I’ve been working on creating a rubric for scoring Meta-reviews, and have gotten probably close to halfway through the process. It’s not quite as easy to create an effective rubric as you might think. Well, at least with a six-point scale (though I’ll admit I can’t see writing up a Meta-review for a comic with 0s or 1s for various aspects of the comic).

Here’s what I’ve got:

Penciling/Inking/Tablet Art
0 ribbons – scribbles, clip-art
1 ribbon – simple line-drawings that suffer inconsistencies from panel to panel
2 ribbons – basic line-drawings, fairly consistent, minimal detail
3 ribbons – basic consistent line-drawings with some detail
4 ribbons – well-drawn images with significant detail
5 ribbons – extremely well-drawn images with significant detail to face, texture, and clothing, and consistent variations in character/object designs

(Needless to say, this looks somewhat clunky. Basically, it’s three subcategories of the “line-art” aspect. Some people leave their comics in just pencils, feeling that their inking efforts increase the amount of time and effort in creating a final product. Some people enjoy the crispness of the inked form (and some people even can ink images without initial penciling). Finally, with the rise in tablet use, an increasing number of people do all of their art via tablet, using layers that can later hide the initial “scribbles” and leave a clean-looking product.)

Backgrounds
0 Ribbons – No backgrounds
1 ribbon – gradient shading fills, photograph backgrounds
2 ribbons – vague line-drawings, clip art, minimal detail
3 ribbons – basic line-drawings, some detail
4 ribbons – well-drawn backgrounds with significant detail
5 ribbons – extremely well-drawn backgrounds with an eye to detail, lighting, shading, and consistent variations in object designs

(Fairly self-explanatory)

Coloring/greyscale/black & white
0 ribbons – Random “colors”
1 ribbon – simple “colors” with minimal effort
2 ribbons – flat consistent “colors”
3 ribbons – consistent “colors” with basic shading and lighting
4 ribbons – extensive “coloring” with shading and lighting effects
5 ribbons – extensive blended “coloring” with significant shading, and lighting effects

(Originally this was going to be for coloring alone. But then I realize that effective greyscale use could also be put on this list… and then a friend pointed out that black and white are colors too (and the comic Demonology 101 is perhaps a superb example of artistic use of black and white). “Colors” thus represents the use of color (including black, grey, and effective use of whitespace) in creating something more than flat two-dimensional images on a page.)

Now on to Characterization aspects, Web content, and Continuity, unless someone comes up with a category they feel would be useful for the Meta-reviews that I’ve not listed.