How Brutal Are Your Fight Scenes in your webcomic? Are they:

1. Fair
2. Intermediate
3. Advanced
4. Brutal
5. Gory

And explain why that is? And who is the most brutal character in your story?

My Story, “Stringy and Mopy” brutality falls under as of now between Advanced and Brutal because of the impact of each punch, breakage of bones and severe injuries that follow. My most brutal character is Jason Love. He's the main antagonist of the story.

My fight scenes are intermediate, if one sided.

That is because they usually pit a small red headed girl against a range of apparently superior foes. She fared surprisingly well against a sleazeball with a revolver, but struggled against a large German Shepherd and had no chance against three goons with axes and chainsaws.

The most brutal character in my story is The Administrator. Whereas the others only threaten the body, he corrupts the mind with a combination of dreadful humour and appalling German accent.

Mine are pretty one-sided. I guess a 2 or 3 since there is occasional blood, breaks, or whatever. Injuries depend on the parties.

I have a couple characters that are basically always healing from something. (One keeps breaking the same hand.) I try to keep it fairly realistic, and most of my characters are not fighters, know when they are physically outmatched and work on the out-smarting, being patient, or being diplomatic angle. Quite a bit of running, hiding, and summoning authorities. Another character depends on her reputation as a crack shot and can usually coerce submission with a glare and a threat.

I guess the most brutal antagonist is Valentine. He's not a fighter, though. He's a serial kidnapper-rapist-killer He's basically a predator and generally a coward, but a very efficient coward. (He's had scenes that tested the limits of my comic's “T” rating.)

The most brutal, uh… protagonist? antihero?? is Fudo, who, when backed into a corner or in a tense situation, has a tendency to literally start cutting throats, which is quite effective at eliminating threats. (He's attempting to curb that reaction.)

Gory. I go for realism without being grindhouse/gory movie silly.

As for most brutal? Everybody and anybody as necessary as I depict violence as random and senseless. It's from my background and life experience. I've witnessed the real stuff. Violence doesn't discriminate.

The Falsanorians (Da-tu in Tales of SIG and Fy-Zorla in Interstellar Blood Beasts) are indifferent to the pain they cause less developed beings. The various protagonists do what is necessary to win. In Interstellar Blood Beasts it is down to a fight for survival so it gets necessarily brutal involving decapitation and casually blowing the head off a corpse “just to make sure”
There are also genre-savvy observations. One example would be the escalation of firepower in Attack of the Robofemoids. Most movies have the military not escalating the weapons used when something proves ineffective. If small caliber bullets don't work, they're gonna use heavier weapons as necessary. I have a lot of characters with military backgrounds who as aware of how to ramp up the violence in order to win. Norwood in Interstellar Blood Beasts based on his background in the Navy SEALs, has heavier weapons smuggled aboard the ship “just in case” Denisov in Attack of the Robofemoids struggled to get the larger weapons released to him to stop the advancing alien creations.

Advanced, I guess. but now I wanna make a super gorey one just for the hell of it, lol.

hmmm. pretty gory and brutal, the way they should be. Well maybe I over do the gore sometimes.

I'd say Brutal for the most part!! Lots of blood with the occasional piece of meat flying by… But… I've had a scene with intestines getting yanked out and twisted… I think my art just isn't able to make the gore seem super gory… maybe…!!

Also, I think the fact the power of the Godstrain allows for healing from even fatal wounds probably plays a part…!!

In Pinky TA I think I'd say “fair”. Cc gets into a hand to hand fight, and it's just action, no nastiness…
Pinky slams a guy's head into a periscope and smashes his nose…

But it's a war comic. A man gets cut in half with a heavy machine gun, people get riddled with bullets and burned alive, have their throats sliced open and worse. Pinky almost has her legs cut off at the thigh.
I depict it in a pretty non-brutal way for the most part though I think and that's just violence as opposed to “fight scenes”… well they are fight scenes but with guns and machines instead of fists.

Pinky is the most brutal character in that regard. Her on screen kill count is higher.

Genejoke wrote:
hmmm. pretty gory and brutal, the way they should be. Well maybe I over do the gore sometimes.

I sort of think that people would prefer to show hardcore sex than brutal gore… but gore is more socially acceptable and it gets a lower rating so people subconsciously go for that instead.

