It's now fridayish.

PIAGCLAYM!

Yeah, horribly sorry about the delay guys; I've been learning a lot of lessons about how not to approach something like this, and will impart these lessons to you guys for your reference upon completing the comic. Have some schoolwork and stuff, though, and may not get this up until after the weekend.

Faw, drop me an IM if you want to get a head start on your response. I've had the sketch done for like a week and have just been playing around with a bunch of inking/coloring methods.

Having completed this comic, I am going to impart some wonderful nuggets of knowledge unto you forumfolk:

• When trying a new art program, don't try it with a 7 page comic. Try it on something small, to decide early if you don't like the program.
• When making a seven page comic, make it 7 images.
• When trying out a new art style, try it on something larger than a single character before trying it on something really really large.
• Despite what I said about the last comic the floodfill tool really doesn't save any work and, with details, just makes everything harder.
• Have colors in mind before sketching, to save trouble later.

Anyway here, picking up from Faw's last comic (with the Spirit Bomb):



Again, sorry about the delays. This puts me, like, 20 points behind. Doing so much wrong on this comic, though, has given me a lot of ideas on how to do better next time, and I'm somewhat itching to try out new methods. I'd hate to see this art battle end definitively so early.

What do you forum-people think? I feel I need some kind of penalty/disadvantage for being late, but near-automatically losing due to point penalty feels anticlimactic to me.

So here's what I think:

You basically lost all your points. Unless Faw's really on the ball this week, he'll probably lose all his points via delays just like you did unless he just tosses something out tomorrow to win on a technicality, which would probably defeat the purpose of this whole thing. I suggest that we make the first two punches the warm up rounds and have this one count for the win.

... What a disgusting comic.

You think it's out-of-character for Eirru to be so confused she has to stop for a minute to try and get what's going on? But it's fine for Fawriel to use an attack so powerful it KILLS SEVERAL INNOCENT GIRLS? What the (-)(-)(-)(-) is WRONG with you?
You've turned him into a MONSTER! How am I supposed to WORK with that!

Bah.

Anyway.

I'm still going to honor the three-day-limit. I went with this competition to prepare myself for having my own webcomic, and that includes time-limits.

Obviously Radium won't have a chance to win by points unless I really mess up, which won't happen.
Obviously his comic is also well-produced enough to gain all votes from everyone unless I work pretty damn hard.

So I stand by my earlier proposal.

I gain one vote, I win.

Originally Posted by Fawriel

But it's fine for Fawriel to use an attack so powerful it KILLS SEVERAL INNOCENT GIRLS? What the (-)(-)(-)(-) is WRONG with you?

But he made them out of light and aether D=. Presumably their death was made out of light and aether too.

Originally Posted by Fawriel

Obviously his comic is also well-produced enough to gain all votes from everyone unless I work pretty damn hard.

This made me =D very much, though I think you exaggerate. It wouldn't be THAT hard to outdo.

Yeah, that blood looks very light-and-aether-y. Extremely so.
It shouldn't surprise me that my reply actually made you smile. Let me assure you that by "well-produced", I meant the artwork. Very solid style.

The rest, on the other hand.

[rant removed]

Do I just not get it, or should you seriously calm down?

Both, I'd assume!

Hmm, that rant sounded a lot calmer in my head.

EDIT: Removed the rant because I guess I'm only giving Radium what he wants by getting worked up about his blatant lack of respect. I found it pretty funny, though, so I'm saving it to a text file. =P

EDIT 2 - Electric Boogaloo:

But don't let it be said that I didn't raise any points!
Here's a rundown:

The characterization makes no sense whatsoever. Fawriel is not a sociopath. He would never kill the girls. There are a thousand ways that could have been avoided. The only reason you wouldn't, and even draw attention to it like that, is to put Fawriel in a bad light.
Further, his emotions skip from psychotic to calm to psychotic straight back to calm in whatever fashion seems most suitable to Radium at the moment.
And even further, this Fawriel has absorbed the wisdom of the world, but falls for a stupid trap that was even ANNOUNCED BEFOREHAND?

There have been small personal blows before, but at least those were in-character and in-universe. But here, Radium just did whatever he could in order to make me seem hateable.
I always worked under the assumption that there was at least some mutual respect going on here. Apparently I was mistaken. But was it really necessary to create a whole comic when you could've just said "Fawriel is stupid and not as nice as you all think"? I thought we were trying to create a story here.

The whole thing isn't even funny. It just goes from one "ha ha you suck" moment to the next with no structure. The "make Fawriel talk and hit him while he's distracted" was so bad I could've sworn you used it before.

Some of the poses look stiff and awkward. The aforementioned punch, for instance, has no motion. I can't put my finger on it, because Fawriel certainly moves and all, but it feels lifeless. An onomatopoeia would've helped there.
Your speech bubbles look weird. Don't stick the pointer up a character's nose. You only need a subtle one to indicate who's doing the talking.
Fawriel's snout occasionally turns into a crocodile's for some reason.

Yeah, I can't say much about the art. That part is solid. But the writing is just tasteless and childish.

EDIT THREE DUDE:

Relevant link.

Awesome link is awesome!

I'm largely with Faw on this one - I wouldn't expect comic!Faw to get caught out by the same trick twice (especially given that comic!Faw just used it on Eirru), and I thought the Greek chorus got killed off by Eirru in Faw's last comic. On the flip side, zipping comic!Faw's trouser legs together was very funny.

Originally Posted by Torkell

I wouldn't expect comic!Faw to get caught out by the same trick twice (especially given that comic!Faw just used it on Eirru).

Hmm... personally I viewed them as significantly different, but maybe that was just me. The first time Eirru attacked Faw while he was talking it was because she got tired of listening - she even warned him before doing it. When Faw created the choir girls it was sheerly a distraction/confusion tactic.

I tried to make her actions in the last comic unique in that this is the first time Eirru has actually asked Faw to speak. Rather than a repeat of previous actions I was aiming for it to come across as a variation based off assessed weaknesses. By now Eirru has been able to pick up that Faw likes to talk - and not just talk, but talk in long, winding monologues. By now she has also noticed (but of course, is not vocalizing) that she likely isn't capable of facing him head-on. As such she is willing to get a bit more underhanded in her tactics - such as implying that she is finally awed by his power and now genuinely cares about his backstory, only to dash these dreams by quickly revealing it was a trick to get his guard down. His reaction is meant to reflect this (as opposed to being something more generic like "I wasn't ready!")

I probably could've made the instances differ more, but I personally felt that making the two instances differ too vastly wouldn't properly convey how she is having to adjust her tactics specifically to suit the fight. You're definitely right, though, I should probably have her take the stuff she learns and apply it in distinctly new ways.

Originally Posted by Torkell

comic!Faw's trouser legs

Ack! Now I feel like I used the wrong word in the comic. His vocabulary in the previous strips struck me as predominantly American, but I don't know what word he would use for los pantalones.

From the distance between March 11 and April 1, and the distance between April 1 and today, am I correct in assuming we are now equalized, point-wise?

I know there was some discrepancy with when the last round began (when Faw meant to imply I had three days to finish it was misconstrued as three days until the end of voting), so I'm not entirely sure if we've been equalized or if I am still at -3.

... Jesus, you scared me for a second. What makes you think that Puffie's countdown had any bearing on the score? I started the countdown right before that, and you can't exactly expect any mercy in that respect since you even had a long enough time beforehand to think of what you're going to do next. Based on my calculations, this puts you at -29 points. Which means I still easily have all month.

I definitely learned some things about time management, though. It's amazing how long this is taking, primarily because I had some major inhibitions to even start. I guess brute forcing my way into my dormant potential is a pretty painful process. The results are not bad so far, but I think there's a limit to how far I can push this in one go, so it's good that this'll be the last round. The pressure's totally screwing up my studies and everything anyway.

waitawaitwaitwaitwait.....double-you-tee-

You said

Three-day countdown starts... now.

I said eleven days later

1...2...3...4...5...6...7...8...9...10...11!

RAD: 6
FAW: 4

K! O!

now you are saying

... Jesus, you scared me for a second. What makes you think that Puffie's countdown had any bearing on the score? I started the countdown right before that,

so how do I get into this argum- oh, I threw a wrench in Rads gears by summing up the votes. Sweet.

Oh whoops didn't even notice that was 11 days D=. I misinterpreted you as misinterpreting that 3 day countdown as the end of voting (given that you posted a countdown and a "KO"), and figured it looked the same way to everyone else.

Disregard me, sorry!

Edit:

Originally Posted by Fawriel

it's good that this'll be the last round.

Woah, hey:

Originally Posted by Fawriel

- the minimum amount of punches will be 4, as in the previous Art Battle. If necessary, the battle shall rage on until a winner is decided.

D<. Though if the pressure from this one is causing you problems, you know I'm perfectly amenable to mutually agreeing to make this round a tie and continuing another (hopefully faster paced) one.

Minimum amount of "punches". Not "rounds". I really don't want to drag this on any further than this.

Originally Posted by Fawriel

Minimum amount of "punches". Not "rounds". I really don't want to drag this on any further than this.

I know, I was referring to the "until a winner is decided". It seems presumptuous to assume it'll happen.

The punches should have been drawn in secret, waiting to be revealed in some dramatic manner. That way you would have had less pressure on your work *and* you would have spared all this useless chit-chat from the readers, both of which would then give a very positive effect.

But then again it looks like instead of collaborating, you preferred to treat this as a real battle just so that a "winner" would be set. If that's the case then something is wrong with you.

Yay, there's something wrong with me. You know what the funny thing is? You're right. I have issues. And I'm trying to deal with them by confronting myself with them. Now if you could possibly restrain your cynicism for just a little bit, that would be very appreciated.

This will be over before you know it... MARK MY WORDS, boy, and MARK THEM WELL!

OH GOD DAMN IT!

Okay so heads up everyone: Next comic will suck.

It was better before I decided to start inking the (-)(-)(-)(-)(-). So yeah.
Oh well, doesn't really matter if I win or not anyway. As far as I'm concerned, I leave the competition as the winner either way. Because I still learned a lot.


Except for inking.

*goes kill something*

I could still finish the comic today if I really wanted to, but then I'd have to miss out on some quality, and after all the skimping out I did with the inking and whatnot, trying to make something good out of it seems like the least I can do. I think finishing it tomorrow will mean Radium and I are equal in points? How cute. Oh well, who cares. I got what I wanted from the battle already. I know I could produce a nicer comic if I tried again. But I still have to make the best of what I'm dealing with here, yes?

PS: The inking is hilarious. After realizing that I suck, I basically ate my collection of One Piece mangas, then proceeded to regurgitate them all over the penciled pages to see what sticks. It's a glorious mess, that much I can tell you! I believe the scientific term for this would be, hm, "haphazard"!

Originally Posted by Fawriel

I believe the scientific term for this would be, hm, "haphazard"!

=D That's the title of my story. Nice.

Looking forward to seeing it on the morrow.

Originally Posted by Fawriel

It's a glorious mess, that much I can tell you! I believe the scientific term for this would be, hm, "haphazard"!

Haphazard is not a scientific term D=. Scientifically your actions were probably experimental in nature, focused around an attempt to imitate various aspects of the One Piece mangas to see which, replicated by you, yielded the most visually appealing results. The appearance of a mess is likely just an unlabeled series of failed and successful trials.

... Yes, Radium. Thank you, Radium.

Among the most important lessons I have learned in this battle is: "It always takes longer than you think. No exceptions." There's still some stuff to be done there, but I think it's in my best interest to call it a day for now.

Well, god bless this mess.









But wait, there's more! If you didn't like this comic, I have prepared an alternate continuity comic for you!

Yaaaaay.

=D I like the alternate comic. It's the kind of deus ex machina I can get behind.

=O not bad at all, I'm glad to see you stepping a bit out of your comfort zone.

The new shading technique works really well for you, especially in the first half of the comic. The use of darks and lights really makes the figures pop in some panels. This effect diminishes a bit near the end when the background grays start to diminish the bold and powerful contrast effect. The background gray seems darker there, but in retrospect it could just be because Faw got lighter without his shirt.

Personally, though, I think the final panel is one of the weakest. You had a good thing going with the black-gray-white color scheme, and branching out into color so abruptly really makes your lack of knowledge on the topic obvious.

I think Dev mentioned this a few pages back, but a lot of the color experimentation I've been doing myself through this thread was based off some things I read off John K's blog. While I'd hardly consider him an expert on color and don't agree with a lot of his statements, it's very entertaining to see his analysis of various color schemes. Any of his posts on the subject are worth a look.

The major criticism I have of your last piece is pretty plainly that it's hard for me to follow. Some panels are notably ambiguous: in the "DOM" one near the top the blur effect makes it hard for me to tell who hit who, and in the panel directly below it I can't really tell what is moving. It looks like someone broke through the wall and into the room with the tree, but a few panels later it looks like both Faw and Eirru are back in the room with the stairs. Except there's evidently some tree there too? I don't know. Somewhere a tree got Eirru too. Did Faw's arm suddenly go General Ysengrin in the panel where he heals the little girl?

I've never really thought you were good at handling Eirru's movement and dialogue. I tried to establish her character as something of an antithesis to Faw's more anime-styled "stand still and monologue" (which I definitely poked fun at a lot), and evidently did well enough for it to stand out when you wrote her out of character. It's not very interesting when every character is pretty much like you.

If you have trouble capturing her character it may help if I show my sources. For her dialogue I'd suggest reading Watchmen and paying special attention to the sentence structure of Rorshach's speech, and for her movement/fighting style I'd suggest watching a TF2 Scout tutorial (and ignoring the parts about the pistol). One of Eirru's lines in my second comic is pretty much directly pulled from that video, and the whole idea of avoiding direct combat is pretty central in her actions - especially after Faw starts to get crazy powerful. You can convey a lot about someone by how they stand, how they move, and even how far they stand from other people.

(I guess voting starts now?)

I don't get what you mean about my characterization of Eirru in this one. She kept attacking him even when he was out there. The only time she stops to talk is to diss him, which she's been doing plenty of already.

I agree that it's hard to follow in the middle. Some space between the panels would have helped that. It's one of the things that I didn't get to do anymore in the end. The other thing that would've helped is if we had planned out the frikkin place beforehand. As far as I'm concerned, by the time we got to your last comic, the place has turned into some sort of ficto-dimensional time-space vortex that shapes itself based on the plot.

I agree that the last panel is weak, but whatcha gonna do.I think it might've worked better if I'd gotten the time to do something else I've been planning, which is to use colored lighting to set the mood in earlier panels. Red for the burning rage, green for after the epiphany.

But yeah, one reason this took so long is because at first I was downright terrified of working on it, and in the end... I kinda lost interest. As I said, I got what I wanted out of the art battle. At some point I managed to combine my increased understanding of anatomy with the just-for-fun stuff I've been doing and managed to find a way to draw that actually makes it fun. For the past years, and I'm blaming this on you, drawing has been a painful struggle to me. So yeah, that's what I owe you, I guess. Can't change the past, gotta make do with what I have.

I'll check out the stuff you linked to at some later point.

Originally Posted by Fawriel

As far as I'm concerned, by the time we got to your last comic, the place has turned into some sort of ficto-dimensional time-space vortex that shapes itself based on the plot.

Man, you should've asked me D=. Before drawing the last comic I made a 3D model of the place based off what was shown in your first comic so I could track the relative locations of people and environmental features; I would've been happy to give it to you.

... I call shenanigans. Your model makes no sense.

It's very defining that you took the time to link one of your criticisms to what is nothing more than a personal attack. Why, yes, the fact that Eirrukovi doesn't have a distinctly aloof way of picking her nose means that I'm on the level of a horrible fanfic writer! I will admit that I see some things I could have done better in her acting since she's apparently such a flat character she's incapable of displaying anything but arrogant distance, but you'll have to excuse me if I'm a little skeptical of your criticism regarding characterization after you got every single possible thing about Fawriel wrong in your last comic. You can come up with all the fancy words in the world to describe her, but if your idea of Fawriel is nothing but "stupid manga-type guy who talks a lot", then the antithesis to that is nothing more than "not-manga type girl who doesn't talk much". I've been working on the idea that she's a battle-hardened fighter who accepts challenges from strangers in the hopes of finding a real challenge for her superior skills, and she's thrown off a bit by Fawriel's unconventional style (a side-effect of being experienced is that you don't expect completely unconventional things) but has no patience for his weird antics, since she expected an intense battle rather than a show fight, and despises him for being basically a child with too much power on his hands.
How would YOU describe her?

Hell, I helped you with Fawriel's characterization in a PM. He's an entertainer who wants to go out into the world and be awesome. I show that in his dream-world at the start. He's been inside a capsule underground for a long time watching the world from a distance. He's basically like a kid whose knowledge of the world comes completely from reading adventure stories. He challenged Eirru in order to prove his worth, and wanted to do so in a way that shows just how awesome he is (and got really damn pissed when it just refused to work).
Yet all I see in your characterization of him is "Fawriel is an arrogant idiot who talks about himself a lot (and that is funny)".

I admit that I could have done things better in Eirru's displayal (her emotions are too strongly pronounced in many cases now that I think about it, she barely even opens her mouth in earlier pages, so her teeth-gnashing is out of place even when she's surprised, among some other subtle things)... But you don't get to make fun of me for those mistakes when your displayal of my character is nothing but a thinly veiled clone of the way you see me with some added personal attacks for good measure.

EDIT: Oh hey, John K. My new "mentor" links me to that blog a lot. Fun times.

I've gone from finding this immensely fun to asking myself why I am even reading this... internet argument. How could this get so lame? Because some people might take this too seriously? Nah. Must be something else.

Yeah, I can see why I've fallen from grace around here in the process of this war. I just couldn't keep up a facade anymore, had to deal with some troubles, you know? Radium's impact on my artistic process is something that's shaped my life quite strongly, possibly quite badly as well, and there's a strong relation there to the fact that I lost my former best friend, who is also watching this battle. Put me under quite some pressure. I'm afraid I had some terrible issues to deal with, and let it out on you guys. But a deal of coping with pain is humor. I try hard to smile at this whole ordeal, and I tried hard to be able to make you smile while I'm puking my heart out at you. I'm sorry for not being terribly entertaining. It's been a strange balance act between wanting to win, wanting to prove myself, and all that stuff, so I can see that my submissions were probably pretty weird to read and that my behaviour has tainted their reception. I can do nothing but apologize and hope that you can find it in your hearts to understand my position, yeah?

Buargh. Really, I just want this to be over. I've been making a fool of myself for the sake of not making as great a fool of myself in the future. A major fool. Like, an internet dramaturgy. I swear I had nothing but practice in mind when I started this! But it came as it had to!

Let's not bother with the voting. Radium won because he was actually trying to entertain people, as was the original purpose of it all. But I don't think I deserve to lose, not only because that would kinda put me back to square one, but because I've really been trying hard to better myself, which is kinda what I've been "battling" for.

Let's call it a done deal.

The rules say that the winner shall produce an ending comic in which his character wins the fight. Let's both make one and put an end to this. Then people can choose whichever of the two endings they'd prefer to be "canon".
Sound good?

Well, dunno, Radium's stuff is of course well-drawn and such but I think I enjoyed your comics more, since they had more soul. The rough edges actually added something to it, whereas Radium was as well-drawn as expected but apart from that nothing surprising either.

...that was awesome.

In my eyes, Faw wins. Although technically lower, this is exactly why I prefer his latest blow - you can see the emotion put into it more than cold thought. Of course, Rad's comic isn't all dry and boring and all, but I just find Faw's more interesting. Especially with the alternate ending.

Originally Posted by Fawriel

Let's call it a done deal.

The rules say that the winner shall produce an ending comic in which his character wins the fight. Let's both make one and put an end to this. Then people can choose whichever of the two endings they'd prefer to be "canon".
Sound good?

Yeah, how about no. I am quite sure we agreed to continue this until a winner became clear.

Originally Posted by Fawriel

Yeah, I can see why I've fallen from grace around here in the process of this war. [...] I can do nothing but apologize and hope that you can find it in your hearts to understand my position, yeah?

I think this is your problem. You are definitely portraying a bad personal image, being way too dramatic about everything, and showing an inability to read yourself from other people's viewpoints (I know at least one person was relatively offended by how you ignored their criticism). Your reaction to this, however, is apparently to ask for forgiveness and attempt to end the battle as soon as possible.

I'm not a strong believer of solving problems by sweeping them under the carpet.

You have definitely "fallen from grace", but trying to end this won't change anything. Rather than looking to get away from your failure, try to amend it. At any moment you can stop being dramatic and we can just keep on drawing naked amazons and color-changing furries or whatever. You can take criticism in stride and learn to see every piece of advice as a method of analyzing yourself. Maybe you wouldn't've lost your best friend or whatever if you tried to learn and adapt rather than just trying to end things that are difficult.

Seriously, let's make this fun!

Thanks, Stijn and 2xGJ. I'm glad you appreciate my work! Like, REALLY glad!

@Radium: I could agree to this if I wasn't also getting bored with it all. The story is getting nowhere. From a plot perspective, my last punch already hit the climax. After this, there can only be a strong finisher and a denouement. Dragging it on will not be fun at all. Besides that, I don't think I'm brushing anything under the carpet. In fact, my problem is that I'm dwelling in the past and can't manage to get over with it. In the last year of high school, I had a classmate in philosophy class who was really pretty neat and I thought I could be friends with him, but at some point, probably due to a misunderstanding, he started hating me, and when our philosophy teacher gave us all our final grades and I protested because I was second from the bottom (in a class of four), he disdainfully commented that I'm "showing my true face". That has been years ago, and it still haunts me terribly. You know, that's just to bring some perspective into this. It's silly, but that's how it goes.
I'm slowly coming to terms with the idea that I'm not a completely worthless artist (hell, up until a while ago I didn't consider myself worthy of the term "artist" at all), and that other people's views can help me improve as a person and I shouldn't take them personally. I don't think ending it at this point would be shameful or anything.

If you insist on fighting it out until the end, here's the alternative: If the winner isn't clear by the end of this voting round, we'll both submit our own endings and then people vote for which one they prefer.


PS: I can't find a good segue for this, but I really wanna get off my chest a big problem I realized with this whole thing. You know, before the duel really started, I thought I'd make the plot all silly and over-the-top awesome since that was pretty much Eirru's schtick in the Lego comics and it's fun, right? But then I figured that that kind of plot requires drawing skills and wit. And you were obviously ahead of me in those respects. (Though I may have overestimated your wit. *polite cough*) So I figured the only way I could win was to build a strong world out of the bits you gave me.

... Whiiiich would've been fine if it weren't for the format, because in the end that forced me to do an infodump in the START to show that I have a backstory, and more infodump in the middle to really set it up, and any fantasy world will just sound cliched if it's summarized in a few worrds, and it requires you to sympathize with a character who's only established very briefly and is mangled by someone else half of the time... basically I tried to make an inherently stupid format epic. Too bad I couldn't back out of that anymore by the time I realized it.

It would be very awesome/cool/tubular to have an huge climax involving everyone's characters (you know, the Rabbit Troopers, Inexplicably Greek Pako, Boosokus Guy, etc). But yeah, your last punch pretty much sealed this up.

I was kinda planning to include the troopers in my ending, really. Maybe I'll go a bit further than that... =3