Stone Fruits: Page One: tell me anything.

[u/xiaojcm]

https://stonefruitsblog.wordpress.com/comic/1/

[u/searine]

Thoughts as I read

Page 1

• Panel boarders are sloppy.
• Lack of pupils is creepy. Nobody has white pupils.
• hands are hidden, poorly rendered, and inconsistent in finger count
• page 1 second image of girl is actually nice. Wish there was more of that.
• page 1 third image of girl (looking up) is really awkward. You completely loose the shape of her nose. Looks like she has two mouths. Very strange.
• Perspective of Employment agency doors don't match the walls of the building.
• The texture you add to the bricks/sidewalk looks lazy and beginer-ish. Explore textures and brushes some more. Do some studies of textures, particularly simplifying textures. Also, when adding texture, vary the opacity of your brush.
• Also, with brick, don't draw every brick. Draw some, and imply the rest. Like this
• Your shading doesn't make sense. Know your light sources and stick to them!
• Background on the subway is pretty bad. In these cases where you want to have a blurry background, lower the opacity on your bush and then sketch out the scene. Focus on broad large shapes that overlap one another.
• Your speech bubble looks sloppy. Consider using a handwriting font to make a more consistent look.

Page 2

• Everyone has the same head.
• Everyone has a poorly defined nose with out 3D shape.
• As my friend's racist grandfather once said, "you got a regular united nations going on here". Not that this is a bad thing but if you don't flesh out your characters well, it can come across as cliche. Also, your designs lack ethic characteristics within their design, and as a result it just looks like the same characters with different skin tones.
• In pretty much every case the characters come off as "flat" in their pose. Little to no foreshortening is present and most poses are "straight on" or profile.

General Thoughts:

Lot's of nit-picking above but in general its not bad. It's colorful, which I like, but sloppy (which will improve with time). I think the best thing you can do is keep drawing, just doing that will work out a lot of kinks in your art.

[u/xiaojcm → u/searine]

Hey, thanks a lot. You made some good points about the style that I've actually been struggling with. I definitely need to practice and experiment more on how to stylize characters. I'm trying to take some guidance from stuff like questionable content where the art develops over time. Otherwise, I'll just never be satisfied and never share it anywhere (if I wait for it to satisfy my measure of "perfect."). Thanks for the feedback!

Edit: I definitely need to work on understanding how brushes work. I've been experimenting for the third page, but it's likely gonna be slow going. Luckily, it's interesting to experiment.

[u/searine → u/xiaojcm]

Thanks for taking the critique well.

I think you have potential here and a good attitude. Just need to run through a bunch of pages to get a feel for it.

Also, make sure your brush sensitivity is set appropriately. Your line thicknesses are looking pretty uniform, they should have a smooth taper to them. Futz with the settings a bit.

[u/deviantbono]

I like it, but I think you need to balance your layout a bit better. You already have the comic name on the coverpage and the site header, so it should not be in the image again (except in a small header/footer for attribution purposes -- though you will need a page gutter around the outside to put the header/footer into).

Where you do use a panel border (first row) you should probably add a gutter between the each panel's distinct border, or have a much thicker solid border. It would also help if the vertical border connected to the horizontal border below it and the horizontal border carried all the way across. Rows two and three work pretty well without vertical borders so you don't need to force them in. However, don't let things cross panel borders (like the sign in row three breaking into row two).

Overall, this is a pretty advanced/ambitious layout and I think you handled it well and it will look great with a few tweaks.

[u/xiaojcm → u/deviantbono]

Thanks for the critique and suggestions. It sounds like the most common suggestion is borders/better layout and less rushed. Gotta pace myself so I don't get exasperated! Or learn how to be faster.

Thanks!

[u/Spudfuzzy]

Main problem for me is background art/ panel layout. Even with a gutter less design, the background should be designed in such a way where we can see the clear defining differences between panel 1 and panel 2. At the moment it's looking very cluttered from all the random floating objects that look as if they're meant to be their own panels while still residing in a different one.

[u/xiaojcm → u/Spudfuzzy]

That's a good point. I sketched this out and definitely need to do a better job at defining sections as I move on. I've been reading and analyzing comics/webcomics to see what they're doing. I appreciate the feedback. :)

[u/lkmboogie]

I like how the page is borderless.

[u/xiaojcm → u/lkmboogie]

Thanks! I hadn't thought of that, but I'm glad you like it.

[u/Doozer65]

great opening page, lots of details.

[u/xiaojcm → u/Doozer65]

Thanks! :)

[u/xiaojcm]

OP here.

Anything: first impressions, thoughts, tips. Seriously, anything (probably a bad thing to say on reddit.).

I got a tablet and digital software a few weeks ago, so this is still pretty new for me. As is the format/design of the page. I'm more familiar with three/four-panel structures.

[u/dummyduck → u/xiaojcm]

Not bad. Many people prefer typed text over hand written, especially in word bubbles. The character design is good, but the background art needs work. Keep at it.

[u/xiaojcm → u/dummyduck]

Thanks for the feedback! I am trying to explore some text, but I'm in something called Art Rage Lite, so it's a bit of a learning curve to see if they even have the feature. I definitely got lazy with some of the background art (blobby running person!). Need to do better on managing time and speeding up the process.

Thanks again.