I think with Pinky TA I hold off on gore because I also hold off on sex.

For many artists showing gore over sex is a conscious choice. Just as it's your choice to avoid both in Pinky TA.

I'm too ham handed a story teller to not show gore. But I think intensely graphic depictions of sex in most comics look too much like diagrams from medical journals.

It depends on the mood you are going for. Suggesting something horrible and gorey without showing it (for me as a reader) causes dread; it's chilling. Seeing graphic violence makes me queasy and gives a visceral reaction rather than feeling the tension or dread. It's a vert different mood being set, even if it is the exact same action, depending solely on what is shown and how.

The same can be said of sex scenes. It depends on the mood you are going for and what you want the focus to be. Suggestive without graphic can draw a reader in more to empathize with the emotions and the parties involved. Graphic scenes will evoke more of a physical than emotional reaction in a reader. They will connect to the physicality more than the emotions.


There's a place and reason for either approach, and you can also use either completely wrong if it's not what you were going for.

Exactly.

bravo1102 wrote:
For many artists showing gore over sex is a conscious choice.

How could you tell? You couldn't.

What I'm saying is that the the impetus to draw sexual things is unknowingly transmuted into drawing violence because that's what is socially acceptable and what society directs you towards. Sort of the same way more girls like dresses compared to men: nurture.

You can go as far as you like with violence and gore and there's not much issue with it: a river flows over the path of least resistance.

Thank you John Calvin. You sure it's nurture and not the predetermination of God? He decreed I shall not sin by depicting pornography therefore I have the illusion of not doing so by the predetermination of God. Or as you say “nurture” ;-)

Yeah a lot of things come from the inner voices of our parents and other players in our formative years.

Quite brutal for now, though I am pretty sure its going to jot up a level once CO-OP progresses.

usedbooks wrote:
The same can be said of sex scenes. It depends on the mood you are going for and what you want the focus to be. Suggestive without graphic can draw a reader in more to empathize with the emotions and the parties involved. Graphic scenes will evoke more of a physical than emotional reaction in a reader. They will connect to the physicality more than the emotions.


There's a place and reason for either approach, and you can also use either completely wrong if it's not what you were going for.

Good point. I've found that if you try to depict a sex scene with realism (as in what you're depicting, rather than art style) it's not what I would call particularly graphic, certainly not porn. For that, you would have to put people into all kinds of unnatural positions to see what's going on and then you're no longer focussing on story elements in your layout choices. It becomes more like some kind of sex instruction manual. Do it naturally and as you say, there's plenty of room for character and emotion.

sex vs gore stuff

It all depends on what you're after, I'm not aiming to make a sexual comic with Lore, however BASO has the sexual elements. It's not prudishness on my part, just a matter of what I want to achieve with any given comic.

Good point. I've found that if you try to depict a sex scene with realism (as in what you're depicting, rather than art style) it's not what I would call particularly graphic, certainly not porn. For that, you would have to put people into all kinds of unnatural positions to see what's going on and then you're no longer focussing on story elements in your layout choices. It becomes more like some kind of sex instruction manual. Do it naturally and as you say, there's plenty of room for character and emotion.

Distance and camera angles are super important too. I've noticed if the camera is too far back, showing too much of the scene, instead of feeling “in the moment” empathy with the participants, I feel like a voyeur, which is kinda creepy and not usually what's intended (although, it could be in some cases). Close-ups of faces or hands or generally “non-sexual” skin contact makes for a more intimate expression.




Btw, I don't draw sex scenes of any nature. (Occasionally, it has been suggested. The same with any really intense violence. I do cut scenes. Imaginations are better than my artistic ability.) Just observing techniques as a reader/viewer.

My fight scenes are..
quick.
and goofy.

usually one or two pictures, but I have a very limited format.

Sometimes showing someone crumpled on the ground and a smoking gun can be more effective than showing shooting and bullet impacts. A close-up of a pained face can be more effective than showing the knife going in and all the spurting blood

I like the visual challenge of posing action at its most intense and extreme point of contact. It's what I picked up in doing miniatures. Always try to pose at the most dramatic and intense point for maximum impact. A lot of film avoid it because of the Hayes code censorship back in the day. And to save on special effects. With Photoshop I don't have that limitation and I rate my stuff appropriately.

