A 12-year-old kid told me my panel layouts were lazy, he was right

Back in 2018 I was posting my indie comic pages online and this kid, maybe 11 or 12, commented that every fight scene I drew was just two boxes with a punch sound effect. He said 'you're doing the same thing every time like a checklist.' That stung, but honestly it made me look at my old issues and he was spot on, I had 14 fights in my first 30 pages and they all looked identical. Now I try to vary the camera angles and panel shapes for action, but I still wonder, has anyone else had a random stranger give you feedback that ended up being the best editing advice you ever got?

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jake_torres6820d ago

Ha, okay I gotta push back on this one! A 12 year old calling out your panel layouts is not the same as getting real advice from a working artist or editor. Kids say blunt stuff all the time, and sometimes it just happens to line up with a real flaw. But that doesn't make it good editing advice, it makes it a lucky guess. Real feedback should come with solutions or at least point to a specific craft element you can fix. A kid saying "you do the same thing" is just a complaint, not a breakdown of pacing or composition. I'm glad it helped you change stuff up, but I wouldn't put that on the same level as a mentor telling you why your action scenes feel flat. You did the work after that, which is what mattered.