m1kclark's art Reviews on Newgrounds

[Castle of Flame]

Two main comments

(a) Tell Reallusion to bevel his edges.
(b) Use a higher-resolution texture for the ground. I can see your interpolation.

Otherwise, it's a very nicely composed piece of a very foreboding castle. Would we really be able to see the sunset through that door, though, since the castle walls probably go all the way around?

samulis responds:

Beveling is fun... except when working with real-time render engines. It would become quite taxing on the system.

It's more of an 'experiment shot' than anything really concerned with physical accuracy.

[FROSTY ! ! !]

Holy out-of-season, Batman!

Interesting character design. It's a little too simple to stand on its own, but it would work great as a recurring character, for example as a company mascot (think Pillsbury Dough Boy). I also like the bump-map on the letters, trying to make it look like it's made of snow. Unfortunately, the letters themselves are too well-formed and the edges too distinct to really be convincing as snow-letters.

And I don't know what the hell those crayon-looking things are. Is there any description for this? Reason? Motivation? Program used? ... Anything?

[concept art]

Scope

Great sense of size. You really convince me that that building is not just huge, but colossal and intimidating to the only character in the painting. Sorry I can't comment on technique, but the image itself is really striking and wonderfully done.

[Sword in the Stone]

Good for a game 8 years ago

I think a game of this level is an ambitious project that could really be rewarding, and you are definitely on the right track. The awesome texture on the ground is at odds with the lack of textures on the buildings or the fountain, but I think these things will improve with time. The quality of the objects and textures reminds me of Unreal Tournament 2003; nothing compared to modern gaming industry, but still hard to do as an amateur.

[Magneto's helm]

Again, excellent!

Just like the barretta, the only flaw is the depth-of-field blur. The left-center shouldn't be blurry at all, since it is approximately level with the helmet.

Otherwise, what textures! There is exactly enough noise in the bump map to suggest a real material that's malleable and shaped by hand. Your beveling is still spot-on, and even the composition (lighting, camera angle, positioning of everything) really shows off your model.

Man, if you keep producing stuff of this quality, I'll stop commenting just out of awe!

Great-Rambo responds:

Thx again for your comment. It realy help me to go on.

Your job is realy good too ^^

[Panting Wolf]

Dali

I'm strongly reminded of the dog-like images in Salvador Dali's work, like in these two:
http://www.oilpaintingshere.com/artgallery/big/Fantasy/the-great-masturbator.jpg
http://img243.imageshack.us/img243/5359/lollitop98357copyofsalv.jpg

Looks very nice, almost tribal. 9/10 for not being a "polished" work, but it's an excellent charcoal/crayon drawing.

Museismymuse responds:

Thank you for taking the time to comment on my work. I appreciate it. :)

[Beretta 9 mm]

Excellent!

I comment a lot on 3D art here on NG, but I frankly have no recommendations for you except perhaps to fix the blurriness (which gr33bl3r said was an overdone depth of field: yes, that should be fixed). As said before, the textures are excellent and realistic, particularly the scratched metal of the barrel and the gray screw between the handle and trigger guard. But the geometry is also fantastic, with flat surfaces and curves surfaces in all the right places, and a lot of non-simple shapes that you have to make out of a series of vertices.

And you BEVELED everything! That alone has me impressed.

There is one thing that really surprises me, though: this render is such high quality that surely you're rather experienced with XSI at this point. So how come we haven't seen any of your other 3D art!?

Great-Rambo responds:

Yes I like to bevel lol, but it's a long work... and i'm particulary happy too see your review because (and you will understand why I don't have any other 3D arts) I'ts my first personnal 3D art ^^, but I will go on it's sure! It realy cheer me up to go on.

Thx about taking time to write this review ;)

[Sarthak! The Unforgivable!]

Godzilla + Jurassic Park

The lizard itself reminds me of the 1998 flop 'Godzilla', while the banner falling across a roaring dinosaur inside a building reminds me of the climax to 'Jurassic Park'. On a technical level, I'm not sure what you're trying to accomplish with the blurriness of the animal and the background, when all the text is so crisp.

ScaredyDave responds:

As far as the monster goes, you nailed both on the head! I forgot to mention in the description that its homage to that one scene in Jurassic Park, and one of my influences for Sarthak was the American Godzilla (I liked how he looked... the movie... ehhh not so much lol.) And as far as the text goes, I didn't catch the crispness until it was too late -.-; That banner was giving me all sorts of problems.

[robotday2011]

Good geometry, but...

First off, your models are good. Each character and object are well-designed and look very distinct even in this group of characters. You also put a lot of modeling work in the background, which gives the image far more scope than if you had put a wall or an image. And the content of the image (a ragtag group made of robots, humans, and that rock-thing) is also an excellent choice.

However, this is what I like to call "good to first order", meaning it's excellent beginner work. To make it really look like something, ALL of your materials need to be deeper than they are. The jeans need very fine noise to reflect how actual denim has a lot of color variations; the blue texture on the ground isn't high enough resolution for the object you put it on, and I can see the bicubic interpolation; the texture on Rockman is excellent, but it also needs a normal map or "bump" map so that it looks like its made of separate rocks instead of a single rock with lines drawn on it; every material needs work in the specularity (how the light shines off of it, not how it reflects off of it); and many of your materials need additional layers of noise or color-mixing, and the steel especially could use some mirror-reflectivity.

Finally, there aren't enough polygons. You have a lot of smooth surfaces that are pretty clearly (to me) made of only a few polygons, so the smoothing is uneven across the surface (e.g. look at Silver Robot's body, with all of the uneven lighting and reflections as if it were made of clay instead of steel).

This looks to me like an excellent project for an animation course (i.e. given that you are still learning how to do it), but my comment is meant to tell you that even one more hour's work would substantially improve the model and image.

Veinom responds:

thank you for the long and fair review. you sure know a lot about 3d! and yes you are right, some textures and some models could have a lot more detail. But if you consider the number of elements this image contains, im sure you will understand that for one guy's work this already has a lot of detail. Also I wanted the robots to look like they are made by something else. other than metal. Like they evolved in a way.
I wasnt going for realism and there is a lot of bump mapping, it just doesnt show much. Also, all these characters are animated and rigged, they are not just statues. There is a whole world behind them which took me 6 months to model and animate :)