[YatesOfYore]

Hey all,

I've FINALLY got some time today to work on retouching vol II for print. While I'd love it if anyone who has the time could go over it and note any spelling mistakes or any other sort of error, I would also really love it if you had any feed back on how to redo the ch4 cover. I kind of hate it, but I'm feeling stumped as to what to replace it with.

Anyhow, any politely worded feedback is welcome! Thanks!
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Keeper of Nanashi's Vambraces and the Amethyst Trees.

PS: Don't panic! I changed my username - I'm not an impostor!

[Asa]

Will we get editor's credit?!?

I will definitely go through tomorrow, if I'll have time and a computer.
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Self-styled Forum Grandmother, because I hand out nicknames and hugs whether you want them or not. ^_^

Keeper of the Library and the Gateway to Haven

Nem: "It's the sort of face you just know is getting ready to poke you with something sharp."
BS: "...then insist you eat a brownie."
__________________
If we shadows have offended,
Think but this and all is mended...
Give me your hands if we be friends,
And Robin shall restore amends.

[Maeniel]

I think Zabby should take up the whole cover, since it's the chapter he's introduced...but I might be bias.

Alternately, what about a five/six-panel close-up of each of their augment stones? Or a "hands in" kind of thing? Or a picture of Zabby eating gargoyle toes? OR a blueprint of Haven?

I'm sure Asa will do a fine job of catching any spelling/grammatical errors, but I'll read through as well.
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Keeper of Zaebos' and Jormand's powers.

[Tinu.]

Perhaps if you chose some of the characters being introduced in the chapter and did plain, solid silhouettes instead of the see-though kind? It's possible to see details on the current cover, which is a little distracting. There are also a lot of characters on this cover. Which makes sense; but it does make it seem overly busy. Three or so characters would look a bit cleaner, in my opinion.
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Keeper of Gaia and all the books on Earthsong

"If you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will spend its whole life believing it is stupid."
~Einstein

[Tamir]

I did a quick runthrough, looking only at the text, and came up with the following:

Page 36 - I think you meant "lightning", not "lighting".

Page 49 - There should probably be a space between "other" and "worlds".

Page 62 - not a mistake per se, but you wrote "pre-war" with a hyphen and "postwar" as a single word.

Page 65 - "anytime" and "everyday" should probably be separated into two words each.

Also... I don't think "alright" is a word, is it? I remember learning that only "all right" is legit. Anyhow, the word shows up surprisingly often: 15 17 28 38 53 60 71

Hopefully I'll have time soon to look for errors in the pictures as well. And I've gotta say, it was really fun to read through the volume again. I should do that more often.

[Asa]

Alright as one word has been accepted, so it's not really an error. I personally prefer 'all right', but it's a matter of preference.

The instance of 'anytime' can be argued either way, but in this usage 'everyday' should be two words, as Tam noted.

*scowls* The internet was down today. I'll go through it now and get back to you if I see anything else.

It's so fun to see how the art has evolved. Are you going to homogenize it for publication, or leave it as is?


EDIT: I noticed starting on page 15 that your use of periods is sporadic. My suggestions is to go through and pick one or the other - use them or don't. Page 17 is a good example, in K'thonya's speech.

Nothing besides that, besides what Tam said, struck me. I'm sure other people might find other things. The only thing that bothers me is the emphasis of certain words. This is something that bugs me in all comics, not you specifically, so I don't know whether you even want to get into it. But my personal preference would be to remove the majority of the italics and bolding, and save it for the real emphasis that the reader can't come up with on his own.
_________________
Self-styled Forum Grandmother, because I hand out nicknames and hugs whether you want them or not. ^_^

Keeper of the Library and the Gateway to Haven

Nem: "It's the sort of face you just know is getting ready to poke you with something sharp."
BS: "...then insist you eat a brownie."
__________________
If we shadows have offended,
Think but this and all is mended...
Give me your hands if we be friends,
And Robin shall restore amends.

[YatesOfYore]

Excellent! Thank you all! Keep it coming if you find anything else. I use "alright" in the sense of "okay" or "good" ie "That song was alright!" or "Alright! I'm coming!". I would use "all right" if I was talking about how many questions I answered correctly on a math quiz lol...

