Oculama

The art bleeping gloops dude. I was instantly hit by that first page and went "wow oh my plop, this shit flipping RULES dude" and my mouth like did a kermit flapping motion thing. I liked the dynamic of funny cat and buff wizard along with a tangible and toothable storyline. I liked the scale of everything too, very driponomic. I'm bad at writing reviews. The way the characters popped against the backgrounds in like the second page made me like salivate at the mouth with joy. I really liked the light coming through the trees. The writing didn't feel like it was a weird inclusion either which I appreciate. Overall this was an enjoyable experience, keep writing and drawing for my own individual viewing pleasure :eyes:.

Wow, the painterly backgrounds in every single page of the comic are really quite fantastic, coupled with the fun little wizard adventure story thats really fun and joyful to see and read, lighthearted in nature. I love the forboding mountain giant design, I think its funny his eyes are pumpkin pie shaped. The composition strength of these panels were great too and i liked how readable they were, never had to guess what was going on and for that I'm thankful. I hope to see this wizard going on more magical adventures for treasure and I can't wait to see how his character progresses the longer he's in the tournament.

Gorgeous, GORGEOUS backgrounds. You can tell you had fun with these. The lush waterfall, the giant moss covered tree boughs, and the sun filtering through the forest- what a treat to oogle as we follow along on these two characters having a chat and a walk. Not to mention making it visually interesting. I like the choice of rendering your environments to such a degree but keeping your characters flat colored and simplistic. Gives a neat animation cell vibe I'm here for. also comparing a gem eye to a slice of pumpkin pie is so wholesome. It's such a jarring thing to say in the midst of lethal action, but in a way keeps David in character so as not to be a bloodthirsty feline. Cleverrrr.

What an epic entry- great work!

The art for this was absolutely gorgeous, right off the bat. The first page in particular was fantastic, with them traveling across three beautiful landscapes, and I especially adored the lighting in the last panel for the first page. The plot of the comic was endearing, a simple adventure across the land for a magical object, which was the perfect setup for the gorgeous backgrounds, and the awesome battle against a mountain-sized monster. I expected a traditional battle between the cat shoveler and muscle wizard, and was very surprised by them instead working together to defeat a titanic foe. Overall, fantastic job!

It’s a shame this comic couldn’t be finished, but what is there is great to see! I like seeing you improve with your watercolour like style, and you’re using it to good effect here. Big fan of your panel split to depict Valaric travelling through the door, and it’s cool to see you trying out hatching in some panels. In future comics I’d love to see you trying out a greater combination of colours or toying with gradient maps to help give make your panels more lively. Very glad that you decided to redeem this comic and tell us its remaining plot.

Instantly, your backgrouns for this comic are very striking! I have no idea how you managed these under such a strict time limit, but I am thoroughly impressed! Valaric launching David with his beard is a great visual gag, and K liked the reoccurrence of pumpkin pie within your comic. You’ve got some really dynamic panels which are aided by the excellent posing going on! I’m a big fan of small David & Valaric on your first page, and your ability to draw scaled-down characters really shines for large shots like that. I can’t wait to see the further adventures of our dear muscle wizard.

Maxes, huge props to you for being the first one to utilize our Redemption feature. I am so glad you're able to show us what you have. I love that first panel with the castle, I thought it was beautifully done. Adding the shading on everything was a nice touch. I would suggest you experiment with harder edge brushes next time too for some variety in textures. The airbrush effect tends to make things rounded/soft. Also, you scared me a bit with that ending! The choice of switching the colors from blue to red also made such a huge impact. But I am glad that David did live and he and Valaric went on to have more adventures together.

Arkeis, what a GORGEOUS comic. I've been in awe at your backgrounds. They look like paintings I can just frame. I think keeping Valaric and David cell shaded works overall but I can't help wondering what if they were a little bit painted as well. But I'll save that for something with less of a crazy timeframe for sure lol. I am already super impressed by how much you're able to do in one week. The story is also fun and I love that the pumpkin pie reference was later on used in the climax. Gosh, I really hope they get a treat for themselves after this adventure. Great job! And I can't wait to see you in the next round!

It's too bad you weren't able to finish this one! Looks like you had an interesting story lined up.

For what you do have, I think you have a great set up that's easy to follow. Frankly, I'm not sure how I should critique this since I don't know what level of completion those first two pages are at! They read well enough for sketches, but a second pass to get some clean line work and coloring is really the next step here. If possible, use a brush with anti-aliasing as well to eliminate the artifacts and jagged lines. And, of course, keep the shading a bit tidier within the lines.

Muscle wizard casts fist! This one's a lot of fun. You have some gorgeous backgrounds and tons of tasty color. And great job of showcasing your opponent! The story you told makes perfect sense for both of them, with a healthy injection of humor and action.

