Oculama

A very intriguing story, and one that leaves me genuinely interested in what the future has in store for Clokk (a good sign for any comic, I'd say). It's a good, straightforward story that executes its horror-twist competently and in such a way that I as the reader felt pleasurably surprised when it occurred.

If time allows in the future, I'd recommend giving your dialogue and extra pass, or perhaps even a peer review before releasing. There's a few grammatical issues here and there, and some of the dialogue comes across as stilted, rather than naturally sophisticated or believably verbose. One thing I do that you may or may not find it useful to try is reading some of it aloud to yourself, and tweaking what sounds a bit off on the first few passes.

I'm really into the style you're developing for your characters; Heartwell and Clokk are rendered in a sort of semi-chibi-esque manner that has the expected endearing cuteness thereof, but doesn't (at least imho) detract at all from the more serious tone of the story. Definitely room to refine your style and make your designs more uniquely yours, but the direction is promising.

Continuing on your art, and while I do feel I'd like to see a *bit* more to differentiate each setting from one another (that the background tone for the subway, office, and outdoors is all the same, for example), you struck a fair balance with the amount of detail shown in each panel once the setting was established. A necessary economy of lines, I imagine, but still impressive given the turnaround on this comic, and the length of your pages.

A fun comic, and a terrific job tackling the scar format!

I think I've said, and will likely say it again on future reviews of your work, but your art has this really potent capacity for conveying dread and a certain unsettling undercurrent to literally anything, even a "simple" civic dispute of infrastructure. The shadows, the uncanny valley appearance of the human figures, the minimal yet sufficient amount of setting detail...they all come together to delightfully spooky effect.

Where I get lost a bit is in the content. While I can follow certain stretches of the conversation (the opening is clear enough, and the exchange about the definition of "bounty" is a delightful little bit that I think is, for me, the clear and away apex of the comic), I can't say I fully grasp the nature of the dialogue happening, to include what exactly the two characters are discussing, it's significance, or what Clokk wants to begin with. Some of this I think could be mended by giving a bit more thought to where you can exposit a bit more in the writing, and some of it might require re-assessing your word choice/ sentence structure, especially with Heartwell. I get the sense there's a distinct/ sophisticated manner of speaking that you're aiming for, but the thesaurus speech and verbosity are at times putting themselves between the reader and an easy comprehension of the story you're trying to tell.

Obtuse as it is, the story here still definitely gets something from being as tight as it is. The briefness of the exchange heightens the creepy surreal-ness of the comic, and while I'm entirely vexed as to the conversation's contents, the *vibe* of it carries a lot of weight all its own. Overall a really admirable job capturing the hostility and the general social horror of a serious exchange.

Really digging the details you're experimenting with in this format. the pattern on the wood flooring for this shadowy realm is giving and indie game vibe akin to Bendy and the Ink machine. Your lighting does alot of load bearing work on setting the mood for what this comic has in store.
If I had any notes, it'd be to get into the nuts and bolts of your characters facial structure. I'm all for stylization, but its my opinion that getting a handle of the fundamentals over how the face is mapped out will greatly help you in exaggerating it to your whims. Additionally, you have these characters exchanging words, feeling things in this comic. I think it'd greatly improve things if you opened the models mouth, tweaked the face to elicit an expression that matches the dialogue or the feeling being felt would pack an extra punch.

You got a great rapport with these two characters which makes them working together to contend with the big bad rat believable. That's no easy feat to get character chemistry going, so it was nice to see a smooth transition from verbal exchange and action. First and foremost, the chief thing I find missing in your work is your backgrounds. Your characters go through more than one environment, and some locales (like the subway) are relevant to the story, but there's so little by way of background that as a reader I wouldn't of known they were anywhere if the characters didn't mention it.
I'll be the first to admit backgrounds are hard. More so when trying to give it your own style and spin, but they are a great element to invest time and effort in. More often than not they enhance your storytelling and allow for a space your characters can interact with as opposed to meandering a void. Additionally, comics as a medium is very show more than tell, so if your word bubbles are doing the work your art should be doing, I'd recommend reassessing your pages

I can appreciate your ambitious storytelling. Even with a straightforward story such as this, you're going for something that is definitely going to challenge your artistically, which is very cool. I think the main things that are on the table for you is to start spending some time developing your fundamentals. The classics being drawing 50 hands, 50 faces, etc. Life drawing will do you wonders in improving where you're at right now.

Your story was pretty clear otherwise - but visually there's a deficit. You do make mention this is the shortest deadline you've ever worked with before, but maybe next time go with a shorter comic as well. I remember when I started I knocked out a lot of pages in a short time, but there's no one saying you can't try to make something just as compelling in 3 to 5 pages as well! Great first comic on the site though, I'm excited to see more from you.

