Round 4: Jon Reed (Only judges can post here!)

[Reed]

Four pages in three days.

[Click on image for larger version]

Page One:
http://brainiac.boilingpoint.com/~cbi3/jonreed/jrr41th.jpg (http://brainiac.boilingpoint.com/~cbi3/jonreed/jrr41.jpg)

Page Two:
http://brainiac.boilingpoint.com/~cbi3/jonreed/jrr42th.jpg (http://brainiac.boilingpoint.com/~cbi3/jonreed/jrr42.jpg)

Page Three:
http://brainiac.boilingpoint.com/~cbi3/jonreed/jrr43th.jpg (http://brainiac.boilingpoint.com/~cbi3/jonreed/jrr43.jpg)

Page Four:
http://brainiac.boilingpoint.com/~cbi3/jonreed/jrr44th.jpg (http://brainiac.boilingpoint.com/~cbi3/jonreed/jrr44.jpg)

[Vince Hernandez]

I honestly haven't been feeling your previous round's entries, but I think this is your best offering yet. You still have some things to work on to really take your art to the next level though.

PAGE ONE:
Panel 1 - I know the plot script called for a tight shot but I think you would've been better served to give a nice full-body shot of the alien. You can still pull in tight but I think with the 3 panel lead in before we see our main character, it's too long. Plus we don't need 6 panels to establish this scene. Panel 2 can be lost with no effect to the story.

Panels 2 and 3 - See above.

Panel 4 - Your alien boy doesn't follow the script and appears to be too old.

PAGE TWO:

Panel 1 - Nice splashy panel. Your robot looks too similar to the robot from Iron Giant, you should've tried your own take on the machine (I know it can be hard though to create an original robot design!). Nice futuristic cityscape, it both sets and frames the scene nicely. The robot blasters to me appear kinda weak and functionally look incorrect. A minor quip I know, but in the comic publishing biz you better be prepared to be scrutinized to the ninth degree on all your work--even the most minute detail.

Panel 2 - I like this inset panel. It works well.

Panel 3 - Well-done.

Panel 4-6 - These 3 panels work nicely, I like the intensity of panel 4.

PAGE THREE:
I know you brought panels from the previous page into this one but I don't have a problem with it because this page still reads well with the changes.

Panel 3 - Your rendition of Saturn Girl is not that impressive. Her hair and face appear rushed, and her facial expression is cold. Her eyes look downright evil.

Panels 4,5, and 6 - nice, effective 3-panel sequence to establish the Alien boy/guy's surprise at the arrival of the Legion.

PAGE FOUR:
Again I'm a little underwhelmed with this page. While you frame it nicely with the outlying characters, the overall composition of this page leaves me wanting more. Me personally, I would've liked to see this scene set up to have the characters springing at us from left to right. I feel it would've conveyed more speed to your scene. Right to left slows us down.Left to right gives us more speed. Having the four Legion heroes standing with essentially the same pose doesn't help your cause either. Try to make your poses more dynamic and differentiate them more.

I really feel you're getting better with each entry which is a good sign Jon! I like some of your choices regarding the story pacing but feel you should pump up your big shots more. Overall, good stuff.

[Francis Manapul]

First of John I'd just like to say congrats to you and the other entrants for making it to round 4! On with the crits!

Page 1:
Ok the first thing I'm gonna have to bring up is the fact that you changed the main characters age. By changing his age, you take away from the desired effect of the story. With the main character being a kid, the sense of tension is heightened along with the drama. Not to say that an older alien in danger shows less, but it does change the feel of the story.

panel 1- 3, I think it would have been better to start off with a tight shot, and slowly zoom it out. You have to be careful when you're cutting of the character off panel. I think if the first panel was a tighter shout, showing him from the shin down would work better.

panel 4. looks cool, works for me.

panel 5-6 I really dig how you drew all the crowd running good job! However, I feel these two panels are too similar. I would have made 5 larger, and made 6 a smaller tighter shot of his reaction shot.

PAGE 2.

panel 1. cool shot! I think you could have pushed this to uber cool if you made it an up shot. In scenes like these, an up shot shows a better sense of scale, and enhances the sense of drama. Also the energy blast might have been used more efficiently if the blast were nearby the kid.

panel 2. kinda redundant, with the last panel of page 1.

panel 3. I don't quite feel the blast. If this panel was a little bigger, and if you added some rubble and stuff flying around then I would have bought that he was in danger. However right now it sorta just feels like a puff of smoke behind him. You gotta watch out for little details like that to sell the drama.

panel 4 Again, I don't quite buy that he's in danger. He kinda looks like he's going for a jog into a smoke cloud. If you changed the angle to have him running towards us with the blasts right behind him, maybe reaching out, you could show his scared expression along with the action of running. You kill two birds with one stone.

panel 5 and 6 works fine, but watch out with varying the sizes of your characters through out the page. the page becomes too static when their the same through out.

