Page 1104…
Hi all…
I’m slowly catching up. These scenes are taking forever to render. But I think I’ll be OK.
Not sure if sound effects were needed here or not.
Other than that….I hope you’re enjoying the pages.
🙂
Scott
Hi all…
I’m slowly catching up. These scenes are taking forever to render. But I think I’ll be OK.
Not sure if sound effects were needed here or not.
Other than that….I hope you’re enjoying the pages.
🙂
Scott
What, no blood?! Not very realistic for this comic 🙁
Sorta agree. If Nico can bleed green while getting scarred then others should bleed their colours. No need for great gouting fountains like Manga, but melee damage aint pretty. Between impacts giving medium velocity spatter, there are severed arteries to deal with for the looks of the position for some of those blades. End scene should have sullied blades at least. Nice chain mail. Spose it makes rendering take longer with all the everchanging shades and light.
Woot! Merlin kicks but!
“We’re knights of the round table, We’re ve-ry form-idable”
Btw, great lighting, page looks great, yeah a slightly reddish tone to the edges of swords and stuff might have been more realistic.
Don’t worry ’bout sound effects, as I read it I heard “clash clang” “ching” “pow” “birds chirping”
Annnnnnd que the witty comment from Silverwolf!
Not surprised they are taking so long. Grass uses a lot of render time. Great action scenes! I would post work a little blood on the weapons and some of the uniforms when you have time, but for fresh off the render machine pics, they’re fine. I don’t think people realize the amount of time and work that goes into CG art. Something for you to freshen up before they go into the next book. 🙂
Arthur: “Wait…weren’t we in a fight scene? Where did all the bad guys go?”
Offscreen: “Editing mistake, sorry.”
Some detail:
In 1101, bottom panel, the large Viking-helmeted guy (“VHG”) with the orange cape is on the far right in the picture. In 1102, bottom panel, still so. The guy causing his demise, with some strange red shouldercover and a brown goatee, is on the opposite side of the battle scene.
Here in 1104, he is still there, and it appears that the VHG has passed behind Arthur, in front of Percival, unclear but most likely behind Merlin as well, without entering combat and finally meeting his destiny on the opposite side.
This appears to be a very strange route to take during a battle, especially if his main target is/was Arthur! Apart from the chaotic effect it creates, would you please explain this, Scott?
(Oh – maybe this guy was blind and tried to feel his way around! 😀 )
Actually, after taking another look at 1103, it looks like ha crossed in front of his friends some time between 1102 and 1103 and entered Arthur’s group to the right of Merlin. Even though he would normally keep his position in the attacking rank and would normally have entered on the opposite side.
Oh – maybe it is a tribute to the “sudden hyperspace” in Lancelot’s charge in “Monty Python and the Holy Grail”? 😀
These are characters we don’t really know or care about waving swords around. The plot’s not being advanced noticeably, and we aren’t learning stuff. Nice rendering and lighting, but what’s happened to the story telling?
Oh, yeah. I was agreeing from a realistic battle scene stand point. And I totally understand why there was no blood (they were using blunt blades j/k). Its not like Im wanting Braveheart lvl. In fact, when one looks, theres no actual slicing or stabing going on. Whacking the enemy with forehead, hilt and staff yes. I liked it, and ttly kid appropriate. If anyone thought I was trying to find fault with the comic, I’m sorry. Ttly not what I ment. Keep up the good work Scott, thanks for the great comics!^^
My main concern is that it barely looks like an action scene. Everything feels stiff.
If it weren’t a daily comic (if it were in a book, for instance) we could simply look at the next panel. Taking a few panels to show action like this is common. It is simply the wait between panels that causes a perceived “stagnation.” Be patient. I, for one, am sure there is a reason for these “action scenes”!
Yeah kind of like a very awkward dance scene. Percivial almost looks like he’s whispering to the guy in the first panel gave me a giggle hehe
XD made me giggle
NO! no sound effects! sometimes there is a need for them, but i am generally against using them. i say, if you have to ask, don’t use them. if you think you need them, alter the picture.
sorry about that, sound effects are one of my comic pet peeves.
on another note, i like this action sequence. I think you did a good job showing a fight while still keeping it kid-friendly (though a little blood wouldn’t hurt, especially on their swords in the last panel to show 1. why the fight was short and 2. why you don’t attack the King)
I agree. Written sound effects work well in some kinds of comics, but I don’t think would fit the tone of this Arthurian battle at all. Blood would help set the scene, though, as others have said.
Needs blood, gore and motion lines 😉
yeah, I think sound effects are needed to bring it to life, looks like posed figures, and some gore and stuff.
I agree on the no sound effects bit, but that’s partly because when I played the scene in my head silently, it was pretty intense and eerie…and I liked it that way.
The comic is supposed to be rated K. Blood and gore would sort of ruin that… I do agree that it would make it more realistic, but come on, would you want your seven year old reading something where someone gets sliced open? Sorry, not my idea of a good idea.
It actually took me a minute to realize that the bad guys *didn’t* just dissapear
Since it’s going to be in a childrens’ book, I like the action, as is! Looks great to me! And as far as the sound effects go, I’m usually for them, but not in this case. Leaving out the motion lines and sound effects give these panels a sort of muted heat of battle look. For me, it increased the intensity and seriousness of the scene.
Forget sound effects, we need battle cries!
“Have at thee knave!” “For Camelot!” “I’ve got a wedgie!”
You know, that sort of thing.
…and some TV shows. Batta-batta-batta-batta, Batta-batta-batta-batta, BATMAN!!
