Kinsei's art Reviews on Newgrounds

[Wraith-a-teers]

OMG THIS IS LIKE THE BESTEST PICTURE ON NEWGROUNDS! WHY THE HELL ISN"T THIS THE NEW MASCOT FOR THE SITE BY NOW! ARE YOU PEOPLE BLIND, PRAISE THIS AMAZINGNESS.

~cause I'm "That Guy"

Actually I liked the folding on the wings on this piece. It added some interesting appeal to the over all.
You should get the rings back together and take a real good beauty shot of them all together.

MajesticBob responds:

Lulz.

[Ring Thing]

Although I don't have as much interest in the band on this one as I did the other ring, I do enjoy the "Stone" better.
Too bad you couldn't have integrated the bead in to the bad a little more by wrapping the wire around it a little.
Speaking of the beads on the other one, I honestly thought they looked like plastic, and I apologize if I bothered you with those comments I made over their quality.

Since I know what the intent of this prop is, it makes it a little easier to make a couple of comments on it. I little more roughing up would have been nice. Giving it that end of the world feel would have really helped it feel like it existed during the end of the world. I would get some antique finishing and brush in to the wire to add that dark feel to the band.

I like that you have gone out of your way to make props for your character and all, heck I'm working on sculpting some coins for my D&D games, but I want to see them pushed a bit farther with some added detail.

[Blue Crystal Ring]

Ooh, nice and juicy. good to see all that detail for once. Me likey.

Over all I'm liking the wire work on this I think you made a nice appealing ring on that point.
I may like the wire, I don't care much for the beads. To be honest they don't match because they look so fake. I really wish you had gotten some more unique beads for the ring. If I'm not mistaken the ones you used are plastic and pretty common. Even if they are glass, they are such a dull looking cut that they just don't scream anything special.
If you cannot secure better beads, I think maybe some gold lettering on them would help change them up.

As said, I really like the wire work on this and I think it really makes the object, but I think you could do much better with the beads.

MajesticBob responds:

Those are Swartizki crystal. They look better in Real life. Also post apoc, limited resources. I actually got those beads imported, so I'm a little saddened at you reaction lol.

[Post Apoc Necklace]

Aww man What happened. Your other one has such a nice large and clear picture. Ah well.

Anyway I'm kind of intrigued about those clear disks. mind sharing a few details on them?

So as a post-apoplectic Item I honestly expect to this to not be so well kept. I would be looking for some broken parts and odd accessories attached all over the necklace. I see you have some pop tabs to try and add to the randomness, but I don't think it is enough yet.
Again, I can't see everything all that well so if you have more, I apologize I cannot see it.

I think you should take a couple of those wooden beads and roast a few, stain a couple others and grind and cut on all in between. Maybe a couple pieces of random wire, a little metal and or random glass as well.

If nothing else you have a couple interesting elements to go with this. Now I would like to see you expand on them.

MajesticBob responds:

It is post apoc but 200 years later. Think rifts. So resources are tight but it's not impossible to make something new. The plastic disks are stoppers from seafood bag holder at my job. When the bags are empty and need to be replaced I take the stoppers since they get thrown out anyway. As for Pics these were kinda a rush job since I had to take them to game. Also I have a real hard time taking pics of jewelry. something I will have to figure out.

[Itherael]

Their are many things needed to be worked on here, but two of the biggest is your underlying structure and your "editing."

Yes you need to work on anatomy over all, but I think getting a good grasp of the skeletal structure underneath the character will be key in bettering your works.
By drawing a very basic an simplistic skeleton you can begin to see where the muscle structure and thus the skin, needs to go. Your shoulders are really awkward, and your head and neck are way off.

As you begin to get a grasp on the anatomy, proportions will begin to follow.

As for the editing. It looks really bad. I can see you were attempting to remove and/or recolor parts of the background. The cut work looks very rough and you would have been better off using maskes in Photoshop or the free alternative, Gimp.

You could use a little bit more defined linework and some more solid colors as well.

