P.O.W.! Challenge 1--Final Poll

[Ilaekae]

http://photos.imageevent.com/aljmary/conceptarts/CA-POWexLOGO.jpg

Final Poll: P.O.W.! 1: Getting Even.

It's not a bad turnout for our first challenge. I'm very impressed. Congratulations to everybody who fought their way through to the end. The voting will be open for roughly two weeks. Vote for one artist, and just to remind you--the theme is "Getting Even," with any interpretation you feel appropriate to your story. The art could have been either black and white or color, so don't let that sway your vote, and the stories do not have to be "complete" as such, though they should make sense to at least a degree that we can follow them.

Artists are posted in alphabetical order...

NOTICE: Hideyoshi is listed in the poll (and misspelled) but is not in competition. Please don't place any votes for his entry. I screwed up and can't remove his name from the poll...

[Ilaekae]

Arttorney...

[Ilaekae]

FlipMcGee...

[Ilaekae]

Grief...

[Ilaekae]

Gwenevere...

[Ilaekae]

Joe A...

[Ilaekae]

JonZ...

[Ilaekae]

Sinix...

[Ilaekae]

Skorpi...

[Ilaekae]

Stoat...

[Ilaekae]

Zeitwolf...

[arttorney]

Gwenevere was in the running, but no page number etc. Grief's is highly amusing and probably deserves the golden emo award for this round. JonZ had enough cool stuff going on that it makes up for his apparent numbering of page 2 as page 1.

[Hideyoshi]

one for JonZ :)
That's a lot of work put in! Nice planning on the page layouts and the car action is really cool!

Sinix would be 2nd and I also really enjoyed the entry by Gwenevere!
This first round was quality! :)

[Zeitwolf]

My top Favs are Sinix, JonZ and Gwenevere. The latter got my vote for making me smile. XD How often do they probably do this. Just resting in grave all day is surely boring them most of the time...

[davi]

great job guys, i sent grief's to Manley and friends :P

[Ilaekae]

So I'm assuming he won't be submitting in the next round? :P

[arttorney]

Jason Manley voted for him, but Elwell could still move his entry to Sketches and WIPs I suppose.

[el coro]

wow. :)

[Grief]

guess i better watch my back :0

ps- hey ilaekae where's hideyoshi's submission?

[Maestro Andres]

I voted for JonZ because of the nice composition in his pages and cool style. He did a great job conveying the action there. Gwenevere and Sinix were also on my top favs.
It takes a lot to be able to accomplish this so kudos to everyone who made one and to Ilaekae for organizing this event.

On another note, I second what arttorney mentioned about Grief's comic for a "golden emo award". It's very amusing and so CA content wise that most here can related to.

[Joe A]

I also had to vote for JonZ. For page 3 alone I would give him my vote. Loved your brushwork man. The pages were very Eisner-esque too, with free floating borderless panels. And you really brought a lot of life into the cars.

Sinix, yours was great too. Reminded me a lot of Ashley's Woods Metal Gear stuff.

[Stoat]

Wow! I didn't realize there were so many entries! I guess I didn't follow the WIP thread as close as I thought. There were several really terrific ones, but I had to go with sinix. LOVE the linework/graphical treatment.

[Renegade89]

It was a good one :) Thanks for the event Ilaekae.

Gotta say, was a bit though to vote just for one, lots of stuff that i liked, went for JonZ, love the action on those cars.
I dont know who i would choose as second, Gwenevere´s is really amusing and i really like sinix´s and stoat´s approach to the visual aspect.

I vote too for Grief´s nomination, that was really funny.

hahaha Flipmcgee´s, that is so awesomely weird ;P.

[TheGnoll]

Grief gets my vote for basically beign the first one that caught my eye and made me wanna read it all staight away, which is really mportant imho, its got humor, its well done, and its entertaining, which is the greatest thing for comics, apart from the polished looks. Next time you use this style, some parts could use more attention, just to make each elemt together with another (like korbin's chain or skull)...just a lil' more polishing, and a slash of a single color, or using a two tone color scheme could help separate foreground characters for the BG, to help it read better ;)

JonZ was my second choice cause its got action, its well drawn and reads quite well.

can't wait to see this thing grow heh

ciao!

