Round 3: Dan McDaid (Only judges can post here!)

[Dan M]

Page One

http://brainiac.boilingpoint.com/~cbi3/danmcdaid/inv01THUMB.jpg (http://brainiac.boilingpoint.com/~cbi3/danmcdaid/inv01.jpg)


Page Two

http://brainiac.boilingpoint.com/~cbi3/danmcdaid/inv02THUMB.jpg (http://brainiac.boilingpoint.com/~cbi3/danmcdaid/inv02.jpg)


Page Three

http://brainiac.boilingpoint.com/~cbi3/danmcdaid/inv03THUMB.jpg (http://brainiac.boilingpoint.com/~cbi3/danmcdaid/inv03.jpg)

[Ryan Ottley]

Dan-

Nice stuff! There is a good flow through these pages.

Page one

Panel one- Nice pose, Looks like he is enjoying himself. Looks a little stiff in places, like the karate chop flying hand but overall it's nice. I like the clouds.

The double take is pretty cool. It's kinda funny and lets us know somethin is going on.

The last panel is good, it's energetic. I like that you have the buildings there. His flight lines are cool, I like the quick turn he makes, adds speed to it all.

One thing about this page that bugs me a little, is that Invincible is pretty much all the same size here. More variations would be nice. That last panel could be more energetic if he was closer. More foreshortened to the foreground.

Page two

Panels 1-3- That's pretty hilarious. I like your take on it. Looks great.

Panel 4- Works well. I like that you added the cop car and the hint of more cops and cop cars.
Panel 5- Really great energetic panel. I like this a lot. Of course the transition from panel 4 to this one has a bit of a jarring feel since you broke the 180 rule. Ya know, Invincible is coming in from the right in panel 4, then he's coming in from the left in panel 5. So the view does a complete 180 and sometimes that can feel a bit jarring.

Page three

Panel one- Do Manatee's really make that noise when they fly?

Page works well, the last panel portrays that Invincible is most definitely in a pickle.

Cool stuff sir.

[Ryall_IDW]

Page One
This is the fifth entry I’ve looked at tonight, and I think all five have Invincible’s costume looking different. This one, the Kirby-esque shading takes on a bit too spotty an appearance in that first panel. And I’m not quite sure why his feet dropped off under his knees. Panels two and three seem a bit redundant—one of the two would’ve sufficed, since both together don’t really add much to the page. The classic, animated feel of your art can work well, and did last week, but here, the images just feel a bit too sketchy.

Page Two
The top-third of the page is a fun way to approach things, but also a bit of wasted space. We see the “vs” thing before we ever see the threat itself, in panel four (that’s a nice panel, though). Still, don’t take this just as a negative, since I like to encourage different interpretations of scripts if it forwards the story in interesting ways. So keep it up, just make it feel more germaine to a scene. The manatee in panel four wouldn’t necessarily be immediately recognizable to me if I didn’t know what I was looking for, but a colorist would help clarify that a bit. Nice impact in the final panel, too—explosions and impact are a good strength of yours.

Page Three
Your style on this story is really growing on me. Your inking here actually reminds me of very early Keith Giffen, who used to do a bit of a Kirby style. Panel one, the manatee flying up like it does is a bit awkward, but the rest works well for me. This is maybe the first one of the entries to properly convey what was called for in that final panel.

[Marc Silvestri]

Dan-

First thing I noticed about your pages was they have a nice energy to them and that’s a big plus in an action sequence. The other thing I noticed was Invincible doesn’t really look like Invincible to me. I think a little more sketching of the character pre-pages would have helped get a better handle on his look. Yeah, I know style differences count but some choices in facial and body structure seem off. Then again, my Invincible would probably look like Wolverine so there you go. Still, get the vibe of the character down.

In the first panel the sky is over rendered which makes it look smudgy and busy and draws attention away from the figure. Also, not having any part of the background show though Invincible’s motion lines make it look like he is in an entirely different panel than the clouds around him. Add the fact, those lines are part of the panel border and it just makes matters worse.

I had to look twice at the middle three panels to realize invincible was doing a double take (if the reader EVER has to go back and figure something out you’re gonna lose `em). I like the idea but the gag doesn’t really work the way you have it. Maybe a zoom-in on the face in panel four would have helped.

Last panel is lacking in power and suffers from smudgyness in the background as well as the figure. There is also and odd tangent where the cloud meets his feet, which combines the foreground and background elements and hurts the separation of planes. This negates any 3D effect.

Onto page two. I’m usually not a big fan of overly clever storytelling tricks like what you have with the “vs” but you pulled it off and it seems to match the book tonally. Nice.

Where is the aquarium on the page? You have to establish the location before you can get into the action otherwise the reader has no idea where they are. Just having a couple of letters on a wall in the background ain’t gonna cut it. By not showing the building you force the writer (and a very good one at that!) to place an unnecessary caption.

In the last panel Robert was VERY specific on the action (Invincible smashes Octoguy into ground and makes a big crater). Oops, where is that? The way you have it now it looks like he’s smashing into…something. Don’t ignore the script!

Last but not least, page three. Again we have no sense of space because there are no background references. In panel one for instance, we have no idea where the characters are. By not establishing Invincible and Octopussy on terra firma, we lose the drama of Mark having to catch a flying Manatee. And nothing says drama like flying Manatees! Show us where everybody is!

The last panel should be pulled back to show the scope of the threat otherwise we get no sense of the real danger. Plus we need to clearly see our hero holding the VERY scared Manatee as a last beat.

So going into the next round don’t be afraid to pull back on some of the shots so we can see the world around our main characters. You’ve got skills Dan, show `em off!

Good luck!

-M