m1kclark's art Reviews on Newgrounds

[Creature]

house elf

It looks like Dobby and a Rock Golem had a bastard child.

I like the lighting in all of your work, and the perspective-blur is a nice touch. You could add a texture to the outside, maybe to give surface either more of a rock-like feel or an organic skin-like feel and define the character better. Not to devalue the work done: it's still excellent!

[Sunset beach]

In the words of Dr. Suess

"But those trees! Those trees! Those Trufula Trees!"

The best part about the image is how the plantlife looks like plants, and not like an algorithm. In fact, the tree algorithm is so good that if I wasn't deliberately and explicitly looking for it, I would not have noticed that the two trees are actually the same tree. The clouds and the water are the same way: the balance between structure and randomness is exact and correctly represents what my mind expects of reality.

Kinsei mentioned the sand is a bit repetitive. I have seen sand with such a repetitive pattern before, but a long-range source of noise might have been good, so two zones of sand that are 20 feet apart don't look identical. He also mentioned the sun, which maybe should be more corporeal as Kinsei said, but also not so white-colored at sunset. The rays it casts on the beach are very warm and red-yellow tinted, so I'd expect the same in the sky. These critiques, however, are not worth taking a whole point from your score!

And nice lens flare. It really completes the "photography" illusion! :-)

[Dancer]

Realism

@evulnater: It's called perspective, and I think it has been uniformly over-applied in an artistic way.

It's strange to look at this image, because I associate the darker line-drawing feel (most noticable on the toes, ear, mouth, and eyes) with your typical over-the-top accentuation of details as in a cartoon. Here, though, all the shading and proportions are subtle and realistic, with no hyperbolic emphasis on anything. It is a representation of reality, but through the lens of your hyper-real artistic style.

I like it and think it is a fantastic drawing, but it's jarring all the same.

[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!