Comico, a sponsor of the International Comic/School Contest 2022, gave their critique for the entry, "吟遊詩人."

 

View entry

吟遊詩人

Pen name: ナカヤマ

School: Nagoya Zokei University of Art & Design

Country/Region: Japan

Language: Japanese

 

View Critiques

1) The atmosphere of the first panel with the sunset and the back of the cat evoked that lonely feeling well. It would have been better for the scrolling effect transition to move the second panel under the third. It would go from a sky to an empty town, and then you would get the lone cat, which would make the scene feel even more desolate.

 

2) After showing the cat's back, you would see the face, which would help convey what is being thought about in this lonely scene.

 

3) This arm is reaching out to the cat in a different scene than the above, so I would put some blank space after the #2 panel to make it seem like time is passing as this reminiscing is happening.

 

Webtoons allow you to manipulate time with empty space, so make good use of these between each panel.

 

 

 

4) I assume this scene is conveying the girl singing in the woods, so you want to focus on the girl. Make the girl in #5 bigger and the arm in #4 smaller, or don't use an arm at all and go with musical notes in the air to indicate singing.

 

5) As I wrote above, this is where you want to draw attention, so you would want to make this panel bigger to give a stronger impact.

 

 

 

6) This creature suddenly appears, and it is a bit hard to understand the context. Doing a bird's eye view of the scene would let us know where the girl we just saw and this creature are.

 

7) The space left around this speech bubble is a good way to change the scene. The next scene is not the next day, so it would have been good to add in "Be careful going home" or another line like that to let the reader know that we are not going to the next day and instead, this girl is going home and the next scene is her getting home.

 

 

 

 

8) Pay attention to where you are leading the reader visually and place lines a bit lower. When you order information, it gets easier to read; the reader sees the angry face and then reads the corresponding line.

 

9) The man is saying this line, so it would be easier to read if this speech bubble was up more, overlapping with the panel above.

 

#9 is where the girl has a line, so it might be good to put that where #9 is or add another panel with her expression.

 

Overall this piece had a mix of lonely and warm scenes, was well-balanced, and left me with a lot of feelings!

 

The atmosphere was really something, so if you can improve the readability and draw it out with more thought on who is feeling what, it will read easier and reach the reader's heart.

 

POCKET COMICS

 

International Comic/Manga School Contest 2022 Winners