NHN comico provided its detailled critique on "I Admire You A Whole Lot!", one of the entries to the International Comic/Manga School Contest 2021.

 

View entry

I Admire You A Whole Lot!

Pen name: Mado

School: School of the Museum of Fine Arts at Tufts University

Country/Region: United States of America

Language: English

 

View Critiques

● Overall commentary on the set.

This is a very moving story, and we think the art fits the story perfectly.

Even so, we'd like to offer some tips on how you can better tell your stories in webtoon format.

 

1. We think the picture of the admired artist and that of the protagonist should be clearly distinguished from each other. This can be done by drawing thin lines or by using a different coloring style for the artist's drawings.

 

2. It would be more effective to swap these two panels so that first you see the protagonist torn by the illustration, and then you see the illustration.

 

3. We think it would be better to draw a zoomed out view, make the whole thing fit in the size of a smartphone screen and show the laptop completely.

 

https://www.clipstudio.net/how-to-draw/archives/157055

You can refer to the "■ Tips for Creating Vertical Scrolling Webtoons" article to check if the frames and dialogs are not too big.

 

4. If you swap out the panels like you did in 2, you could have included a monologue like "How cute!".

 

5. It would be good if you put "I want to be like YOU someday!" in the monologue here, because in the next panel you see the drawings of the admired artist.

 

6. It would be better to shorten the space between the panels, as it seems somewhat excessive.

Spacing in itself helps to show the passage of time. However, in this case, the scene is continuous in time, so it would be better to shorten the spacing between panels to improve pacing.

 

7. You could add a scene that shows the relationship between the protagonist and her friend to make it easier to understand what happens next.

 

8. We think it's a bit much for the character to say "Good grief, what a pain" in front of the main character and the rest of her fans.

A sigh, for example, would have been enough.

 

9. Instead of the main character finding her drawing in the trash, the scene might have been more shocking if it was her friend who found it first.

 

10. The lighting in this panel looks as if it is coming from the smartphone, but since this scene follows the reading of her friend's warm message of encouragement, you could get out of the ordinary and use warm colors to express the heroine's feelings.

 

11. We think it would be better to use lighter colors in the space between the panels after the pep talk, instead of gradually lightening it with color, to express the protagonist's feelings more clearly.

 

 

 

comico

 

International Comic/Manga School Contest 2021 Winners