Kinsei's art Reviews on Newgrounds

[Friday Flood 2]

The Gorilla

It infiltrates my Brain!
!!!!!
!!
Sweet experiment. Even if you take it down after the flood, I thin kyou should put it up in the forum so we can check it out if needed.

[Monkey Cupcake]

Monkey!

I like the look on its face...

Again, nice job with the inking. I am really going to have to take my own inking up a notch.

As for the actual drawing, I don't like the top. It looks more like the monkey's brains rather than the top of a cupcake. That could have been your aim, but if that was the case, you should have drawn more ridges to look like a brain. Don't take it the wrong way, but it looks as if you are straddling the fence a little.

I like the subtly of some of your shading. Although it has a flat appeal, I think for this piece that it works for it. Or at least mostly. I think that the ears could use some work. They seem almost too flat, like a piece of cardboard.

I'm liking the color choices...
Although At first I didn't see the arms, I did once I got to high resolution. And they seem fitting.

Over all it looks like you had a style in mind when you started this, and you kept at it until the end. And in doing suck I think you have a pretty solid piece that is appealing and consistent.

I'm not kidding, every one seems to be showing me up. Guess I had better get off my lazy ass and put forth some some serious effort, or I'm going to get left more in the dust than I already am.

[Orca]

Inking And Color

I notice that you have grasped something right off the bat that seems to have taken me a while when it comes to inking. And that thing is the line weight. When I first started in Illustrator, I thought the simple line was enough, but as it turns out that it needed style, So I added special strokes to my line work, But sadly again it wasn't enough, my line work looked like crap. Finally I Read a few tutorials and I'm better for it now. But you seem to have gotten the proper concept right from the get go. Although I like the line art, I must say there is one or two things that kind of break it, and those are the interior lines. Some of then seem to be the same line weight. Although that may be a problem, I think you will get much better at this with time.

The color is decent, I Think you could have played with some lighting a little more. I wanna start with a few of the things I think you could have improved on first.
~I think stronger highlights are in order. Most pictures I have seen of Orca they seem to be very shiny, or have a high gloss when in water. I think Pushing that out a little more would have helped this pop out a little more
~ More, and Bigger Highlights. One of the things that seems to be flattening this is the lack of highlights where light would hit. The Highlight on top of the whale would have been much longer. Also some highlights above the eye on the brow would have been good as well as on the fin since it sticks out from the body of the whale.
~The shadow under the top lip needs some work. I thought the lips of orca were more beveled when going in to each other. At the moment you have a strong and sudden shadow and that makes me think that the top lip extends much farther than the lower.
~Blue lighting. The orca is under water and that will mean some blue reflections. Adding a tent of blue to the creatures highlights and skin will make it fit in to the setting a little better.
~ Distorted Light and Light Rays. When the surface of the water moves it creates ripples and those ripples distort light as it comes through. This would mean some uneven lighting and some pattern cast on the whale a little. I do admit that this is a bit of a advanced technique, but I think with some study you would understand it easily. Also Water is murky, or at least seawater is. SO when mixed with the distorted light, the light will seem to cut through the water in rays. Example: http://www.google.com/images?hl=en&q=Water+light+rays&bav=on.1,or.&um=1&ie=UTF-8&source=og&sa=N&tab=wi&biw=1264&bih=826 . This is mostly a background thing but it will really help out with giving appeal to the over all piece.

Very nice Job for the most part. I think with some practice you can go a bit farther with it.
THIS PIECE IS GOOD!!! DON'T DELETE IT! >:(

[rain]

:3

Hai.... this is me being an ass :P
I like the texture you have on the ground and background. I had to take a moment to look at your last two pictures to see if you have been using that recently and I hadn't noticed.... but this is the most extensive so far.
Very nice :P
Carry on :3

PixelCake responds:

OH NOES NOT TEH KINSEI

I haven't seen you in a while where have you been hiding?

Anyway, I haven't used THIS particular texture before :) I usually use the same boring one but I really like the white texture this time instead of the black one.

[oh god my eyes]

lol

I actually thought it WAS Sailor Moon when I saw the thumbnail....

