Vic final

Making Vic's eyes have dark bags under them was clever. It helps give him a slightly unhinged and exhausted look. I also feel this could be relatable to many people, as we all seem to spend more time on our screens than we do with our families. What is unclear to me is why was Vic and his family being threatened, and by who? Do they ever catch the people who kidnapped his family, and most importantly, what flavour of ice cream did they get? Great job!

Wow-- I'd believe you if you told me some of this happened to you. Exaggerated, sure, but this story feels really personal. It also has some deep takes on what being "terminally online" can do to a person. Grown-ups who try to write about this generation always come off as well-meaning but a little ignorant, so that makes this story really special and really valuable. Your character design for Vic is A+. You completely nailed the attitude -- what's going on in Vic's brain -- the whole way. Super-expressive, and I believe the "acting" in the drawings. Especially impressed with all the drawings that conveyed tone through lighting, fog, rough chalky texture, etc. It leads the eye to what's important, adds drama, and gives each of the biggest beats their proper importance. Even just quickly going through each of the pictures, the rhythm creates in the pacing through when you decided to do that gives a feeling of structure. I think the ending speech from Vic gives me the clearest idea of what the full message is supposed to be, but I feel like some of the story beats don't completely follow this speech. Like... in the story, we don't get to see that Vic had a change of heart when he got attacked at the hospital. The thing is, you didn't say that in the narration! I think it was just something you skipped over on accident, because if I zoom in on your thumbnails for Act 2, I see it starts off with Vic's family celebrating that he's alive, and Vic saying, "They really care!" Don't forget how important these kinds of parts are in FULLY telling the story! Just listening to your narration, I wouldn't have even known what really happened after he got attacked-- it would've seemed like he gets attacked, he recovers, but nothing about Vic's outlook really changes. When you introduce Vic, you make a point of saying he doesn't have any friends at school. You never mention that he had people he considered friends online until Act 2. It's important to set up things like that beforehand. I assumed even online, he didn't really have any friends. I believe the idea with some of these events (Vic getting attacked & Vic's family getting kidnapped) was to add real stakes and drama. I think that some of these choices COULD work, but really, this story feels like it should be a little more grounded in reality-- or at the very least, these events shouldn't come out of nowhere. Vic lives at home and only likes to play games-- why did he go outside late at night to get groceries? It just doesn't really follow what you set up about him. I think if something bad were going to happen to him, it'd be that he just... straight-up forgot to take care of himself and got himself deathly ill. I think that follows what you set up about him. And then the family getting kidnapped, while dramatic, just isn't treated with a lot of reality. I mean, if they got kidnapped once, what's to stop these evil dudes from kidnapping them again? Not really something to just go eat ice cream after, with that kind of thing looming over you -- unless, of course, you're just trying to add some lightness & silliness to the story. If you strike the right cartoon-y tone, that could work. If you want Vic to have to do something for his family-- to put them first-- maybe it could be as simple as going to his brother's graduation ceremony on the day of the release of some game he's been waiting for. (That's another thing-- you gotta help us differentiate between Mom, Dad and Brother. It's a little hard to really feel like the love of his family is special when they're written like they're three-in-one rather than three individuals. If they love him, we should know them as people.) Other ideas for the third act: If he values his family now, puts them first before his friends, then what is the new thing he's learning from saving his family? Maybe to learn that he can save people in the same way they saved him. Maybe that means you can get the message, and perhaps get it across stronger, in a different way. Maybe his brother starts to go down the same path as Vic and isolates, and Vic can save him that way. Or maybe it's some dude online he's playing with, and Vic gives him a pep talk about how things can get better, and that Vic believes in him. Maybe one of the mean people he was "friends" with is having a hard time, and Vic chooses to give him kindness when he doesn't even deserve it, and it makes that "friend" turn a new leaf. BUT, if it's gotta be a kidnapping, just make it clear what it means to Vic's character arc! And maybe you should make it harder than him just locating their phones and sneaking in without any resistance and sneaking out without any resistance. Something of that seriousness really should be treated like a HUGE OBSTACLE to overcome so that we can feel Vic's really done something extraordinary when he saves his family. In a story with even less connection to reality, it'd be interesting if, like, instead of the bad guy being his friends, the bad guy was, like, a video game that was alive. The video game gets upset when he stops spending so much time playing it, and traps his family in the game, etc. Then he could destroy the game at the end in order to set his family free. Lots of ways it could go-- I think why I'm thinking so much about this is that the full story needs consistency of tone, and a clear arc for the character where every point adds up to something at the end. Vic's somebody who I immediately root for, and wanna see succeed, so he deserves a story that gives him that!