Ugly Clothes Comic
3yr
Kevin Labaziewicz
Hello everyone!
This is the first official comic I've made. The story follows a college student walking into their dorm for the first time and checking their roommate's fashion tastes. I was hoping to get feedback on the following...
1. Is the punchline understandable without context?
2. Do the forms feel solid? (Does the perspective/shading feel right?)
3. How is the panel layout? (is the layout messy/organized)
Thanks for taking the time to read, and I look forward to your feedback!
(Read from left to right)
I revised my original comic using the feedback I was given. It's not the best, but I hope it's better.
Hey, Kevin
Thanks for sharing your comic. One problem that a lot of comic book authors have is they never share work. Afraid of the criticism, they wait until they write the next Watchmen or Akira to show something to others. The irony is without feedback you don't grow so is very unlikely a groundbreaking story will appear in this conditions. So congratulations on taking the first time. Whatever I say, don't take it personally. Remember, I'm criticizing your work, not you. I don't think I can evaluate all your questions separately so I will answer them all at once
Whenever your doing a story without balloons your images have to do the heavy lifting. they have to make it clear where we are, who are the characters and what are they doing. What you show and what you don't have weight telling story. In general, your story doesn't give enough visual information and the narrative is very confusing. That undermines the understanding of the history
Let's review your story panel by panel together and I'll point what I think it's problematic and try pointing directions you can take.
Page 1
Panel 1: You said that it's the first time she's being there. But Someone already has her name tag on the door and someone wrote that's she's the best fashionista? Did she wrote that? Did her roommate wrote that? Did someone wrote that ironically? Also the name tag is almost the same width as the door. This is very forced exposition.
Panel 2: Here you lost me a little. You said that this is a dorm, but this it more like an apartment.
Panel 3: It's ok but kinda unnecessary. Normally after turning on the light, the next panel needs to reveal information that's in the dark.
Panel 4 - 6: This is very problematic. You rapidly changed camera angles creating a disorienting feeling and a sense of urgency. The way you did, it looks like she HAS to go that room. Also, dude numbered door in the inside?
Panel 7-8 here the drawing is not communicating well. I understand that she knocked and the door was unlocked but the image don't show it well
Panel 9: This is kinda weird. You go to a strange place and the first thing you do is go through your roommate stuff? Is she supposed to be the heroine of this story or a bratty entitled teenager?
Page 2
Continuity errors from panel 1-3. She changes direction from one panel to another, clothes changes from one panel to another and then color scheme of the character changes inexplicably (I thought at first that it was her roommate).
panel 4: The hand turning on the light is kinda creating a weird panel because it looks over sized in the wall but rest is ok and so is panel 5
Panel 6: I didn't understand if she was calling her roommate's ugly or her roommate herself. Also compared to the protagonist's clothes I didn't feel a gap in style that big to consider her roommate's clothes horrible. In fact they look very on par
So, ok. We have a lot of problems on location on this page but also who is our protagonist? Did you noticed that it's the first page and we didn't see the face of our girl? Isn't she a fashionista, then why is she using a generic dress? How do I know for sure that she is a student goes for the first time at a dorm and not someone returning from a trip?
Writing comics is a constant job of asking why. Characters never do stuff just because. And even though you're not going to put everything you know about them on the story you better have all of their background on your head.
OK. Suggestions. First: Do a thorough visual research. Find how dorms look like, the bedrooms, the corridors, etc, find pictures of fashionable girls. Clothes, accessories. Read interviews, discover what they like, find reference on those if you think you can enrich her character... just with the character design you're telling the viewer who the character is. Don't tell me your character is a fashionista, show me she is. No matter which kind of comic book you do, reference is always primordial.
Now let's work on your narrative. First of all start by showing your character. Let her face be visible. Show her arriving in the dorms, show the environment. show her reactions to her surroundings while she searches her room (it's important to know who the character is).Show her arriving in her room but cut panels like 4-6. If you don't need extreme angles, don't use it. Now, Instead of going to a living room, have her open the door and arrive directly on the shared bedroom. Dorms normally are just bedrooms and no living rooms (look up floor plans, sometimes you don't even have a window).
Instead of her breaking her roommate's room have her just see a hint of the clothes under the bed. And when she goes checks out she find the horror. She's not being invasive, she's just curious about something she saw. You can even use it as a tease. She can find something that she doesn't understand what it is and them her roommate shows up using something really atrocious missing the part that she found.
The clothes are essential to your story to works. You really need to sell the difference. Draw something very fashionable encountering something out of fashion.
I probably forgot a lot of stuff, but written critiques are tiring to write. If one day this site has voice chat ask me again about thins and I probably give you a more complete and more understandable answer. But until there this is all I have to say.
Good luck and Best regards