.3.

2.2
This panel's supposed to be showing off her Combat Rifle, but we barely see it, poking out from behind her back. Without that, it's just another panel of her running. Wasted.

2.3
Pose could use a little work -- looks clumsy. Since she's yelling "you on the roof--", it might be nice to be able to see what she's seeing. If you used a lower angle, you could show the building and the guy on the roof in the background.

2.4
Cropped too close. We need to see more of this guy than his eye and nose before he gets what's coming to him. This also leaves out the storytelling info we need to understand that he was going to rape her. We don't even see his knife, so we don't know how serious the danger the girl's in.

2.5
Good.

2.6
Good. Real juicy. But personally, I want to see a wider shot, with the girl reacting.

3.1
Good face. For some reason, I want the tilt of her head to feel a little more action-pose. Maybe facing down a bit, looking up through her eyebrows.

3.2
Good shot. Lots of information conveyed. I don't think it's sufficiently clear that this is a different place from Ariel's location. Maybe it's because she's basically an inset panel. Maybe because the background black + tone of each panel is similar. I notice a couple of the other artists solved this by giving her a blank background in panel 3.1.

3.3
Solid. Might be nice to have her actually kicking open the door. Just putting her in a kicking pose, with some motion lines to show the door swinging open, would be enough. At the very least, I'd like to see her gun raised.

3.4
Real nice electrocution! I'm not sure it's sufficiently clear that she's shooting them. Maybe have her stand large, cropped in the foreground on the left of the panel, pointing her gun at the guys being electrocuted over on the right.

3.5
Real nice panel. Good, clear storytelling. Although her legs are a bit hard to read -- partly because of their tree-trunk design, and partly because at that angle, she must have the hips and crotch of a Beastie character!

3.6
Good panel. The knife is a bit hard to read, and gets lost. I wish it were right at her throat!

4.1
Awesome panel! The way you've laid it out left-to-right, so we see Ariel, the bandit and girl, then the glint in the doorway, and the "AH." caption right next to it. Perfect storytelling.

4.2
Decent, but a bit of an odd crop and angle. No reason we can't see the expression on Ariel's face as she's forced to drop her weapon. Which, also, it's a little ambiguous whether she's dropping or picking up.

4.3
This one's problematical. Ariel's pose, combined with that big explosion, make it look like she's being blown across the panel. Her pose needs to look more dive-y. And the explosion is overshadowing the laser beam. So it looks like this panel is about an explosion, not a laser blast that caused an explosion. (My guess is the writer had a smaller puff of dust in mind.)

4.4
Fine, but I wish she looked like she was coming out of a roll, or coming up on one knee or something.

4.5
Good. It's probably not a big deal here, but keeping with the 180-degree rule, it would be nice if this panel were flipped, so the bad guy stays on the right side of the panel, where he's been all page.

4.6
We don't see the hand dropping the knife, which I think is important to the intent of this panel.

4.7
Nor do we see the bandit woman dead on the ground in this panel. I think these two panels fail to convey what happened to the bandit woman.

5.1
Nice imposing, looming raider. But Ariel is just standing straight in front of him with her arms at her sides. She should probably be spinning to face him, quick and powerful!

5.2
Good.

5.3.
Good. But cropping the guy's head off isn't doing you any favors.

5.4
Good.

5.5
Very nice, but why is he suddenly facing the other direction?

5.6
Not bad, but this is an emotional panel, and the shot isn't conveying that.

IN SUMMARY:
Very nice work. You've got good storytelling instincts -- except when you crop too closely and leave out important information. Will Eisner called it "the tyranny of the close-up". Close-ups are for dialogue, for emotional moments. For action, we need some space to see what's happening. All the detail shows you're not afraid to do some work, so that shouldn't be a problem.

Your pages have a tendency toward being cluttered and cramped. Leave some empty space here and there. Don't think you have to fill up every inch of every panel. Play with the negative space around characters and objects, and how they relate to the panel border.

Brush up on the 180-degree rule. Characters should stay on their side of the panel, facing the same direction, until there's a good reason for them to switch.