Kinsei's art Reviews on Newgrounds

[Fish Tank]

Actually, I thought they were Frogs

No really, look at the one in the bottom left. They look like frogs.
Anyway. A piece like this has a couple elements above normal art pieces. This kind of makes them harder to critique. But that extra mileage helps more than hurts.

Over all this takes a very simplistic design appeal. Much of it is silhouette. I guess like a structured abstract of images. It reminds me much of the backgrounds created by Chuck Jones when he was working on Looney Toons. They had shapes and colors, but were simple and effective.

one of the things I want to point out, which surprises me since I'm the kind of guy who surfs google images for 16MP pictures, and that is the size. At maximum size, the grainyness of the picture gets in the way of the art, so the picture is too big.
*GASP* I actually said that?!?!
Well, yes its too big, but at the same time the sample size is much too small to get the full detail. So I had to manage with opening the full size in a new tab and then let Firefox handle the rest. This gave me about 55% size. And it worked out great. I got to see the picture, and the grain didn't get in the way.

The painting of the background and middle ground worked out very well. Spray paint can be a difficult too to use well, but you have managed, and I give you kudos for that.
Your forms are pretty nice and this seems pretty well though out and executed. Some of the transparency of your paint brush strokes and textureing with paper towels give some good depth as well.

Don't take this the wrong way my man, but I have noticed that you have done a much better job with your gun customizations as well as this here than you have done on the digital realm. Perhaps this is more of your nitch rather than Photoshop or flash. And to be honest there is nothing wrong with that. We don't get much hand crafted things around here so things like real paintings and rebuilds are nice.
We could use more of stuff like this. The only thing I want to suggest is to read the tips over documenting your work again, http://art101.newgrounds.com/news/post/314936 , and perhaps get a better camera so you can take much better photos of your work.

Congrats, keep this up and you just may have a scout in your future.

MajesticBob responds:

Thanks! No, offense taken. I agree with you. I'm just was more comfortable with a spray can than a mouse. Huh, go figure. And they are clearly Fish lol.

[Believe]

Very Nice

OVer all there isn't much I can say for this.
It is really pretty good. The only things I do have to say are pretty small.

The first one is what is up with that black block?!
I mean at the top of the picture you have this block that seems to be 100% black and the rest is like a 90% black. At first I thought it was some sort of gradient, but nope, it just suddenly changes. It's kind of awkward.

I think you could have pushed out some more reflections and hard highlights on the visor and gun. It would have given them a much more shiny feel.
On the subject of strong highlights. In some areas you have the armor roughed up quite a bit. I think you should have added a couple spots in those areas where the paint would have chipped off and you would have the metal shining through. All just to add some more appeal and make the armor look more worn.

Still, very nice piece.

xTY3x responds:

i don't understand that black thing, i don't see it. maybe it's an error of the site, since sometimes images appear to be cut or scattered. anyway thanks for the review, i agree with all you said, but i did this in 2 hours restarting a piece i had already done, so i kinda rushed it.

[Custom Maverick]

Liking

I'm liking this Bob, and it's a great start.
The biggest problem with this, is the same reason it is hard to critique. That issue is all in the presentation and size of the photo.
You need to take High quality shots of the gun from multiple views, and shop them together. This way we get to see all your hard work in good detail instead of one view.

Moving on. I really think the color scheme is pretty nice. It has the start of a solid steam punk feel to it. I think you should take advantage of this and start adding one some "frills" to give it more appeal and to alter the design from the normal Nerf Maverick. I see you have started to do that, but why not continue down that path, right?
And since you are going to be altering the gun, I think you should improve on the design a little. Perhaps using some PVC piping, you could add an attachment to carry more ammo on the bottom of the barrel.

As I said, it's a excellent start and I would love to get some more views on it. So yeah give us a nice collage of photos so we can really see it.

MajesticBob responds:

I'll keep the multiple photo idea open. The ammo holder idea me and a friend have done before, problem is finding a decent bonding agent. But you gave some valid points. I'll keep that in mind. As I go along, my works are going to become "braver" as I start experimenting more.

[The Manikin]

Kind Of Weak...

Well, As a whole, this is not that great of a piece. The layout of the strip itself is borderline, the art isn't anything special and the line work has no real weight and is dull.
The strongest thing of the entire piece is the second closeup of the mannequin.

I've seen your profile, and it proves you can do better. I think you just wanted to get this posted asap, so you cut a few corners. Down side is that has backfired immensely.

BloodyAngel88 responds:

No no. No cutting corners here. It was just a quick idea I had, so I plotted it down and had some fun.

So yeah, if you think it's weak...then, whatever. It's all your own opinion.

[AWP Gol Magnum]

Soild Model, But With A Problem...

Since Mr. M1clark mentioned the background, I won't take off for that, but there is something else I wish to address.
In terms of model it looks good. It is a solid piece showing skill in both modeling as well some skill in the textures. SO I Have no beef with those.

