Chronicles Of Botan

by Mareckirawr

Begin Reading Latest Page

Add to Favorites

Pages

Updates

On Hiatus

Last Update

1 Month Ago

Fans

Readers

Latest News

Similar Comics

PMD: Hanging in The Balance

TSSB Extra: All Roads Lead to Home

Chronicles Of Botan

Begin Reading Latest Page

Latest Pages

Authors

Mareckirawr

Recent Comments

Suspicious

@Dilly: Thank you!

Looks really clean and nice! I think I prefer the colors over the screentoned version too. These characters are really cutely drawn!

Explanation

Hello, I have taken a bit of a break from the comic to recharge batteries, and think bit more deeply where I want it to head.
I was not very happy with the screentones, I found them bit too hard to work with to get a nice effect, so I ran few polls with comparisons between coloured and Black and White pages. The votes ended up in favour of coloured pages. I've personally enjoyed working with the colours much more than Black and White , I hope you all will enjoy the new look too.

-Bren

and then they got lost in the forest and were never seen again

Bit of a bigger update this time

@Emc_502: Thank you! I'll do my best

Looks great!

Keep up the good work!

I decided not to update last week because the art wasn't looking very great, so I decided to take bit longer and touch things up

Two pages this week, hopefully I can keep up this pace!

Two new pages this week, apologies for no update last week I was in hospital and couldn't finish it on time.

The story continues, I wanna try making more pages next week.

New Page is here, hopefully starting next week I might be able to pump out bit more of them

An Update

The new page is here, apologies again for all the delays, things were just a bit out of my control, that's why I'm updating bit early this time around to show this project is still active, starting next week it's back to Friday updates.

@Racapa: Hello! I'm glad you like it! I am continuing on this, I was just little sick and gettin used to the new tablet, so art might be gettin a bit of an upgrade.

On the character design thing, my goal is to make them similar looking but to be told apart via horns/expressions etc. However I decided to look a bit more to make them stand out little more to eachother. I made some taller, bigger gaps between the eyes etc. But I think older pages had a lot of close up shots(too many) so I think it contributed to it given the nature of those designs. It's something I'm keepin an eye out on, to make it bit easier to read.

Okay, I read what is available at the moment
Consider me a fan!
I love it, the art style is really cute. The story fits the style quite well. A bit hard to tell the characters apart sometimes (the horns help, though). But the characters all have distinct personalities and I'm super curious about the story and the relations, as there's clearly more to stuff!
I really, really hope you continue on this, this is good stuff!

Small update this time, I'm a little bit sick, however I'll try to be updating every Friday however!

A little advice

All the characters look so similar that I thought the guys in the last panel were Apollo and Milton, it was only until the next page that I realized they were actually two new people I hadn't seen before. If their identities weren't explicitly stated in a text box, I would have assumed Apollo and Milton were twins.
I think it would do you well to overhaul the character designs. Their faces and bodies are basically identical and it makes it hard to follow the dialogue and empathize with them.
some suggestions would be to play with their proportions, make them shorter, taller, fatter, more muscular, etc. Their bodies should reflect their personality, one should be able to tell, just by looking, how a character will act. Milton, for example, has a personality that would go well with a short, square build.
The face is something that should be totally unique. unfortunately theirs are identical. their heads are all spherical, their eyes the same width apart, the same height, their snouts and mouths are all the same size and length. They even have the same three downward eyelashes. In the last panel the guy on the left is different, but it just looks like he's making a funny expression, his facial structure is still the same as the guy next to him.
The most obvious identifiers are their hairstyles and horns, but even they suffer from the same issues of similarity. Every hairstyle so far has been a slight variation on the same basic shape, that is, a sphere. Milton's pomp is the only hairstyle that can be easily and immediately identified from any angle, the others' are just changes to the bangs. Beyond just being similar, the hairstyles also obscure other important parts of the face that could be used to differentiate between the characters. The round fluffiness of the basic hairstyle obscures the chin, jawline,neck, and parts of the horn. We're left with just the eyes nose and mouth and a bit of the horn, and that combines to make a very copy paste feeling cast of characters.
Best advice I can give is to take the current design of each individual character and add and/or exaggerate about three defining traits. To use Milton as an example'd say change his height and emphasize his pomp.
Its a good start.

@Ralmon: Hello, thank you for the criticism! My goal with the designs was to make them bit similar looking with some different features to them, like you mentioned horns etc, as well as attitude of their expressions (Milton is always grumpy and has a curly pomadour, Apollo is always cheery and has a string of wool down his face etc). I think a lot of the issue with confusion might come from the mentioned close-up shots, which I am planning on moving away from in the future pages. However I'll keep this in mind and try to make it all more readable in future pages!
I'm glad you are enjoying it so far.

It is kinda difficult to tell the characters apart. I know they have differences like hair(mane?)style, eyebrows, clothes or horns; but they aren't distinctive enough. I just can't recognize anyone instantly. I have to study and look for the details to tell who is who. Recognition is specially difficult when the details are obstructed like with closeups (which happens often) or just obstructed by the frame or speech bubbles. The lack of colors isn't helping ...

Otherwise, aside from the weak conceptual framework of the character designs, the art is really well done. It is specially pleasant to look at and well executed.

And the story isn't bad.

So overall, a nice start.

Chronicles Of Botan

Tags

Latest News

Similar Comics

Chronicles Of Botan

Latest Pages

Authors

Recent Comments