m1kclark's art Reviews on Newgrounds

[Bat-O-Lantern]

Illustration or photo?

If it's a photo of an actual carving you've done, I'd like to see the whole pumpkin in full light. It looks fantastic as it is, but it would make it just *that* much more impressive.

Schteeve responds:

it's carved. already had to toss it though. it got all squishy!

[Demon Battle]

Motion

I like the level of gritty detail in some portions of the image, with well-chosen blurring in other portions. You've really given a sense of closeness and motion, and I really like the lighting on all the surfaces.

The only weakness really is the man's face, which looks a little ... beastly (I am most reminded of Blanka from Street Fighter II). I think, given that, the image would be better if we saw the demon's face and the soldier's back instead. Otherwise, great painting and a nice subtitle to go with it.

InsolentMinx responds:

cheers for the review :) Yeah lookin over it I would probably redo the face

[Inky and Brush]

Excellent quickie

It definitely isn't polished, but the effect is still striking. The environment has real ambiance, and that character seems to have a LOT of nuance despite the simplicity of the art. He glares as if to say, "What're you looking at?" while holding a paintbrush comfortably, like it's his instrument of ... whatever. I really feel like it's a single snippet of what is otherwise a big, dark story. Well done.

BinaryDood responds:

Thank you :)

I shall make more stuff with this character. The reason he is holding a brush is because he draws with it... USING HIS OWN BODY AS INK!!! IT'S INSANE MAN!

[Still Life WIP]

Low poly?

It's awfully low on polygons. If that's deliberate, then I will say it is awfully well done: if this is for a video game or if you were given a polygon limit, then you prioritized really well and evenly distributed the details so nothing stands out as being drastically different in quality.

Your cloth texture is really nice, although I can see the interpolation: you mentioned that you wanted to use bigger textures, so you're already aware of that. And I love the gritty, deformed skull!

The two things that I really have to comment on are the glass bowl and the limes, from a material perspective. The limes look out of place, as if they aren't under the same light as the cloth and skull. The two things that I *think* are making that happen is that (a) the texture itself is already lit from one direction and the directions don't really match on the randomly-placed limes, and (b) you should make the green in the lime texture a little less saturated ("grayer") to better match the duller/redder tones of the rest of the image. And you made two mistakes that are classic with modelling glass on that glass bowl: don't let the inner polygons be visible, and play with the settings on the "transparency" modifier until you essentially can't see anything but the glass edges. If you want to, you could add index-of-refraction to really get the glass to look glassy. Having said all this, I don't know if that's the effect you are going for, and you should only take my advice if you like the result.

Great job overall and I look forward to more stuff from you!

SpiderRat responds:

Thank you very much for your comment! Yes, this was supposed to be low-poly. Our max was 7000 triangles, I have around 6500. Since the assignment is over I can go back in and make everything higher poly later. Everything else you said is about correct. I still have a lot of problems with lighting, and the the vessel was my first glass material I've made, so I'm not surprised by my errors. Thanks again!

[Mandolin]

Again, awesome!

Again, you've shown prodigious skill with Maya. My one and only comment is that there should be a little bit of noise in the textures on the guitar's head: the tuning pegs and the glossy design are unrealistically smooth. But those metal anchors for the strings are *perfect*.

And you get extra points for the 8-string mandolin.

Whistler3D responds:

I appreciate your all your critics! But you don't have to give a 10 if you see the inperfections.
In any way, thanks for coments!

[Desk]

Great with flaws

It's an excellent image with good objects. But there's something about it that just makes me think it is a 3D image instead of photorealistic. I think it's the specularity and reflectivity settings on the wood and the books, quite specifically. Having said that, that feather quill is EPIC and the glass bottle below it is also quite eye-catching!

Whistler3D responds:

Thanks!
And yes... the wood looks like plastic.

[3D Gun]

Excellent start

It's a great first model, and I like your attention to detail. I rated 9/10 given that you are a beginner still: if VidGameDude had submitted this, it would have gotten a 5, but that's the learning curve for you. The 500 polygon limit is a stringent constraint in today's GHz world, but it IS useful for getting you to prioritize your polygons for maximum effect. With that in mind, your polygon priority is actually what I want to address.

By the looks of it, I'm estimating the following numbers of polygons: 100 on trigger+guard, 25 on barrel, 25 on the hammers, 100 on the decorative gold piece above the trigger, 150 on the wood butt, and probably 50 on random other elements. That's not well proportioned, given that the barrel is huge and dominates the model but the trigger and the decorative gold piece can hardly be seen. I would tone down the decorative piece to 10-20 polygons, the trigger and guard to 25, and then use the rest of the polygon limit to make the barrel more circular instead of octagonal. I mean, it doesn't make sense to have SO much detail on small pieces but to be so polygon-cheap on the second largest object in the whole model. Especially because later, you'll learn how to use textures to give some really fine detail to otherwise low-poly objects.

Hope this was constructive more than critical, and good luck on your class!

BATCLAM responds:

Yeah I completely understand what you mean, thank you very much. I didn't find that too over critical at all.

I considered making the barrel rounder, but by that point I had already finished most of the gun and I didn't want to ruin its symmetry, that and we had to stick to quad-faces so if I wanted to add anymore sides to it I would have had to use the insert-edge tool which would have added soooo many faces to my poly count.

But if I have any time to fix it up I probably will remodel it from scratch and do that. Thanks again!

[Ibanez Guitar]

Masterful lighting!

Between the lighting and the texture on the body of the guitar, which includes *fingerprints*, as well as some really awesome textures on the floor, the strings, and the wood ... I'm speechless, because I think this is such an AWESOME render!

Whistler3D responds:

Thanks! Im glad you like it!
Is not as good as you think, I not do intensional do the fingerprints there were just a rare efect in the material and the ligths... but the final result is what matters :D

[Things]

I like it!

Good textures, good geometry, excellent lighting, and the reflective floor really adds to the image. You beveled all the edges and really made photo-realistic objects in a 3D CGI environment. This is excellent and I'm excited to see more of your stuff in the future!

Whistler3D responds:

Thanks! I will upload more.

[Monster Moped]

I love blender

I'm going to guess the extremely realistic-looking smoke was done in GIMP, because it would be so hard to do in Blender alone. I do like all the extra features in the room, like the crates, the barrels and the gas tanks. The cracked tires texture is also very realistic looking. That blue-marble look for the gun and the supports is a bit odd, neither a reference to a real manufacturing practice nor stylistically consistent with the dark nature of the rest of the robot. And why can't we see his head?

Really, I think that you have my problem in that you know exactly what you want the models and textures and lighting to look like for each object, but you're having a little trouble making an ensemble. I don't advice for that. But I do feel like this image isn't dark enough to be noir, nor bright enough to be caricature, nor detailed enough to be still-life. It's like Half Life 2 but with too much color, and I'm just not sure what "sense" you're trying to convey. By no means a bad image, but I can see why you are "not satisfied with it". (BTW, I love your other 3D work, too.)

Woolybear777 responds:

Thanks for your comments. The blue-ish look is actually blue flames painted on the body. It's the paint job. I know it's kind of dark though.

I actually didn't do any post-processing effects in Gimp. The "smoke" is just the Halo effect on the spotlights.

I'm not sure who's head you're referring to. There's no one in this picture. If you meant the top-portion of the Giant-Moped-Thing, it's just dark. I should brighten it up. You're right. The lighting is really the center of why I'm not satisfied with it.