POCKET COMICS, sponsor of the International Comic/School Contest 2023, gave their critique for the entry, "컨테이너".

 

View entry

Container / 컨테이너

Artist: Go Seo Jin / 고서진

School: WONMI HIGH SCHOOL

Country/Region: South Korea

Language: Korean

 

CRITIQUES

① The foliage in the background and in the panels in the front are all blending together. If you place panels where there isn't foliage or adjust colors of the panels and background, then they won't interfere with one another and it will read better.

② Two panels before this, there was a similar close-up on an eye, so you could take this out and the pacing will get better.

③ There is a panel right on top of this panel, so I suggest giving a bit more room between panels to make it easier to read (where the red arrow is).

④ The boy is facing in the same direction as the panel above. If you added the girl's point of view then the angle would be different and the scene could change more naturally.

⑤ With webtoons you don't want to guide the eye horizontally with panels and instead want to do it vertically. This would be more easily read if you made the panels lead the reader down.

 

Also you explain the situation here but the reader already knows this by this point so you could omit this.

⑥ The girl is using her eyes to pressure him but we can't see her whole face. If you showed that then it would read better. Try making this panel more vertical.

⑦ Like in ⑤, be careful not to place panels horizontally, and make them lead down as depicted by the arrows.

This will make it easier to read and the backgrounds you drew will be more visible.

The lines are also over the drawings so I would suggest placing them outside the panels.

⑧ You continue the close-up of the face and eyes for a long time as indicated by the red arrow. Add in more diversity in your scenes by showing the girl's surprised face and drawing her from the bust up.

⑨ In this comical scene where they are talking, the boy is represented by a shadowy figure. If you drew him in a chibi form the scene would stand out more.

⑩ It would be easier for us to understand that the scene changed if you first showed the classroom (zoom out) and then showed the girl (zoom-in).

⑪ The girl is probably looking up at the airplane, but judging by the angle of her neck it looks like she is looking even farther up than where the plane is. If you wanted to draw the plane bigger you could not have her in this panel and add a panel where it shows that she is looking up at a plane outside the window.

⑫ The following three panels look very similar to the ones that came before. The tempo can be improved if you made it: the plane → the teacher getting angry.

⑬ You can relieve the claustrophobic feeling by expanding the panel to include the top of her head and her feet to have a full-body shot of the girl.

⑭ I thought that you showed the girl's mixed feelings well by having her trapped in the window frame.

⑮ The scene where the two meet is divided into four frames, but I think it is too much. I think it would be better to keep it to about two panels and arrange them vertically to make it easier to read at a good pace.

In the first scene where the boy raises his hand, I think the main focus should not be the hand but the face of the boy smiling. I would suggest a panel of the boy with his hand raised and his face smiling and in a second panel, a scene of the two talking face to face at the entrance, seen from the side.

⑯The space scene is beautifully drawn, so I thought it was a waste to cut it off at the frame. If the background of the expanse of space frame was made a little brighter, and then connected to the pitch black scene of the container frame using a gradation, it would be a more effective webtoon transition technique.

⑰The bright background can be seen before the panel where the switch is turned on. If the background is dark until the panel where the switch is turned on and the panel with the bright background gets lowered to a red line, the story actions would be more easily understood and better expressed.

POCKET COMICS

International Comic/Manga School Contest 2023 Winners