m1kclark's art Reviews on Newgrounds

[Pond]

I have many reactions, some good, some bad, some just things I noticed.

1) That is one excellent rock. The color, texture, shape, and feel are all just perfect. But am I right in thinking that you have 10 copies of *the same* rock scattered through the pond?

2) I love the plants! And that tree-bark texture is not only a great-quality image, but you mapped it perfectly so it didn't distort at all.

3) It's sunny: why is the rest of the image so dark?

4) What are those white particles on the lower left? Between that and the darkness, it almost looks like you were originally going to do the scene at night and changed your mind.

5) I'm not positive that all the length scales match up. The branch in the foreground looks pretty thick, maybe as big as my thigh. But that means the reeds are all huge, taller than I am, and those rocks are middle-sized, like a Labrador could just barely sit on top of one.

6) The layout is really nice, showing a varied but enclosed little scene with a lot of diversity in it. I'm voting 5/5 despite my comments. :-)

Nasenbaerr responds:

You are right I have copied all this stones from one because I was simply to lazy.
The scene is so dark because it's inside of a ruin of a Flooded house and the roof is still there.
I think the white particles are a render fail.

[F-22 Raptor]

BEVEL YOUR EDGES.
Sorry for using all capital letters, but that's my advice on 80% of all 3D drawings here on NG. Also, I would tune the perspective on your camera a little bit. I can't explain it simply, but the mathematical rate at which the shapes seem to "shrink" as you move away from the camera, that rate is too shallow. It makes the model look small, like a plastic model instead of a 30-ft structure. Then again, that could also be due to the lack of textures.

Good starting point, though. I hope you use this geometry in other works!

Nasenbaerr responds:

Thanks for the comment.
I think what you mean with the thing that makes my objekts "shrink" is the Focal Lengt but I must acknowledge that the door in the background and the lamps are far to big compared to the F-22 and thats why it looks to small. :(

[Mulan's Sword]

You didn't take my advice on your last submission. The image's biggest problem are those edges: they are still too sharp. It's especially noticeable at the sword tip, where there's a clear triangular point instead of a smooth curve leading to the tip of the sword. Understand?

But, your material design is awesome, the lighting, layout, and overall scheme is perfectly suited to showing off your work. Keep creating, please!!

Lusin responds:

Ok bevel edges. Thanks I will.

[Sword of Bruncvik]

Good stuff, but here are two technical comments.

A) Bevel your edges. The hilt has impossibly sharp edges, and that's the first giveaway that it's a 3D render instead of real.
B) Increase the detail on that floor pattern. It also makes the image feel like a computer render, since that is clearly a built-in texture. It might be useful to map several textures of different sizes onto each other, with small color variations, etc.

What software?

[Doraemon]

The geometry is right for the style of the character, but you need a higher-resolution texture. I can see the pixels of his whiskers and around his mouth, which I shouldn't be able to. I'd say do 3x or 5x higher resolution on the texture and it'll be a nice character.

Silvertwilight responds:

Understood, I really should.
Thank you : )

[Kisiing in the rain]

Passionate!

clayscence responds:

thank you :D

[Beer]

SOLID.
(a) I see you're re-focusing on realistic glass. I didn't think it needed improving, but you got better with it anyway!
(b) The crinkled paper is a nice touch. Probably the first time I can see the polygons in a 3D model and I don't have to cringe.
(c) Hey, I recognize that background!
(d) "Love, your dead wife" !?!? Dude, that's grim!

<deleted> responds:

Lol yea. That is pretty grim :p Regardless, I appreciate the review and I'm glad you liked it :) Yes, I thought the paper required some polygons in order to look more crinkled :)

[Xenomorph dick]

A dick-shaped xenomorph is ... redundant!
Well done anyhow.

Rennis5 responds:

just like the colonial marines game!
lol, thank you anyhow.

[Assault mech]

I'm a big Blender fan, and I've got general comments on all three of your "mech" models.

The design is nice, with proper attention to detail on the geometries. Kudos on beveling your edges, but everything is too low-poly. I can see those polygons in the feet, in the gun ... actually just about everywhere. You would be well-served to increase the detail of your mesh. I realize that this is not a simple fix, and that you'll have to go back and re-do most of it, but that's one of the biggest weaknesses.

Your lighting and materials aren't realistic. You should add more lights that are much dimmer (brightness 0.100-0.400), that don't cast shadows, and that don't cause specular reflections (there's a "No Specular" button if you select the lamp and then go to Shading [F5]). Place them so the back of the mech is better-lit. Regarding materials, you made a good call wanting to add some noise in your textures, but don't use the built-in texture "Noise". Use "Clouds" instead; it'll give you a softer noise that you can control better. And make the two colors more similar (like 0.500,0.500,0.500 for the main color and 0.400,0.400,0.400 for the cloud-texture color). This would make a big improvement in all your models. And is there some kind of blue light coming from the left? All the blue on the back wall and on the mech's front looks out of place.

Finally, you made a mistake with the reflections. The back wall and left wall have "Ray Mirror" turned on, but they aren't reflecting the mech. I have no idea why that is, but look for a setting like "Only reflect objects in the same layer" or try putting all the objects in one layer. And the reflective "head" in the center of the mech looks strange: you should play with the various mirror settings as well as specularity (color, brightness, softness) and transparency. I don't know if you were going for a mirror-effect, a glossy-effect, or a glass effect, but it doesn't really look like any of those.

Coldworks responds:

Thank you very much for your insightful comments.
Truth be told, these models are actually intended to eventually render some 100*100 pixels with, but I'll definitely keep your comments in mind when I move up to making some cutscenes (totally a plan of mine at some point)

[Goreface]

... YO, that's nice. Eyes are a touch small, but the sense of being organic, angry, and all-out terrifying were PERFECTLY executed.