[Elle]

--MWUAHAHAHAHA.

or would it be, --OHOHOHOHO?

Not sure what kind of evil laugh suits dear Tychia.

Speaking of, I LOVE the grim lighting on her closeup! Under the lip, on the cheeks..it's just so spooky!


Let's not speak of scarymonkeyfairymanthing.


Oooh, ominous bloodletting sound effect at the end--who gets skewered? We shall seee....
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This signature is a filler for a much cooler signature.

[BarbJacobs]

hee hee....

I have to admit here in the safety of the forum that I was THOROUGHLY unhappy with this page in every way. Shh...dont tell anyone. It's hard for me to even look at it...

Anyway, Im glad everyone is so confused about that last panel. I thought it was quite obvious, but then I WROTE THE STORY, so I suppose I would know...I love it when folks are confused...

Thank you Elle, for the nice comments~

~B

[KEZ]

Ehehehe, C looks so incredibly terrified. Now we just need a "monkey fling poo" joke to pop up so things can REALLY explode. (Barb had a really good word for this).

The "nothing personal" bit is awesomess. Tychia is hard core!
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"Find what you're following and chase it down."

[Hagar]

For me it's the" Demios turned you into a monkey" part. His not mean, or just evil- he turns people into monkeys!
I love the upper look on CC. Poor guy... & the fact that T sounds like a British pub keeper ("Luv").
I do hope that spear hit a tomato though..

6 panels?!? I thought your doing less of those. Your addicted to panels Barb... First step is to recognize the problem, then cutting a LITTLE bit every time... Not that I mind- it's a lot of work for you though!

I knew her shirt was ripped from behind so she'll have room for those wings, I just knew it. I wonder if CC has wings too?
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"Every word is like an unnecessary stain on silence and nothingness."
Samuel Becket
"I don't have a drinking problem, except when I can't get a drink".
Tom Waits

[BarbJacobs]

^_^

I'm glad you liked some stuff about this page- this is one of those expostion pages that I feel very insecure about- I always used to throw these things at Steve and didnt have to worry about the writing. Now I do. I have dialects, back story, characterizations of new characters... There are a lot of tidbits of information on the last two pages that give important story clues- I wanted to give enough to get readers thinking, but not give too much away. (or paint myself in a corner...)

And Deimos as a character finally has a face. I drew him about a month ago. It amused me when I saw him. He is not Ba. At all.

Thanks you guys, I still really dislike this page, but at least you guys didnt mind too much!

~B

[Krozam]

There are two possibilities. About the spear and the blood, I mean. Either it hits Charlie directly and just lacks the sufficient force to kill him in one blow, or Livy jumps in and absorbs most of the force in the blow. I hope it's not the latter. Actually, I believe so, since that'd be a bit too... cruel.

A very interesting conversation there, as I already mentioned in the poll topic. Raises a ton of questions. I don't even know where to begin, so I'll skip the examples this time.

Don't worry, it wasn't that bad a page. It was a bit messy and some of the speech bubbles were misplaced (the lowest one in the panel is read last, not the rightmost one - unless there are more than one down-most bubbles at the same level, in which case the rightmost of them is read last) but the dialogue was fluent and the art was clear enough. It didn't really confuse me at any point.
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"You lopped his head off? Struck through his heart? Don't think of him as one of those vampires. He won't die from just that." - Sir Integral Fairbrook Wingates Hellsing

[canterrain]

Heh.

Me thinks Krozam missed the point in the so called 'mess'.

That is one of my favorite parts of this page. When I first saw it I described it to Barb as a broken mirror. That's what the panels look like. Shattered glass. And that's the sort of feel Barb intended. It's a stabbing scene where Claude doesn't understand a single thing about what is going on or why. He's convinced he's going nuts (again?) and can you blame him? The view of the panels -adds- to that feel. And the bubbles? Makes sense the way they are. Because the last thing to be read leads into the last panel. Like it should.

I didn't have any problems with getting that at all. They're not misplaced. They're exactly where they should be.

It's a dialogue heavy page. But it tells -so- much without telling -too- much. And so very needed. And alot less dialogue intensive then what I've seen out there.

Personally to me it comes off as a homage to the classic, "Evil guy gloats and tells the heroes his great plans in evil monologue" story technique. And felt appropriate in that.
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[Krozam]

I didn't say the messiness was a bad thing. I just pointed it out, in case it wasn't on purpose. Now that you mention it, though, it does give off just the right feeling for the scene.

I have to insist that two of the bubbles are misplaced. I don't know how "official" this rule is, but I do know that it's a common practise in western comics that the bubbles are read from up to down, and whether they are left or right matters only if they're in the same level. The upmost bubble should be the first one and the downmost bubble should be the last one, there's no way around it. If Xylia were to be published, the publisher would most certainly demand that the order of the bubbles be fixed.

It's not bothering me that much, I'm just telling this so that this mistake can be avoided in the future.
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"You lopped his head off? Struck through his heart? Don't think of him as one of those vampires. He won't die from just that." - Sir Integral Fairbrook Wingates Hellsing

[BarbJacobs]

Krozam-

Are you talking about the second panel- are you reading Charlie's dialogue first? I worried about that after I posted the page. could you let me know specifically which one you found confusing- this is good for me to know, becasue I am often doing balloon placement at 1 or 2AM (just always works out that way) and since I knwo the conversation flow its hard for me to read it in the way someone seeing the first time would.

I ll try to get that adjusted soon, at least before WOWIO.

Thanks CT- Im glad you liked the fragmented panels.

I hope yall like tomorrow's page... I think it will be a bit unexpected. Maybe.

~ B

[Strange Ian]

My guess is the CU of Tychia, I had to look at that one twice to get it right... That's also my favourite panel on this page, so I don't mind that much, though. Although Charlies eye is also great, and Tychias posture in the bottom left, and the middle panel with Charlie in it... Yup. Those are my favourite...

Also: I'm just dying to know exactly what she means by "someone on the inside"! Have a feeling that's not exactly in the next update, though...

<.< >.> Maybe it's Livy.

[Krozam]

Silly me, I should've done this already in the first post.

The dialogue in the first panel should be read like this:
1. "Brimaz, 'ow can you remain loyal to Deimos?"
2. "He is my lord and king. He created the hallowed kingdom of Az--"
3. "Deimos Turned you into a monkey! An' 'e banished 'alf of our race to this awful world."
4. "Eh, no matter! Once we drag the body of Claudius to Azloe we'll be members of the High Court."

The way the balloons are arranged, the dialogue is actually read like this:
1. "Brimaz, 'ow can you remain loyal to Deimos?"
2. "Deimos Turned you into a monkey! An' 'e banished 'alf of our race to this awful world."
3. "Eh, no matter! Once we drag the body of Claudius to Azloe we'll be members of the High Court."
4. "He is my lord and king. He created the hallowed kingdom of Az--"

You see? Brimaz's reply is in the lowest balloon of the page, so it's read last. It should be higher than Tychia's second and third balloon.

The balloons in the second panel are even more messed up. I assume it's supposed to be like this:
1. "You are certain this is Claudius?"
2. "And this weapon can actually sever his soul?"
3. "No! No! I'm Ch-Charlie! Charlie Ravensdale!"
4. "'E's Claudius. 'As the mark, 'e does."

The thought bubble is irrelevant to the conversation, so it can be placed wherever you want.

The way the balloons are arranged, the dialogue goes like this:
1. "No! No! I'm Ch-Charlie! Charlie Ravensdale!"
2. "You are certain this is Claudius?"
3. "And this weapon can actually sever his soul?"
4. "'E's Claudius. 'As the mark, 'e does."

The third panel should go like this:
1. "An' that spear came from Ambrosia's chamber. 'E's been 'idin' it for centuries!"
2. "How did you manag--"
3. "Got someone workin' on the 'inside', o' course!"
4. "The old fool 'as no idea!"

But it goes like this:
1. "An' that spear came from Ambrosia's chamber. 'E's been 'idin' it for centuries!"
2. "Got someone workin' on the 'inside', o' course!"
3. "How did you manag--"
4. "The old fool 'as no idea!"

