The Failed (?) Experiment -Comic Book Story (2019)
4yr
Yiannis
Hello everyone, my name is Yiannis and I'm a 3D Student from Greece. I have been passionate for comics ever since I remember myself. This is a short comic book story I created for a local magazine in July 2019. All done traditionally.
This is the first part of the story, the second part unfortunately was not continued.
This is the story of a misunderstood scientist , who, disappointed at the univeristy's narrow-minds, decides to create the perfect assistant, of course by creating the perfect artificial life form....always with the help of his new butler.
Enjoy!!!
Fantastic work. I like how imaginative and complex the scenes are, how the panels merge into each other, and yet the action reads so clearly. Very neat and also bizarre.
Your style makes me think of underground work like R. Crumb. I like your use of blacks, and I was wondering if you use technical pens when you ink? Have you ever considered kicking up your line weight when you ink?
There's a lot of energy and creativity in these pages and the art style is fun and distinctive.
I would echo what Julien stated about clarity, however. Spaces between panels give the reader room to breathe and help clarify the separate actions represented in the panels. When panels are combined or overlap as a number of these do, it causes separate panels to join together in a way that can stand in the way of the story. The panel and space set up sets up the pace of the story on the page. For example, the closeness of panels to each other and interaction between series of short panels in this example make the pace very fast. And since most of the panels appear to be about the same size, those moments that are important for the reader to notice might get lost. Obviously, such comments are made not knowing the original intent. As a stylistic choice, if you are blending panels, etc., to create a fast, chaotic pace, then that's something that would have to be factored in as well.
Hello Michael ,thank you for your feedback! Indeed that was also feedback from some of the viewers from back when it was published. I’m currently working on figure drawing and some composition,I also study from animated films ,I think they’re a treasure for art students.
Kalimera Yiannis!
I love comics too, and I think you have very good drawing skills for characters: expressiveness & nice inking! I liked your comic. The main thing I would say though is that's it's hard to follow, the reader really have to be carefull to apprehend & understand the story. I think you could benefit from figure composition tricks or more generally composition for storytelling (though it's obvious you already know some of this stuff), in order to make things clearer: idealy the reader should understand in one glance what's going on in each frame. The series of book "Famed Ink vol 1 & 2" form Marcos Mateu-Mestre could be of use, but maybe you already have them?
For instance: (i) I think the 2 characters look too much alike (same shape of head, event if hair/no hair) and (ii) the comic pages are too packed with info/frames. But maybe it's a personnal thing.
Anyway I focused on what bothered me, but I would never have been able to pull this off. I think you are gifted for this!
Hello Julien , thank you for your feedback my friend!
Indeed,as you correctly pointed out, there is too much information going on ,in a short space,thus making it difficult for the viewer to follow. I realised that after discussing it with my then art teacher here in Greece.I will definitely look into the resources you pointed out, I believe they will also benefit my 3D work.
I also decided to work on my draftsmanship skills, I have been working on Proko’s Figure Drawing course,which I have to say is absolutely wonderful .I have seen lots of improvement over the past months,and there’s still a long way to go.I’m looking forward to the rendering part,as light and form are things I have been struggling with.