[ciots]

voted grief because it was fucking hilarious

[Hideyoshi]

Grief, I didn't want it in the poll from the beginning. ;)

[HunterKiller_]

Tough one, but had to give it to Grief for the lawls.
Nice action on Jonz's.
I really like the style and presentation on Sinix's.

Great work everybody!

[funfetus]

It came down to Jonz and Sinix for me. Sinix edges it out for the better draftsmanship, but it's a tough choice.

Honorable mention to Grief. I can't vote for it in good conscience, because you didn't draw it, but holy shit it's hilarious.

[DannySketch]

this was a fantastic first round, good job everyone.

[Dan!]

JonZ and Gwenevere were very pro but had to give it to grief for all the reasons above.

[mickeymao]

I voted Grief because it doesn't matter how well drawn your comic is. All that matters is how you connect to your audience, and that was the one that genuinely entertained me.

Ilaekae / Everyone - if you want this to read the way it would in print, put your spreads side by side, and add an extra linebreak between pages vertically.

Arttorney - I'm assuming you want honest crit, and so I have to say yours is painful. I see from your website that you can actually paint, but your digital work, especially drawing with what I must assume is the mouse, has a long way to go, and your layouts are more avante-gard than dramatic. I'd try using traditional media (or, since you're into geometric shapes and cubism, maybe something more geometrically stylized -- see for instance http://drawn.ca/2008/01/03/bob-staake-in-real-time/ ) and go for simpler, visually clearer layouts.

Flip - the story is pretty random, which makes it hard to evaluate the storytelling. Be careful making major scene/time changes between pages -- even though it seems like a logical place to do it, the audience can get confused, thinking they missed a page, if there isn't some cue as to how the new scene relates to the previous one.

Grief - I love it. You have lived by the maxim "know your audience". The ending is sudden, random, and a bit sequentially confusing; but it doesn't matter in this genre, all that matters is how many laughs you get.

Gwenevere - I like the linework, and the flow is clear. I think there are some slight problems with the legs and feet on page 2. Your panel shapes are pretty cool, but I find them a bit distracting, and they also leave what I would consider an excess of white space. This may just be my particular taste. Have you studied the panel layouts of some of the manga masters (Shirow is my fav)? They frequently use wild shapes in their action scenes, but they keep them pretty snug and don't overlap them very often.

Joe A - I'm not crazy about the way you're using digital here. It almost looks like a 3D-rendered background, which IMO never works even when it's done really well. Your layouts are nice and clear. The story and the drawing are both somewhat lacking in finesse, but it's a good effort.

JonZ - Very strong piece. The first page reads a bit choppily, but I think you may've intended that. Page2 panel1 could use some device to draw focus to the main character hopping in his car. Page 3 last panel might work better if it was less similar to the previous panel (zoom in closer, perhaps). Page 4 might be more dramatic if we got to see, for instance, the frightened driver, but of course that might be a little tricky to fit in. Overall excellent work. Great FX.

Sinix - I love the style. Clarity could be better, especially at the end.

Skorpi - Overall nice work. Good camera angles on the first two pages. The last page looks rushed, and the last panel, between the rough drawing, plain camera angle, and bad tone effect, ends the piece on a clumsy note. On page 2, I don't know why he looks over his shoulder or what's making the "KLIRR" sound.

Stoat - Very nice piece. It took me a while to match the locket/medallion in the closeup to the one she's wearing in the long shots. I'd recommend you change one of those three closeups to a medium shot where we can see at least her lapel. It also took me a while to decipher the final reveal of the IV bleeding out on the floor, but I'm not sure what the best way would be to make that clearer -- maybe have her touching the IV line? Also that last page composition might be more dramatic if you used perspective.

