Topic: Round 1: World Ender

Ok, so this one sounds like my last trip to the doctor. I mean seriously, if a doctor ever tells you it's gonna be a good idea for them to stick needles in your spine and inject stuff, I'm here to say: It's not. ANYWAY: Hello everyone, and welcome to another Idol Day, here on your Idol Channel. Today's offering is from a repeat contestant whose going for year 3. He tells me the following image is a new method for him, it is a completely digital effort - so it might not look like pencils...let's take a look at...

World Ender
project of: Kyle Barrett

When you're a trans-dimensional empire that holds the secret to understanding the universe, and you want to expand your territory, you don't send armies. You send World Enders.

A backwater planet, not unlike our own, is under siege by a foe its people don't understand. They're being destroyed by technologies they can't comprehend for reasons they haven't been given. But there's more than just Armageddon at hand...

The Ender laying waste to the planet has a unique agenda. He's been going from system to system chasing a shadow, following whispers of a universal threat. Something massive is beginning to take shape--and it will prove to be far beyond a simple conquest. Fantastic creatures will be encountered, companions will be made, lives will be destroyed, and... an ultimate truth will be realized:

Nothing is beyond revelation.

---

Well...judges...

go!

Digital artwork… Nice!

The Pitch ~ This is one of the strongest pitches so far in the competition. I can tell that Kyle really dug deep, thought about it, edited, etc, to come up with a nice length, great feel, and overall execution.

The hook ~ When you're… VERY strong. I was sold as soon as I read that and the rest of the pitch would have had to try really hard to change my mind. Instead, we don't get a ton of details, but I feel we get enough to formulate an opinion on the book.

Only complaint would be the last little bit, "an ultimate truth will be realized: Nothing is beyond revelation." Don't really get that, which I'm assuming is the point, but I REALLY don't get it. In an otherwise stellar pitch, that makes me scratch my head, so I cock my head to the side and say, "wha-who-huh?"

The Rough Cover ~ Very nice. VERY nice… Clean lines and I wouldn't have been able to tell "digital" if I wasn't told (that's what it's all about!). Only complaint is the central figure looks a little off on his pose. Right leg stepping forward, piece covering his pelvis turns to the right, but I would figure based on the movement it would twist towards his left (if at all) as his right leg extends forward. Face is head on, but torso is cocked slightly towards his right. I took a step to check… Right leg forward, body moves slightly left.

If the angle and such are intentional, I guess I'm just missing it a tad.  I'd suggest making his stance a little wider (legs further apart) and make sure the directions of everything are correct.

Having said that… ships look great, a few "classes" of vessels and the ones that are the same really look similar, but not identical, telling me you didn't copy and paste, but took the time to make each of them unique (or at least changed enough to make it look that way), so kudos for that.

Overall, strong image, in my opinion, and tells us a lot without saying a word ~ army heading your way with this guy on point and they leave death in their wake.

The Bottom Line ~ Like this one a lot! Strong pitch, strong cover with easy to fix issues, and can't wait to see this in Round 2. Give me a sci fi epic!

YES

Ah, today's entry! Fun!

Premise: There you go. I like it! This pitch is one to be read, re-read, and studied folks, because it gives me what I need to know, does so in a fairly concise manner, and gets out before it bores me to tears. The first sentence alone is just incredibly powerful in that it's not only well formed but also highly informative. You then get into the conflict behind the conflict, and you're giving me hints of a larger story without dumping the details on me. Excellent work. I probably could have done without the last two sentences but they didn't bother me to the point my head wanted to explode either.

Cover: I like the line work here for the most part. The foreground with the bodies strewn everywhere sets the tone nicely for this piece, and the various ships in the background coming through the spatial dimension is just killer. I love the ships anyway but seeing them warp in like that was a really good choice. I like the tattered flag off to the left but if anything I'd have made it bigger to really catch the eye better and give you even more of a sense of the desperate nature of the defeated world. Even the jaw bone is a nice touch. Has the battle been going on that long though? Just curious. It doesn't take away from my enjoyment of the piece but it does give the viewer the idea that this has been a long and protracted battle, or that this place has seen a number of battles even.

I guess the only issue I really have with this cover is the main figure. From the waist up he looks pretty good, and I see what you're trying to accomplish with the way he's walking towards us, but that needs work. His cod piece thing looks awkward and you really have to struggle to see he's supposed to be striding towards us. I do like that you chose to not just having him standing there Marvel Universe style and you actually have a bit of motion in him, but it needs to be refined to look more natural. If you can't pull that off another choice might be to have him standing triumphantly on the chest of a fallen foe. Up to you really, just a thought there.