But I was always taught that it could go either way, so whatever floats your boat, I guess!

I am indeed tweaking a bunch of the art in the first chapter - there's such a difference in style from the beginning and end of that volume that they just feel like they don't belong together.

It's mostly just redrawing the noses, fixing a few proportions, and the occasional redo of some anime-ish bug eyes. (I hate redoing the eyes the most, especially since Willow's hair often partially covers them. AUGH.)

Thankfully the last 1.5 chapters won't need too much work, art-wise at least.

I'm also rewriting some of the dialog so that it flows better/doesn't clutter up the page. Not much though! Periods are definitely something I will be going back and fixing too. I can't remember why I decided not to include them, but it was the wrong choice regardless!

Thanks for the suggestions re: ch4 cover. I'm still feeling undecided though, so lemme know if you have any other ideas!
_________________
Keeper of Nanashi's Vambraces and the Amethyst Trees.

PS: Don't panic! I changed my username - I'm not an impostor!

[Tyris]

Aside from that which has already been said:

Page 20, panel 2 - "wack" means "crazy" (plus a few other meanings of "bad" if you're a rapper); the word you want is "whack."

Page 24, panel 3 - this might just be us, but wouldn't you normally put the ellipses after "oh" and "that's" rather than before "that's" and "okay"? That seems to be the way you've done it when using spaces rather than line breaks.

Page 39, panel 1 - "much" and "pixie" are separated by a comma, but no space. You might want both.

Page 51, panel 4 - it's the ellipsis inconsistency thing again. The one between "mean" and "certainly" has spaces on both sides (unusual) but the others on the page (at least, the others that don't begin a bubble) have a space only on the right (normal).

Page 58, panel 4 - it is becoming clear from the emerging pattern that a certain someone has more of a problem with ellipses than any normal person is likely to. Read on with that in min*CLANG* Thank you. *ahem* Anyway... yeah. Ellipsis with two dots instead of three between "I" and "I'm." Sorry.

Page 78, panel 3 - sad as this is starting to sound, might as well be consistent... space to left of ellipsis probably shouldn't exist.

Page 104, panel 5 - go on, take a wild guess. We're pretty predictable.

Page 106, panel 4 - uh, actually, you're right here. Weren't sure about "till" so we looked it up, and apparently it's standard and "'til" is nonstandard, so... uh... ignore this line.
Hey, at least it wasn't more whining about ellipses, right?

--------------------

The chapter 4 cover looks pretty sweet already. Maybe reduce them entirely to silhouettes instead of having transparent detail though?
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You can't look dignified when you're having fun.
Dubbed "Tetris" by Asa... apparently.
Keeper of Nanashi's ghostly blue visage and Felucca's hypothetical ejecting nose-cone.

"It's a sad thing when a man loses his cookie." - Nem

[Tinu.]

This is a nit-picky detail that I might just be imagining, so feel free to ignore it:

On the subject of ellipses in general, it looks like you sometimes put spaces between each dot in the ellipses, and sometimes you don't.
There is supposed to be a space between each dot, grammatically (as far as I can recall). If there isn't enough room, then there isn't. But they should probably be consistent.
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Keeper of Gaia and all the books on Earthsong

"If you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will spend its whole life believing it is stupid."
~Einstein

[Asa]

That, I think, is an either or. I tend not to put spaces between, but I do recall Tinalles giving a longer explanation. If I recall correctly, formal usage uses spaces, and informal usage does not. That and/or 'proper' usage uses spaces, but accepted vernacular doesn't. Meaning the stylebooks will tell you to put in spaces, but most people don't bother.

In any regard, consistency is key!
_________________
Self-styled Forum Grandmother, because I hand out nicknames and hugs whether you want them or not. ^_^

Keeper of the Library and the Gateway to Haven

Nem: "It's the sort of face you just know is getting ready to poke you with something sharp."
BS: "...then insist you eat a brownie."
__________________
If we shadows have offended,
Think but this and all is mended...
Give me your hands if we be friends,
And Robin shall restore amends.