Some minor marks in the artwork category: Valaric is posed fairly static throughout with a few exceptions, I'm not sure I was fully sold on the scale of the fight between our wizard and the mountain monster, and generally I felt the characters ended up looking a little flat against the richly textured backgrounds.

Looking forward to seeing more from you!

Kudos one hundred percent maxes for submitting what you had. I know how i must feel to have not finished on time but you did wonderful in posting what you did make. Would've been amazing to have seen it fully completed but what you do have is good. I think you need to focus on how you shade things, there's a few times where the shading on Valleric blends fully into the background and it makes it harder to understand and the readability of some panels goes down. I can see you have the understanding of it all and you get it you just need to take a little extra time to focus on things some more. Like I think you did very well on the castle in the first panel and the one right below it on the right side. Maybe toss in another tone to make it easier to colour and shade. way to go maxes, hope to see more from you in the future

I mean those backgrounds am i right??? that entire first page is just sublime, easily in the top 5 for best oct page I've ever seen, the way you paint those backgrounds is mesmerizing. I can't truly praise how great they are cause I aint no where near that level but just know that you blew it out of the water straight to fucking mercury or something. Now this is going to seem like a really weird nitpick. I really liked your story I thought David was super cute it in and you did a great job on it, normally I would've enjoyed it and praised the creativity of fighting a big ole mountain monster. But you did so amazing on the first page that I just wanted that. A prolonged adventure with Valleric and David walking through different backgrounds that you are just fully flexing on all of us with. It's stupid cause it's like completely selfish, cause you did great on the story, and my only real gripe with it is that you didnt just make a really beautiful walk. It's super silly. You did phenomenal I can't stress it enough, absolutely wonderful job.

Maxes, even if you weren't able to finish, the idea behind the story was cute and that first page, where you were describing the context of the comic, was very solid. Your idea was cool. I hope to see a finished work in the future! David seems such a fun character to work with.

Since I don't know what else to say, I'm going to write a couple of random facts: 1 in 5,000 north Atlantic lobsters are born bright blue. There are 10 human body parts that are only 3 letters long (eye hip arm leg ear toe jaw rib lip gum). A skunk's smell can be detected by a human a mile away! Wow!

What a cool comic!! The rendering that you were able to create with this painterly style is just so, so beautiful. I'm still staring at that first page, it sets up the mood perfectly. I feel adventure, friendship, and fantasy!
The writing is simple but effective. It's a "quest hunt" adventure comic, you're able to showcase Valaric's cool moves, and David is such a friendly character to have as a companion! A pity pages 3 and 4 aren't as rendered as the first two, but I'm in shock that you were able to do everything in a week.
Thank you for bringing the MUSCLE WIZARD archetype into the comic world, I'm hyped to see him more in action.

Proud of you to commit and get stuff up after the fact! I know time crunch can be a killer. You had a solid start and I appreciate the way you tried to little things with paneling. On that note, I would suggest you make a lot thinner panel frames next time, they should generally not be much thicker the the thickest of your lineart in my experience. Anything thicker starts to stick out and distract from the art. I do like the idea with the siluette panel and I can tell you have a creative mindset and that is going to serve you very well making comics.

This was a enjoyable and all throughout super solid comic. My one question I have is how do you do your backgrounds. I cannot tell if they are painterly stuff done lineless, or if they are some form of photos being rendered over or photobashed. They look pretty, but with the way your charachters are in a defined, very consistently and confidently lined style with stark shading that's not evident in the background, I Think they stick out a bit to much as a result. I would have loves to see a little more cohesion between foreground and background (Possibly by adding a more texture across of all of it, or more playing around with deep shadows and highlights across fore and background.) That said, this comic is super solid and very concisely and effectively written. I look forward to more!

This is a really neat start! I like the seriousness/ toughness you give the wizard, and your scenery shots are terrific; not too busy, but easily readable, and with enough detail to be interesting. The fact that your description includes a shifting landscape is very exciting, The remainder of the plot seems interesting, with some beats and space for good humor. It does seem very ambitious for the remaining three pages, so I'd be interested in seeing how you execute that at some point down the road. Looking forward to more comics from you as this and more tournaments unfold!

I'm impressed by a lot of this comic's elements, high among them your great sense of distance; you strike a perfect balance between showing off the character and keeping the background/context for their action clear. And what beautiful backgrounds they are! I feel like I could read an entire comic of yours with nothing but characters wandering the world. Your writing is solid, but I think is still working on catching up to the quality of your art. None of the dialogue really gives me a strong sense of either character, and the humorous bits (the pie) doesn't really land for me/ add much to my enjoyment of the comic. Try a couple different versions of the dialogue for characters going forward, to nail down lines that help convey who they are. REALLY dig the monster design in this comic, and how well it works with your landscapes. Your renderings of the characters are similarly fun, and I like how the crispness of your lines and bold block colors make them stand out from the backdrops.

