I vote for 1 and 3. Thank you. ---------
Comments
1.Bill Blume " Ten Minutes To Midnight " heheh. Good story. Great art, 'specially the backgrounds. That hallway, wow. My only complaint is page 4. The arms on the big guy are too short, even when taking into account perspective. Hands are too small, a hand extended should be around the size of a head, smaller as perspective warrants. Other than that it was entertaining.
2.Dot Warner " Home for the Holidays " This story is about an office party, but I had to think to get to that. Dot should make every effort to make the reader instantly understand what is going on, either in dialogue or in pictures. For instance location can be determined by a caption or someone say "wow this is some office party", or in the background:a banner saying company x's christmas party (what company would do this, I don't know, but it's an way way for clarification, besides comics aren't very realistic anyway). There are other ways too. I like the idea of the color of text font is the color of the speaker's hair, but for light haired people it is harder to read on white. Using a light font, use a dark background in the bubble. On the positive once you get past the initial, the story flows well.
3. Susan Ching "[Broken] 2" Easily the best artist this month. I shouldn't suck up, I can't help it. It's good. I love the after image on page 1. I love the huge overlapping picture on page 2 (btw, you overlap when it looks cool, I call it the "McFarlane sitting on a toilet rule"). I love the watch on a sunday evening on page 3. I love panel 1 on page 4. I love the bunny on page 5. I'm not so crazy about page 6. ugh pixilated blur. Should've cut noan's head out, and feather, use stamp tool to fill gaps (ps 5.0 select stamp tool alt+button to select area, button(mouse) to fill like brush, cross hairs is the area stamping from) And I think a gaussian blur would've been better. Needs work on shading, but good attempt. Space left for trademark S.Ching psycho babble should not be left empty (pg. 2,3,4,8). I said in Broken1 that psychobabble had no relevance, it's worse if it's empty. Cut out space or put psychobabble.
4. Julie Bihn " Ten Minutes" ... What a weird unbelievable story. Somehow I like it though. The writing and dialogue pulled this one through. A lot of thought went into the consequences of being a dog. Good job. Poor Connor, though. Nat must've given up too, since she never got him people clothes in case he did turn human. Art worked well with the story.
5. Yume " New Year's Resolution-Stop Whining" That's one way to quit tv. It's a case of too much anime and thinking someone could actually survive a one ton mallet on the head in real life. Good art. Yume should watch the symmetry on the last page, though (big problem for me too).
6. Kasumiko "Ten minutes before midnight" Nice color job. Too many repetition of words sound like stuttering. It's ok in moderation, but used too often it becomes a bit humourous and ruins the mood. Good art, reminds me a bit of CLAMP, when they did X/1999. One comment about the last page, it looks like a 5 year old kissing a grown man, yeesh talk about forbidden love. Generally woman are smaller than men, but not so much. Hope that wasn't too harsh for your first MOM.
7.Ed Bangalan "Point Y to K " Fast drunkenly drawn backgrounds, maybe I should cut down on the caffeine. Some inconsistency. I saw a similar story on another site, I might've copped it form there, although unintentionally. By the way, I'm not sure if I really stole the character design, I just found similarities in the design to the characters I mentioned in my previous comment field. My apologies to the respective artists who may have been offended.
8.wxp " Kang and Telly " Last Kang and Telly. I never really understood Kang and Telly, I think the concept of space detectives is cool, but they never solved anything and no one ever hired them. Maybe I never understood. It seemed like parts of the story were being kepted locked in the author. WXP should've explained. The characters were easily confused. Who was kang? Who was Telly? I thought they looked the same. This was a nice entry and a treat to see it colored. Unfortunately the same problem remains. What's going on? How'd they get a time machine? are time machines common in the future? Who is kang and Telly? All of them have brown hair. Who's who? Why aren't there any distinctive features? are they clones or something? Oh well, bye Kang and Telly.
9. Kenji Watanabe (late entry) "Eldrad": Chapter 2 New Year's Comet Light humour and cute moral. Art is ok. Room for improvement, especially on perspective (pg 5, the house). Panel to panel flow is good. I like the characters... and gosh darnit now I'm hungry.
10. Meow Kitty (late entry) "The End of The Food Festival" I thought it was pretty funny, I never get tired of hearing santa being called a fat boy. That end in the middle of the comic on pg 3 almost fooled me, it looked outta place. And dragonball z! What a way to end things.
11. Tang (late entry) "The End of a World" Starts off very cinematic. It's a great piece. That was funny with the sacrifice bit. Tang's the man. The suits reminded me of Star Trek the movie space suits. Great stuff.
12. Jess Idres (late entry) "Ten Minutes To midnight" Whee! James made it! Yin's poor poor house, it looks like it's burning down. The night scenes (outside + planets) were very well done. Proportionality of characters is a bit askew (pg 4). Usually 5-6 heads tall (excluding hair) is the normal height. Also when walking usually the hair is close to the body unless it is windy, which isn't the case since the clothes aren't blowing or the smoke isn't coming out of the house. All in all well drwan, especially Yin. I couldn't find the mascot. :(
13. Yan Wen (late entry) " Cinderilla " Noan again! Even though Waji isn't here in comic, he's here in spirit, heheh. Art very good. I really liked the dressed up borders, and clothes of the characters. And of course the story telling was fluid and light. Good job. I even like the cardboard people. Only complaint: LATE!!
14. Nutz " Promise " (late entry) Nice little article on the Phillipines and the "Land of the Beginning Again" on pg4. A lot of effort went into this one. I feel bad, I'm comparing it to the other similar one that miss Jess Idres did. I guess that's the risk of doing MOM, you never know who'll have a similar submission, and then you wonder which is better. I think both stories are good. Nutz is a bit more advanced in art in the use of greys and slick backgrounds and layout. The wording is a bit corny, but sometimes corny works for you. I can't really tell, my dialogue is always corny.
15. Melancholy Chinese " WTH: Ten Til Midnight" More snow. More I say! I thought I was original by including snow, was I wrong, this is the third MOM with snow. They must've read the same Savage Dragon or alternatively the same Sin City comic I did. Oh well. It was a cool idea. I'm glad to see a prequel to won ton hammer, the end was kind of a downer. Mel emphasized the cold better than I did. I thought overall it was pretty good. I like the style. I think there's too many charcters to keep track of. It might get complicated if some Mel doesn't cut the chara list down, unless there are a some of characters that seem important, but aren't really (such as swat team). The scenario reminds me a bit of the first Cpt Taylor episode.
~~Ed Bangalan