Why is it so hard for Western artists to make action sequences "flow" even when the art is really nice like in pic-related?
same way why realistic movies are more popular than cartoon/anime movies or shows. They hate exaggerations and "stiff" sequences looks better.
I didn't have a problem with this action sequence other than the hand randomly changing in the first panel.
Not enough motion lines.
>>7244581bro forgot spidingman
>>7244636
>>7244637
>>7244637>>7244636it must be a blast to draw a spiderman comic. can have him so all these crazy/gestural poses
>>7244637problem here is with venom's design and shading. Spiderman has the wrapping web lines that make his form really easy to read. Venom is pillow-shaded, looks like a sack of potatos.
>>7244636>bro forgotYOU MUST GO BACK AND CLOSE THE DOOR WHEN YOU LEAVE.
>>7244622yup, it tripped me out a little bit.
>>7244581Japanese comic good American comic badWe get it bro relax
>>7244581this traced 3d model garbage isnt "really nice". and theres a couple rocks, a circle for a planet and thats it for backgrounds. texture is from tthe colorist. this is uglier than most manga 3d tracing and their photobashed backgrounds.
>>7244725yeah the stiffness makes me think 3d modeled idk traced
>>7244712I'm just asking a question based on observations of media I consume, dude. I like American comics, including a lot of capeshit. I just noticed that most Western artists, even the top-tier ones like OP, don't have the same level of composition and flow in their action scenes as say something like Sakamoto Days.
>>7244581Why is Superman fighting an older faggot version of himself?
>>7244581It's too busy trying to be experimental with its design, rather than ensuring it's readable.Western comics explore comic paneling and design more often, and can have some truly amazing moments because of it, but this more often than not leads to dogshit stilted reading experiences.Meanwhile Japan seems to largely play it safe, but their comics flow nicely and it's rare to find a comic there that's hard to read.Another reason for this is because, in my opinion anyway, the more realistic an art style becomes the less it flows as a comic. It's like you're trying to soak in all the details of the panel, so it makes it harder to go to the next one - I also think this effects coloured comic, and this is why I prefer comics to be b/w.
>>7244581>Why is it so hard for Western artists to make action sequences "flow" even when the art is really nice like in pic-related?Japan figured out early on to learn from animation to make comic sequences more fluid. So the entire manga industry allows entire chapters to be specific fights that will double as a storyboard for a direct anime adaptation.The west had a mindset of DETAIL over everything else so big 2 wannabe artists just try to be the next Jim Lee aesthetically and just do action scenes by ripping off the same generic poses we've seen a billion times because that's what the bigger comic artists did.
>>7244581I thought compositionally its alright, but not very readable. I have similar complaint relatively to JH William's batwoman stuff, pretty pages but fairly static as action scenes. Its not very clear to me what the first 4 panel on the left is suppose to convey, looks like it might be flurry of punches, if that's the case soluation is fairly simple, just showing it connecting or passing intended face. On the right, it shows older superman grabs younger one and sweeps him up and smashing him down, its not very clear because you couldn't see the rest of his arm on panel 3. If it were up to me I'd at least break down this sequences into two pages, so there are more space to windup and also the impact into its own pages, and planetary effect into another page.
>>7244581This particular page has a few basic problems, but an overarching issue with western comics is they need to cram a fuck ton of panels of action on a single page, unlike manga where I'm not gonna say its a non-issue, but artists can usually go nuts and make full page panels for dramatic moments. For instance in picrel, the middle face would be a beautifully rendered bastard smiling at the camera taking up half or the entire page, or the last panel a 2 page spread.An actual one-off issue with the page is the hands. I assume it's supposed to show how Superman is punching dilf future superman multiple times, not just following through one single punch, that's why they are all in different motions. There's a little blood on the hands progressively getting heavier (i assume superman's own) but probably due to censors it's so light it's barely noticeable.Also excuse the reading direction on my quick dirty fix, i didnt notice i'm too used to reading manga
>>7244581Because they care more about the illustrations within the panels instead of caring about the entire page. They don't see the entire page as one artwork. As long as the drawings look nice, the paneling and flow can be a second thought. That's also why they half-assedly place these ugly speech bubbles with infinite text within them or boring SFX lettering. They don't treat these elements as part of the illustration. They're pretty much glorified illustrators. Funny how the west created and popularized what we know now as comics but refuse to engage with the elements that create an enjoyable and enhanced comic-reading experience.
