Hello everyone!

After a few days of getting to know the Newgrounds site, I've decided that it would be good to make an art thread on the forum. Here I will share my works that are also posted on the main site, in hope of 1) getting some helpful feedback from other users, and 2) giving it some exposure aside from the Art portal. I would very much appreciate any commentary on my stuff, since I haven't had much opportunity to share it and gauge people's reactions.

What I would like to share with you today are the first two pages of a comic that is very dear to me. I made it in 2019, and working on it was very much a form of therapy. I'm also including a link to a news post I made to collect all the comic pages in one place, should you wish to take a look at them on the main site. Looking forward to hearing what you think.

Nice pages. I like them.

Good - no nonsense - panel-layout. Good shape for the word-balloons. Good placement of the balloons and a nice, easy readable font.

Nice clear line-work. I really like the very limited palette for the coloring.

The story-telling, in choice of images and dialog, works well.

A very nice use of the comic book media. You seem to have a good understanding of the media.

There are some things I could nitpick on for anatomy, proportions and background details.

The one thing I really think you should work on, from seeing these two pages, are eyes.

I have here done a few adjustments to the shape of the eyes and eyebrows in the last panel of the first page.

They are very small changes, but make a lot of difference (in my opinion).

Best of luck with your comic. You are doing good and I think you have the potential to be really good.

Hey, thank you very much for this reply!

The one thing I really think you should work on, from seeing these two pages, are eyes.

I have here done a few adjustments to the shape of the eyes and eyebrows in the last panel of the first page.

They are very small changes, but make a lot of difference (in my opinion).

Also, thank you for taking the time to do the adjustments. As I've mentioned in another thread, eyes are my Achilles' heel when it comes to drawing faces. Specifically, I have a difficult time positioning them "within" the skull/face (i.e. adequately representing their depth), as well as in relation to the browline and nose. Since this comic is from 2019, I like to think I've improved in the meantime.

I've posted the third page of this comic, so I'm sharing it here as well. As mentioned before, any feedback would be very much appreciated.

Here's page 4 of my short comic. As mentioned in the post itself, I tried to switch up the camera angles in the first two panels. Don't know how successful it was - any comment and critique is, as always, appreciated.

I like the slow pace of the storytelling. Works well for the story.

The camera angle works well in the first panel. But not really in the second panel. In the second panel the camera angle, to me, signals that Mateja is feeling strong and confident, which I believe to be the opposite of what he is feeling in the story. So, to me, the second panel don't work that well with the story.

For the last two panels I think that a different position of the speech balloon could help the storytelling.

By having the balloon between the father and Mateja, the natural order for the eye to go will support that the father talks to Mateja. By having the balloon cross over into the last panel, this can give a feeling of the father's words are invading into Mateja's space. Which I think is how Mateja at this moment are feeling.

The placement you chose is generally speaking perfectly fine, but in this particular case I think the placement I suggest would be even better.

But all in all, good storytelling.

@PerKGrok Thank you very much for the detailed, thoughtful reply!

For the second panel, I felt that seeing things from this perspective would highlight the tension and dread Mateja was feeling, specifically by focussing on his fingers clenching the fabric of his pants. Admittedly I was also working really hard to make it look good because it's not the easiest angle/perspective for me to draw in. So whatever my intention was, it may have gotten a bit muddled in the finished product.

As for the last two panels, back when I was doing this comic I still had a lot to learn about word balloon placement (I still do, but hopefully I've improved in the meantime). Everything you said makes perfect sense! The only reasoning I can think of for why I did it this way was that I wanted a full panel of Mateja's reaction to what his father said, focussing on his shock and fear of what would happen next.

In summary: very helpful commentary. Thanks again!

I'm not the best at judging comics based on their layouts etc but I do help out with animation, so story telling is more of my focal point I'd say. Overall, I really like the panels, a lot of comic artists will trip up with drawing backgrounds for every frame, but it's great to see you're selecting them and placing most of the detail in for the establishing shots. 

My thoughts on this page is your choices for panels, I find the flow in this one particular to be a little jarring for the story telling element.