Maxes Kudos for putting in some pages even if the comic wasnt finished! I have seen you work under similar time frames and your work is great but 7 days can like I said earlier be a real crunch and hard to pin down story/art/time to make the comic so dont feel bad! your artistic style is still great as ever and your characters are always a joy to see interact with others so I look forward to your next comic with whoever you put out to do your next one! I also like that you did post the finish to the comic in text as well I do love closure!

A very good comic! that opening shot and the follow painted backgrounds look super good! I also like that you setup was very easy to follow and the resolution was very clean/open shut. You have a real knack for action and you did a great job with colors and highlights especially that last shot of david with the crystal is great. I do think mentioning the quest goal earlier would have been a good idea as once the monster shows up things escalate pretty quickly without much explanation as to why swol wizard needs the jewel in the first place. But that isnt to say that the extra explanation was needed as I follow the story quite easily and was a smooth read throughout!

Hey maxes! Its good to see you tried for the redemption feature, even if you couldn't finish off entirely! What counts in the end is you put in some work, next time make sure to budget your time properly and try not to tackle too much! I think you had a overall pretty fun idea planned for your comic and I can't wait to see what your able to pull out in your next comic! Don't let this setback get you down, you're gonna rock your next comic fight! Also I really loved your comic panel to portal transition idea, and I liked your use of red to hype up the fake stab in your comic! Good job!

Fuck yeah Arkeis you went super hard on this comic! Nice job, you did such a splendid job on this, your backgrounds were to die for, and I could stare at each of your panels for hours! Love your colors all around, you really put your back into this, and came out swinging! You managed some wonderful action and some really great back and forth dialogue between each of the ocs. The combination move to close it all was equally great, coming out with a bit of comedy as they land the finishing blow on the beast! All in all this was a super enjoyable read.

Bummer you couldn't get the comic done, what you wrote sounds like it would have been cool to read. Valaric is a cool character and I hope we get to see some more of him in action!

I do love that you used the redemption feature (which I didn't know was a thing) and got a comic up, though! Your pages in that scribbly fast style you did are still very clear, and your pacing and layouts are very good! I also think that silhouette panel on page 3 seems cool and like a fun misdirect. I'm definitely excited to see a full comic from you!

Okay WOW that's impressive work for such short turnaround! Those backgrounds, especially on page 1 are gorgeous! You did a great job writing both characters, they had a fun dynamic! That's a super cool monster design too, that panel on page 2 behind Valaric is rad as hell. Plus you gave both characters interesting things to do in the fight, which is always nice to see! I'm not even sure what to give you for critiques, except maybe some of your poses seem a little stiff? That's something I'm trying to work on too. But still, your layouts and action were clear and rad! Great work.

Its a bit disappointing you were not able to finish and I hope to see your finished work here one day but what was here was the start of something promising but its hard to say much, I am glad you gave a resolution with a bit of text at the end explaining the ending but still it is a shame to see you not be able to finish, the idea of muscle wizard being sent on a quest was a fun set up for a comic but the sudden attack felt well a bit sudden but overall decent for whats there.

This was a really well done comic I do really love your landscapes and the settings you drew and just the sheer amount of effort that went in to make it feel like this is a real adventure I think the only aspect of the comic that leaves me a little confused is the pumpkin pie analogy for the jewel eye of the volcano mountain monster, I really liked the team work for this quest rather than it just ending up becoming a fight between the characters. Overall it was a really cool comic to read with really clean and smooth art!

Im really glad you were able to post your comic in whatever state it ended up in! Its so tough to meet deadlines, but htat secondary to the fact that you created something. I enjoyed your art: The line work is clear and punchy. You have a really good grasp of tonal value and shadow as well, and use it to great effect in your panel compositions. Also, this story! The SUSPENSE is real, even though your intended story continues, its a hell of a panel to stop on, making me VERY interested in what comes next for David. I love the scruffy guy! Keep going, Im excited to see more of your work!

Very impressive work on this comic! Your lines and colours are crisp and clean and let nothing go to waste. Also. THOSE BACKGROUNDS, WOW. Gorgeous. Ahem. That aside, there's such a precise and enjoyable flow to this story that I had no trouble re-reading it many times. Your paneling and page layout are also very elegant, showing off the rising stakes and action. Both characters got some good representation, the 'newly found teamwork' dynamic was very fun! All in all, this has everything I could ask for in a story: Beautiful landscapes, buff wizards, big monsters and grumpy cats. And exceptionally executed work! SO stoked to see more.