While I think it's rather exciting to be working within the medium of 3D art for a comic, a good deal of quality suffers under these deadlines due to lacking for assets. Your comics end up having a stage play feeling, since they're all within a dark void for the most part. I can appreciate you working on making everything within the deadline, because that is the main hurdle within the time given to you, but I think you should consider spending some time working on developing a proper background. An office, some chairs, some lighting, maybe even an image of a city to set in the background. I don't think there's any harm if you spent some time making tools to play with for the future for your visual aspect.

As for the story, it's brief and ultimately a bit unclear. I'm not certain what occurred and knowing you didn't upload a certain page sounds like a major chunk is missing from it. I think you should get a proofreader for your works in the future, someone to help overlook the process and for you to ask if certain things are coming across clearly. I can tell there's a big story here you were working with, I just unfortunately don't get it. That being said, it's always a pleasure reading - I appreciate seeing an alternative style coming out for this site. Good work.

Nice comic here rhanny, I think you did a great job showcasing both characters, and you did an excellent job staying true to them, the limited colour being used and keeping Heartwells ever changing eyes was very nicely executed. Just that little thing was very nice to see because it is something that is important to Heartwell and I know in the past when other people portray heartwell his eyes are never like that so kudos to you for going making sure they had their lil points.

Just a small thing that could improve your comics would be if you changed the colour of your comic gutters and the background colour you normally use, just to differentiate them a little bit more. You already do so with the characters and everything and I think just adding a little bit more there would be a nice step in improvement. Also I dont know if it's the file or something but the first page the lines seem much blurrier than the rest of the comic, I dont know if this were intentional or not, just something to look into to and check on when you do other comics just so that all your pages have the same quality.

I think you did a great job on this, was a nice introduction to Clokk's story, and speaking of story, you did very well to weave everything together and make an intriguing plot with some fun lil action. excited to see where you take this.

Nice job on this Mihnea, great work. I think your use of intense shadows works well in this comic, it fits the vibe that you present to us, very mysterious works well for a political thriller like this. While I do think it works well in the comic I would be wary of it, just not to go overboard with it. There's a lot of shadows in this, maybe even too much in certain places, but it's able to work out fine this time, my only fear is that if you try this again in the future it might not work out so I'd just keep an eye out for that.
One thing that I think can be improved on is how you place everyone, (this also might just be a constraint of time) but to me they seem pretty stiff at times, and you lose some of that impact, so it would be exciting to see you experiment with that and give your models a bit more life.

All in all i think you did a very good job, your work is making Heartwell into a super interesting character and I highkey love what you're doing with him right, and you gave a very cool scar. Excited to see what you do in the future

Rhanny - I love the intrigue and mystery surrounding your entire comic. Great job in keeping the situation really tense and foreboding between Clokk and Heartwell. There are a few points of improvement that I can suggest with the art. Keep practicing on the anatomy and you should be able to convey the scenes better especially the actions. I noticed in certain parts that the hands weren't completely drawn. The speech bubbles and lettering could also use some punching up to look like something out of a comic book (Back Issues is a popular free font that can be downloaded). I really like that twist at the end though. Good job in introducing that giant rat that had led me to believe this is going to be a 'straight cut, they end up as allies/friends' story. I love how nuanced everything is and I am intrigued by that scar for sure!

Mihnea - Riveting! The dark room really adds to the mystique of the scene though a part of me also wants to see your work on more backgrounds one day and also outdoor settings. Perhaps on a comic that is more of a solo/long deadline so you can take your time with it. I'd also like to see you use colors other than black with shadows or at least lighten it up a little bit :) I like the font that you used here, it's very easy to read. I do wish that you utilized some speech bubbles because at times I got confused about who was saying which lines. And I did not see that scar coming at all. I assume those wings aren't going to be suitable for flying. I imagine them more as..hmm, shield-like? It is very unique and interesting!

Thank you so much for an enjoyable read! I really appreciate the story you did here! What I think I like the most about this comic and I think you utilized really well was your greyscale and color combo. I think just using a splash of thematic color against the grey tones really added to the tone of the comic. You did a really lovely job wit that.

The biggest thing that stands out to me is the spacing between your Panels, or the gutters. They are really wide and spaced out in ways I don't feel are intentional? I think that slowed down the pacing of your story and took away from it a little bit with so many gaps. Utilizing the composition and panel layout a little more I think will add a bit more to the story.

overall, it was a nice comic! Thank you for sharing and I look forward to reading more from you!

As always, I really love the atmosphere of your comics, You always make such good use of your black shadows, especially with your overall compositions. . You're paneling was quite nice and felt like it flowed pretty well overall. I like the gold, yellow and brown tones you went with, it looked really nice up against the stark black and made everything feel real moody.
I think it was a nice short, sweet and to the point story! Though I think I would have liked a little bit more back story, but that might be just personal preference.

Overall I really enjoyed this comic, and I look forward to more!