DUPUIS, sponsor of the International Comic/School Contest 2023, gave their critique for the entry, "Sa couronne".

 

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Her Crown / Sa couronne

Artist: Felizs_art

School: ESA Saint-Luc

Country/Region: Belgium

Language: French

 

CRITIQUES

This imagery is beautiful but suggests a completely different work; more intimate, less realistic, and less epic than the one that follows. I would have preferred a cover image with more impact leaning towards dark fantasy that clearly embraces the graphic elements of the story.

① In fantasy comics, it is common to include in a panel to tell the reader the basic geographical and temporal information such as "Castle XXXX, country of XXXX, era XXXX."

② In this first page, it is important to establish the setting and not overwhelm the reader with excessive amounts of text that lack clarity in context. It would have been better to dedicate a third or half of the page to a panoramic view of the castle and its village, and save the discussion of what is happening in the courtyard for later (perhaps on page 8 or 13, where the hero could summarize it in a single word).

 

The effect of the character's cape moving in the third panel is not working well.

 

Keeping the first and last speech bubble as information would probably be sufficient.

③ It would have been good to show the courtyard without telling us this (a panel with the queen in the background, for example).

④ The main character later appears without her helmet. It would be good to show her in this sequence, removing the helmet to clearly reveal her fair face and light-colored hair in the final image. This would enhance the understanding of the next page.

 

The armor looks very stylish; however, it is unfortunate that the dark rendering obscures the details, as we don't get to see them clearly enough.

⑤ This panel is visually weak, possibly due to the difficulty of combining two shadowed figures with dialogue. Since it is the girl from panel 3 who continues speaking, the speech bubble tail is not necessary, and the foreground with the two heads is also unnecessary. This would allow more space to better depict the queen and the paladin.

⑥ Until this point in the story, it has been hard to understand that the character Aro is a woman. You need to make her identity clearer in the two preceding pages. If a scene cannot be understood without text, it may indicate that we haven't been shown what we need to know.

⑦ It would have been good to restructure these three lines to alleviate the busyness when reading the top panels.

Panel 1 and 2 with line 1,

Panel 3 and 4 with 2,

and Panel 5 and 6 with 3.

⑧ Don't hesitate to use a double speech bubble or two separate bubbles when there are two sentences, as seen here, or when a sentence is very long.

⑨ It's great to dedicate a full page to epic action, which readers generally appreciate in this genre. However, it is important to pay more attention to the drawing and rendering, making it less like a storyboard to allow readers to appreciate the artistic qualities of the author.

⑩ The way you show movement, with these two strikes happening simultaneously, is not well conveyed here. The sword in the foreground appears to be stationary.

⑪ It would be better to split the text into multiple speech bubbles with a maximum of one sentence per bubble, in order to keep a good reading pace and avoid a wall of text.

⑫ In general you need to polish your writing, making the text more dynamic, natural, without redundancies, repetitions, and French errors.

⑬ Having Aro speak a little more would bring some theatricality to this scene. For example:

"My queen..."

"Aro..."

 

Additionally, it would have been better to introduce the queen's name on page 1 or 2.

⑭ Focusing on a close-up of the mouth is not very effective in this case. Choosing a close-up of Aro's furious face or her intense gaze would have had a greater impact.

⑮ It would be better to show the crown shining in her hand more clearly.

Pay attention to details. Aro picks up the crown with her right hand, but here it is depicted as the opposite.

DUPUIS

International Comic/Manga School Contest 2023 Winners