Hello, everyone, and welcome to Panel by Panel, a periodic exploration of comic panels around The Duck. We return to our workshop series this week. First, some housekeeping.
As established last time, our page submission comes from xalienrath from the comic IWATSV. Specifically, we are looking at the update “3.023 - The One Becomes Legion.”
Here is the page in question.
First off, we have a comment from TheHawkandFloAdventures regarding the page given the open workshop nature of the last post: “Looks cool reminds me of Mortal Kombat and has a vintage 90s kind of aesthetic. The speech Bubbles are a bit tight around the words and I find the green text a bit tricky to read but the art itself I really dig.”
This aligns with some thoughts of my own, so let me cover my general feedback on the page. To begin with, the panel structure on the page is good and pretty clear. Even with the rising slant on the last two panels of the vertical stack of the bottom right corner, the reading order is still pretty obvious. I do appreciate the aim of using unique and rounded shapes for panels to break up the visual structure a bit more than a standard page. Even a wide rectangular panel can benefit from a little curvature. Regarding clarity regarding the overall structure and panel usage, the page works well.
Some elements I am a little more critical of are the posterization effects of the art and the dialogue balloons. Regarding posterization, I refer to the art having a coloring and line style that evokes the posterize filter in Adobe Photoshop. This effect is meant to make photographs appear like painted works, resulting in some sometimes blobby and plastic surfaces, especially with line art and cel-shaded artwork. This is also noticeable on shading where there is a dark line that surrounds the shaded element. Every shadow seems to have a border when it is not really necessary.
I think the coloring style has done the overall boldness of the character designs a bit of a disservice on the present page. Everything feels a little grainier and blurred for an art style that would benefit from harder, sharper edges. The blurry highlights on certain elements, such as wings, significantly contribute to the blobbiness of the current coloring.
Getting back to some of the feedback from the previous workshop post, I am in agreement that the greenish/yellow text can be a bit tough to read. I also find the presence of the drop shadows, the rounded stroke effects, and the red color for the dialogue balloons themselves to lack a certain unity and clarity. If I were in the position of lettering the page, I would strip down these elements and aim for something simple, such as a red outline, black balloon, and similarly red text. Additionally, aiming for an oval for the balloon shapes requires a little more care in making dialogue text into diamonds that fit within those ovals. There is definitely a little more buffer room that could be applied between the text and the balloon border.
With that, we'll tackle a new workshop subject next Panel By Panel. If you want to find earlier editions of Panel By Panel, click here.
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Panel By Panel: Workshop 'IWATSV': Part Two
hpkomic at 1:51PM, Aug. 16, 2024
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