PAGE 3

panel 1. Love it! this is exactly what I had in mind.

panel 2. works for me.

panel 3. doesn't quite feel dramatic enough. I think a slight up shot would have helped.

panel 4-6 while the intention is good in its pacing I felt it slowed down the story too much. This could have been accomplished with one panel.

PAGE 4

ah the splash page! I'm diggin' your bouncing boy and chameleon boy, something about this page reminds me of early mignola stuff. My main complaint with this page, is that aside from a couple of them the rest of the guys are just standing there. This is an action ready shot of the group, they should look ready to kick ass!

Anyways that said, you did a really good job telling a clear and precise story. It was very easy to follow, kudos to you! That being said, I think you need to vary some of your shots angles pretty much every shot in this 4 page sequence is straight on. Once you learn how to push your angles, you'll be able to tell a more dynamic, and dramatic story.

[Marc Silvestri]

Hey Jon-

Getting’ to the end here buddy, congrats on final four. As with pretty much all the contestants, your pages are giving me mixed results, which is a bit frustrating. And when I say frustrating I mean I see much potential in the individual parts but the parts aren’t adding to a whole. Sometimes I see good storytelling but mediocre art and sometimes, good art but bad storytelling. It’s final four we need to see both at the same time!

I’ve mentioned this in other reviews in this round but on page one we need to see the ball by itself in the first panel. A lone, bouncing ball moves the reader to feel something (good or bad) and drives them to the next panel. Plus the figure crop in the first panel is really awkward. Oddly, you follow this with an almost exact figure crop in the next panel (an unnecessary panel btw). I like the design of the alien but dude I don’t care what planet he’s from the kid looks about 80.

Panel five is good but the figure pointing off panel is too on-the-nose. You convey the panic of a fleeing herd nicely we don’t need to be told twice. Random placement of black in the background continues to be your Achilles heel. The nice perspective you provide with the figures in this panel is somewhat flattened by the solid blacks behind them. Especially hurt is our kid in the middle who disappears a bit into the vertical black lines behind him. Three lines create tangents at his shoulder and both sides of his head. This blends him with the background and ruins the depth. Panel six is a good one that could have been great if the kid were closer/bigger. I’ll still give you a good mark on it though as it has energy and depth. The better storytelling beats for these last two panels would have been for the kid looking more over his shoulder in panel five and then zoom into a big close up of his startled eyes looking directly at us in panel six.

Love the scale of the first panel on page two. The fleeing citizens in the foreground are too evenly placed and spaced though. Love the robot but he is a bit derivative of you-know-who. There is a strange feeling of non-destruction going on here as well. We need to see buildings exploding and not just a bunch of dust.

Panel two is great but panel three lacks drama because we’re not sure how close the shot really is to hitting the kid. Panel four is odd because it looks like he’s running toward the blast rather than trying to avoid it. The placement of the bouncing ball draws too much attention to itself. Panels five and six are fine.

Onto page three. I like the old ma…I mean kid in panel one but the camera should be flat on the ground in this shot. All the elements seem to be sharing the same space in the perspective you’ve chosen. Saturn Girls legs/feet look REALLY masculine in this panel too.

Panel two doesn’t work for me, the action is awkward and the two figures in relation to each other in the next panel don’t match. Be careful of abrupt or clumsy transitions. The positioning of the figures in this panel is uninteresting as well. The camera should rotate so the figure of the boy is crossing-over slightly in front of Saturn Girl. That way she’s looking more down at him/us and is presented more dramatically.

Hmm. I don’t know what to make of the last three panels to be honest with you. Why is our boy looking more scared here than when he saw the giant robot?

In the last page I can clearly see Mike Mignola’s influence in your figure work. Tread carefully here man; Mike is a world-class artist with a VERY specific aesthetic that only HE can pull off (I know, I’ve tried!). I do love the big balloon guy though! Black-spotting again is not your friend here and tangents are running wild because of it.

The windshield on the car is way fussy and directionally clashes with the oddly cast shadows on the ground. The foreground guy (forgive me people, I’m not even a little familiar with Legion characters) completely disappears into the body of the big guy behind him. This is due to equal parts composition and black placement. Note how the foreground figure is positioned almost exactly the same as the big guy behind him. If you follow the line that defines the bottom of the big guys pecs, that line continues with the foreground guy’s trap muscle and then continues into his shoulder line and forms an almost unbroken arc. If you look at the two figures that arc is repeated over and over again (the big guys shoulders, what I think is his leg, and the front guys thigh etc.). These are tangents that blend the two figures.

The guy with the lightning bolts on his chest looks like he’s wearing a weird helmet. His head is so perfectly placed in the object directly behind him it takes a second to realize it’s the shoulder pad of the bald guy! Let’s not even talk about the woman in black and the placement of the other guy’s head! Oy! I know I’m smacking you hard here Jon but see what I’m getting at?

Sorry for the brutal beat-down this round but I’m trying to help you break some bad habits before they become unbreakable. I want to see you working as a pro dude. You can do it. Good luck!

-M