Once again the thought bubble is irrelevant to the dialogue in this panel. However, it is relevant to the dialogue in the next (or the one after the next) panel, where Tychia kind of answers the thought. Technically it isn't wrongly placed, but in practise the reader may find it odd that the answer is almost directly above the "question". Some more space between them, and it wouldn't matter which is higher, because they are in different panels. My recommendation, though, would be to try to keep them close to each other and raise the thought bubble higher, if the panel layout allows this kind of an arrangement.

At this point I'd like to point out that the fourth and fifth panel are a bit oddly placed. Technically the Brimaz-panel comes first, but the way the panels and speech balloons are arranged makes the reader go through the Tychia-panel first. Except for the thought-and-answer connection there's nothing that would make either order wrong. Also, with panels it isn't as important to follow the rules, as long as the reader doesn't get confused. Besides, as CT pointed out, this kind of "messiness" kind of fits the scene. So, nothing is actually wrong there, I just want to make sure you know that in principle the same order regulations go for the panels.

Now then, the fourth dialogue panel:
1. "No use tryin' to get away, luv."
2. "I put a 'Freeze' charm on ya."
3. "Nothin' personal, Claudius--"
4. "--But we needs your body."
5. "Without your soul!"

Technically it's read like this:
1. "--But we needs your body."
2. "Without your soul!"
3. "No use tryin' to get away, luv."
4. "I put a 'Freeze' charm on ya."
5. "Nothin' personal, Claudius--"

As you can see, there are actually many more than two bubbles that are misplaced. Until I started examining the order of the bubbles in detail, only Brimaz's lines in the first and the third panel had caught my attention. So, it isn't actually as confusing as the impression my detailed analysis probably gives. It's just technically messed up.
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"You lopped his head off? Struck through his heart? Don't think of him as one of those vampires. He won't die from just that." - Sir Integral Fairbrook Wingates Hellsing

[canterrain]

My favorite thing about Barb's pages is that she is not confined by such so called rules.
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The meaning to life is *censored!*
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[KEZ]

Gentlemen, agree to disagree, please.

While I did not have the same problems reading the balloons as Krozam, I do see where he is coming from for the first panel. In the second one, I do disagree, that one reads fine. L-R, T-B, as per convention. Just because one is a little higher on the right does not mean it is read first. Also, Charlie's balloon is not crossing over into the panel above, which means that in this new panel, reading starts over from the top left.

In the first panel, there is not physically space to switch around those balloons. I would say that if Barb wanted to please everyone, she could use Brimaz's balloon to overlap/cut off Tychia's balloon/speech, thereby ensuring it is read right after. Through the rest of piece, Barb still follows the Left-Right, Top-Bottom reading rule. Each panel is a reset, and that's acceptable.
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"Find what you're following and chase it down."

[Krozam]

*Sigh...* I didn't have much "problems" reading that page. I'm just informing you that these kind of rules exist. I don't really care whether those rules are followed or not, because this is a webcomic and I have full confidence in Barb's ability to make the dialogue understandable without following those rules. Still, I do think that following them would be a good idea, just in case. Well, at least most of the time.

Barb, I don't know how much you usually do this, but I recommend you give a bit more thought to the placement of the balloons while sketching the page and designing the panel layout. Your pages are often so full of stuff that I can see how troublesome it must be to fit any balloons into them. That's one of the reasons why each of them is such an artistical masterpiece, but it must be troublesome when the page is as dialogue-heavy as this one.

KEZ, I repeat the statement that the height of the balloons is what matters first. Only when they are on the same level does their placement in the left-right axis matter. If we follow the rules, that is - I had little trouble reading that second panel.
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"You lopped his head off? Struck through his heart? Don't think of him as one of those vampires. He won't die from just that." - Sir Integral Fairbrook Wingates Hellsing

[canterrain]

I'm going to make three recommendations!

One, that we follow Kez's recommendation to agree to disagree.

Two, that those of us who actually make Xylia be the ones who recommend what the makers of Xylia do when they make Xylia. And those of us who don't, don't!

Three, that we move on to the next page! Tis a good one I see.
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The meaning to life is *censored!*
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