I think some sound effects would help make this page a little more effective. Considering the comic is done in a style which aims more to a younger audience, no blood is alright by me, but I agree that it does seem inconsistent with Nico having bled.
add blur effects and speed lines I suppose? And maybe let the last panel look more like a glorious victory. No captions, gotta make up for it 🙂
“It’s just a flesh wound!”
It’s to show that Camelot is at war. It was implied before, but a couple of pages of humans being humans has a more lasting effect on the reader and further drives the notion of “people like this shouldn’t be in Dreamland.”
Motion lines WOULD be good. In panel three, I analyze the situtation and decide that Merlin must have already struck the guy in red, but it DOES at first glance look like he has just spotted him and is about to strike him shortly.
motion lines may look a bit artificial; what about motion blur? (It can be post-worked into the image for all we care.) Also, blood or not, I think what will help the scene a LOT is to (like they say in comics how-tos) exaggerate the striking/falling postures. Having the characters stand more or less upright makes them look stiff in a non-animated medium; in order to bring the motion across an essentially stiff medium, the postures need to be exaggerated and off-kilter (our brains naturally try to adjust off-kilter postures to more plausible ones – thus automatically inferring motion where the medium actually has none).
For example, having Merlin stand essentially upright and holding his staff essentially in a neutral position (or not very far from a neutral position) looks very stiff. Having his attacker essentially stand upright (or mostly so) after being struck is also very stiff. What would help if Merlin’s posture is twisted to one side, with his staff extended outwards at an even farther angle, and his attacker falling backwards, feet off the ground, body horizontal (or more). Yes, this is an unrealistic posture, but face it: in a stiff medium, exaggeration is *needed* to bring the action across. Blood really is secondary and probably even unnecessary if the character poses are exaggerated enough to convey the force of the blows.
I think that Scott is trying to keep up the kid-friendly aspect here. So, while it isn’t realistic, it is good to only add blood at important parts, like Nicodemus getting scarred, as it adds emphasis due to the lack of blood everywhere else. If every villain who gets whacked bleeds, not only do parents tell younger kids not to read Dreamland, but these important wounds lose a sense of importance.
Motion lines might be more trouble than they’re worth. I like the frame-by-frame action: it really feels like being in a battle, and everything has slowed down to be one picture at a time.
Sound effects would ruin the battle. It kind of reminds me of Firefly and Serenity, where the space-battles had no noise. Granted, this isn’t the vacuum of outer space, but the lack of sound effects helps with the total-absorption I mentioned before: everything has slowed down to be single shots in the battle.
My thoughts on blood are a toss-up. Yeah, a bit of blood on the swords might look really cool, and still keep it PG, but guys: this IS a kid’s comic. Kids get so much blood and gore these days, it really is refreshing to see a comic that just has some implied violence. There is also plenty of room to leave gore up to the imagination of the reader.
There’s no real bloodshed in most of the fights and it’s things like that that make me confident and comfortable to sit down with my young sons and read this comic. I agree with Dreamer that the only times that we’ve seen blood has been at the appropriately dramatic scenes and it really helps add impact without making it gory.
The style of images here remind me of the fight Alex had with the pirates early in the story. The was no blood in that fight either but there was no doubt about what was going on and it certainly cant be affecting the story telling because my 6 & 8 yr olds could easily understand the frame by frame break down.
i think you might be over anylizing it. do picaso fans try and figure out why he painted someones nose where his eye should be? no. dont think too hard about it, instead try and enjoy the magnificance that is dreamland. 🙂 no offence.
remember that it is a kid friendly comic. I’m all for action and violance, but we have enough of it on tv, games, and movies. Would it hurt to have one “inocent” piece of matirial on the internet? yea this could have been more dramatic with a little bloodshed in it, but what about the 6 year old who reads these every night before bed? don’t get me wrong, I’m a fan of violance, but I consider this comic a “family” comic and whouldn’t change it at all.
totaly agree with you. oh and the comic is awesome the way it is. we can imagine the noises, and its great. This way depending on your age you can imagine it anyway you want it to be. In a way your making us dream about it, or at least day dream, which is bringing us more into the world that you have created.
Maybe he was all talk and little action… Bold words, but not the real courage to see it through, so he sneaks, ducks, and so on, until confronted head on with nowhere to run…
Or perhaps they each had their assigned targets, so he snuck behind and past Arthur to get to his assignement.
Another possibility:
When we first see them, they look like they’re about to converge. So it’s possible that the people at both ends of their line did some sort of “X” trajectory, where the one from the right met Arthur where the two bars meet, and VHG snuck behind Arthur, and kept going on his original trajectory.
Since the story, for the time being, is set in Arthurian times I would like to suggest another author that created another famous strip from this era. His name was Hal Foster and the name of the strip is Prince Valiant.
You don’t see much blood and goore in Prince Valiant, although there are lots of swordfighting and battles in the strip. And where there is blood, then it is either on the swords or to illustrate some of the smaller wounds on the characters.
Otherwise I don’t mind the lack of blood in the strip above. I have enjoyed the story so far. Keep it up Scott!
“And then…the render farm suffered a fatal heart attack! The CGI villains were no more.”
Just came to weigh in on the blood issue. I say in moderation it would be nice, as I’ve always felt that shielding people (mainly kids) from the truth is more dangerous. I’d rather there be a small amount of blood than a kid think he won’t bleed if he stabs himself… perhaps that’s an extreme example, but hopefully it gets my point across.
Besides, this is the Middle Ages. They didn’t have blood back then.