At least you strived for a more interesting pose and some post work. So I give you some props for that. Keep practicing and better luck next time.

[A Day At The Park]

Yeah, now thats quite a bit better.
You've taken care of a lot of the flat colors. Have a couple more levels of lighting. Have some stronger and more expressive line art. Gotten more to the sky with the clouds and the slight gradient. You got your picture more squared I like the floating box you have for the text, very comic bookish. Yes much better indeed.

As for things to work on. the color of the sky seen through the handle of the basket doesn't match the rest of the sky. you may want to make it a little lighter so it isn't as noticeable. The root coming from the ground should be a little more horizontal dues to the viewer's vantage point. I'd work on the shadows cast by the objects/characters/textures in the scene. Lastly I wouldn't copy and paste the clouds so much. One or two copy/paste will work, but not all of them.

Good job keep it up.

pockets08 responds:

YES!! YESYESYESYEYES!!!! and i fixed the apple basket lighting, but forgot to reupload the fix :P

[Day at the Park]

One of the first things I have got to say about this is that your box is off. It is a good bit shorter on the right than the left. Although panels like this are used in comics they are reserved for dynamic scenes, action, shock value or important events.
I mention this because I'm sure you didn't mean for this to be intentional. A tip for the future; Start in the upper left corner of your page. Measure from the top of your page down to where you want to top of your panel/drawing to be and make a mark. Do this again from the top of the page 2-3 more times a few inches apart so you can connect the marks with your ruler/straightedge.
Now do the same thing, but use the left side of the page this time. Measure in to where you want to make your left edge of the panel/drawing. From there you can measure how width and height of the rest of your box to make sure all the edges are even.
I know it seems like a lot of work, but it is really helpful of you don't have a drafting triangle. The easier solution though is to just buy a drafting triangle.
You'll pick up on that as you progress.

Moving on.
I really don't like the line work in this. Mostly for two reasons, it has little to no line weight, and its but splotchy and not black.
This is where you will want to do a little post work in your program before you start coloring. Playing with some of the Levels will help you achieve a blacker more solid line. Thus giving more impact to the piece over all.
Adding some more line weight will increase the dynamic of the picture. Basic explanation. At the moment much of your lines have pretty much a single thickness from start to finish. To have more appeal you want it to taper a little at the beginning and get a little wider and more expressive in the middle and on curves and such.
This is one of those things in drawing and illustration that will take a little time to truly understand, but a long time to truly master. But once you start to get it figured out you'll be much more pleased with your line work.

Coloring and lighting is, something. Sadly not something great. A lot of your colors are flat, and although that can work with some things, its not working here. Adding more shadows and highlights (actually having highlights that is) will help break up flat coloring.

Your coloring and lighting go hand in hand with this piece. At the moment you have only two levels of lighting and thus 2 levels of each color. For example, you have only two colors of brown for the tree bark, same for the grass, and leaves, and so on. you should try to at least work in at least 3 levels of light, Highlight, base color, and shadow. Having at least 3 levels will really widen your pallet immensely.

The composition of the piece is alright. The actual drawing may need to be refined but things aren't too far off balance.

I would advise some sort of background. Perhaps some clouds or something. Again this is going back the the flat color issues you are having at the moment. This is a link to one of my FAVORITE cloud tutorials of all time:

http://shadowumbre.deviantart.com/art/Clouds-tutorial-41272212.

Its a nice and easy read and even easier to do I don't know if you have a tablet or not, but this tutorial can be done with a mouse and/or track pad, you just have to take your time with it.
Having something in your background will help break up that flat color a little more.

At least your trying, that alone is a good thing. Keep practicing and learning. Good things will come of it.

[Dr. Doom Tribute]

My quick thoughts are for you to reinforce the details. Details like the webbing on Spiderman's Suit, or the Hard lines of Doom's armor. Also some more stronger and dynamic posing would have been a good choice.

