The Rabbit Hole..

[Marrrrkie]

Critique appreciated like always..
It's kind of a teaser..
I'm gonna add more later as right now i'm tired and everything that i've gotten after these first two pages i'm not really liking. Sorry it's so short, and thanks for reading.
*Note for FORBY: If you're reading this i'm sorry about the splash page. :whistlin:

(Page 1, 4 Panels)

PANEL 1: Nighttime, an overhead view of a light haired man standing inside a crowded train car, it’s brightly lit with light blue neon lights that shine near the windows. The man is looking down, reading a newspaper while people around him are wearing expressions of panic. The train car has metallic floors and walls with large windows. The seats are padded with black plastic. The man’s name is Archer (Archie) Casper. He is dressed in a black jacket with a grey hooded sweatshirt underneath and jeans.
ARCHER CAP: The trick is not to panic…

PANEL 2: A front view of Archer as he calmly reads his paper and the people around him look terrified. There’s a window behind him through which you can see a large city, lit with different colored neon lights. You can see a woman seated behind and a few other people.
ARCHER CAP: Don’t let all the loud noises get under your skin…
TRAIN PASSENGER: Oh my god! What is that!?

PANEL 3: Same as last panel except Archer is setting his paper down on a woman’s lap, the woman is looking in a different direction and has a sheer look of panic on her face.
ARCHER CAP: Just keep a cool head…

PANEL 4: Same as last panel except now Archer is looking into the camera (haha) smiling)
ARCHER CAP: And wait for your stop.
WOMAN: OH DEAR GOD!


(Page 2, Splash Page)

PAGE: A view from over the top of the train onto a city street, it’s a residential street lined with houses. Cars (with bright blue neon lights on the bottom that cause them to float in the air) are crashing into each other along the street. People are running away in panic. In the center of the street there’s a large dark whole in the asphalt, through which large white bunnies, with long, sharp teeth and big red eyes are jumping out. There bodies are slightly deformed like their bones have snapped into different positions underneath their skin. (This stitch from lilo and stitch for the body type). The bunnies are attacking people and cars and anything else they can sink their teeth into. Police vehicles (also with the neon hovers instead of wheels) are coming toward the hole in the background.
ARCHIE CAP: I love rabbit holes.

[knockedoutpanzer]

You could run this without any of the dread CAPS dialog at all. It would still work.

Just say "flying" or "hover" cars that would be easier than-Cars (with bright blue neon lights on the bottom that cause them to float in the air) and saves on typing.

Unusual and I'm intrigued. I admit it! Giant bunnies? <:

[r nelson]

This is a great start to a story you have here. It's very catchy and regardless of what Forby might say about it, this is an excellent use of a splash page IMO.

I do have a couple crits here, and a couple nitpicks, but they're entirely mechanical because for the first two pages, you've done your job as a storyteller, which is introducing a protagonist and a story hook/conflict, and get me interested.

First, the crits:

1) Overuse of the ellipsis: All of those should be periods instead, indicating the end of one thought instead of a pause or a broken thought as the ellipsis indicates. I know you're going for continuity of the captions from panel-to-panel, but when you have the caption boxes (individualized to demark them as Archie's, I assume), you'll have that continuity visually without having to deface English language grammar to make it happen.

2) Character Identification: I always say that you're better off describing your character clearly and decisively right off the bat. In the first panel, you jump around a bit before clarifying the most important character in your story, and it's a little annoying. It's workable, but it's messy. That panel would be much clearer to the artist and leave less question about what's really important to the scene, if you take care to FIRST identify your protagonist, SECOND, identify your scene, and THIRD identify the action occuring in the scene. A more organized re-write might look like:

Nighttime. Top-down view of Archer Casper, aka ARCHIE, a light haired man currently wearing a black jacket and a gray hoodie. Archie sits in a crowded traincar with metallic floors and walls, seats padded with black plastic and LARGE WINDOWS THAT ARE OBSCURED by the bright blue neon lights that shine near each of them. Archie calmly looks down, reading the newspaper in his lap while the other PASSENGERS PANIC at something as-yet unseen outside the train car.

Note that I always CAPITALIZE what absolutely must exist in my panels, and leave the rest of the descriptions as suggestions to the artist. The essential elements here are (1) Archie, (2) The other passengers, and (3) that the windows are large but as-yet obscured (in order to make clear that you don't want the artist to give away the "reveal" in your page 2 splash).

And now, the nitpicks:

1) In panel 2 of page 1, I would split up the TRAIN PASSENGER dialog and give it to two of the freaking out passengers, and not just one. In general, I'd add a handful of extra dialog bits and just leave them all floating (unassigned to any particular characater), to make the feeling of panic more concrete. A good letterer can find ways to make the extra verbiage work, overlap the balloons, play with the size of each exclamation, etc. and add even more to the sense of panic.

3) Again with the identification thing: Page 1, you've assigned all the CAPS to "ARCHER," but on Page 2, you assign it to "ARCHIE." I know it's minor, but it speaks to a lack of voice for the character at this point, like you the writer are still unsure of exactly "who" this guy is.

4) Aaaand, the grammar monkey in me just cringed at this sentence (emphasis mine): "There bodies are slightly deformed like their bones have snapped into different positions underneath their skin."

Hope it helps.

- Richard

[Steven Forbes]

See what happens when you just stop in to see what's cookin'? Your name comes up, and you barely see it.

Interesting, if I do say so myself. Not really my cup of tea, and more than likely something I wouldn't pick up, but interesting nonetheless.

Mark, you're on the road to doing your job with this, I'd say. Well, mostly. Some grammar issues, but those are things Rich either pointed out, or can easily be cleaned up by an editor. He's right about the ellipses, though.

As for the splash page, I'd say that it was set up pretty nicely. You have the setup on P1, and you have to turn the page in order to get to the splash. I'd call that good work. Because you started relatively late in the story, the splash is nicely placed. If you started earlier and then had the splash, I'd call you on it.

Two pages, and they're interesting. Just a couple of things that get me:

1) generally, we're not going to care if it's day or night inside a train. That should be left for outside.

2) if it's nighttime outside, how are we going to see all of the action that's going on? Something to think about.

There's more, such as watching your camera angles. Trains are not notoriously tall, so you don't have a lot of space for a top-down angle. And if its crowded, it's hard to be an island of calm in a sea of chaos because you're too busy trying to fend off the panicked. And what is your main character doing, sitting or standing? You never say, and leaving it out leads to the artist either asking questions or making decisions on their own.

You're getting there. Keep at it.

-Steven

[Marrrrkie]

Thanks a lot for the crits guys, i just got my computer back today.haha.
I didn't like my use of the ellipses either or what was said in the caps..
It was something i did in like one minute but i've been mulling everything over for a few days (Some without any power and some without a computer haha) and i've thought on the character more and stuff.
I usually don't mess up my there's and their's etc..
Thanks for pointing that out too.
And Forby, you know your advice means a lot to me, but it says that the main character is standing in the very first panel.

Thanks a lot guys.
Thanks for looking.
I'll post more once i flesh out the story more.

Cheers.

-Mark

[Steven Forbes]

Ah, so it does, so it does. Must've went right over it, but I did get he sense he was standing.

Ah, well, it happens. Thanks for pointing it out, though.

-Steven