{"id":10867,"date":"2010-04-24T15:06:47","date_gmt":"2010-04-24T20:06:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/opticalsloth.com\/?p=10867"},"modified":"2010-04-01T18:19:41","modified_gmt":"2010-04-01T23:19:41","slug":"mcfalls-jerell-battles-of-paradise-1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/opticalsloth.com\/?p=10867","title":{"rendered":"McFalls, Jerell – Battles of Paradise #1"},"content":{"rendered":"

E-mail<\/a><\/p>\n

\"battles11\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Battles of Paradise #1<\/strong><\/p>\n

I’ll freely confess to a bit of a double standard in my reviewing policy.\u00c2\u00a0 If somebody sends me a comic that looks terrible, has misspelled words all over the place and no discernible story, AND they’ve sent much better stuff in the past, I’ll probably tear it apart.\u00c2\u00a0 If, however, somebody is sending me their first comic, and it has more than a few flaws, I tend to try a different approach: offering some (here’s hoping) practical advice.\u00c2\u00a0 Jerell is 18, this appears to be his first comic, and he has a few basics to learn.\u00c2\u00a0 I’m a big fan of everybody doing comics, and it’s clear that he has a decent imagination, so this should in no way be taken as discouragement from doing more comics.\u00c2\u00a0 That being said, much needs to be improved here.\u00c2\u00a0 Full disclosure: this is an anime-style comic, something I probably wouldn’t have liked anyway, just to throw that out there.\u00c2\u00a0 The story, which would be a little difficult to tell if it wasn’t for the synopsis he thoughtfully included, is that demons are hunting after a princess for her land, and a young boy keeps popping up in time to save her.\u00c2\u00a0 She develops an instant crush and eventually gives him some of her power so he can become a demon slayer.\u00c2\u00a0 The trouble is that I was never able to really get into the story because of the number of basic errors contained.\u00c2\u00a0 The sample page should give you a clue, but here are my suggestions, and this may well go for some of you people who think you have this comics thing down pat as well.\u00c2\u00a0 First, use a spell check.\u00c2\u00a0 I know, they don’t come installed on the comics page. If you’re not a particularly good speller, go to a place like dictionary.com and type in every word that’s more than two syllables.\u00c2\u00a0 It sounds ridiculous, I know, but you’d be amazed at how many errors this can fix, and the more times you do it, the more you’re likely to learn.\u00c2\u00a0 For example, “couragous” looks right if you don’t know any better, but they crammed an “e” in there towards the end.\u00c2\u00a0 Next, keep your letters in the word bubbles\/boxes.\u00c2\u00a0 Maybe once or twice in a comic you can creep outside the lines a bit, or maybe if that’s an aesthetic choice for your comic.\u00c2\u00a0 If it happens multiple times on every page, you need to plan your dialogue a bit better.\u00c2\u00a0 If all else fails, write the words in first and then box them in.\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0 You also need to know when to use “to” or “too”, “their” or “they’re”, etc.\u00c2\u00a0 It drives me batty, and I know I’m not alone on that.\u00c2\u00a0 You also shouldn’t need to write what’s happening in the panels, as Jerell will often use [runs] or [fall].\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0 You have to trust in your ability to be able to show that action in the panel, as in most of the cases where he used brackets I could already see what was happening.\u00c2\u00a0 In general, don’t be afraid to use bigger panels.\u00c2\u00a0 There were a few battle scenes in here where everything was crammed into little panels and the brackets really were necessary.\u00c2\u00a0 Solution: give more room for the action.\u00c2\u00a0 I hope this doesn’t come across like I’m picking on the guy, but when you’re 18 a knowledge of the basics will take you a long way.\u00c2\u00a0 Here’s hoping I get to see Battles of Paradise #2 to see what leaps the man has taken forward, but I’d chalk #1 up, except to the most diehard of anime fans, as a learning experience.\u00c2\u00a0 No price listed, I’m guessing a couple of bucks.<\/p>\n

\"battles12\"<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

E-mail Battles of Paradise #1 I’ll freely confess to a bit of a double standard in my reviewing policy.\u00c2\u00a0 If somebody sends me a comic that looks terrible, has misspelled words all over the place and no discernible story, AND they’ve sent much better stuff in the past, I’ll probably tear it apart.\u00c2\u00a0 If, however, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[1633,3075],"class_list":["post-10867","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reviews","tag-battles-of-paradise","tag-jerell-mcfalls"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/opticalsloth.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10867","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/opticalsloth.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/opticalsloth.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/opticalsloth.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/opticalsloth.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10867"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/opticalsloth.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10867\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10868,"href":"https:\/\/opticalsloth.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10867\/revisions\/10868"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/opticalsloth.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10867"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/opticalsloth.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10867"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/opticalsloth.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10867"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}