Scent of Spring Pencils now open to betareader comments.
Confessions of a Creataholic
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0 replies on “Scent of Spring Pencils”
Connect the bubbles in the first panel. Her face is odd in the last panel… change the nose angle and the mouth.
I’m not sure the third panel merits a closeup. In fact, I think it would be better without the closeup. I’d rather see her sitting there with her son on her lap.
I love his expression in the fourth panel. It’s so much better than the smirk he seems to usually have. He looks genuinely happy and sincere there.
Their faces look great in the top two panels! DEFINATELY use these two as reference for further shots of these characters on those angles, if you’re going back and fixing. Especially hers. Looks great. You’ve got it right on.
I’m not sure who’s saying “thank you for this priceless moment”. Either an arrow or connect it to “Liang, dear” so that we’re sure.
Overall, this page just confused me. Is she saying he’s formidable and dangerous? That’s what her face seems to be saying. But then the page switches over to happy. So I’m just not sure what you’re trying to get me to think with this page.
(snrks)
Is he trying to buy her affection or just trying to be nice? Either way, it made for a humorous scene.
Yes, sunset. By changing the coloring of this panel and the last few you can show the progression of time–and it’s a GOOD way of showing it, too. Cute single-page update. 🙂
I just love her face in the last panel.
His hand, though. That is not how to hold a paintbrush when painting. Thumb on the bottom, fingers on top.
Also. “Come, tell me what you think.” Comma!
Arrow on the last speech bubble and I think I understand that mindset right there.
The canvas looks great, though I kinda want to see what’s on it now. XD
I’d connect the Prince’s speech bubbles in the top panel, and point hers at her head.
Last panel could use some work.
Her neck’s too big in the middle panel, and head twisted strangely for how you’ve drawn her body.
Her aunt’s neck is too big in the fourth panel.
Aww. Poor Liang. And she’d seemed happy!
Connect the last two bubbles. Her hair comes up too high in the third panel. Fourth panel, his hand gesture seems off. Get someone to stand that way and see how it’s done from life, maybe? The best solution seems to be to find a reference for that one since I can’t really explain what’s wrong very well.
Last bubble needs to either be connected or have an arrow. They seem too happy for the dialogue.
Mouth shape in the second (or is it third?) panel. He’s saying “no”, so it should be an o, not a bow.
She looks much too excited in the next panel (though it’s a great expression) and I think his hands ought to be open there, not fists since he’s being all dramatic and punctuating what he’s saying.
Aww. I wanted to see a terrible, awful painting on the board. You built it up, now make it awful!
I think it’s funny that he lets the kid play with it, though.
Wait. What is that thing? I thought it was a well, but her aunt can walk into it? o_o
And he just stands there. A well thought out page.
What’s he doing? Tearing up the canvas? I’m not sure that works, but it makes for a good looking page. Just remember to draw ripples to show that it’s a reflection.
Bold/italics and make it a larger size instead of the all caps. Though to be fair, if I was writing that dialogue I’d use all caps there too–but consistancy is good.
Aaand the end. I found the end a bit abrupt. I didn’t get a clear feeling that she’d made up her mind and was only shown it by the last panel. You may wish to make it clearer and add a couple more pages.
Mostly as I went through, I approached the art. I was critiquing as an artist, mostly looking for places where you could improve what you’d already drawn. Now at the end, though, I have to look back at the story as a whole and agree with the previous commenter. She didn’t move or shape her world at all. She was dragged along with it. With your approach to the writing, we didn’t see it through her eyes as well as we ought to have for the content of the story. I think it might be better if you worked an internal narrative through it, using narrator boxes to show her thoughts and hers alone to show how the story shapes her.
I enjoyed it. I’m not a big romance fan, but I especially found the first half of the story charming. Very cute, a wonderful couple. And I don’t read a lot of romance so I’m not sure entirely how to approach it…
But like wswears said. She felt like a warm, fuzzy object. Now, I understand that the conflict was that she needed to get over her former husband and break out of the fear of losing the Prince, of being lost in a world that was so very different from her own world–and that ought to have been the climax. Yet, you displayed the climax in a series of pages where we saw nothing of her internal battle. You didn’t show her struggle, her fight with her own emotions to get past the fact that she was holding back her own life. There were a few glimpses of these feelings from her but mostly she was just swept along. If you punctuated this more, and brought out the internal conflict it would improve her as a protagnist.
The story works as a snapshot but it’s not as gripping as it could be if you allowed her thoughts, feelings, internal conflict and inner demons to shine through and add a little bit of darkness and climatic drama to the story. We know they’re there, or she wouldn’t be worried. You just need to let them shine through a bit in the writing.
As the story is right now, you’ll have to have some pretty incredible art because that’s the major appeal of the story.
Now, I liked the ending lines. It worked well as a fade-out. I just feel there wasn’t quite enough of a climax to make it a gripping ending.
Spring is good. It’s not flooring, but it’s good. The art’s pretty enough and the colored pencils should really sweep it away since the major appeal, I felt, was the visuals and the settings. You made them stand out in the pencils, and I can only hope that colored, the setting stands out equally well.
In a sense, I see Spring as a story about a garden that just so happened to observe a romance. I think if you worked an internal dialogue through the story you might be able to bring us to a closer relationship with your protagnist and show a bit of the conflict that led to the ultimate happy ending, and add more of a problem and a conflict–even if it’s primarily in her mind. Hey, that generally seems to be how romance novels work? They fall in love, something happens that split them apart, but in the end it was all a misunderstanding/they end up together anyway and make up, and live happily ever after.
Overall, it was good. Pretty, easy to read, and a nice story with a fairly smooth ending. It just seemed to be a bit lacking in the climax deparment. I think it’ll look good once it’s done. Whether you want to try push the writing a bit more is up to you. It’s good as it is but it could benefit from maybe the addition of a couple more scenes or a narrative to add more sense of conflict and change.
Beta reading this was a great experience and I’m glad to have been allowed the chance to read it well before the launch!
Seeing as she’s already wearing the combs, it may be more interesting if we don’t get a close up of the carving until the end of the chapter. I really like the way the bottom panel is laid out, but I think it would work better as the footer of this chunk of text.
The last speech bubble would work so much better with the large picture of the carving.