Critique Corner

[Pie]

As most of you know, I love art. I want to encourage and help those who are treading the uphill journey to improve their drawing abilities with any experience that I may have to offer. There are a ton of really amazing talented artists out there and it can be daunting and really depressing sometimes thinking about the gap that exists between many of us. Let's not let our self defeating thoughts hinder us; let us band together and help one another become the best we can! If you have any artwork that you want critiqued or commented on, please share! If you have any constructive critiques or comments you want to express, please do that too! =) We are comrades pushing forward towards a common goal!

[hrist]

I really love your art style Pie, sometimes I look at your artwork in order to better my artwork I love how you draw it's really great and you seem to be one of the few RPGish webcomics out there so I contallly love your artwork and even style some of mine off yours since it reminds me so much of anime and rpgs


here's some of my better stuff I thought I'd post if you want to give me your critques and advice and comments, i draw almsot daily and am trying to improve, there's things I can see and things I'm working on

I loved strip Search, I wish you guys got on it, you got so far, you would of been my favorites on that show, I wish I could of got on it too.







I love penny arcade too much and tried to do their style here, it wasn't bad turned out well.




My comics sort of are like yours but I am in love with the Penny Arcade 3 panel look, sometimes I want to do a full page though like yours, but full pages take awhile.

[Pie]

Hello Hrist. =) I'm flattered to hear how much you like Life in Aggro and how you look to it to help improve your own comic. >.< Thank you. I know what you mean about long form comics taking a long time, >.< but then it also grants a lot more freedom in creativity, pacing, and visual variety.

There's actually a lot I wanted to say, but if I keep waiting till I write them all down as one huge post, I might never get it done so I suppose I'm just gonna trickle things in. ^^

The first bit of advice I want to say would be to try to add some visual variety to your comic like different camera positions and angles, and character posses and expressions. Almost all of the characters you draw are standing stiffly while facing the camera. Try letting them stand in a way that gives some form of body language and expresses personality or try drawing the characters doing something while they interact and converse, even if it's unrelated to the conversation. It adds a lot more liveliness and expresses the idea that they have actual lives outside what is being portrayed in the comic. Think about what kind of postures and positions you perform naturally and try to incorporate that. You say you draw every day; that's a very good thing, but it's very important that you look around and try to draw different things, otherwise, you end up stuck drawing the same things over and over again meanwhile improving very little (if at all). One large problem I see with a lot of amateur artists who get into manga and anime is that many of them focus so much on drawing faces that they never really learn how to do bodies. A lot of artists also seem to be afraid of drawing hands so they simply try to avoid doing it. We have to tackle the problems head-on if we wish to improve! It's very not cool to see an illustration of a very beautifully done face with an awkward body and obviously hidden hands.