>>7244778Fucking weeb
help how do i understand whats happening :((((
>>7244640You get to draw the coolest action sequences, and carpal tunnel from drawing a million little webs each page.
>>7244581comic artists simply aren't focused on 'flow"comic books aren't made to be read, they're made to be collected so that means art that looks presentable
>>7244581That's actually really cool, that old Supes is badass.t. Battle shounen fag~To answer your question OP manga is all about the illusion of movement, they use foreshortening, speed lines and dynamic poses.
>>7244581what I'm supposed to see here? This is pretty clear for capeshit standards.
>>7245416>they use foreshortening, speed lines and dynamic poses.Motion blur, Dutch angle, movie storyboarding techniques and a lot of home grown techniques.Just read One Punch Man, Wistoria or Sakamoto Days, they're really good at action.
>>7245416>>7245423>manga is all about the illusion of movement,That's not what's being referred to when talking about "flow".(in fact posting 1 panel is the exact opposite of the point being made) It's a matter of sequencing not visual effects. How each panel connects to the previous the same way a film strip of a real person is a series of photographs. OP's example isn't terrible by modern average mainline capeshit standards but still suffers from stiff jankness and emphasizing the wrong elements
>>7244581They can't make proper use of smears and exaggerated distortion because MUH colors and paneling gets confusing. That's it.
>>7244581Manga is focussed on the action and mood. It's essentially trying to be animation within the limited scope of a comic panel. It cannot truly communicate timing and sound like an animation can, so it has invented clever artistic tricks to communicate those things.For example, it communicates speed through speed lines. This is the most basic and obvious technique. Western comics do this too but to a much lesser extent than they arguably should.
>>7245711When western comics do use speed lines, it has a positive effect... however they all too often neglect them entirely and you end up with stiff art like this.A comic is about motion, it's not a still picture, if you neglect the tools that communicate that motion, then your comic has no motion.
>>7245716While speed lines communicate motion, isolating the character on a plain background, usually black communicates thought/introspection. It visually takes us inside the mind of the character. It's a very effective method of communicating thinking, far more effective than the bog standard thinking bubble.
>>7245721You can communicate a moment of great intensity by increasing the contrast and adding lots of rough lines
>>7245723And equally, by making the panel very empty, still, light, you can communicate a moment of calmness, a sudden drop in intensity, or if it were an animation, a moment where the music abruptly cuts out.
>>7245716God colors kill the fuck out of readability. I will never stop resenting the toddler-brains that demand color in comics. Hindered from compositional greatness at every turn.
>>7245725But to speak more specifically of flow, that is the apparent animation that we visualize in our minds as our eyes glance from panel to panel. That thing that makes a comic really come to life despite being merely still images.There are a few things that make or break this.Manga plays it safe with its panelling. 99% of pages are based off a series of 6 boxes arranged in a 2x3 layout.However make no mistake, no manga page will ever feature this layout in its unaltered form.One or several of these boxes will be extended either horizontally or vertically, and in doing so overrides the existence of the box it overlaps
>>7245739If that wasn't clear, this is what I refer to when I say a 2x3 layout of 6 boxes
>>7245740>forgot pic
>>7245742And this is what I refer to when I say that these boxes are altered.These are all taken from actual manga pages.As you can see, for the most part they all have their base as >>7245742, but are altered by making some bigger and some smaller.
>>7245745By contrast, western comics often like to make panels that are "clever", that don't follow this format, and while they are very pretty to look at, they are very hard to read.
>>7245747But what does this 2x3 format mean?It means that at the most base level, the panels are key frames of an animation, and more specifically an animation that fits neatly in a TV aspect ratio.If you've ever read a manga after watching the anime, or vice versa watched the anime after reading the manga and remarked at how there is very little difference in the camera shots between the two, this is why. This format is perfectly suited for anime adaptation, and as a plus, it is also very easy for our eyes to comprehend because it is so straightforward and consistant.Now don't get me wrong, this is not exclusive to manga, this is simply good comic panelling in general and all good western comic pages feature this as well.
>>7245751So now that we have a solid base for our panelling, we must ask the question:>how do we do this "altering" of panels, making some longer and others wider, some bigger and others smaler?There are several things that affect our choices.By making a panel bigger, you extend the time the eye looks at it for, effectively slowing down the pacing. You can combine this with the above mentioned effects like speed lines to very precisely control the timing of a panel.
>>7245755By making a panel very vertically long, you can communicate the panning up and down of a camera as if it were an animation.The eye is naturally drawn up or down the page in this particular motion.
>>7245757However not to be confused with other vertical panels that are simple "squashed" regular panels.There's a bit of subjectivity here on the readers point, every individual gets a different experience.But the idea is that, while some vertical panels are deliberately designed to communicate a panning of the camera, others are utilizing a clever trick of the mind in that... we already know what's on the page, we only need to see a small slither of it to understand what the panel is about, and so it can be heavilly squeezed inbetween other panels to save room without sacrificing any clarity.It's effectively a space saving technique.This can also be done horizontally.
>>7245761While vertical panels communicate vertical camera panning... horizontal panels very rarely communicate horizontal panning. They are simply regular panels that take up less room than the above panel in this picture.A horizontal panel is really the closest thing to a TV animation key frame in terms of aspect ratio.How squashed you make it controls the timing (as well as the previous technique about saving space on the page where having a bigger panel would be wasteful)
>>7245763By combining all these effects togetherThe speedlines, the contrast, the amount of white space, the size of the panels, the aspect ratio of the panels, and a few more I've forgotten. By combining these with basic good comment sense about the arrangement of the panels (in manga it goes right to left, top to bottom), drawing the panels so that it's easy to identify where in the environment the characters are in relation to other characters and the direction their motions are taking. This conveys good flow and makes your comic easy and pleasant to read.
>>7245767That is all the panelling but some must be said of the drawings themselves within those panels.And this is a far less clear cut thing, it is very much a matter of artistic creativity and skill.Imagine you are drawing keyframes of an animation, or if you are a photographer and you take a photo of the key frames in an scene of action. The specific moment a punch lands, or a ball hits the ground.If you select this as your comic panel... you will produce a very weak panel.The reason for this is because in a comic panel you are extremely limited in terms of motion/animation. The specific moment a falling ball hits the ground is not enough. You must, through your ingenuity, communicate the moment both before and after the keyframe all within one picture.This means in a punching shot you must draw the moment a fraction of a second after the punch has hit, but with the punch still connecting, as if it were a camera with a long exposure.This might also mean exaggerating the "anticipation" of a moment before it has actually happened, or exaggerating the aftereffect of it after it has happened.
>>7245770While that is a good method for action scenes, it is not quite as helpful in dialogue scenes.In dialogue scenes you have to be very careful to avoid monotony.While real life conversations are just two people sitting in place without moving for the duration of the conversation, if you do this in a comic you will communicate the unintended effect of speeding up the pacing of the page... and combined with the fact that dialogue panels feature alot of text which your reader is forced to read, you now have a recipe for immediately boring the reader where their eyes are telling them to read quickly while their brain is trying to read the text.
>>7245772Side tangent to explain what I mean by speeding up the pacing of the page with monotonous panels.This page is attempting to communicate that the character is standing still and staring for a very long time, but it fails at this for the simple reason that our eyes see the panel once and then immediately recognize that the next 4 or 5 panels are exactly the same and so instantly skips past them for they are redudant, the end result is that you have 1 tiny panel in actuality, and the eye doesn't spend very long on it at all.
>>7245774But on dialogue.Even if your comic is trying to be realistic in tone and art, you must utilize great creativity with your panelling here.The camera angle must change constantly, the background must change, the facial expressions must change, you should include cuts to the environment even. The more varied you make these panels, the more engaging your dialouge scenes will be
>>7245779Here is an example where the artist has deliberately used poor pacing in the bottom panel here for comic effect.There is far too much text with no variation in the panel at all (it's just a single panel). The time it takes for our eye to take in the image is far quicker than the time it takes for our eyes to parse the text, and so we are very quickly bored by the text and wish for it to be over... which is precisely the intended effect.The irony is that many western comics make panels like this all the time unintentionally
>>7245783Here is a page that depicts very standard conversation, there is no physical action going on that would distract from the talking, they are not running anywhere, nobody is abruptly entering the scene, they are just standing still talking, and yet... see how varied the panels are.
>>7245784By contrast, this page here has no variety whatsoever, and is very boring to look at.
>>7245785An even more egregious example
>>7245788But I'll stop here.In summary, think of your comic like an animation. Always be considering the motion, the mood, the timing. It must be truly alive in your head, you must be able to hear the sounds of it even.Your goal should be for the reader to read through your comic at precisely the pacing as if it were an animation, that is, as if it were moving.Here's a couple more collages I made that I didn't find room to talk about.
>>7245793
>>7244581Never watched western comics before, but this white superman looks cool, is he some sort of inner superman, like hollow ichigo?
>>7244581I agree with others, it looks really, really stiff. Also, I think that the panels of the fists are really confusing. Also, there is no tension either. It looks like someone is copying fighting manga w/o an understanding of pacing or fighting choreography. The most glaring example are the panel with all of the fists. Also, those bottom panels on the 2nd page don't really hit as hard, because of the lack of exaggeration in them. Actually, that's the one of the main problems with these pages, the lack of exaggeration. Even the panel where he punches the blond guy...the effects don't do anything for it. Even if the punch didn't do anything for blondie the audience should be under the impression that it did and that way when we see that it didn't it will give us more surprise and panic for Superman. Hell, even Superman's cuts and bruises seem like noting. At least Robfeld would kinda be able to do that if nothing else.
>>7244997>>7244636>>7244637All of these read way better and way better at conveying the action than >>7244581 despite not being drawn as realistically. This was also American animation's problem for a really long time, too.
>>7245711Even Rumiko Takahashi's action pages read better than >>7244581despite her getting overlooked quite a bit by Western audiences.
>>7245785>>7245788Too many artists just let the words do all the work rather than letting the art do so. Then again, too many writers try to fit novels inside of each speech balloon instead of letting the art do the work. I think Stan Lee/Jack Kirby had the right idea.
>>7244636japs probably copied these early spiderman comic action alot in addition to what Tezuka was doing.
>>7245845I'm sure the panel autist already covered it, but it's proven that people read comics the same way they do books, right to left horizontally at a continuous eye level, then down a level, resetting in position. That's why people get confused by reading manga right to left until they get used to it, because they're conditioned to read books that way. Either way, that's why those pages read better, they're laid out in horizontal strips, even Spiderman vs. Venom. There aren't really any tricks to paneling, horizontal strips just werk. Big flashy things, like reveals or special attacks, can be saved for one or two page spreads. Webtoons break that pattern and still work because they're meant to be consumed on smartphones and they exploit the consumption pattern of smartphone apps, straight down with infinite scrolling. It's almost universal in this day and age.
>>7245747the superman and spidey ones in the bottom left are actually good at communicating the action. Could be better, yeah, but if you were trying to choose examples of stylistic paneling you missed with those two
>>7244581I very often have to do a second and third take to figure out what the fuck is supposed to be happening in manga, stop trying to make this some retarded east vs west thing
>>7245727Colors aren't the problem, the literalist coloring is.
>>7244581there's this notion that drawings have to be "full". so if an action scene doesn't have fully constructed figures from head to toe, then its cheap and lazy. Subtlety and style go against capitalism, which is the driving force behind the western comic industry.
>>7244581Everything on these pages is traced from 3D models.It helps with accuracy but makes everything lifeless and dull.The best comic artists exaggerate things in ways that would be difficult to do with 3D models.
>>7246130half of the people who complain in here about westoid comics are complaining because they have been trained for years to read manga and nothing else
>>7245794>>7245793>>7245784>>7245783>>7245779>>7245772>>7245770>>7245767>>7245763>>7245761>>7245757>>7245755>>7245739>>7245725>>7245723>>7245721>>7245711>Posts an example of everything but multi paged CHOREOGRAPHED sequencing>The thing that FLOW isI have never seen someone put in so much effort to miss the point of a discussion before.