Conclusion: This is the kind of entry that makes my day. An excellent rough cover with a few points that need refining in an otherwise very strong effort, and a very strong pitch to accompany it. Not hard to figure out this is getting a YES from me.

THE ART:

Pro: Very, very strong layout. This one is immediately interesting, largely because your design work on the ships and characters is just so very well done. We particularly love what you're doing with your spacecraft. We're pretty big sci-fi buffs, but have never considered it to be an artistic strong point of ours, so we love seeing people doing interesting stuff with that genre. This looks like something we would have loved to have drawn, and that's big.

It's also a great example of a cover that draws the reader in. Having the main character staring us down like that gets us personally involved in what's happening. It doesn't need big splashy action, it doesn't need wild poses, it just uses eye contact and a pose that moves. Suddenly we feel like "we're next." Good stuff.

Con: The proportion/anatomy issues with the main figure have been pointed out and are the first things that pop out at us. He's such a dominating figure that you can't afford to have him weak anatomically.

It would probably help if you widened the hips; your legs are getting squished together at the juncture of the hips, and it's partly because you drew the waist armor inside where the hips would go instead of over top of them (drawn like the hips themselves rather than armor on the hips). It often helps us to draw the whole figure first as if it were unarmored (just the bare body) and then add the armor or whatever over top of that. It would allow your legs to widen and your stance to feel more natural. Also, your arms aren't quite moving enough to get that walking feeling across. The right arm needs to recede more and the left needs to advance more.

The perspectives on the ships aren't lining up. Pick a single vanishing point on your horizon line and all ships should recede to that line. The closer ship off his left shoulder is clearly on a different vanishing point than the two behind it.

The other thing we wanted to point out was that your digital inking could use a bit more polish. One of the biggest things you have to watch out for is the pixelization of your lines. The main figure has a lot of "stair-stepping" happening on his linework (where the pixels create a bumpy, rough look to what should be a smooth line). It might be the resolution of this image, and it could be part of the "roughness" of the cover at this stage, but it's a major thing to watch out for. Smooth lines spell slick art, and this art is clearly trying to be slick.

Also, you need to add more line-weight variation. Your main figure in particular, but also the bodies on the ground, appear to have been rendered with basically a single thickness of line. It makes the art look more flat and 2d. To help make the illusion of depth in your linework, use more varied thicknesses. Thicker, darker lines on the exteriors of objects and where two objects overlap, thinner and more fine lines on interiors and in smaller details. You actually did a really nice job with line-weight on the jawbone at the front - now use that everywhere.

The last thing we'll say is that you should have some kind of backdrop in the distance behind him, whether it be a mountain range, a burning forest, a broken, decimated city, or something else - we just need to have some kind of background beyond just the bodies on the floor.

Last Word: This is a great cover. Don't think because we have things to critique that we don't love it - we just want it to be the very best it can be. This is one of our favorite cover roughs of the whole contest, so far.

THE PITCH:

Pro: A lot of neat ideas encapsulated in an easy-to-read and well formatted pitch. Good job, sir. A good hook leads us into an opening paragraph that sets the scene and the setting. You move smoothly into the specifics of what the series is about and close with the threat of what could come. In all, it actually reads somewhat like the opening crawl from a movie like Star Wars - everything you need to get right into the first issue and start reading.

Con: The hook is just a tiny bit too long. Cut it down to "When you're a trans-dimensional empire and you want to expand your territory, you don't send armies… you send World Enders" and you've got something tighter that still gives us all that we need to know.

There's also just a little confusion for us in the role of the World Ender in the story. It would seem likely that he'll be our protagonist (unless you're going the Predator route, in which case that should be clearer) in which case at some point he'll stop killing these poor people and start being the hero. But as written there's no hint of pathos to him - he's just on a massive killing spree while also coincidentally looking for some important piece of arcana. Oh– but it's to stop a universal threat. Well… what about all the people he's killing in the mean time? There's a fine line between "anti-hero" and "unsympathetic d-bag."

If you mean him to be a sympathetic character, work that in somehow. If you mean him to be "The Predator" and our real protagonists will be the small commando squad trying to survive against him (Dylan! You sonufabeech!) then work that in somehow.

…oh, and your last phrase, "an ultimate truth will be realized: Nothing is beyond revelation" is a bit redundant. It basically means "we'll find out that nothing can't be found out." Smacks of trying to find catchy buzz-words to build artificial excitement. Your pitch is strong enough not to have to fall back on those kind of Hollywood-executive tricks.

