Oculama

One of the things I've come to appreciate about your inaugural comics is how genuinely likeable Valaric is. Powerful, honorable, and as we're seeing, very conscientious of those around him. Add in the growing mystery of what all his questing has been about so far, and you've got an immensely intriguing figure! As for this round's comic, you move at a nice pace getting us into the action, and the fight, though short, feels like a solid enough collaboration between characters. If anything is missing here, it's more to do with the larger arc of Valaric's stories so far; it feels a little late in the tournament/arc to be now hinting at the larger substance behind all his (to be fair, visually wonderful) fights so far. With only one (?) round left, I have slight trepidation about how well the rest of his story might be told in the remaining time while also doing justice to your opponents AND telling a fulfilling story. That said, you've shown the prowess to pull something just like that off, and I hope to see you succeed to that end. GREAT stuff overall!

While this comic is not as background intensive as your previous showings, I think it still looks gorgeous. The ocean background suits Driftwood's character (for reasons we already know) and the plot really called for the same (icy monster encounter). So they all worked together. What I think really stands out to me about this round was the plot itself. Over the course of three rounds, we see Valaric seemingly attend to these 'mundane' missions and here it was revealed that there was more to it than meets the eye: that he was the one causing all this and all these comics are connected! I really can't wait to see what happens next and what a great way to put a climax and air of excitement for the next round.

Another lovely comic from you. There's a stronger sense of danger I'm getting from this comic and I appreciate the ramp up. The previous three rounds have had that element, but seeing some actual blood being drawn heightens it in a way that was missing with the prior examples. I'm intrigued by the story you're laying forth and just what Valaric has done to cause his current plight.
While the background work has been great from you in the prior rounds, this one was rather weak. I certainly got frozen ocean from it, but I feel like having waves flash-frozen or perhaps nice big collected ice floes breaking up the visual design would have gone very far.
I'm excited to see what you perform in the final round. Wrapping up this story arc will be very intriguing and I'm here for it. Great work!

Short and sweet with some very cool foreshadowing! Working all your entries together into one big epic quest was a really smart idea and really makes me interested in seeing where you decide to go with it in the final round! Your backgrounds are still extremely good with the frozen ship being a great way to add some texture to the otherwise mostly empty frozen sea. Valaric's compassion and genuine remorse for being the cause of these incidents is really good and honestly I think it speaks to how flexible your character is that you were able to have him work so well with so many different characters!

The 4th artifact!

Beautifully painted backgrounds as with your past comics. I quite like the ice effect; it is my favourite part.

Story wise, we've got some development from our favorite buff wizard. Realizing he's had no sense of right or wrong when it comes to his allies recovering the treasures. I like seeing the story develop in your action packed adventure setups.

Aesthetically I really like the texture on the lineart. The cool colours are nice and the snow effect is (ha) cool.

Overall, I'm interested in where you're taking the artifact plot. More painted backgrounds will be the cake to go with it.

It's so great to see a character whose just genuinely good. It's great to see the way you're linking all your rounds together and our good wizards regrets over his encounters with each of them. It makes for a great catalyst ot put his all in helping a relative stranger. He gives off great goo Samaritan energy (I especially like the 'heavenly light backdrop on pg 5, panel 1). You also have some nice expressions. His concern as he looms over this new mysterious stranger was a nice sense of urgency, but I think you can punch it up.

You took this in an interesting direction on some story crafting as to why all these calamities are happening and cleverly left us with a hook with that to be continued in an effort to have us hope for more. I certainly cant wait to see how Valaric ties in to why these treasures are running amok and how he brought them into being.

As Always, Every comic from you in this tournament has been an absolute treat. Your art is solid as always! Panel layout matched the pacing and action of the story very well, it felt dynamic where it needed too!
But I'm really enjoying the story arc for valarc, The twist! I am very curious and excited to learn what happens next in this quest now that he has secured all of the items, what will happen to all of these magical items?
He has been a fun character to follow, thank you for the lovely comic, I can't wait to read what happens next!

OMG lore drop! Valaric is behind the treasures being released in the wild? I love how well Valaric has worked with each of your opponents, even though he had the fight with Raincoat, it didn't really feel antagonistic, he's such a nice guy. Your art is lovely to look at as ever, if with maybe some slightly more sparse backgrounds than you've had in other rounds. But knowing you were also doing another OCT at the same time, I'm amazed you've been churning out such high quality the whole time!! I can't wait to see what you do with the finale ♥