My issue is in the render. pert of the render, the lighting, is fine, but the entire thing is fuzzy. It looks like you had a depth of field toggled on the camera, but had the settings off where it started to blur the piece. Since we are dealing with a stationary image here, with no background, the focus should be on the model. And having the fuzzyness takes away from being able to see the detail you have poured in.
So get that render fixed and you'll be good to go.

Dawn-Breaker responds:

Aahh thanks allot! well although I still have some troubles moddeling pieces that have roundings and openings (in this case the entire stock) I'm glad it does show off that I do improve.

As for the texturing. I had it worked out with arch and design texture preset with Mental Ray. a bump bitmap added in from an excisting texture I had and it was good to go on the metal parts :D

Now to the issue at matter.. I was aware of the odd and fuzzy feel of the render but I had no camera active in the file, just the Perspective view. rendered it with HDTV also the reason why the expanded view on the picture is so large.. I'll try and figure out what settings I'll need for a finer render result.

Thanks again for the great feedback!

[Drawin from ma Drawin Book 2!!]

Getting there

Much better An excellent start.
Now to keep going. I would call this portal worthy.
Although just being an eye, an entire portfolio cannot stand on this alone. Continue to work, practice, study, and produce, and you'll have a pretty good chance of getting scouted.

Narutofan914 responds:

Thank you for supporting and helping me:D

[Pico Day]

Ha!

I actually laughed at this. Pretty sweet.

Not only is it hilarious in concept, but it is also well done. Nice lighting, Good colors, Simple but effective background. 100% man. Righteousman. Any idea if you are going to do Nene or Darnell? as well?
How much time did you spend on this? cause it think it is a serious contender for Pico Day.

Lazymodecomics responds:

Took me about 4-5 hours. With a lot of breaks to eat popcorn. Thanks for the positive words my friend.

-Jake

[Marie]

Excellent!

I just noticed how similar your and her style matches. Not in character designs, but in the linear, coloring and such....
..... wait.....
couldn't....
D: Pixel and Joe are the same person!
D:
D:

BizarroJoe responds:

Why it seems that everybody wants to turn me into a woman?!
Anyways, this is the internet... Who can assure I'm not?

[Forever Alone pg 1]

This Will Be Good

Bravo my good man. Superb.
It's always funny when a piece of Fanart out does the original that it is based on, although the bar was already set pretty low in the first place.

The art is solid, same with the shading. But I expect that from you. Got good pacing and having the frames slightly out of line is a nice way to give this both a good solid professional feel, while keeping it natural.

you have done well with the expressions and the close up shots really get you personal with the characters. Down side of this is it is hard to get a sense of placement or settings. Although at this point I am quite literally digging for things that are wrong with this. I mean it is so awesome in both execution and purpose, that there is little to actually go against.

So very nice Fifty, you have earned my 10 and 5

Fifty-50 responds:

Thanks man. Although I just made this for laughs, it's quite an honor to receive a 10 from you Kinsei.

[Soldier]

Well.....

First off, the head is way too big for the shoulders and torso to properly support. Even if you were trying to pass this off as some sort of bust, it still wouldn't work because of the way you out lined it.

The Eye sockets are both aiming in different directions. One is aimed up, the other is aimed down. Now I see that you have some blood on him and it somewhat looks like he has been in a fight. but him being roughed up won't explain his deformities due to the fact for his eyes to be like that, most of his facial structure would need to be broken, but then you don't have proper coloring or swelling. So him being roughed up is not going to work as an excuse.
And then the chin is out of line, it needs to be back a little more

As for your coloring and lighting, they have their own problems. most places you only have the base color and a shadow. Some times that works, but your usually better all with going with 3 levels of light and dark. Actually on a second look, you didn't do any highlights. Sure that might be one on the pin on his hat, but I doubt it.
As for coloring, it goes much with the lighting, the colors are very flat, thus making the picture very flat.

His clothing looks, well just drawn over top of him as if he was a flat plain. He needs to be more 3 dimensional. His clothing needs to flow with his body. Clothing will also bunch up and wrinkel where there is a lot of cloth shoved in to a small area, like the bend and turn in his neck and collar.

The blood looks just dabbed on as a second thought, actually him being roughed up at all seems like you decided to do it last minute to try and "Spice it up" but it didn't, this soup doesn't even taste like you added even table salt to it.

And the jpeg artifacting, it;s just painful. I'm not sure why this is so compressed, but that could be because of the over saturated color.

Do more planning
Get to know your structure
Do under drawings and build up structure
Learn proportions
practice color an lighting
work with posing and dynamics
research blood splatter and body damages
look at facial expressions

Perhaps after you study all that, you\ll have better results in the future.

Minchken responds:

shut up faggot.