Now with some more in depth thought.
I think a bit stronger composition with a more dynamic pose would have really helped the impact of the overall feel of the piece. I think something with a little more of the body showing would have been good. Perhaps doom holding Spiderman off the ground by his neck and seeing Spiderman struggling to get free.

The anatomy could use some work. Its not too far off, but it could use some more consistency in places such as Doom's hands and arms. Also Doom's neck and head seem thin and small compared to the rest of the body. I also notice that Peter's right shoulder is very small and puny. Spiderman may be a little on the smaller and scrawny side, but he does have some good solid muscle in the right areas.

The coloring could have been much more solid. Although it is breaking about par, I think you could have pushed your color pencils to have a bit more rich color. On that same hit I would like to mention some lighting and other effects. I don't see and definite or solid light source. I also see little to no shadows or shading. You really need to get a strong Light to case some nice hard dynamic shadows on the characters. IN that same sense this would give you the most awesome opportunity to play with Doom's armor had its reflectivity,

As I mentioned in the quick thoughts I think you should really get the thicker lines on the costumes. This also applies to the line work.
A couple minor changes and this could become a pretty bad ass piece. At the moment you have a start and I will pleased to see you come out with more comic book related pieces.

Chessplay responds:

Thanks for the honesty, I'm gonna work on those points moving on

[Sleeping with the Flying Fish]

before even reading your description I was thinking this was watercolor

I like the over all subject matter. Although kind of strange, it is something that appeals to me as a person.
I especially like the roasting of the birds.

The color and lighting are pretty good too. I would have liked to see some stronger shadows in a couple places like the guy's arm and the bed frame in a couple areas as well.

Although I think you could use some more practice in the medium, I think you have a decent amount of control over it already. You seem to have an excellent grasp of color theory and how to use shades other than gray and black to get a much better sense of shadow. As mentioned there Are a couple of areas I would have liked to see some stronger shadows.

The background, although simple, is good. I really think the watercolor was perfect for this in the simple sense of adding texture and breaking up what would normally be a flat gradient.

This carries the essence of a dream very well. It has that lovely mystical feeling about it that could only come from a dream. A little bit of nonsense and randomness such as the candle lifting the balloon, the fire breathing balloon that looks like a fish and the birds getting roasted by said fire.

Excellent job man. I hope to see more like this in the future.

Merol responds:

Thanks for the review!

I used a bit of colored pencils for some shading, but yeah, it mainly is watercolor.

I also wasn't totally happy with the shadows, they looked good enough to me before I added the background. It (the background) turned out to be a little darker than I was planning, I believe that played against them (the shadows).

That dreamy feeling is the reason why I used watercolors, I always thought watercolor paintings have that dream like thing to them.

Thanks a bunch for the review again!!

[Papercraft AT-AT]

I have to give it to you Bob, this is definitely one of your best pieces yet. I really liked it. To be honest for the contest it really comes down to a hard call between this or the Cthulhu piece. In the end I guess it comes down to who truly owns my soul; The Empire or the Old Ones.

I really liked the metallic that came out on this. it gave it some really nice appeal. I know some thought you made this out of metal, and I can see why, especially with that one fold on its shoulder looking like a weld bead.
As mentioned in the thread I would add some line work for the metal plating, but you already informed me of the problems with the marker, so I would suggest some paint pens. A little more expensive, but really worth the cash.
After that, if you end up with a little more black spraypaint in the near future I'd give a bit of light dusting to the underside. Give it some shadow appeal.
As for some photos, I'd like to see a really low angle show of this. Give it that massive appeal that it deserves.
Perhaps you should do some small origami or papercraft snow speeders next and set up a little stylized Hoth diorama with some white sheets and cotton balls.

Nice job, I'd love to see this take a pretty high spot in the contest.
faved, since we can do that now :3

MajesticBob responds:

Wow. That's the second time your review unexpectedly stunned me. I do wish I had added more detail but time was running short and I made do with what I had. I agree that the Cthulu is solid competition. That thing is sick. All the designs were solid. I just had to make an AT-AT. It just felt right. Thanks for the solid review.