Topic: Round 3: Electronica

Remember, vote DAILY, and watch for the standings updates daily on the Idol homepage and reminders/ commentary in the voting threads.

We want to point out that our Monthly magazine - SP! Nexus...is available as a FREE PDF Download. #4 is going well, closing in on 500 downloads so far. We're really made it easy to get a copy folks, all you have to do is click the following image, and the download will begin. Read the magazine that is SWEEPING the Indy covering scene.

---

 

The Art ~ You had me hooked from panel 1 with the entire package. The small details of sand sweeping through the desert, grit on clothes, the varied looks of the sky, etc… The setup pages to me look elegant and professional. The details of Electronica are simply stunning from the details of the windows to the immeasurable number of straight lines, and even the plume of exhaust trailing the ship as it takes off. Electronica's contrast with the outside world is pulled of expertly. Only complaint, and it's minor, is the main characters face on the last page, first panel… just looks a little awkward.

The Words ~ Someone once told me that letting an artist do the storytelling with a strong script with few words and captions is an art form. Personally, I tend to be wordy sometimes, but every page I write, I get more and more comfortable with word-free panels.  I have to congratulate the writer first off for taking the high road here and pulling it off. I love what I don't see! We learn just from the art that it's a high tech world (hand held water extractor), that it's a post apocalyptic world (deserts of So Cal and the San Diego sign ~ thanks for killing my neck of the woods… jerks), and the city of Electronica. The few words we do see just help fill in some of the blanks. So folks, take a lesson here… just because you don't fill the pages with dialog and captions doesn't mean it's poor writing ~ quite the contrary. Great job… seriously…

The Lettering ~ I like everything I see. I may have changed some of the positions of captions, such as in page 2, last panel. I would take the first caption and put it higher and closer to the right border and take the second, drop it down a tad, and put it closer to girl170. Very minor and just personal preference. Some sort of sound on the first panel of the last page might have been good, too. Clean lettering, though, and no complaints.

The Bottom Line ~ Clean art, great colors, and the best writing without wording I've seen in the competition.

YES

UPDATE 5/21/2010

Ok, I actually caught up on Idol today. I post this - I might have time to do one or two other pending things before I go to bed. And so, we see how Round 3 is gonna be going pretty quick here. Vessel kicked in their gears, and jumped up, as did Cohort - tumbling MonkeyQuest - and their extra days head start, into the Cover slot section. We put up 3 more projects this morning, and are expecting, well, lots of them, over the weekend - so, as those projects all work to get up the chart, we'll see if anyone can hit those last year vote levels we say in round 3 - where we did have projects hitting 100+ a day. Anyone could still win this round! We've seen, in past years, ALL KINDS of craziness, and I think this year, will be no different.

But first...please download our magazine. Click the image! New issue soon....

So no further ado....

CLICK HERE FOR STANDINGS

Storytelling: This is one of the best total packages we've seen yet this round. Erik said it and we agree - you are telling a story without words, and we commend you for it. Something we haven't mentioned much yet elsewhere is the need for the art to build a world, and you're doing such a good job of that here. From the first page with that Can-teen (which is a neat idea, by the way), the reader is immediately clued in on what this world is like and what your rules are.

Your reveal is working really well, here. The San Diego sign is a great panel. Great splash! And we really appreciate how much you change up your angles and character sizes. You should never have your characters the same size in two different panels on the same page– variety creates interest. This is just excellent work. It might not have been the most slam-bang set of pages to show here, but it's a great display of storytelling skill and makes us much more interested in what comes next.

Art: This is mostly a winner, artistically. Your girl's faces feel a little awkward in each panel we see them, and the shot of Kay pointing at the city could be better (his pointing always looks like he's flipping the bird until we shake our heads and look closer). Then there's that guy's weird face on pg. 4, p. 2… Other than that, though, this art is kicking on all cylinders.

The color is really working for you, too. It's dirty and dingy, but still has a cleanness that keeps it from being too starkly contrasted with the shiny city colors. Contrast wouldn't be a bad thing, but we digress. Even though some of your colors are heavily saturated, it isn't really bothering us too much here. If it gets much worse when we enter Electronica, it might be a problem; for now it's okay.

That's a great establishing shot of your city. As people who hate drawing cityscapes, we salute your effort. Good job, sir.

Lettering: Not a lot to see here, but what there is looks absolutely pro. Very nice work, here. We even like your logo a little better as seen on that splash page.

Verdict: We're voting on every one of the projects this round based on one simple question: After these four pages, would we pay money to read the rest of this issue? We could easily see buying this issue to see more. Those faces need some work to get where they're going, but outside of that this is a very tight, professional package.

I'm assuming that's a YES, Adam and Comfort?

Storytelling: Yikes. You rock the silent panel like you were born to it. I'd actually love to see you do an entire silent comic, and that's not a joke at all. You gives us an immediate sense of what's going on, of the general predicament, and you cram some high speed technology down our throats in the midst of it all! Well done sir, well done indeed.