For example

1. The third panel doesn't need to be here, as panel 1 and 2 establishes that his friend is going home and panel 2 is seeing him out. I think panel 3 breaks the focal point as it tricks the viewer into thinking the main character is now the friend, as we're following them leaving.
2. Keep the 'camera' in the room to avoid the above. In panel 5, Mateja seems to be anxious and we as an audience don't know why. In the previous page it establishes that they look like they are doing homework, and if the father is never there then surely he would be fine with his son having company? So calling him to talk out of the blue don't seem like it holds any importance. But looking at the page below this one, I can see that this 'talk' is far more important than you give it space for.
3. So we need to hold onto this scene a little more, to really emphasise that this is going to be a defining moment between father and son. We need to make sure that the page where the father drops the bomb is built up for maximum impact. Right now it feels out of left field. This is where panel three returns, we can erase panel three and conjoin panel 2 and 5 into a long one,
4. Why should it be long? So we can see what the father is doing and to place the camera back in the room. We need to get into his mind, why is he going to be calling his son to talk? And why is Mateja anxious by it? We need to solve this before he calls his son's name.
5. The father knows something that the audience doesn't, and he's probably known for many years so what makes this moment special? Why out of all the years of knowing this knowledge, why would he chose this moment? A longer panel can help solve this.
6. In a longer panel, we will be able to see the son in the background seeing his friend out (minor event), in the foreground we see the father holding one of his school text books (main event), his face/torso is bigger as he's closer to the 'camera' and the boys are in the background behind his shoulder.
7. Next you need a catalyst, the father is in his kids room, this is where his son feels the safest to be himself, so we need a catalyst to propel this story into action and to add meaning to this scene.
8. The catalyst can be a photo or even one of the text books they've been studying in where I'm not sure if the friend is a love interest but if the book is open, as teenagers often do, they vandalise college text books with their initials and <3 the other persons initials, or you can have a polaroid picture of them both be used as a bookmark.
9. The above scenario would be the deciding factor to anticipate the dining scene, we need something to push the father into thinking that he needs to let his son know now, more than any other time, that he doesn't need to hide who he is.

How I would change the panel:

I wouldn't have the father call his son's name either, I think small talk could work better here. It's a tender moment, imagine yourself as the parent in this scenario, how would you address a very personal matter your kid is going through? A 'beckoning finger' calling your kids name can seem aggressive, if you're looking for a more fatherly approach it may be better if he makes small talk, and have smaller panels circle around Mateja's growing concern while he's flicking the pages and he comes across the "vandalism" or "polaroid bookmark". (Mateja wouldn't know his father has seen this, as the book cover would be facing Mateja as he's in the doorway, but as the audience we would know what the father sees.

This would help hold onto the scene and build tension, it's telling the reader that this is a very important moment.

He can say something like "Even after all these years, this stuff's still garble to me." * Small panels circling around him Flicking the pages and coming across the picture, or vandalism*

==> Mateja's facial expression increasingly growing in discomfort as his father talks and flicks through it (for reasons we assume are nostalgic). (However, by Mateja's face we would know that a massive secret of his is in these pages, so he's visibly mortified if the 'picture' or 'vandalism' is found.

Now we understand why the son is anxious by something in the book, and why the father wants to talk at the end of this, perhaps the father invites him to teach him something he never understood as a kid over dinner he brought back > This will add significance to the dining page and flows into that scenario better, especially as you can continue the nervousness of the son as the father takes the book to the table.

Sorry this is super long, I hope you take this feedback with a grain of salt and I only wrote this much because I see potential in this being a really lovely story. I really enjoy your work and it's great to see LGBTQ+ representation, especially from creators on NG. Can't wait to see what else you create!

@CosmicPunked thank you very much for such a long, detailed reply to this thread! It's certainly useful to hear opinions and ideas from someone who is familiar with the more technical side of storytelling.

Having said that, let me break down my own reasoning for why these pages look the way they look.

So if you look at the first panel on page two, the most important things are left unspoken. Indeed, in their haste to cover up what they were doing, Nikola buttoned his shirt up wrong and Mateja had to strategically place a pillow over his lap to hide incriminating evidence (they clearly thought they would have more time to themselves since Mateja's dad usually returns from work later, hence the "you're home early today"). This, as you put it, is the catalyst. In the following panel, the face of Mateja's dad says it all. He knows what's happening, and he knows now is the time to talk about this, because the very fact that his son needs to be hiding something from him is not healthy in the long term.

Moving on to page three, Nikola hastily takes his leave, Mateja says goodbye, and in the third panel we see him heading back to his room in a straight line, hoping that he'll make it there before his father says anything. But then dad calls out to him, and he knows exactly why, hence his expression in panel four. The beckoning gesture and heavier shading in panel five are deliberate choices. One, dad is trying to make his son think he's in more trouble than he actually is, which is something a lot of dads do, and two, from Mateja's point of view this is something serious. He doesn't know what's going to happen and how the conversation will go, and his dad looks imposing against the light.

I'm not saying I communicated all of this flawlessly in the visuals, but these were my intentions. Nevertheless, thank you so much for this comment and for your words of encouragement, it means a lot to me!

Another day, another new page of this short comic.

Also, I'm going to do something that I don't think I've ever done before and post a work in progress. Here's a drawing I've been working on lately:

I need to add more people and background details, but when it's done everything is going to be grey except the two guys you see in the sketch. The idea being that nothing else exists for them when they catch each other's eye from across the room.

