Round 3: Caio Oliveira (Only judges can post here!)

[Caio Oliveira]

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[Ryan Ottley]

Caio,

Page one
A little bit of location would be nice, him flying down into a city. The page feels a little corny, the way he is flying looks weird in that first panel. More like he is bowing to a crowd. And that huge overbite is a little odd. Invincible spotting something looks odd as well. It just comes off as corny. But maybe that's what you felt the script was asking for? The last panel looks pretty cool, again a couple buildings woulda been nice.

Page two

Panel 1 and 2 have pretty much the same information just different angles. I really like panel 2, Octoboss looks great here.

I'm not into the way you handled the rest of the page. Having an action scene like that so far away really takes the energy out of it. I do like the way you handled the detail of the road being broken up by the impact, and the jumping cars.

Page three

I really like the composition of this first panel, good background too. Anatomy seems wobbly though, and he has another dorky look on his face. Other than that it's pretty cool.
more dorky faces for the rest of the page. He just looks weird man. But again, maybe you think Invincible is suppose to be a dorky character? I don't know. The flow of the rest of the page works well, I like that you did a close-up at the end of the page. It adds a nice moment.

[Marc Silvestri]

Caio-

First off congrats on making it to the third round (and getting to work on a Kirkman script)!

Okay, lets get to it. Your style here seems to suit the spirit of Invincible well. Working in a cartoon style is tricky stuff and requires not only finesse but also a knack for playful exaggeration and a dose of the theatrical. That said these pages are a little hit-and-miss for me. The miss is mostly in the storytelling. Remember, even light-hearted adventure needs dramatic tension (Eric Larsen is very good at this).

Page one seems over-paneled to me. It shouldn’t take five panels to convey what the script is saying. Plus the panels are redundant. One and five are virtually identical in figure size and angle. The end result is a loss of drama in the last shot. The addition of the sound effect is a nice thought but in this case creates and odd tangent with the figure and proves to be a distraction from our main guy about to do some big business. In the first panel I would have added a horizon line in the background to provide some reference to the reader as to where we are.

I think the middle three panels could have been replaced with two closer shots of Mark realizing his fun time has turned serious. I get the intent of the three panels but here the idea seems to fall flat.

Page two is a bit unfocused. The threat below in panel one doesn’t seem like such a big deal and will need serious color to help create the illusion of depth. The biggest problem with the rest of the page is a real-world sense of timing. The assumption is that Invincible is coming in at a high rate of speed but in the six(!) panels that you use to tell this simple action it makes it seem like he’s going about 3 mph. He never seems to get there!

The last four panels fall into that “too clever” category. It’s fun to play with over-lapping action but when you make the reader work too hard to figure out what’s going on you lose them. The Manatee flying in the air is an important dramatic beat but if I hadn’t read it in the script I would have missed it because here he’s so small. The problem isn’t helped by the distracting panel arrangement and “too clever” storytelling. Sorry but that “BOOM” gets a “meh” from me.

The first panel on page three isn’t giving me the feeling of Mark catching a falling Manatee (never thought I’d type a sentence like that). He might as well be trying to stop a Manatee balloon from floating away. You completely left out the important “Gotcha big fella” beat. As it is he kind of just winds up in Marks hands.

I probably would have made panel five the last shot to have the reader begging to see what happens on the next page. Plus we need to see ALL around our hero to make it clear he’s surrounded. Right now it looks like he can sort of just walk off the bottom of the page because nobody blocking him.

This was a tough gig because it left a lot up to the artist but that’s part of the job. You captured the playful spirit and some of the expressions are good but you gotta tell the story! Good luck!

-M

[Ryall_IDW]

Page One
One thing that Ryan Ottney—and Cory Walker before him—really imbue this title with is a sense of fun, so this first panel is really going to se the tone for the way I judge all three of these pages. Luckily, you’re off to a solid start. I’ve been enjoying your facial expressions during this contest, and while I like them here, the teeth in panel one give it more of a leering quality than you probably intend. But the body language and pose in this first panel, and indeed on this entire page, really capture the spirit of the character. Panel two seems rather unnecessary, though. And while I like when artists draw in their own sound effects, somehow the whoosh looks like it’s zooming up into the sky even as Invincible zooms down.

Page Two
From the airy, open skies to the crowded ground scene, and yet you handle the transition pretty nicely. The panels are detailed without being overly cluttered, although from this angle, panel one doesn’t seem to give us much of a threat that Marks responding to. And panel two seems a bit hard to follow, although that’s largely due to a character that has so many tentacles. I usually like when an artist draws in his own sound effects, but the “bangs” work less well for me than the “boom” in panel five.The colorist will have to work a bit on this one to make it clear. I do appreciate the innovative layouts on the rest of the page. The manatee flying up into the air needed to be a bit more of a focus, though. I knew to look for him but he’s a bit small here.

Page Three
This page makes it official—I want to see the manatee get its own back-up story in INVINCIBLE. Panel one, though, both he (she?) and Invincible look like they’re floating, weightless. And while I’d like to see this page less crowded than more, there seems to be a panel missing between one and two. I like the facial expressions on the characters throughout the page. Panel five, the threat doesn’t seem to fully surround Mark and his new friend, either, and a reaction shot (panel six) after we see the scene in panel five, seems a bit redundant. So while you definitely have some nice skills, on a story like this that’s just plotted and not tightly scripted, I’d like to see your storytelling shine through a bit more.