Last Word: Other than some uncertainty as to who our protagonist will be, this is a mighty fine pitch. We're ready to read issue 1.

FINAL VERDICT: Easy Yes. Presuming the cover is still in its rough stage, that thing could become a real piece of awesome by the time it's done. Matched with a story that sounds exciting, thought-out, and epic, and you have what we like to call a No-Brainer. Good job.

3 big yesses for the end of the world….er…i mean World Ender…

Let's send this out for public comments, while we still can!

I really liked your pitch, the story you describe is one I could easily get into. I also like the cover a lot, nice character design! My only crits would be that having ships come out at different angles makes them look like they are on different vanishing points. Also, though nicely designed, your lead character seems a little stiff and rigid.

I'm looking forward to seeing your character designs, you obviously really thought out the design and I want to see what other folks in the same world look like.

I like the premise a lot, but agree with Adam and Comfort that we aren't really given a sense of who the protagonist is going to be. The lone World Ender does SEEM to be the main character, but it could just as easily be a band of survivors fighting for their lives, or even the "shadow" that he's chasing (hey, it could be a young girl with incredible power trying to escape from people who would try to use it to destroy the universe. I don't know…); the point is that it's not really clear, which takes away some of the power and focus from the pitch.

The art is fine, aside from the minor anatomy/perspective problems already mentioned, but unlike the judges, the cover layout just doesn't do anything for me. I can see how the art will look nice as character designs or comic pages, but I think that the Marvel Universe style that Cary mentioned not missing would really make this cover pop. I'm imagining the standout covers for books like Nova and Guardians of the Galaxy that would really take an image like this and make it explode with power. The World Ender could still be standing amid a pile of bodies, but a more interesting angle or a more dynamic stance could really make this cover sing. For this type of book, I'd take a look at the types of poses that Dale Keown does on his covers (as well as the Nova/GotG books I already mentioned…) to see how to really make an image take off. Just a suggestion.

Also, the armor design isn't that original. Not only do all the dead characters on the ground look just like the main figure (although that could be on purpose), but the World Ender himself looks like an Iron Man/Darkhawk clone. I know it's hard to come up with something truly original (which is why so many movie aliens look like HR Giger's Aliens…), but one truly unique feature of the World Ender armor would really make the character stand out in people's minds.

And specifically, a question to Kyle Barret: As a digital artist, myself, I'm just curious what art programs you're using to create your images, and if what we're looking at (in your cover rough) is the finished inks or just a really dark, digital version of pencils. Thanks.

Good work, and I have to say that this cover screams for a logo that…hmm…wait, I'll show you:

3 yeses! Thanks for the votes and critiques guys. I'll be sure to post an update addressing the perspective, line weight, and anatomy issues.

I'm glad the pitch was received well, I didn't know if I had taken too much out of it. Ha ha from what you guys have said though, it sounds like i should have removed/revised even more. I'll be sure to update that as well.

As far as the bones and battle length, I guess its hard to demonstrate without colors. I'm gonna try and save the whole "trans-dimensional" element details for round 2, but for now I'll just leave it at the notion that these guys can directly manipulate what we see as space-time… so it may or may not be a future reference to an impossible weapon that causes its targets to decay into smoldering piles of ash…

Hmmm… It looks like I botched the main character description. I wanted to create interest into that as I find it to be a more unique aspect of the story, but it sounds more like it was recieved as a deterrent. Just to clarify, we're definitely going to have some "commando"-like protagonists. The World Ender, however, is definitely still the main character. In predator, there's a clear black-and-white division between villain and hero. The predator is meant to be alien, you're not given its perspective or really even meant to relate to it (sorry if you disagree, I'm still pretending the ending of 'Alien vs Predator' never happened). I'm hoping I'll get the chance to create something a little more grey, where the Ender's role as a pro/antagonist changes as he becomes more understood.

Frequent: I'm using Adobe CS1, just the basic hard brush. I guess you could call this the darkened pencils, as I'll eventually lighten them and draw the corrected 'inks' over them.

Thanks again for all the feedback!

ian ouch that does not sound fun! and congrats on round two!

hey is it cool if I post some unfinished round 2 materials in here for feedback/hype?

NO! You can't post anything from round 2, not rough, unfinished, sketches, or anything. You can talk conceptually I think… I was thinking about doing yadda yadda yadda and see what people think, but you would probably be better suited soliciting advice privately from non-judges or asking general questions. Don't show your hand!

Showing artwork anywhere online could end up getting you disqualified.

gotcha thx

LOVE the name of this project. World Ender. Very cool. Looking forward to your Round 2 material!

hey thanks very much