The world of amateur art that we live in on gaia shields us pretty well from a harsh reality of the creative world. Most of us that post here have only experienced the most ego buffing manners of feedback.
Every now and then, a discussion on critique comes up. We talk about how to give it and how to accept or reject it. Despite there being a clear cut, academic/professional definition and approach to critique, these discussions can get pretty heated on both sides. There are plenty of people that just aren't prepared to deal with constructive critique as a form of feedback.
There are a handful of us that have published our work via print or web and opened ourselves to another, far more detached and far less forgiving form of feedback.
Consumer reviews
I'm sure we've all read reviews about some product we were interested and based our purchasing decision on what we read in them. A few of us may check out rottentomatos.com before seeing a movie. Many of us read a review before we pay for a console game. Most people (anyone with half a brain) does extensive research and review reading before purchasing something big and complex like a next gen TV or appliance. People will spend weeks researching and looking for reviews before buying a car.
The fact of the matter is, a review is as close to fact to a consumer as is a schematic or company profile. People take what they read very seriously. Companies take reviews very seriously. They spend time and money collecting this data and using it to improve and reposition their products in the market. They spend a fortune on damage control because of reviews and consumer reports.
Reviews come from people who spent money and/or time on the product and express their level of satisfaction. Reviews should be just as informed as critiques, but that's often not the case. It's a lot like critiques. Most critique you get will be from someone informed enough to advice you.
Peer critique vs Consumer review
We receive constructive critique freely here and in many other places, both online and in person as artists. We will often be overly protective of this art, but there comes a time when artists that share their work with consumers need to realize that their art is a product.
When I had the money (read: Not this term), I attended a class for comics and sequential art in NYC. One of my classmates apparently has a web-comic and is self publishing sets of chapters in print. (I commend her for that, actually.) I learned of this while researching a print on demand company for my own books. Anyway, I read a review she got from someone who picked up her book at a convention.
I'd image she wasn't smiling through it. (Provided she read it.) Read the full review here.
During class, it did come up that she should work on her art. She never mentioned that she would be selling her comics. In hindsight, maybe we should have been more insistent in being harder on her to prepare her to create a product, rather than "her art".
After reading this review, I thought, "A review is just a critique from someone who has a more extreme bias and expects more", so I decided to deconstruct this review and extract the critique.
This is something I think everyone who makes a creative product should do in order to improve their product and further their success.
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I blindly got my copy of After Lily Book 1 at YuleCon 2009. I figured, it was cheap enough, and I was supporting a smalltime, independent artist.
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Now I wish my support had went elsewhere, because to be frank, this manga sucks.
This bare-knuckle feedback is valuable, no matter how scathing, if you know how to look at it.
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Let's start with the book itself.
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While the cover is glossy and sharp, and the pages within are of expected quality, the print quality inside looks like the output of a dot matrix printer I had in the early 90s.
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The inside pages are blurry, and even bold text has a fuzziness to it... compressed images and poor print quality combine to produce an overall blurry image. Perhaps if this were produced as a regular-sized manga and not a "fullsize" picture book, these faults would be less noticeable, but I believe that anyone expects this manga's print quality to make the large pages worthwhile will be disappointed.
This bit also illustrates a bit about the uninformed nature of reviewers. This reviewer doesn't know that the publisher doesn't print in a "manga" pocket size. The artist apparently didn't realize this either as she probably created the work specifically for that size. Even the uninformed reviewer can tell that the artist did something wrong here. Don't ever think that someone has to be "better than you are" at making the product themselves to see the shortcomings.
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To discuss the print further, Ms. Scott could have made use of a good proofreader.... showing that Ms. Scott didn't even reread her work (or at least enough to notice a word spelled differently throughout a page).
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With the objective nature of the book covered, let's get subjective. A good manga should have cool characters, good artwork, funny dialogue, interesting ideas, maybe some kickass action scenes... traditionally, comic books give authors a fast-paced way to tell a story, and involve the reader with the characters on a personal level. But, we can't all be Stan Lee.
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Finally, the art style. Could this be this manga's saving grace? Hell naw! From the first page of Chapter 1, we're presented with unlikeable and unskilled art.... many errors in perspective, inconsistent use of shading, unexplained variations in line width, jagged lines, pixellation, and bad anatomy. Most of the scenes convey little energy or movement, and looks like lifeless cutouts. Even the aforementioned stabbing isn't actually shown, but the cliched shortcut of "closeup of a character's face beforehand, aftershot of the damage" is used instead. Whether this is a style element or trying to mask a lack of skill in conveying skillful movement is unknown...
Read reviews and critiques the same way. Make a list of the negative points and the positive points and work on making the negative better, rather than making excuses for it.
tl;dr: Reviews are way more serious than critique. When you get bad reviews, learn to read them for the constructive feedback that's found in it's words. If you treat peer critique as you would consumer reviews, you're much more likely to make a strong product.