Although... that raises even more questions on why I clicked it :P

Great job per usual. Keep it up.

[Grand]

Good...

Its a lovely start. A couple of areas could use some work, but over all this picture is good.
Lets start with some of the problems I'm seeing and move on from there.

One of the First things to catch my eye is the blue splotches on the floor. They are very distracting. And if they are taking away attention from the main model, then it is something that needs to be adjusted. Perhaps lowering the opacity of it like the red splotch under the piano would be best. Like I said you don't wish to draw attention from the main subject of your scene.

The next big thing I want to address is the lighting. I am expecting this nice polished grand piano, although you have one here, you cannot see it. The use of a couple ambient lights would have been excellent, but a good strong highlight to put a solid shine on the piano would been awesome.
The extra lighting would also have helped you get a better feel for your setting. At the moment it looks like you simply dropped a omni off to the left there, and quite closely to the ground I might add, and then had some simple spot lights used for casting shadows. Sadly it just isn't working for the scene. Adding some of those ambiance lights but extruding them from casting light so they will force your shadows to taper off instead just being solid all the way through would have helped as well.
When I look at this, the wood floor, the white walls (I'm not even sure what your trying to do with those red and blue lights.....) and I think that the best lighting would have been sunlight. Treat it as if there is a big set of windows just beyond the camera and have it flooding the room with light. Use a mask on a spot light to get the feel of the window shape. And then have the strong light on the floor just barely creeping in to the frame.

Now something I tend to get on to a lot of artist for is the size. Give us a high resolution picture where we can see every little detail. Please! I understand that it can sometimes be rather hard on a computer to sometimes render at larger sized images, more details, and extensive maps, but it is truly worth it in the end. You can really get a good feel for a scene when you can just see everything.

Now on to some of the things I like.
I like the piano model. from what I can see, I like. Again this draws back to the lighting issue just a bit, but that has been discussed. At the moment I cannot tell if you used a good bump map or actually modeled each key. Either way I think it looks good.
I also like that you put up some sheet music. so many people do a piano but never give it any music. I feel that a little touch like this in the scene gives the piano a played feel, not just setting in an empty room.

Over all I like the scene and I think it is good. You need to work on some lighting, but other than that, I don't see many other flaws.

m1kclark responds:

The splotches and red & blue lights were what I remember from high school plays. :-P
I've actually got 6-7 lights going, 3 that cast shadows. I've tried sun-lighting before (the Wraith in my profile), but I didn't like it, thus the attempt at mood lighting. And I completely forgot a highlight: thanks!
Also, yes, I modeled each key.

[Gamefreak Logo]

Not Impressed

Don't take this the wrong way, but text just isn't impressive. Even if it is a nice render, you should just have done something better with the scene.
Perhaps if you modeled every brick in the background, and mortar in between and then made one hell of a good map for it all, then I would be more kind.

[Gordon 2.0]

Great Update

I like. you have done a nice job with a character redesign. You even kept the simplicity consistent with the original which I think is worth some points.
Again you did well with the textures and color, so no beef there.

You also have some confusing light sources. I know you want to keep this shiny, and that means a lot of shine, but you need to organize them just a tad.

One thing that is bothering me about this is the lack of joints at the shoulders, elbows, hips and knees. Even just simple lines would have been ok, but as it is it fills so rigid and like it couldn't move. and even if it could move, it looks it would topple over very easily.

Anyway it was a pleasure reviewing your stuff. keep up the practice.

[Toothbrushman Pixel Art]

Well.....

Well.... I think you did well with actually construction the gradients on the handle and brush. I had to zoom in to see it but it was worth it.
The Thing that takes off 7 points is the character design. It is too simple and lazy. I can understand not wanting to kill yourself ove a simple project, but I know you have more design skill than this.

Perhaps you should do a updated version and upload that.

[Slime Man]

Not Liking This....

I'm not liking the way you have just tossed the anatomy and proportions out the window. If the line are was smooth then it could be passed off as humorous, but here it just looks bad.
Try and get it more fluid if you want it to work.