I definitely fall way on the ‘Brutal’ side of the spectrum, though I think violence is ubiquitous enough in most of my works that it's hard to choose a “most violent” character. Their whole universe is violent… so I guess you can blame that on their creator. I blame television.

For me it's a stylistic and philosophical choice. My approach to pretty much everything is “Indulge, Indulge, Indulge!” I like for my comics to be vivid and graphic, because I aim to affect the reader at more of a visceral level than a cerebral one (not to say that my comics are brainless; they're not!). It's always good to make your readers think, but for me I'm trying to make the reader laugh, I'm trying to evoke revulsion, arousal, anxiety, joy. Moments to be experienced, not sterile information to be processed.

It's not that I think either approach is necessarily better in a true sense, but that's my preference. I find that when I see a movie or comic that's more understated, I may appreciate the cleverness and style and whatnot but I'm probably not going to watch that movie too many more times. I've seen it. I've digested it. Good craftsmanship and all that, didn't see that twist coming… and then on to something else. On the other hand, a pulse pounding action movie, or a good comedy, or even like a quirky Tarantino movie that bounces from quirky memorable scene to quirky memorable scene… those are the movies I can watch again and again, because they're experiences that you *feel*

I think that's sort of like how most people can listen to the same music album or playlist a million times and never get tired of it, but most of us have very few movies or books that we can go through that much without losing interest. I think it's because for music – like food, or sex – the joy is in the experiencing, in the tasting. But in literature and film, the heavy focus on storytelling – communicating plot information – can get in the way of creating those palpable moments which transcend narrative.

…aaand that's why I do gory violence and porn.

I going to say 3 to 4. Depending on which book I'm drawing. With my book, it more head cutting type or lots of death with bystanders or a semi hero/villain death. My story deals with, supers vs. undead vs. gods vs. Alien vs. human. With each conflicting with one another, things will tend to get a little crazy.



Hand to hand vs. weapon vs. powers vs. magic vs. Tech will cause from a few to large casualties. My main character is immortal by accident. Done to that, he is forced to defend himself from heavy hitting gods/immortals. He has all the fighting memories of his previous past hosts. Over 30,000 warriors, (not of earth), are running through his untrained mind. So he fights with “fight/flight” mode if he gets threatened. His body during the fight will break or tear. Meaning, his body is not conditioned to execute moves of those who once lived before him. (He heals after a while). So with each fight bring up a different memory about how to handle what is going on. ( he blanks out and only sees the memory of other hosts. So because the memory are so violent from these aliens, he tries to fight like them. His guardian comes to earth to help him condition his body and control his blind rage during normal fights.

I only have one fighting scene until now, and I consider it ‘gory’… an arm cut by half, a beheading and a head split in two parts. Well, in a vampire story you are supposed to see blood, a lot of blood ;)

The fights in Daddy's Girl are “early Steven Seagal” brutal. Broken noses and using human bodies to break the furniture. The final fight with the villain is the most brutal even though it only spans a couple pages.

I suppose there are graphic scenes in WM but the fight scenes I think are very swift and almost pedestrian. Usually they produce irreversible results so my characters avoid them as much as possible…

My fight scenes would be Brutal if they weren't softened by the comedic imagery.

Battle is fightin' and fightin' is killin' .

Simple as that. Some of the best war movies IMO were those from the 1930-50s. No explicit guts but the pain is there.

Something about telling a guy to jump off a tank and he just screams “I ain't got no legs!” You don't see his legs just his pained face. The guy turning over the body and all you see is his reaction. You don't need to see that the body has no face or the insides are all over. You feel it.

But if you're going to show the actual fighting; I don't believe in pulling punches. I know what a weapon will do and I'll show it. These things are dangerous and you should know what they do.

I would say they are intermediate at best because there's no blood, but it does involve hitting, punching and some moves I wouldn't want a kid copying hence the Teen rating.

I don't like drawing blood baths and even when a dead body is found or something along those lines, I just imply that it is there. I don't show it.

Not sure if this classifies as brutal or gory…

Pretty much the most violent I go…

My Drako the barbarian character is a Japanese swordsman, so there’s going to be a lot of cutting, slashing, etc. there. And, my detective Tag Forester character has been known to fight and shoot in his comix and his girlfriend can wield a knife like nobody’s business.