Well, everyone's commented positive stuff - which I agree with - so I'm gonna focus on the negative stuff. Overall this isn't bad, obviously, but I think there are several things you could use to improve your work.
So, problems I have with this comic:
1-Panel & bubbles layout. Be careful with that stuff, you're mostly doing good but there are a few confusing ones. For example, the second panel of page 1 makes it look like the wolf is speaking first and the, uh, human-like dude second, even though it is the other way around.
Now, normally you would indeed have things go left -> right in term of order of dialogue, but in this particular case the eyes are more drawn to reading top to bottom - especially since we just finished reading the "Hey Max, how's it going?" bubble from the previous panel, the reader's eyes naturally go to the closest bubble.
So try to think a bit about how a potential reader's eyes might scan your comic. Ideally, there should be a nice flow between reading the dialog & looking at the art, without needing to do big "jumps" between parts of a panel to follow the narrative.
2- The story is a bit confusing in the first page. What exactly is happening in the fourth panel. Does he shut down his computer? Did he get done posting whatever he was posting? You get from the next page what he's running after him for, but it's not very clear at first, which doesn't give the comic a great start.
Not to mention, the character is saying "Zatch", but it's the first mention of the wolf's name at that point, so we don't know what the fuck "zatch" is, on first read. I thought it was just some kind of "bazinga" expression at first, honestly.
3- This is a more subjective criticism, but it's still something that you see a lot of artists do and it *never* works : avoid rainbow-colored body parts. Seriously. Even if there is an in-universe reason for it, it's just something that always looks off and has been so overused by the furry fandom in general that audience reaction will range from "bleh" to "we get it, gay furries".
Not to mention that in the particular case of this wolf's design, the placement of the rainbow doesn't really make much sense or look all that good. The insidde of the ears just looks silly, and the inside of the mouth makes it look like some kind of disease.
Unnatural colours, in general, are something you should be very mindful about, as it's a very easy "trap" to fall into. Most of the time it doesn't add much to character design, sometimes it ruins it. In your case it doesn't "ruin" it, but it just feels like an unnecessary, odd details that adds nothing.
I'm not saying to get rid of that, uh, "doodles" thing - that can definitely be made to work well - but I think there are better ways to visually signify it than rainbows - which are pretty gawdy.
4- For the art itself, eh, you're a beginner, there's not much I can say other than "practice". You seem to have some sort of general style, so that's goo, and your lineart is okay. Just using gradient tools for backgrounds *kinda* works for now with your simplistic style, but as your drawings will improve you will very quickly find yourself needing to use more complex colouring techniques, to make the whole thing visually consistent.
As a general rule, I'd say try to work some on anatomy. Do gesture drawing, learn anatomy rules, learn perspective. Oh, and don't hesitate to look at photographs for reference (as long as you NEVER trace). For example, the third panel of your first page, Max's leg is positioned kinda behind (from his point of view) his torso and his arm, which is kind of a glaring mistake. You don't need to copy reference pictures, just google "person sitting on computer from back", or kinda look at yourself in the mirror in the position you're trying to draw so you can spot things like "oh yeah, from that angle this leg will be in front of this arm".
Applying art knowledge like perspective & gesture drawing to your art can be a bit difficult at first, especially since it can be hard to concile between realistic and cartoony, so I'd say try to look for cartoonists whose work you like and/or seem to be similar to what you'd want to be drawing in, say, ten years, and try to understand how they do it.
Oh, and as with every beginner artist : try to think more in three dimensions. Look at tutorials on Youtube about that, how to "build" characters from 3D shapes when drawing. And definitely try to learn skills even if you don't plan on using them - even cartoony art styles require knowledge of perspective or an ability to not always do symbol drawing.
So yeah. Basically, this is actually rather good for a first comic, keep up the good work, but never be too satisfied with what you can do, always strive to learn more.
|