If you have any comments or critiques lay 'em on me, I'd really appreciate any feedback I can get.

Here's page six of my comic, which kicks off a flashback sequence that I'm really happy with. Hope you'll like it as much as I do!

And have an update on my work in progress while we're at it:

If you couldn't tell, I had a lot of fun with the posters on the wall.

I really like your comic, I think it has great pacing and the dialog reads very naturally. This is a small detail, but I particularly like the close-up shot of the shoes to show who is in the house.

It could benefit you to study some

figure drawing, preferrably from life to give a bit more energy and gesture to the characters, but frankly the art does not take away from the storytelling, at least for me. I'm looking forward to seeing this story to completion, as well as your future work!

Thank you very much for this comment! I'm very aware that my anatomy and poses need a lot of work, and I started making a conscious effort to improve them last autumn, but it's great to hear that you feel these shortcomings don't distract from the story being told. Hope you enjoy the remainder of the comic!

Nice page. The story telling rolls on well.

Since you have said you want to improve on anatomy, I'll share a small tip on doing a profile, using the sketch you added besides the comic page, and specifically the woman in the middle.

So what I've done is

1. move the eye down a little bit. (Lining the eyebrow with the top of the brow as it shows up in the profile)
2. Added a guideline for the lower part of the face (red). The line touches nose, upper lip, lower lip and chin. The line will go inward. Not an absolute rule, but will generally look good. (You can test this out with images of profiles a see where the guideline works and where it don't)

I hope you find that useful ☺️

Oh wow, thank you so much for this! It's funny, in spite of all the effort I put into my characters' bodies and faces, I still often slip up with the most basic of things. There's so many things to keep in mind but they're never hard and fast rules because there's so much variety in human anatomy and faces. Guess I need to really get the basics down before I can experiment with different body shapes and facial features.

I really appreciate your reply and you making the effort to help me improve. :) Thanks again!

Love this I love the detail within each frame some very talents and looks like a good comic

~X~

Thank you @XwaynecoltX, always nice to hear encouraging comments like yours!

It's time for page seven of the comic:

And just in case, I'm going to copy-paste the explanation for the Cyrillic script in the third panel from the page commentary:

As I said in my commentary for the first page, this comic is set in Serbia, which is why you can see Cyrillic writing in Mateja's drawing. "JА" (pronounced "ya") means "I", "me" or "myself". "МNША" is an incorrect way to write "МИША", which is pronounced "Misha" and is a common male nickname in Serbia. Cyrillic and Latin script are used interchangeably in Serbia; children learning to write will often mix up the Cyrillic И with the Latin N, the two letters being mirror images of each other. In other words, it's totally a mistake a kindergartener would make, which is why I included it in the drawing. It was a spur of the moment decision but I'm really glad I included it.

This and page 8 are probably my two favorite pages from this whole comic, so I hope you like them. Any and all commentary would be very much appreciated of course.

As per usual, I'm updating this thread with the next comic page:

Overall, while it's not perfect, I'm really happy how this one turned out. It warms my heart just looking at it.

Here's page 9 of my comic. Getting close to the end now!

That framed photo on the wall in the first panel is one of my favorite parts of this page.

Just posted the antepenultimate (yes that's a word) page of my comic, so it's time to share it here as well.

As far as transitions to the "birds and the bees" talk go, I'd say Mateja's dad was as smooth as sandpaper here.

(Any and all comments are very much appreciated, as always.)

The second-to-last page of my comic:

Will be posting the last page on Thursday. After that I'll be sharing some standalone and one-shot stuff I've made this year, and maaaaybe doing Inktober, which I'm still not sure of. If anyone has any advice for someone who's never done Inktober before, I'd be happy to hear it.

Page by page, I've reached the end of this short comic:

And since I feel it's relevant, I'm going to copy/paste what I wrote in the page commentary:

So here it is, the final page of this short comic. Since this is the end of the story, I feel like some background information is in order, so forgive me if I drag on for too long.

My relationship with my father is not the greatest. I know that he loves me, and he has always provided for me, but he was never the kind of person I could be open with and talk to about my thoughts, interests or problems. We’re also very different people with wildly different outlooks, to the point that I feel that I would never willingly spend time with him if he wasn’t my family. Relevant to the subject matter at hand, all I’ve ever heard him say about the LGBT community was very negative. Hearing that kind of thing semi-regularly from a parent is not at all easy when you yourself are part of the G in that acronym.

