Yeah, I’m trying really hard to stay open and give this a chance but so far the writing has left me feeling like I read an issue because I HAD to and not because I wanted to. There isn’t a single character or plot point I’m interested in or care about yet. Hopefully that will change, but going by this author’s previous works I fully expect the entirety of this run to be joyless and humorless.
Can we not do this thing where mtmte fans decry a series because its not mtmte. Because we got enough of that already in the idw1 threads.
But the characters here are dry and lifeless compared to MTMTE or not. But when compared to MTMTE, it’s even worse. There’s really nothing going on here. IDW separated the TF comics fandom firmly into either RiD or MTMTE camps and now they’ve brought us both together again after being apart for so long.
Atmosphere. His character designs have a simplicity that is reflective of Geoff Senior and Andrew Wildman but stylistically he captures the surroundings and colors to match the tone of the story he's drawing for.
It’s dark, grubby, amateurish, lacks detail and clarity. Ain’t no story has the tone to deserve such terrible unclear artwork.
Yeah pretty sure his work did well with the tone of Chaos and the scenes of the Dead Universe during Dark Cybertron. And like I said earlier, Im not a huge fan but as a fellow artist I appreciate what he does because unlike some of the artists of IDW he’s met every deadline to every issue he’s worked on with doing all the art making him more reliable than others. He does everything, penciling inking and coloring. Hey if you can do better than by all means let’s see
Of course he’s going to be able to make deadlines with that poor quality. Decent artists actually put the time and effort to make a comic book that’s enjoyable for the reader to look at, the pride of the artists ascending from every page. With Livio, I don’t get that sense. He rushes through his work just for a pay check. That’s the tone I get from reading his comics; turning what could be an actually amazing book with another artist into a sloppy muddy mess. And I don’t need to be an artist to recognise the difference between good art and bad art. I can’t make a Hollywood movie either but I sure know a bad movie when I see it.
Literally everything Ramondelli draws is a parallelogram. Look at it, there isn't remotely a perfect square anywhere, except maybe the panels.
Every artist at some point has to make shorthand versions of his own style, give him unrestricted time and Livio's work looks fantastic, multilayered and very well detailed. His simplistic style captures the classic comic look of the old Marvel days when all we had to go by were Sunbow character designs. Just for the sake of Furmanizing this off topic swing, here's my counterpoint.. Geoff Senior's cover art, but his in-comic art is just as flat, rhomboid, one dimensional... all of those criticisms everyone singles out Livio for. and yet, it's held in higher regards. Livio's poster art. Everything everyone's saying about his work can still be equated to others too... ESPECIALLY Andrew Wildman. The only signficant difference of them is Livio's work is all mostly digital and his start to finish, everyone else has a seperate inker and colorist.
Except he doesn’t rush through his work. He works very hard and does everything. He’s not just handing it line art and has someone else does all of it and tries his best listens to the criticism and does his best to do better. His first couple years was rough. He wasn’t making backgrounds, he was covering everyone in darkness and was photoshopping background but he saw what people were saying and actually was doing his best to improve and I respect that a lot. I feel bad for artists like him because he does see him he comments by arm chair critics like you who admit they can’t do what he does but act like you can. You don’t like it fine but don’t accuse him of being lazy and rushing when you don’t know anything about his way of work
Look at the size of Quake in that group! Hasbro surely is shrinking their Siege deluxes! Haha. I think the comment about Quake in the comic is not really giving him a big role. Just stablishing that he's someone well known and disliked by the cops, and that the ascenticon who put him in a security role must be dumb or have some dark motives.
I like how the comment "Is that QUAKE!?!?!" coming from off panel is a fourth wall gag. You're so used to the big four, Megatron with Soundwave, Starscream, and Shockwave being his first inductees, but you never expect the obscure characters like Quake in this issue, and Ruckus in the first issue to stand out so prominently in a crowd of genericons.
I’m sure there are better things to do with your time than writing essays in defence of a mediocre artist.
If IDW has to do a "toys currently on store shelves" book to keep the license, fine. But jeeze, put out a second book that people will actually care about already. And the whole "following the death of a well-known character" thing? Not in this book. Brainstorm was literally introduced to the comic in the second issue as a dead body. Why would new readers even care?
