Annoyed Android. New Character/strip (pic heavy)

[we66y]

Hi All, it's been a while since my last post but I've been hard at work putting together a submission for the Prog. I decided to have a go at writing my own story and character for many reasons, mostly because I just had an idea bonching around in my head and I really wanted to put it down on paper. I really like to hear from like minded creatives, on opinions on my strip or critiques or if anyone has got any ideas on how I could improve on the strip. I've included the first 2 pages of what is now a twenty page story, I'm rubbish at attaching pictures so I hope they load properly.

[we66y]

I had to delete one of the pics off the previous post as they were over the attachment limit, sorry.  Here's the second page.

[Dark Jimbo]

Straight away I can see a few typos you'll want to fix (don't hate me, I'm pointing them out in a spirit of helpfulness)  :

Panel 1 : 'before I was outcast.'

Doesn't really make sense as is. You could have 'became an outcast', 'was made an outcast' or 'was cast out' (two seperate words).

Panel 2 : 'Takens'

You presumably meant 'taken.'

Panel 3, caption 2:

Ideally you want to make the short stop halfway through that caption box a comma, or change it for a semi-colon, as those two sentences are really part of the same thought. Having the short stop makes the second sentence - 'In such a short space of time' - a sentence fragment, which makes no sense on its own.

[we66y]

page 3, I really hope everyones enjoying the story so far, I know the pace is a bit slow, bare with it, the action pics up as I establish the characters and situation.

[we66y]

Hi Dark Jimbo, Thanks for taking the time to read through my strip, I'll try an fix those typos in a bit thanks, Guess what spelling is not my strong point, I did have them proof read by a few friends but those mistakes weren't picked up.

[Jim_Campbell]

Please, please, please, for the love of all that's holy, don't letter your strip in ComicSans.

Blambot has literally dozens of excellent fonts here, many of which are free, and a fantastic overview of lettering conventions (pay particular attention the part about the crossbar 'I') here.

Cheers

Jim

[we66y]

page 4. I've been playing around with resizing the pictures so that I can upload the pictures, the upshot is that's it's gonna take me a while to get all the pages uploaded.

[we66y]

Hi Jim, thanks for the suggestion, I looked at Blam bot, wow that is a lot of fonts to choose from. I must confess I have no clue as to what fonts are good or bad, could you suggest a few that you think would fit my strip? Please

[we66y]

So this is the last page of my first issue of Annoyed Adroid, I'm really greatful from the suggestions I've received so far, I promise I will follow up on those suggestions, thanks guys.
Nath

[CrazyFoxMachine]

Please, please, please, for the love of all that's holy, don't letter your strip in ComicSans.

This. Forever and always this.

Your colouring could do with being a bit bolder as well - but it rattles along quite well. Looking forward to seeing more.

[Greg M.]

Howdy. I like your art - it tells the story successfully, and the whole thing flows well. You have a fine, clear style. Have I seen your work in small-press publications before? I would agree with CFM that the colours could be less muted, mind you, and I'm not as taken by the pasted-in nature of some of the background easter-eggs - (OCP posters, that sort of thing.) Not saying there's anything wrong with nods of the head to certain inspirations, but they'd probably look better if you drew 'em in your own style (or better yet, did your own variants, as Ben Willsher tends to do in his Dredd strips.)

Plot-wise - I'm intrigued, I'd read more. Script-wise (actual dialogue and what not) - commas. You need to use 'em. And full stops too! Nothing pulls me out of a story like wobbly punctuation. (Oh, and on page 3, it's 'sentient' you're after.)

Cool stuff though.

[Dark Jimbo]

Hi Jim, thanks for the suggestion, I looked at Blam bot, wow that is a lot of fonts to choose from. I must confess I have no clue as to what fonts are good or bad, could you suggest a few that you think would fit my strip? Please

To be honest, I wouldn't worry too much if this is specifically a 2000AD submission. They'll want you to focus on doing one thing well; so they'll expect you to pitch to them as a writer, or an artist, or a letterer.

It's really commendable that you've attempted to make your strip the whole package (and it certainly makes reading it easier for us!) but if it's comic art that you want to do, then that's all that you should be submitting to Tharg - a sub-par lettering job will really detract from your art samples, and why would you want that when it isn't even lettering you really want to do for them?

By all means keep up the writing and such - I'm sure small press will come calling soon - but in terms of a prog submission, the art is the only thing you should be sending.

[we66y]

Hi Greg, Yes I've done alot of stuff in the small press and well as the role play game industry.  I worked on the Judge Dredd role play game series by Mongoose Publishing and I've been in Engine Comics, Square Eyed Bunny, Thunder Head Games, the list goes on, I submitted a strip to Zarjaz some years ago and I was told it'd be in the next issue but I lost touch with them. It''s all been relatively low key work but you may have seen my stuff around.  But Lettering is not something that comes natural to me, I'm not using that as an excuse (I'm reading the Gramma Page on Blambot right now), I do need to work a bit on this aspect.

[we66y]

Hi Dark Jimbo,
                   I know exactly what you mean about focusing on one aspect of the job and I agreed with you, trouble is unless I want to draw a submission script that loads of other aspiring artist have drawn, that editors are probably bored of reading, I have to create something from scratch.  I've worked in the small press and often the scripts I've worked on haven't been as well written as I'd like, which can be such a hurdle.  So rather than use the excuse that the script was letting my work down I decided to go it alone. It may not work out but I'm glad I tried.

[Dandontdare]

That's really good, I enjoyed reading it and it made me want to read on.

I only have a couple of minor niggles - There's a bit of a dislocation between pages 3 and 4, like there's a linking panel missing. It's not too hard to guess what happened, but the monologue on page 4 was a little confusing - The art's fine, so you may want to edit the text just to clarify.

Also the title logo reads to me as "Annoyed robotics flawed to perfection android" - the middle sub-title bit could be moved to the bottom of the logo, or be smaller or in a different font/colour to visually differentiate it from the actual title. Oh and the Comic Sans thing definitely.

I hope the feedback's helpful, but with a bit of tweaking i could easily see this as a 3riller in the prog.