Dialog here is pretty sparse so it's hard to get a grip on anything tangible from that angle, but that's not a knock at all, just stating the obvious. What you do have works fine, and I didn't find it intruding upon the story at any point. The last page is a bit confusing but that's because of where the cut is made rather than any mistake on your part.

And look, that splash page...that just kicks all kinds of ass!

Colors: I have to say these are about as close to pro level colors as we've seen in the contest thus far, especially fitting the tone and genre you're playing in here. Very nicely done.

Letters: Again with so little dialog here I'm left with the caption boxes for the most part and they're fine. I like that you altered the colors up to show a difference between speakers. It does seem a bit weird that the speaker from the early pages is giving us the location of the launch party...but maybe there's a reason for that in the pages we haven't seen. I'm happy to wait and see put it that way.

I was surprised we didn't get a launch SFX in the splash page or the follow on page for that matter. You can hear the space shuttle launch from miles away so it stands to reason they'd hear it from their vantage unless it's some sort of unseen tech of course. Not a big deal but a launch SFX on the splash page would draw the eye to the launching ship more and serve to connect us better to the next page in line.

The revised logo works a lot better with a pretty minimal alteration on your original design. I do love seeing people take crits and revised to good effect.

Overall: This is premium stuff without a doubt. I like seeing creators step up and prove misconceptions fully wrong when they can, and this title is a prime example of that. I liked the artistic talent in round one but felt it was all fluff and no story substance. With what I see here I'm no longer concerned about that and I can't wait to see more of this. I'm giving it a definite YES.

Alright!!!! 3 yes, a solid sendoff to public comments....

UPDATE 5/24/2010

So it's Deadline Day, which means - I'm getting CRAMMED from all sides at the moment. I got the Saturday/Sunday vote count done and those standings are now live....now I have projects to get up. A boatload. Like 8 more so far with more due, and possible alternates if they turn in and others don't...I don't think I've heard back from about half of the people that qualified for the round that haven't posted...which I just don't get, with $1000 bucks and a toy deal on the line, that many people not even telling me when and if their projects will come in.

I wanted to point out to ALL PROJECTS: If you "copy link location" the URL to your PDF download....you can use that URL ---ANYWHERE--- to get people to download your PDF, and it will still count the download. Getting people to LOOK AT your pages should be everyone's top priority, and we really thought - with how EASY we made it to download and look at the pages either online or in the free PDF on their IPads or whatnot....there would be more downloads.

There WERE enough Saturday night to make our server hit a bandwidth limit for the month, and make me need to upgrade our account a bit to set it straight. So it's not like it's DEAD out there...it's just, you can see that the people who are getting people to download the PDF, are also getting more NEW VOTERS...and if you're not getting NEW voters this round, you simply are NOT doing enough to win this contest. You have to look at the world this way folks: There are more people out there that would like your work, and vote for it, if they knew about it...than there are people that DO know about the entire contest. your POTENTIAL audience is out there, and to win them, you need to get them to look. That is what Idols are made of.

Speaking of which....Check out 2009 winner's #1 issue....now in pre-sale. Just up!!!

So no further ado....

CLICK HERE FOR STANDINGS

Thanks judges for the critique. As a long time illustrator and designer I often find myself working in a bubble so it's great to talk about things like this in an open forum. It's been a great learning experience for me overall, seeing how others see my work and even the necessary evils of promoting!

Sincerely,

WEGJ

   keep up the good work, i would be a stinker and give hints to whats comming next…. but that would just get people too excited and none of the other contestants would have a chance  

keep it up wegj

diggerplus said

   keep up the good work, i would be a stinker and give hints to whats comming next…. but that would just get people too excited and none of the other contestants would have a chance  

keep it up wegj

You could of course PM the judges with that information…just saying.

Well I like the 180 pulled here in terms of wordiness. Last round was a bit of a chore to slog through, but these pages just zip by… which is also sort of a problem. I love the visual storytelling, but certainly not much is happening in these 4 pages. The lack of any text on the first page made me almost skip right past it until I remembered that I was supposed to be reading this comic… then I had to go back and just look at everything.

The "Can-teen" was brilliant, and a cool piece of tech, but I would say that walking through the desert only needed 3 panels. After that, I felt like I was just looking at the same thing happening over and over again without much purpose. Generally, doing the same thing over and over again in a lot of panels should slow down time for the reader, but there is just so much similarity in them that I found myself getting bored.

The city was a nice establishing shot, though, and the art in general is all pretty good. I just wish more was happening…

The next pages get a little busier. The sand, the sign, what isn't there… It's all story

Thanks for checking in,
 
wegj

+1 vote for solid cinemactic SF

I'm digging this. Let's see more. +1

I really like everything about this one. I would certainly be interested in seeing more. Electronica is definitely a top contender, in my opinion.

pm eh?    maybe i should ask for permission first…

+1 from me

thanks diggerplus!

wegj

Love this and want to buy it monthly.

I joined this forum just for this comic.

On to round 4 baby!

This is an outstanding entry. But it had a good vibe from the start -- for me, like the cutting-edge stuff DC put out in the mid-'80s.

I would buy this book. Totally.