WIP Comic: How To Become King

[Brickington]

Here's my WIP comic! I changed it to a better comic. I have just started to use Comic Life and am loving it so far!

Edited April 29, 2013 by Brickington

[Darkdragon]

Welcome to BF&CA, it's great to see your enthusiasm here!

I like your idea for the comic and what you have posted is a great start. A few things about this project could be improved though, so I'll just dive right in.

One of he main things that catches my eye is that you have a bunch of rectangular pictures with some actual text near them. It reads more as a regular forum post rather than a comic. I'd suggest for fixing this, you look at taking the Dynamic Paneling lesson. Def will be able to help you out with layout and adding some pizzaz.

The other item that really stands out to me here is the fact that all your photos are square and many times cutting off the thought and speech bubbles. Don't be afraid to break those borders! Let those bubbles jump right out and just make some whitespace around the image to handle it. A simple change like that really help with the excitment of the panels.

To start you out, I'm gonig to assign one more lesson in addition to what you've already signed up for. I'll keep this list updated for you when you complete something or another teacher assigns you something in relation to this project.

Personalized Curriculum

• Adding Dialogue to Comics Passed
  
• Character & Theme 1: Basic Story Arc and Characters Passed
  
• Dynamic Paneling
  

[Brickington]

Personalized Curriculum

• Adding Dialogue to Comics Passed
  
• Character & Theme 1: Basic Story Arc and Characters Enrolled
  
• Dynamic Paneling
  

But the teacher that is supposed to teach never checks this part, does he? Could you let him know that I'm enrolled in his lesson?

[Darkdragon]

Since you are still waiting on grading from Hinckley, why don't you go ahead and enroll in Dynamic Paneling

[Brickington]

Since you are still waiting on grading from Hinckley, why don't you go ahead and enroll in Dynamic Paneling

I'll try to get the time, I'm quite busy myself right now.

[Darkdragon]

Great update. Your skills are very much improving.

One that bother me are the numbering circles:

1. Why do you have them?

2. Why aren't they all the same spacing?

3. Why does one of them have a dot and the rest don't?

I'm asking because even though to me it looks "wrong", if it's an artistic choice and not an accident then that's your decision.

The other thing that I'm not too fond of is using mixed case instead of all upper case lettering. Again, it's up to you, but the standard for comics is to use all upper case (as mentioned in the Adding Dialog to Comics lesson).

At this point, I'm not going to assign any more lessons, though you still need to take the Dynamic Paneling lesson that was assigned.

We'll see what some other teachers have to say.

[Brickington]

Thanks for the feedback! I took out numbers, you were right. For the other problem, I like mixed case in this comic. I'll wait until the other teachers give me feedback until I change it. I will get to the other lesson in the next few days as well. Again, thanks!

[SteampunkDoc]

Well, I'm not a comic guy, and just barely passed a lesson on that, but here are some things that stand out:

(Now, I'm looking at the copy in the first post which still has the numbers, so some of these issues may have already been addressed.)

The Title: The first frame is fine, but the story quickly de-rails off onto other things. And swiftly causes the title to become misleading.

The Text: Yeah, there's a LOT of story for each frame. And while the text is witty and entertaining, it doesn't seem very comic-y, but leans more "Story-with-pictures."

Which is fine, but probably not the best choice when trying to pass a comic-making lesson.

The Mixed Cases-IMHO looks nice. The speech is the normal 'Caps-lock on', with the story text not. This way, the story elements are not only set apart and look visually different than the text, but it also helps to de-emphasize that text and bring attention back to the picture.

The Background- It adds a nice, playful/cheery feel to things, but there's an obvious seem that isn't covered by anything.

The Speech Bubbles-I think the "popping out of frame" design look neat. Sometimes they aren't pointed exactly at somebody's mouth, but that's just something that I like, and isn't a hard and fast rule.

And there you go!

[Hinckley]

You made such vast improvements, Brickington. You should be really happy with how far you've come. Great job opening up your mind and learning what is here to be learned.