>>7246140"Literalist" coloring is by far the worst offender, but even limited color like in your example can become a problem very quickly in the hands of a separate colorist. Purely because there's such a disconnect between the composition of the inks and then colors applied as an afterthought. If the sameness person is doing pencils inks and color, then limited color can be nice.
>>7244581>more pages dedicated to action>manga tends to put a lot of emphasis on impact both on the char and enviroment>speed lines>squash and stretch, exaggerated gestures, >extreme foreshorteningAm I missing something
>>7244645>seething this hard at some words>>7244636Continue to stay here and lock the door.
>>7246293You missed superior japenis genes.
>>7246396>seething this hard at some words>Defending speaking like a NPC spoonfed by social media algorithms It's a sign you lack the personal filter that allows for independent cultural opinion/taste.
>>7246430mb i shouldve said stupid fucking retard forgot about spiderman please get off the internet
the main thing I don't like about american comics is the color scheme, it's always too primal for my taste.
>>7246464The poses and gesture work in Spider-man comics are good but how they actually connect into one another is mid to poor in quality. You posted a very basic left hook right combo and then 2 head slams. Which are fine in that they aren't random but still lack a smooth coordination that conveys the changes in postion with the impact delivered.So yeah you posted some okayish stuff that isn't really all that impressive in terms of flow
>>7246474>lack of smooth coordinationi can smell a japanfag a mile awayread a real comic instead of superslop 2024 and you will find that "flow" is something that japanese comics got from american comics long ago. speed lines and motion blur are there to appease to your little troglodyte brain without providing any substance.
>>7246489>i can smell a japanfag a mile awayI don't determine quality by what team I arbitrarily pick. Japan excels at action because it's comic and animation industry put an emphasis on it. They had decades to hone it to the point that the word "sakuga" is now synonymous with high quality animation.> got from american comics long agoThey got it from American ANIMATION long ago. That's why characters and motions are more exaggerated. Even classic bloody manga like devilman still had popeye disney esque simple art styles.Action is my favorite aspect of media regardless of origin or medium. Tradd Moore is one of my favorite artists because of how smooth his scenes are so don't give me that strawman horseshit.
>>7246489What the other guy said. I don't like manga because it's from Japan, I like it because it's good quality.Manga was inspired from American comics literally over 50 years ago and then immediately surpassed it while meanwhile American comics abandoned all of its skill in favour of digitally tracing real life photos
>>7246245Left or right doesn't really make a big difference. It's not like weebs try to read translated light novels backwards. Comics just suck at paneling. They neither stick to the tried and true, nor do they try to design their panels to be intuitive in some primal monkey brain way. They're not even really consistent these days like older comics. You just panels on top of spreads and arrays of panels in random order and other cute little tricks the artist thought would be clever, without thinking about how readers will actually read it. If you're not a genius, just KISS
Are there any mangas that are like Garth Ennis's *good* comics?
>>7245711legend, thank you for the lesson
>>7246258I'd like to say that I've never seen someone attempt to comprehend a response to a discussion; that expands on the current point, bringing in further concepts with evidence to support a broader more reasearched and nuanced view, tackling the proposed question with a response from the top down, and completely miss the point of the contribution of the response. But that unfortunately isn't true. You're not the first person I've come across that exhibits poor comprehension.
hatching in the direction of the movement and trails like these make anime a lot easier to read imo, i think its pretty hard to portray movement without using these, unless you're just drawing tons of frames
>>7244636I like this. I can feel his rage
>>7246790>that expands on the current point, bringing in further concepts with evidence to support a broader more reasearched and nuanced view,They didn't expand on the point at all because they did not provide examples of A complete MULTI PAGED SEQUENCE. The one thing they should've posted they didn't. Just singular pages and out of context panels.Things like motion blur, speedlines and foreshortened perspective are effects that are stylistic choices that may help but aren't totally necessary for a fluid portrayal of motion. The topic in OP is the direct context of adjacent panels that represent a specific chain of events or passage of time.Actions can carry over for dozens of pages and it's one of trickiest things to master and nowhere in that inane rambling was it properly elaborated on.
>>7244581>Why is it so hard for Wester-Westoids can't comic anon, only Asians can.
