Round 4: Caio Oliveira (Only judges can post here!)

[Caio Oliveira]

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[Vince Hernandez]

This is very good. My favorite of the 4 entries this round. Like everyone else, you still have some things you can work on though.

PAGE ONE:

Panel 1 - Nice intro shot, works well.
Panel 2 - Another nice panel. I like the tight shot here.
Panel 3 - No complaints here again, I like the urgency of this panel. It's a little weird for me that he doesn't see what's in front of him already with the direction he's headed, but the script was liberal with this so no problem.
Panel 4 - The more I look at this, the more I wonder about the correctness of your perspective here. I think the flying guy to the right of our main alien throws me off.

PAGE TWO:

Panel 1 - This is striking. I like the giant robot design and the futuristic cityscape. I would've liked a more dynamic, stunned pose out of our main character as he looks a little stiff. And is that Toe Jam and Earl in the foreground? Don't do this. Maybe for sample work, it's acceptable to add your favorite characters, but this competition is meant to represent your potential talents as a professional so don't add in somebody else's characters. You'll waste both your time and the editor's by having to go back and remove them.

Panel 2 - no complaints here. See above with what looks like the character Alf in the background.

Panel 3 - Nice reaction shot here with the ball dropping out of his hands. Your blasts from the robot could be a little cooler in my opinion.

Panel 4 - Again nice work, your perspective needs checking here in parts.

PAGE THREE:

Panels 1 and 2 - these are awesome panels, I really dig the subtle touches you added such as the skater-punk chain on the alien boy. I also think your expressions in these two panels are spot on for what the script called for. Well done.

Panel 3 - Nice angle for this panel--it really adds to Saturn Girl's intro shot by choosing the upshot. You need to sell a better facial expression here though, her eyes appear sad.

Panel 4 - Saturn Girl here looks pretty wonky, I think it's her legs which come off as not matching her upper torso.

Panel 5 - This is a great panel. Everything works for me here and his expression is priceless.

PAGE FOUR:

This splash page is cool but I would've liked to see a larger variety of poses. Did they all attend the same school for superhero posing? Vary it up Caio, I know you have it in you!

Sorry, not much to critique here. I think this is hands-down one of the strongest entries any of the rounds in the contest yet. Clear, concise storytelling. Great stuff.

[Marc Silvestri]

Caio-

Okay brother it’s down to four and from where I sit you’re aware of it and have stepped up your game. To me these are your best pages and it proves you want the crown. But before you walk off with the bowling trophy there are still some big issues with your work that need addressing.

These pages show a great sense of kinetic energy and good storytelling instincts. The alien race(s) provide you with opportunity to put more “character” in your characters and plays to strengths you have as an artist.

Page one needed a shot of the ball bouncing by itself as an opening. You’ve got a great character design (he immediately looks like a young alien) but you miss an important beat by showing him before you show the object he’s chasing. With that in mind your first panel would have made a great second panel. Love the third panel. You key on what’s important, he’s snagged the ball and he’s happy about it. Very cool.

I like the idea of panel three but I think having the boy look directly at the reader is a bit misleading and makes it seem like WE are what’s important here. He should be looking at one of the running citizens. I’d like to have seen more of the alien architecture here as well.

The last panel is a great, ballsy choice in camera angle. There is a lot of movement and potential for compositional disaster but you maintain focus on the boy. Plus you foreshadow a real threat coming. This is hard to pull off at any professional level and you nailed it. Good job.

One note I need to mention here, and a thing I found a bit distracting, was the wide variety of aliens we are exposed to right off the bat. By making everyone we see in these pages so physically different (bugs, frogs, humans, is that ET?) from each other we get no sense of the kid belonging to any particular alien race (we actually kind of lose the fact he’s a kid because we see no adults of his kind). This draws too much attention away from the important action and forces the reader to stop and go “hey look at all the cool, weird looking aliens”.