Here are some little pointers to help:

• Your photography skills are pretty good. The lighting looks great. Perhaps work on depth of focus a bit. Perhaps take DarkDragon's "Depth of Focus" lesson.
  
• Great MOCs. The sets look nice and I like the characters you created.
  
• The layout of the comic looks great, but I have trouble reconciling the background with the subject matter. Consider using something different.
  
• DarkDragon makes a good point about the dialogue being cut off. If that's a stylistic choice, fine. However, learning to setup a shot so it has room for dialogue is one of the hardest things to do. Go look at the Harriet Slutter Mafia game. I have trouble with it all the time . Take def's dynamic paneling lesson, like DarkDragon suggested. As soon as Brickworld is over, I plan to take it as well. We can be students together!
  
• Panel #4: what is he doing? It'd be better to see him at the door to the King's chamber (that's not clear until the next panel) with a knife or something...
  
• Watch your spelling. "Would their there be a rebellion?" No offense but if you misspell anything in Character and Theme 3, I'll fail you. Sorry.
  
• I like the story. Did you write it yourself? It's very clever. I think the comic panels reflect the story very well.
  
• I think story-wise, as Steampunk Doc said, you may want to choose a more linear story to do a comic with. This works as a comic, but I'd like to see your story writing skills at work as well. At least in one of your WIPs.
  
• I do like what you wrote here, though. It's very clever and you have a good sense of humor. Numbering the panels 1 through 5 is misleading as they aren't actually steps to become King. So, now you just have numbered panels. If you want them to be a list, you should also put that in your narrative yellow boxes. Example: Step 1. Impress the King.
  
• To make this more of a linear story that people expect to see in a comic, perhaps tell the story of how the main character tried to become king. Example: "Step 1. Impress the King. I always thought it would be easy to impress the King. The books made it look easy. Grab a sword, slay a Dragon. Done. King impressed. But that was easier said than done..." and then move onto a story about him trying to slay a dragon. In the end he could choose to mop the floors instead. That's just one way to turn your idea into a traditional comic.
  
• Again, this isn't about forcing you to stick to tradition and writing every comic and stories the way they have always been written. If you want to do a comic like this which breaks tradition, it's best to come from a place of understanding the tradition first and developing your craft from the basis of the rules you eventually want to break.
  

Overall, though, really nice work. Great improvement. Keep it up.

[Brickington]

Thanks for the advice! The title is all about me trying to tell you how to become king. There are steps, but at the end of the day, you can't be king. I will try to find a different comic text to put there as well. For the seam, it is two different comic page. Thus, consider the comic have two pages!

Also, thanks for the advice, Hinckley! I will take def's lesson as soon as possible. I just have all of my finals this week, so I am a bit busy. After def's lesson, I will update the comic fitting all of the advice. Agan, thanks!

[Darkdragon]

For the seam, it is two different comic page. Thus, consider the comic have two pages!

That makes sense. My suggestion is to keep a blank line between the pages when you post them. That will give you the visual separation of the two pages. Just one blank line is fine, no need to get carried away.

[Hinckley]

I just have all of my finals this week, so I am a bit busy.

Not just a bit busy, completely busy! Only check EB on study breaks. Study, study, study! Do well on your finals, man!

[Brickington]

That makes sense. My suggestion is to keep a blank line between the pages when you post them. That will give you the visual separation of the two pages. Just one blank line is fine, no need to get carried away.

Fixed!

Not just a bit busy, completely busy! Only check EB on study breaks. Study, study, study! Do well on your finals, man!

Thanks! Especially for the advice. I think I will be on EB for a half hour from now and then I will try to study. It is hard to not check EB often, but I will try. Must...overcome... addiction. However, during midterms I tried to now check EB and study, but I couldn't help it and checked EB instead of studying. But I go A's so I contribute EB to that.

Edited April 29, 2013 by Brickington

[Hinckley]

Set an egg timer. Only check EB once every two hours, for 10 minutes! Rest of time spent studying! Good luck on finals.

[def]

One thing that might improve your pages would be breaking down the text a little. Rather than have one big text box, make two (or three) little ones. It'll make the page more readable, and carry the eye as well