Lady Meow Comic (First Issue)- Looking For Feedback

I just finished my first comic using in-game screenshots to tell the story of Lady Meow. Please check it out and let me know what you think.

Lady Meow Comic - Issue 1 (Mashon Website)

Lady Meow Comic - Issue 1 (PDF)

Very nice work!

How long did that take you? Something like that would take me months.

Wow, that's amazing! As DarkEther said, it looks like a huge amount of work. And you pulled it off!

Initially, I was surprised that Meow's mum would be so uncaring, when she had purple skin herself - but that changes, so probably just the lighting.

The image editing that leaves backgrounds looking inky and faces looking smooth is a really good way to create a unique feel to the art. It also makes the screenshots work - without editing, screenshots can be dominated by the panel borders and speech bubbles and look washed out. I like it.

Perhaps you can get screenshots (or have a friend with a powerful computer) using Ultra mode just for the cover art.

The ending was unusual. I'm glad someone found what she wanted... even if something almost as good wound up with Dr. V. Seems like a very believable way to upgrade from bad guy to nemesis! But it might have me barracking for the baddie...

Do the MA arcs mentioned tie into this issue?

Again, lovely work!

Arc: 379017: Outbroken See all your old friends in the Outbreak Tutorial sequel!
Arc: Coming Soon: The Incarnate Shadow Shard of Fire and Ice Mender Rednem needs you!
Massively.com opinion poll: Please Help Save CoH!

Since you asked... this critique is meant to be helpful above all else. I appreciate the effort but am not keen on the result.

Minor nitpick is spelling, using "your" instead of "you're," "per say" instead of "per se," etc. But I think it needs a complete overhaul, frankly.

Dialogue:

It comes across as stilted, and Hunter Blue's just isn't believable. Is he Cajun? French? I'm just not buying his speech pattern. Also, there are far too many infodumps. It's better to hint at things and let the reader draw their own conclusions rather than say it outright. Instead of saying they have contacts throughout the city, show Justice Force getting info from various sources.

Plot:

Sending Lady Meow to a special school at 18 doesn't make sense, frankly. She's an adult and can do what she wants at that point. Seems to me that her mom would send her away much earlier.

The fact that she doesn't know what she's capable of doesn't wash, either. She changed at age 9, and every kid runs and jumps, so it wouldn't take long before she discovered her abilities far outstripped those of her friends.

Instead of *saying* that the kids were mean to her, *show* it. This would also have the effect of allowing her to discover her abilities.

When she changes, have her classmates tease her. Have one pull her tail, and in response she lashes out at the kid, spinning, pouncing and clawing him before anyone can react. And THAT reaction gets her kicked out of school, forcing her mom to send her to a special school. SHOW the special school being hard on her. To keep the headmaster from seeming like a total dick, have a scene where he's telling a teacher they have to be hard on the kids in order to toughen them up. Lady Meow doesn't know this, so in reaction she runs away.

On the streets she falls in with a gang (which is what happens to runaways in our world), but is essentially good. When the gang decides to rob someone, she resists, because she sees it as the same as when her friends tormented her. The gang leader agrees and says that's the way of the world. "They picked on us. They hate us. We're just doing it to them before they can do it again."

Have the guy they rob be someone who is kind to others, perhaps even kind to her, thus fueling her resistance to the gang. She goes along because of peer pressure but at the last minute balks.

The Justice Force, responding to the alarm, sees her fighting her own gang and decides to recruit her.

This will take longer to get her to the "joining the team" part of the story, but it lays the groundwork for the follow-on stories.

DarkEther,
Thank you. The comic took me quite awhile. It wasn't so much the editing of the comic, but gathering screenshots took some time. I had to schedule a time with members of my SG to help me get good angles and I had to use the Mission Architect to get other shots.

Airhead,

Thank you, I'm glad you enjoyed it. I have a computer that can handle Ultra Mode, but the first part of the comic including the cover were done prior to I-17. As far as the ARC advertisments, they do not tie into the story.

Ironik,

Thank you for the feedback. This was my first comic, and your comments will help me for future installments and/or editing what I have.

As far as giving too much info in writing as compared to showing, I'm limited by what I can do with In-Game screenshots. Thanks to the Mission Architect and some of the SG members who helped, I was able to get many of the shots I had planned. Some of the shots you had suggested are a little more difficult for me to pull off or not feasable with screenshots (such as having her tail get pulled by a teasing schoolmate.

Spelling... not my strong point I will admit. In the future I may have someone with a stronger grasp of grammar read through it.

Hunter Blue's character was very tough. All of the main characts are based on SG members, and I did my best to do their toons justice. I know a little French, but attempting a French accent I admit was difficult. Again, perhaps having some more help from others may help me in the future.

And I can't believe I didn't think about her age! You're absolutely right in that her being 18 would seem a bit old for her mother to have control over what she does.

I think you've made a decent first effort, and we all walk before we run.

There are two ways around the screenshot problem:

The one with the steeper learning curve is to do demoedits. However, you can really do some amazing things once you get a handle on it.

The second is to utilize Photoshop or the free equivalent, GIMP. For pulling the tail, for instance, just take a screenshot of her tail, then combine that with a screenshot of someone pulling. If there isn't a decent emote in the game, you can just cut the screenshot into its constituent parts and move them to where you want them. It's a bit of work, but not a huge amount.

Edit: As I think about it, maybe the sniping animation can be repurposed to tail-pulling.

Well I think Ironik covered everything but I'll again say it's a very nice first effort...

Ironik,

Actually I enjoy doing demo editing, altho I've only completed one project and am still working on the second. The only thing about using Demo Editing as a way to get screenshots is that it's a lot of work. A lot of math to determine XYZ coordinates, and if there's movement quite a bit of work just for that. Though your suggestion of using demo editing as a way to capture screenshots that are more difficult is great advice, Im not sure if I'm willing to go that far. I'm no professional, of course, and do these projects (whether it be Demo Editing, Stories or Comic Books) simply for enjoyment.

I do appreciate all the feedback, because I do want to get better and offer the readers a worth-while story... and many of your suggestions I will use, but at the same time I'm not looking to be the best by any means... not until I start getting paid for my time anyways. lol. In otherwords, I want to make the best comic I can without stressing myself out.

Her'es the link to the finished Demo I did.. was sort of a teaser trailer for my second MA arc (The Obelisk 2) that I made for my SG.

The Obelisk 2 Trailer (Youtube)

I hear what you're saying, and it does depend on how much work you want to invest in it, but I think with some planning you can keep the complicated and labor-intensive modifications to a minimum.

Using Photoshop would be easiest for me, because although I'm a rank amateur, I do it enough that it's a fairly quick process at this point.

I did some simple demoedits to show turnarounds of my characters or to put all of my SG into one shot, which became easier as I did it a couple times. I think that, like anything, it becomes easier with practice. One thing I found was setting up a shot with Random Character and then just dropping in the info for the character I wanted to have there. Once I figured out how to do it, it was a fairly quick process.


Here I just dropped in Minotaurus next to Minotaur X, the only way to get two of my toons side by side:



Simple turn-around of my Brute:



Some random members of my and my friends' villains as a practice demoedit: