Parasocial - A Cat & Company Short

[u/HaloSeekers]

This is a short story I put together with an artist who goes by "divine art" on Discord. One deficiency I did notice is that it doesn't clearly introduce the cast of characters. Look here for more information.

I'd love any feedback.

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[u/NicholasIvins]

One thing that jumps out at me, and is a personal pet peeve of mine, is reused artwork from panel to panel. On the third page the blonde woman appears five times but is only actually drawn two times. The two dudes get reused on that page too and looks kinda funny. There are other instances where the artist is recycling art but has hidden it better, like adding in an arm, changing the angle of the head. This is the correct way to do it, but that straight up copy pasting in successive panels on page 3 is so conspicuous.

On the second page I don't think the art of the dude is being reused but it looks visually repetitive all the same. They very well could have done a copy paste job there and I suppose it's good they didn't, but the result is still kind of dull looking all the same when you have basically the same panel duplicated three times in a row but zoomed in. The artist has a polished and detailed style, but I feel that they're cutting corners at the expense of storytelling. The other pages don't have these issues, generally.

The text bubbles are also overly large and not formatted well with the text at all. It doesn't match the quality of the art.

[u/HaloSeekers → u/NicholasIvins]

Thanks for having a look at it!

Repetition has its uses in visual storytelling. A lot of cinematic scenes need at least a little repetition to maintain panel-to-panel coherence, and it's pretty common in dialogue-heavy scenes and can be very effective at conveying the rhythm of a conversation. When I write a scene with a lot of dialogue, I try to provide the artist suggestions how characters not actively talking react to the conversation, which should mitigate some of these issues.

The artist was also the one who did the lettering. I just wrote the thing.

Did you end up looking at the chat window at all on the panels where Dylan is streaming? There's nothing essential to the plot there, but there's definitely stuff going on in there.

[u/MichaelSweater → u/HaloSeekers]

Take the crit. The copy pasting looks really bad on the page. When you see the panels together your eye sees all of the reused art at the same time as a pattern.

[u/NicholasIvins → u/HaloSeekers]

Yeah, I understand intentional visual repetition and have used it myself. In the context of comics, it's very useful in setting up rhythm for visual gags in short strips.

That having been said, I feel like you're dodging the point of my criticism, though. Are you saying that copy pasting the blonde woman several times in one page served a thematic or storytelling purpose? Your artist can not do that while still maintaining the visual coherence and rhythm of the scene.

I'm not trying to be harsh on you. This is something that I see big publishers like Marvel and DC do, and it's often way more blatant than in your comic. Just something I always notice whenever it happens and it immediately takes me out of the scene like bad special effects.

I think it's important to keep in mind that comics is a visual medium and needs to work a bit harder during conversation scenes to maintain visual dynamism. It's OK to jump around to different perspectives and vantage points to keep the eye moving. Your artist generally does that, but the pages I pointed out were the spots where they didn't and could use some revision.

On the second page for example, the top row of the guy is good because he's posing different in each one. The bottom row just throws me because of the repetition - the exact same pose each time, just zoomed in - especially combined with the top row. If you replaced the middle panel with a reaction shot if the two women, that could help break it up.

And I would consider hiring a professional letterer instead of having the artist handle it. Probably the last thing you want to do, but it would be worth it. They're very different disciplines.

[u/HaloSeekers → u/NicholasIvins]

It might be interesting to compare the art to the script as written. I try to write in hints for the artist to make sure conversations aren't too static, and I may have been a little too focused on setting up the rest of the story this time. I also try to use emphasis in dialogue to get at least some of the dynamics of the spoken word into the text; while I thought it was a shame this got lost, I also thought that the lettering was clear and readable, which was my first priority.

Thanks for taking time to look at this. It means a lot to me.

[u/TheKingsWeb → u/HaloSeekers]

I would respectfully disagree with the other commentors. I can see why some might find it lazy or distracting but if nothing's changing and its a dialogue heavy page, I don't see the issue in cutting a couple corners haha. Each their own.

[u/StoriesToonHQ]

The cast introduction point and the reused artwork point are probably the same problem showing up in two places. If one character gets five appearances from two drawings, that is also the character the reader has the least visual grip on, so the repetition and the who-is-this feeling feed each other rather than being separate issues.

A small opening page built around distinct silhouettes, or one repeated prop per character, might do more for the cast than extra drawings would. It gives the eye something to hold onto before the panels start stacking.

Did you try introducing them by silhouette first, or was the order of the pages decided before the cast settled?

[u/HaloSeekers → u/StoriesToonHQ]

This is a self-contained 8 page story that's part of a larger project. In all likelihood, this would be in an anthology where I would have an intro page or other stories where I would flesh out the cast.

Fortunately, I don't think I have to worry about people not being able to tell the characters apart. :)

[u/StoriesToonHQ → u/HaloSeekers]

An anthology framing solves a lot. Each short gets to be its own thing and nobody arrives in the middle of something. If an intro page does show up later, I would keep it to one. Anything longer starts competing with the story instead of setting it up.