/ic/ - Artwork/Critique

>>4713636

I think the biggest thing holding the one-shot back though is the fact that the visuals are very hard to look at. I don't mean that in the sense that they're ugly (there's some good foundational drawing in there), I mean that in the sense that everything is so loose and open that I found myself having to work in order to parse what was going on on the page. Things were okay for the robot fight scenes (likely mostly because they were happening on top of blank backgrounds), but as soon as characters or objects were placed in environments or against backgrounds, things became very messy and confusing. The light and sketchy lines and hatching that you use throughout also make black fills very jarring. Every time they appear, they stand out to a huge degree, and become the most dominant thing on the page. This becomes especially unfortunate when the black-haired girl gets more and more screentime, as her hair is extremely distracting and pulls me out of the panel flow. Visually, it feels more like a set of roughs or a Name than a finished work.

I would highly suggest investing more time into working on your line confidence and your inking skills so that you can generate cleaner pages and better element separation.

As a bit of an aside, I personally would have gone with an alternative robot design as well. It feels very light-weight and "actionfigure-y" to me; for something named the "Iron Lung," I would have expected a machine with a greater sense of scale, bulk, and weight to it, but that's pure preference on my end. I'm sure other readers would disagree.

All in all, I think you have a great overall story that's unfortunately marred by what feels like a desire for quickness in the art and writing stages. It's okay to slow down; give yourself a little more trust and patience and take your time, especially when it comes to keeping your art clean. Greater readability would very much increase the power of the fight scenes and the overall narrative.