Zeitwolf - Your story doesn't really have any emotional hook, and is a bit hard to follow. I actually think the concept is clever, if I'm reading it right, but I think you need to spell it out a little more. The bottom row of panels on page 1 is too long -- that middle panel isn't doing anything except breaking the rhythm. Your camera moves in the sword-slash sequence are too broad (you basically reverse angles 3 times) but yet not very dramatic because you stay at eye-level. A longer shot would be clearer to show the shapeshifter knocking away the guy's sword, and a reaction shot of the guy would really help after that. As for the art, it's obviously not to the same level of finish as most of the others. Which is fine for learning purposes, and anyway I wouldn't invest a huge amount of time rendering something until it reads well.

Hideyoshi - Your piece was totally pro. I'm guessing maybe you didn't want it in the poll because you *are* a pro (though Ilaekae messed up by including your name)? My only complaint about it is that it's too perfect an imitation of Otomo's style.

[Ryuartyi]

In my opinion, JonZ's was the most professional looking. I thought that the use of black and white really gave a comic book feel, something I'm hoping to achieve in a few months. Everything was crisp in the comic, I couldn't find much wrong in it really.

Kudos though to everyone who participated in the first P.O.W.!. I want to apologize to Ilaekae though for not finishing my original concept. I didn't think it had the quality that P.O.W.! was looking for, but seeing some of the new people finish it shows that I should have just stuck with it to finish. I will try to do one again when P.O.W.! 3 hits. I need all the help I can get to get into the atelier in the fall, so I'm hoping it will help.

Once again, nice strong entries this time around. I hope to see improvement in the next round.

[Ilaekae]

"Ilaekae / Everyone - if you want this to read the way it would in print, put your spreads side by side, and add an extra linebreak between pages vertically."

A perfect solution ...in a perfect world.

The attachment manager doesn't allow the insertion of spaces, so next time, I'll ignore it and post the material from my personal Image Event account. That should solve that problem. That okay with you? :P

Side by side. Agree, except that every single person on the forum would scream that they have to scroll. I guess i could live with that, but... I'm guessing that I'd have to make sure that everyone indicated "left/right" on their pages as well as page numbers so I get the spread arrangement correct. If I had a choice? Ummmmm... :P

Thanks for the comments...

[mickeymao]

Well, you can leave it up to the artists; if they want spreads they can save each spread as one image, no more than n pixels wide (whatever value of n is acceptable to the majority). If they don't care, or they don't think it reads at that size, they don't have to do it. More important I think is to have a visible break of some sort between pages. But as you say, in a perfect world.

[skorpi]

Thats no easy descison. I vote for JonZ, becouse it looks sinmply professional and I realy like the dynamic pages.
But I like the entries from Gwenevere, Sinix and Stoat too

[Zeitwolf]

Zeitwolf - Your story doesn't really have any emotional hook, and is a bit hard to follow. I actually think the concept is clever, if I'm reading it right, but I think you need to spell it out a little more. The bottom row of panels on page 1 is too long -- that middle panel isn't doing anything except breaking the rhythm. Your camera moves in the sword-slash sequence are too broad (you basically reverse angles 3 times) but yet not very dramatic because you stay at eye-level. A longer shot would be clearer to show the shapeshifter knocking away the guy's sword, and a reaction shot of the guy would really help after that. As for the art, it's obviously not to the same level of finish as most of the others. Which is fine for learning purposes, and anyway I wouldn't invest a huge amount of time rendering something until it reads well.

Thank you very much for the helpful critique, mickeymao! Actually I didn't think about reversing angles or eye level any second and I'll keep that im mind for future panels.
I blame most of the "wrong" things in my comic on my inexperience. There's so much to pay attention to when making pages besides drawing panels with figures in it. The POW should push me to do pages within a given deadline, and yes, I AM using this for practise. Maybe it is not the right thing to do?

[mickeymao]

...and yes, I AM using this for practise. Maybe it is not the right thing to do?

Oh, it's absolutely the right thing to do. Once you feel confident with your layouts (and if you have time) you should try to bring things to a higher level of finish, because those skills are important too -- but right now, it's probably more valuable to experiment a lot with the layouts. I usually draw several different rough versions of a page before I think about finishing it, and I've been drawing GNs for 10+ years.

