LINE MANGA, sponsor of the International Comic/School Contest 2022, gave their critique for the entry, "京那巴魯 - 尊貴的死者之地."

 

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京那巴魯 - 尊貴的死者之地

Pen name: theYOUNG

School: Tainan University of Technology

Country/Region: Taiwan

Language: Chinese

 

View Critiques

Pages 4 & 5

All-in-all the angle we are seeing the character at doesn’t really change.

It would have been nice to see a bit more variation.

 

Spend some time thinking about what it is you want to show off, and then fill in with blacks, screentone, and light accordingly.

In black-and-white comics, darker areas tend to draw the eye, so fill in with black on parts where you want the reader to linger, rather than just randomly adding solids to natural objects - this is an effective use of shading.

 

 

 

Pages 6 & 7

You could have included some of the animals and plants that they talk about in this scene to liven it up for the reader a bit.

 

 

 

Pages 8 & 9

This flashback is a bit sudden, no? It would have been nice if you had led into this with something else first.

 

Like, if he had talked about his mother and the mountain, or if it had some relation with something that comes up later in the story.

 

 

 

Pages 10 & 11

Is this meant to represent his crossing over from the real world?

It happens so suddenly it doesn’t feel real, so it may have been good to find out what really happens when there is an earthquake on a mountain, to make it more believable.

 

 

 

Pages 14 & 15

It felt like you struggled to put across exactly what the flashback was about to the reader.

I feel like if you had put a little more thought into what you wanted to convey, it would have been easier to understand.

 

 

 

Pages 20 & 21

Fewer flashbacks interspersed in the story might have been better.

Also, this might have been better to have earlier in the story.

 

 

 

Pages 24 & 25

I wanted to know a bit more about the various thoughts on the sanctuary of the dead at this point.

 

 

 

Pages 28 & 29

The scenes leading up to this were excellent.

But unfortunately, I think you may have thought too much about the impressive scenes like this and neglected to tie them together with a compelling manga story.

I wish you could have delved further into those fundamental human emotions like why the protagonist decided to climb the mountain, and his relationship with his mother.

 

 

 

Pages 35 & 36

The development at the end, climbing and facing death, was very well done.

 

One piece of advice - because the story is based on a relatively recent incident, the people who were affected might still find it upsetting.

Try to pay a bit more attention to things like that in the future as a comic artist.

 

That isn’t to say that these kinds of stories are off-limits, but if you do decide to write about something like this, you should do it responsibly and bring a kind of innovation in storytelling to it.

 

LINE MANGA

 

International Comic/Manga School Contest 2022 Winners