m1kclark's art Reviews on Newgrounds

[Reflection]

Subtle

The differences are very subtle, but they're there. It's almost too subtle. Frankly, it was a matter of luck that I even looked hard enough to see a difference between top and bottom. Good stuff!

mindmaster123 responds:

Thanks I'm glad I was wrong not the first ;)

[{BT} Needles 2]

Awesome

This is a really cool image. I love the glow of the sun and soft tones!

The only technical comment I have is that the sky's stripes do funny things near the horizon. Maybe anti-aliasing would smooth that out, if that's what you want. Great stuff!

BenTibbetts responds:

Thanks, I'm glad you liked it!

[{BT} Huddle]

Seriously?

I personally feel that this is an insult to your audience's intelligence. There's no subject, no vision, and no effort from you. One light and a dozen cubes? You've done some awesome stuff, but this is crap. Why should it be on the Art Portal? Conversely, why shouldn't it be reported as "bad art" (NG FAQ)?

BenTibbetts responds:

Thanks for the review.

[Sarah]

=-|

I have a thing for brunettes. And long hair. And glasses. And nerds. And women in pastels. I also only find artistic rendering of females attractive if they are extraordinarily well drawn. So ... yeah, 5/5, 10/10.

whitedevil0404 responds:

wow, awesome dude, thanks!

[{BT} Armageddon]

Grainy

Good composition, but frankly all of your stuff is grainy. It seems deliberate in your abstract art, but this looks like a realistic image, in which case the graininess is a disadvantage.
Is this an artifact of using Bryce (unlikely) or of using Irfanview (more likely)? If it's Bryce, there HAVE to be settings to get rid of that and make it smooth and antialiased. If it's Irfanview ... well, honestly, I'm baffled why you use Irfanview anyway, so I'd recommend switching to GIMP or another powerful, free photo editor to solve the graininess.

BenTibbetts responds:

OK. But actually the graininess is completely intentional. Here's the un-postworked version of this image if you'd like to see it, straight from Bryce 5:
http://bensmusic.org/storage/armageddon_original.jpg

I find the graininess appealing, personally. It's just my attempt to bring back some of the nostalgia of old computer game graphics drawn in 256-colors. The effect was achieved by switching to 256-color mode for one image and blending that image with another version for the hazy look as well as the sharp edges. I could just as easily have skipped that step; I'll consider a new version if you really think this looks terrible. Thanks for the recommendation and I will check out GIMP.

[Fortress]

Two models...

It looks like you have two separate models that you mashed together. The landscape is very nice, and dreamy. The castle has wonderful details and is a nice style. However, they don't match at all.

We see tiny windows on the castle, and yet the landscape doesn't contain a single rendered feature except the road. No trees, no shrubs, no rocks, no indication at all that it's made of something more than jello. The mountains, similarly, look like an angry tsunami about to crash on the castle. The effect would be riveting if the castle also looked so impressionistic. There's glow on the landscape, but no glow on the castle. The castle is not antialiased and doesn't look blended into the picture at all. Shadows, color scheme, everything make the image look like there is a castle in one universe and a landscape in another, and the fact that they are together is an aberration.

Serioulsy, re-render the castle on a white background. Post that on NG: it'll get good reviews. Then, take that image, and smear and blur the heck out of it in Photoshop (or GIMP if you like open-source), and then paste it back onto this green landscape. You'll have two images: the crisp and the dreary. Each will look better for it.

1600 responds:

Thanks for reviewing!
I was trying to make the castle stand out against the less detailed landscape, which is more misty than glowing (at least that's the effect I was going for). The focus is supposed to be more on the castle than on the picture fitting together as a whole.

[Captain Falcon]

Excellent

Awesome pixel image! His nose is a big small compared to Smash Brothers' renditions, but an excellent interpretation nonetheless!

kroksas13: you should look up "anti-aliasing". The pixels aren't too big, they're the same size they always are on your monitor. They just aren't smoothed with midtones, and so there is a sharp gradient between geometries.

Danigan responds:

Thanks for the review.

[Super Mario Land: Redux]

Characters

I gave 4/5: you're almost there, but this image has no "subject". Because Mario Land geometries are so simple, this picture teeters on the border between "minimalist" and "featureless", and it only needs a small adjustment to make this almost boring picture into something really striking.
Add one character, any Mario character at all up the sky for example, and then this work will deserve a full 5/5, 10/10! Keep it up!

perry-winkle responds:

mehh... defeats its ironic point of view and meaning. good point though

[{BT} Rose]

Nice shapes!

How did you make the petals? They look hand-tailored for each part of the flower! The rose looks really nice, and might even lend itself to a bouquet!

9/10 because of the blah background

BenTibbetts responds:

Thanks. :) I modelled a "template" petal in a small program called sPatch, exported it as a .3ds file, imported it into Bryce and basically made the flower from variations on that model.

[Saw Bitch Ragebot]

Woot, Don Davis reference

Does he have a pet named "Saw Bitch Workhorse"? Awesome job; nice blending of rough-hewn steelwork with the glowing blue energy effects.

Kamikaye responds:

Thx :) Yea its a reference to the song in the matrix trilogy OST. "Saw Bitch workhorse" :D