[Cervel]

My favourite is the one by Gwenevere, because it's fun, reaches the proposed theme, and is very much polished.

JonZ is in other hand very, very detailed, and actually draws a lot of backgrounds, which is important. Plus, automobiles is a hard thing, and he did an awesome car chase action. Definately even with Gwe, ehheeh

Sinix had a very interesting experimental reach. I want to see this develop!

[mahir]

Love Gwenevere's story idea and Sinix's cool style but I'll give the vote to JonZ for best delivery overall. Clear and intense, with some great composition and angles.

[Orunitier]

Voted for Grief 'cause, it was hilarious.

[funfetus]

Thank you very much for the helpful critique, mickeymao! Actually I didn't think about reversing angles or eye level any second and I'll keep that im mind for future panels.
I blame most of the "wrong" things in my comic on my inexperience. There's so much to pay attention to when making pages besides drawing panels with figures in it. The POW should push me to do pages within a given deadline, and yes, I AM using this for practise. Maybe it is not the right thing to do?

That's the reason to do this sort of thing, right? To have a deadline and an audience to force you to do the stuff. And to learn. There IS a lot to pay attention to, and you only learn it by doing.

[Ilaekae]

Comics are fun to do. That's why so many beginner artists like to try them. BUT, they are --in reality--one of the most difficult art forms to do well that exists. You can be an incredible drawer or painter, and still not be able to do a decent comic panel to save your life. This is not easy. It's damn hard.

We didn't expect anyone to suddenly pop out pro-caliber work here right up front, because the number of "unknown" GOOD comics people is really thin usually on a forum like this, so I'm pleasantly surprised by the results of the first challenge, and I'm pretty sure there are others out there that can hold their own as well.

We all start somewhere. First we do simple. Then we do more complex. Then we do outrageously bizarre...until we realize that half the time...simple is the way to go at least 50% of the time... Weird, ain't it...

Stick with it. You'll find your way, one mistake at a time. That's how I plan to do it. :P

[Zeitwolf]

Ilaekae, funfetus, mickeymao:

Thanks for your words. They drive me to suck everything in I can learn here. Not that I underestimated the community or made bad experience with other activities (quite the contrary!), but I never expected it to be so instructive. During the last week, when I saw all those great entries popping out in the thread I was really demotivated to finish mine. I thought "how very piffling of you to try to compete with all those great artists"

Thanks for not laughing at my naivety, but being really constructive!

[Arish]

Stoat, Gwenevere and JonZ's comics all caught my eye but Grief's was too funny not to vote for. Can't wait to see what he'll skewer next. ;)

[Stoat]

Yeah. I admit, I didn't even read Grief's until yesterday. But it was a screaming hoot.

[Grief]

Can't wait to see what he'll skewer next. ;)

POW 2 (http://www.conceptart.org/forums/showthread.php?t=116649)
...hmm yeah... not quite the same. i'd like to explore various stylistic writing methods and themes. i can't promise dick jokes every week, although they seem to go over well. i'm sure it'd get old pretty quick.

i finished the week 2 comic last weekend, the concept got entangled into the craft, and the product ended up being not what i was initially aiming for. i have midterms all week so i whipped out my entry in a hurry so i can focus on my studies.

i'm anxious to see what else gets produced for week two, it'd be nice if the turnout really blossomed into a panorama of diverse comics. spread the word, this community activity has a lot of potential to showcase some great talent on CA.

[Jacob Kobryn]

Grief:
http://icanhascheezburger.files.wordpress.com/2008/02/funny-pictures-kitten-shoe-loled.jpg

[Ilaekae]

A really good turnout for a first-time event, so I'm really happy with the way you guys all came through. AND a special salute to JonZ for winning the first P.O.W.! Challenge.

[JonZ_]

thanks everyone! That was a splendid experience. That was my first comic panels in 10 years I swear! Great job everyone!

:yayca: