Bevis wrote:
"Nope, got the name exactly right which automatically makes her even more fantastic. OK so we'd introduced ourselves earlier but I was still very chuffed.
And the portfolio crit was pretty good. It did mean waiting in line for nearly two hours (there were so many points were I almost gave up and left) but it was worth it. I still have no idea who it was that did the crit though. He was sitting next to Mike Carlin and I think he said his name was Richard (by that time I was half asleep so it could have been almost anything ) and I'd have felt a bit silly asking 'I know who he is, but who are you exactly?'. He he. Anyone help me out here? Mike, do you know who it was?
Anyhoo he was very good. Picked up on things that I know are a problem and that I'm working on, so that was encouraging. And also picked up on the things that I think are my strong points. Basically said that my pencils are stronger than my inking which is a little tentative (which is very true), that my hands need work because the feeling and the expressiveness is there but the technical execution of them is a little off (he also noticed that most of my characters are left handed simply because I draw using my left hand as a guide. Heh), that I never draw feet and I should do it a little more because people subconciously pick up on things like that even if they don't really notice it properly and that some of my faces look a little odd when you compare the same character full on to profile or three-quarters, which again is true enough. He also said that my backgrounds were a little iffy which is partially true but was also a failing in the stuff I had in the portfolio simply because I didn't really have any pages that really included backgrounds at all.
Hmm. That makes it sound all very negative, but it wasn't really. He did say I wasn't the kind of artist that would be a mainstream DC choice but that didn't rule me out from less... superhero comics. And he said he thought the two Black Canary pics were great, which I was very chuffed by. So I was pretty pleased. The criticism was all very constructive and even though they were really pushed for time he spent a good long while going over the good and bad points of my stuff and gave pointers to how I could improve, hints on various stuff and things like that. The wait was awful but the actual chat with him was very good. I'd recommend doing it to anyone else wanting to get into comic art, although the best piece of advice would definately be to get into the queue as early as possible."
