When Fei's face is normal, people mention him not having any expression, when he does look tense, people say he looks constipated (which seems to be the typical thing to say, I heard it eleventy million times --that's a lot-- when reading stuff about DBZ back inna day). It's a no win situation unless from now on when Fei fights I angle all the panels so they only show the back of his head or his feet or something..

Or maybe I can just have his mouth gaping wide open and his eyes crossed (only pointing in opposite directions), that way people can say he looks batshit insane. Which would at least be better than constipated!

Example:

This should be the face Fei makes everytime he thinks someone isn't looking.

He's probably making that face in the third and last panel.

I have made up for my stupid rendition of Fei in that post by drawing a very ominous/badass pic of him on this page I'm currently working on.

Surely it can't be that hard to make Fei look ominous/badass...

Just for the record, there's actually "two" History Strongest Disciples out there. If you're looking on something like Onemanga, the current one of "Histories Strongest Disciple: Kenichi"

The one before that is a completed manga, and kind of rougher around the edges overall.

Anyways, I was just trying to stir up conversation on what, exactly, some find lacking. Your fight scenes look fine by me, and I wouldn't ask you to change them.

Ohhh okay, thanks for clearing that up about H'sSD.. i was wondering why there seemed to be two separate ones. (I was too lazy to look deeper into it).

I'm not sure which one I saw..I may have seen both. I mentioned in the edited post that after my initial reaction I found other pages I liked more that changed my opinion a bit (in terms of the fight scenes, I was relatively "meh" on the rest of it :p) So it could be I saw the "rough" one first and the "better" one later.

I'm glad you think the fight scenes look okay, I think there's a few kinks in them but overall I'm happy w/ the result. I can't wait to do another one :D

http://i47.tinypic.com/98skfk.gif


The fight scenes in HIKYM remind me of Adam Warren's comics, and hand-to-hand combat scenes there. Detailed blocks, elaborate movement, fast and brutal strikes. You see what's going on while keeping the sense of speed. I can't wait to see the next fight. :)

Out of curiosity, how much creative control do you have over the fight choreography, Mr. Speroni?

Thanks, I'm glad you mentioned that "you see what's going on".

I try to focus on clarity, maybe that's not the best way of going about it and sometimes people still get confused (then again I think people will be confused by things no matter how clear you think you make them), but that's part of my thinking when I design the pages. I'm glad you're looking forward to the next fight! I don't know who will be involved in it yet, but hopefully we'll get to something soon :)

speaking of the page designs, I ought to update Behind the Punch sometime later today.


As for fight choreography I have almost total control :D Brian just writes "take X amount of pages" in the script and includes some ideas about what should happen and how it should end and the dialog that will probably go into the panels. There's nothing in there that says "Fei then turns and knocks the sword out of Jiao's hands and then does a flip over Bao and kicks him in the face". If something particular needs to happen in the course of the fight, Brian tells me in the script but it's up to me how we get to that point. However, I don't completely ignore input from the team, I always get the layouts looked over before I take any big steps toward finalizing the art.

So in other words if they suck I'm pretty much the one to blame.. but if they're good I'm the one to praise! :)