Page two is a bit of a let down because of the cartoonish backgrounds and somewhat random spotting of blacks. Panel one is kind of all over the map. It looks like a fever-dream version of Las Vegas and is too silly too seem even remotely dangerous. There is a great feeling of energy and fluid motion throughout the page though. Don’t like the gimmicky inset panel that tries to focus attention on the boy. Better composition is what’s needed not a gimmick! Throwing the bulk of the black space in the far background really flattens the panel out. In an epic panel like this we need DEPTH!

Love the character stuff and storytelling in the last three panels (not the three rocks crossing the border though). If you look at the work of Michael Golden, part of his genius is his ability to place cartoon-like figures in a realistic and detailed world. No matter how far he stretched the human form (and he has a great grasp of anatomy) he always anchors his figures in the recognizable world. This gives his work real gravity without sacrificing the elasticity of his characters. I think you could learn a lot by studying him.

Page three’s opening pratfall is well drawn but again this is all a bit “funny-book” for the serious subject matter. Panel two is very nicely done. I like the dynamic perspective in panel three but Saturn Girls face is a bit wonky and I’m not sure what the expression is supposed to mean. In panel four she seems a bit relaxed considering a city is being destroyed around her. Her figure here is a bit awkward and lumpy as well. You give us a great last panel with stars (literally) in the boy’s eyes. You seem to be much more confident spotting blacks on figures than in whole compositions. That’s something to work on.

You show big balls again on the last page but the characters lose a lot of crispness. You have a tendency towards a rubbery line that I’d like to see you get away from. Just about every face on the page is a little jacked. The page as a whole screams DEADLINE! In this case less, drawn better, would definitely be more. Coming to the end of the competition you can’t afford to leave a bad taste with the climactic page! Good luck!

-M

[Francis Manapul]

Caio congrats on making it to the top 4! You're work has quite a lot of energy, and I love that! but I feel sometimes you put style over the need of the story, and some parts lack the drama the story needs.

Page 1.
I'm in complete agreement with Marc (who's a great teacher by the way! I learned a lot from my time in the pitt) about the opening panel, we need that tight shot of the ball at the start. It helps set the tone of normalcy, before we turn it up with giant robots!

panel 3. I think you could have pulled the camera bit further away to establish the city a little bit.

I really dig the last panel, actually i love it! thats exactly what I had in my mind, or rather in may layouts (I'm no writer so a I actually thumbnailed this sequence before I wrote it down).


PAGE 2:

panel 1 looks great! I can tell you had a lot of fun with it and threw in the kitchen sink as well! I love that you chose to do an upshot, which I felt is what the script called for. However this panel is really busy! I think thats maybe why you felt the need to put the kid as an inset panel which I don't dig at all. I think if you cut off some of the other characters and pushed them further into the foreground you could have created a nice framing effect to feature the kid, rather than have it be a where's waldo in finding him.

panel 3 and 4 looks great! I love the expression he has!

panel 5, I felt that this last panel would have been more dramatic with a few blasts trailing behind him hitting the ground. It would show more tension like he's just barely evading the blast. Also this might work better if he was running towards the right to pull us to the next page. Right now he also mirrors the guy in the first panel running, they even almost look posed the same which is kinda distracting.


Page 3.

I don't have too much to say about this page to tell you the truth, this was a great sequence! panel 2 looks fantastic! as does panel 3, this is a great reveal shot, and is the best of the bunch. her expression is kind of weird though. I think the only thing that brings this page down (and not by much) is panel 4. Her legs look a bit lumpy, also be careful with having feet cut off by the panel.

Page 4.

Very ambitious shot! I think it looks great, but too similar to the angle you chose on the last panel of page 1. Also as Marc said some of these guys faces look weird. Also I dig that some of them are in a fight stand, but the others that are just standing there kinda takes away from the imminent danger that is about to come. Also where did they go? It feels a bit like we teleported into a hallway or something. Some background elements to anchor us into the story would have fixed this problem. Maybe some debris and cars or what not on the the ground, smoking buildings somewhere in the background.. anyways you get the idea.

I'm really impressed by these 4 pages, you really did step your game up! I'm looking forward to what you do in the next round!!