Because of this, coming out to my father was, for the longest time, something I thought I could never do. A rock tied around my neck that I carried through life. In his values system, finding out that your son is gay was one of the worst things that could happen to a person, and I had no idea just what he would do if that happened. Would he say things that would scar me for life? Would he raise his hand at me, my partner, himself? How far would he go? The constant fear of such scenarios kept me paralyzed and afraid for years. To hear him say, like Mateja’s dad, something along the lines of “I know you’re gay, and I don’t want you to live your life afraid of what will happen if I find out”… Honestly, it would have made a world of a difference. With this comic, I guess I was just drawing something I wished I had.

If you’ve made it this far, thank you for reading this comic, whoever you are. Whether you enjoyed it or not, it came from the heart, and for that I will always consider it one of the best things I ever made.

If you have any comments you'd like to share now that the comic is posted in full, I'd be very happy to hear them.

While the first thing that caught my eye was the unique, subtle way you stylized your work, what really prompted me to reply is how sweet this comic was. There's a place for down-to-earth fantasies like this. If only it could have been your reality!

I really, really, like this comic. The story is well told and well paced. The story has a special meaning for yourself, but it also have a broader, almost universal, meaning.

You have good reasons to be happy with this work.

I have some issues with the way you draw some things - I've mentioned eyes - , but within the frame of your comic that still somehow works, and it doesn't take anything away from the story. There are also a lot of things in the way you draw that I do like.

For the last 4 panels there can be a slight problem with the reading-order of the panels. There are two possible reading-orders from the placement of the panels, that both follow the natural rules for reading-order. See illustration below. This can be disorienting for a reader.

For a situation like this I would suggest using small arrows to lead the readers eye in the intended order. In this particular case I would also suggest putting the speech-balloon in the last panel at the bottom of the panel, for the double purpose of aiding the reading order (the speech-balloon at the top of the panel is something that could lead the readers eye in, what I believe to be, the wrong direction) and because having the text as the absolute last thing in the comic, in my opinion, makes the point stronger.

All in all. Great work.

Thank you so, so much for your reply! I'm glad you liked the way the comic looks, but I'm also very happy that you thought it was sweet. "Fantasy" really is the word to describe it. My reality, as it turns out, isn't all that bad now. A lot has changed in the four years since I made this comic, some of it for the better, some of it not so much. Overall, it's not ideal but it could be far worse - that's just how life is sometimes, and it's fine with me.

Thanks again for this comment!

Thank you very much for this comment, and for being so supportive and willing to offer a helping hand. I agree completely about the placement of the word balloons - I think I mentioned earlier that I wasn't thinking too much about their position back when I was drawing this. I wasn't fully aware of their incredibly important role of guiding the reader's eyes to where you want them to be, so stuff like what you pointed out was pretty common. Thanks for this and all your earlier suggestions, it means a lot and I hope it will help me improve in the future.

Also, I'm very happy that you liked the comic overall, so thank you for the words of praise as well!

So I've finished the piece I shared here earlier as a work in progress, but I'm not sure it's good enough to post on my NG page. Doesn't mean I can't share it here:

So yeah. The idea was to capture that feeling when you and someone you're into catch each other's eye, and nothing else matters but you and your crush. My quite literal inspiration was the song "Shy boy", particularly the line So sick of everybody telling me what to do, when all I need is your eyes across the room. This is why the two guys are colored/shaded and everything else is grey.

That was the idea anyway, but the execution ended up faulty. My CG4 brush marker ran out of juice at some point and I bought a regular CG4 marker thinking the nib wouldn't make much of a difference. As you can plainly see, it does - it's painfully obvious which background details were filled in with which marker. I also messed up some details that I had to correct digitally, which hopefully isn't too obvious at this image size.

Overall it's cute, and I'm happy I did it because I so rarely follow through with these little bits of inspiration that come to me once in a while. It's not perfect, but at least I finished it.

Hey! That turned out great. The color/gray-out thing really makes it work. It's more than just good enough for the portal.

Oh, well I'm really happy you think so! Personally I feel like the very visible difference between the two types of markers used for the grey makes is look very amateurish. But thank you for the outside perspective!

So, back in July I got the idea for a short comic series (6 chapters) that I very quickly did the entire script for - all that's left is to draw it. I started working on it that same month, but progress has been very slow and I haven't really picked it back up since then. I thought it could be useful to share some of the pages I've finished or semi-finished in order to get some feedback, so here they are:

A big thing I would like to try to do with this comic is to challenge myself, particularly with perspective and backgrounds. Perspective is something I always struggled with and tended to avoid for this very reason. I'm learning to apply the rules but it's a slow process that involves a lot of trial and error and drags out the drawing process to the point where a single page takes me several days of work. It's tricky finding a balance between "I want this to be as perfect as I can make it" and "I'd rather have it finished than perfect".

In any event, what do you think? Any comments, opinions and remarks are more than welcome.