Coop's art Reviews on Newgrounds

[Electric Feel Eel]

Nice colours

An interesting portrayal of an Electric eel, with a whole gamut of colours and a very menacing looking face to compound it. To be honest, you might be better served by using the Morray Eel (Brightly coloured, tropical eel), or the Conger Eel, which can grow to 3m in length and be very nasty customers, with massive teeth and violent tendencies etc.

I like the way that you have portrayed the background, with a "Newgrounds aura" style, possibly in the hopes of making it into a level icon at some point. It works well, but I wouldn't recommend it for that purpose. Still, the use of bright colours against a menacing looking silhouette is very nice and workable, especially when the piece in question appears to have a series of lights running along it's sides.

I think that the additional thoughts of adding a length of fins is getting it a little away from the Eel family, but that's evolution for you, I suppose. As a result, poetic licence comes into play and gives a very pleasing effect to be used.

[Review Request Club]

['08 Dodge Challenger]

Not bad at all!

I think that before I go any further, I've got to point out the major flaw here - the lettering / graphics get too concealed by the reflection of the stones. Perhaps what is needed to combat that is painting the bodywork, then adding the reflection, before the graphics. I agree that they might need some reflection, but I personally believe that it could use less and still get away with it.

A good colour scheme and a decent attempt at a background as well. Somewhat lacking in detail, meaning that there isn't something in the background to drag the eye away from the centrepiece. All good art needs something to focus on, aside from the "main event", as we might call it. Some sort of Monaco-esque scene shouldn't be beyone your capabilities. Soft focus is your key here - you're focused on the car, but in the background, you could make something vague, but still hillside town looking.

Improvements are coming, so keep up the good work :)

[Review Request Club]

Kinsei responds:

Thanks Coop, I have a better version in my art thread in the Art Forum.
the background is lame though.. very lame....
I feel I am slowly getting better at this 3d stuff.

[Memories of Better Times]

An interesting piece

Simple in the presentation, effective in the finished product. I think that there is a lot to be said for your expanses of white in this piece, with only the pokeball being the focus of attention. I know that some people really did have an infatuation with this game which quite passed me by. These things happen, but you've quantified it with a good anecdote, which is how people go about winning things like the turner prize. They waffle on about something that hasn't required much effort and people think that they are absolute genius in this medium.

Personally, I think that it's a decent copy of the original, but you could have made a better effort with two areas:

1) Colouring. Outside of the outline of the ball, there appears to be a mark of red past the thick black outline at around 2 on a clock face. When there is very little else to look at, this will become glaringly obvious.

2) The shadow needs to be longer and more rounded - you'd end up with more of an elipse shape, surely, but this is a matter of opinion, as it is really difficult to determine where the light source emanates from, with only that shadow and the light spot on the ball to go by. Taking those two, I would have said somewhere toward the top right of the shot, thus giving a longer shadow.

With little else to see in the image, it is a good replica of a concept that has been around and done its time, but I would have liked to see more from this in the way of a background or some action. Perhaps the ball should be gathering dust?

[Review Request Club]

Kinsei responds:

actually gathering dust would probably be a very nice effect... I wonder if there is a easy way to achieve the look in Photoshop. I'll hunt up a tut on it.

And your right about my little story, it shouldn't affect how people see this piece or vote/review on it. And I think the dust idea would allow me to get the theme of older forgotten items with out the story.

I'm really sorry about the marker bleed on that edge of the pokeball, I guess I should get it in to photoshop and get it out of there. And extending the shadow shouldn't be too hard....

Thanks for the honest review, these harsher ones are the most helpful.

[Luigi]

Very nice

I like the way that you've given a 'glossy magazine' look to Luigi here. It looks as if you want to present him as having a colder, darker side, that people don't take into consideration as he runs around the Mushroom Kingdom dealing with the nasties that get thrown his and Mario's way.

Judging by how old Luigi is supposed to be, perhaps you could have put a few more wrinkles on his face, particularly around the eye and neck areas. It's a good image and the leather jacket certainly goes a long way to showing that he knows how to look after himself.

Perhaps it needs to be chopped down a little more in order to reduce the white space there, which just looks ugly. Even though i know it's supposed to be there, perhaps change the background colour to a softer colour, like a beige, as it will soften the impact and give you a much better look overall for the piece.

[Review Request Club]

Kinsei responds:

Thanks Again Coop For another review.
I'll keep in mind the cropping for future pieces and perhaps if I find time, to alter this one a little with the aging and white space.

[Copper Dragon]

Needs a frame

Well, what can I say? This piece has been the product of many hours of work, though finding the motivation to stick at a piece as epic as this will certainly take some time to get sorted. I'd love to see this in a frame, as the board that you've painted on gives the effect of canvas, so getting a frame around this will certainly cap it off, if you get a frame that truly suits the piece.

Now to produce some more of them. I think that the rock face looks a little worked and angular, I'd have preferred something that looked a little more natural here, look at the pillar where the dragon sits atop - it looks like a pillar of the Parthenon in Athens. With the moonlight on the water, I think you went a little over the top with the bright colours, so it needs to be toned down slightly. Not to say that this is a poor effort - the texture and the disturbances of the surface of the water are brilliant.

I'm not particularly a fan of the full moon, either. Circles are easier to draw than crescents, so perhaps you need to experiment with drawing a crescent moon, or a gibbous moon, since it's more in keeping with the skill level that you've got.

Of course, the other thing I'd really like to see of your dragon pieces is either one of them in flight, or two of them in combat. See what you can do, chop chop!

[Review Request Club]

EchoRun responds:

I suppose with the rocks here I was thinking somewhat of very old remains of civilisations, where worked rocks has worn down so much you almost have to look twice to the the old work.

As for the moon, I prefer a full moon just for the light levels it gives - cant get away with the same light with just a crescent.

Thanks for the review. :)

[Mech Repair Bay]

A little angular here

Sorry, this isn't one of your best pieces - I can see where mass produced mechs, like displayed here would be quite 'chunky' and angular, thus presenting a very rough exterior to the casual observer, but it's down to practicality again - it needs to have something that will function better aerodynamically, since that's going to be one of the major things that designers concentrate on.

I think that you've got talent of using this program to create your 3D images (What program do you use?) and you can take it further, so spend more time on these pieces and give us a better and more balanced image. Perhaps some action shot that you could come up with would satisfy?

[Review Request Club]

Kinsei responds:

Thanks Coop,
Now that you mention the fact of the angles, I now realize it. I probably should have done something to break the consistency of the angles.

As for a program, I used 3ds Max on this one, I'm getting better about unwrapping my models properly and actually mapping them. I am also getting better on planning them and taking my time while building them.
Thanks man

[Space Ship Corridor]

Well designed

Certainly something that makes for a well designed piece of space station, but I would ask one simple question here - why does the bulkhead stop at about mid-shin? Basically, for reference, I'd point you towards Start Trek and Star Wars, as they have thick frames around three sides. Your design is impractical, especially if large, heavy equipment was being wheeled through the station / ship, it would not get very far, before meeting an obstruction.

Good work with the colouring and an interesting position for the lighting, being based below the eye-line, which might dazzle people wandering through.

While you may have a taste for the impractical, it certainly looks good and realistic for a scenario like this. Have you ever played games like Warhammer 40k, or Space Hulk, as these could give you inspiration for further pieces of a similar ilk. Perhaps adding life forms would be the next logical step for you.

[Review Request Club]

Kinsei responds:

As for the door I wanted to either go for a feel of the door not completely open, or broken. Since this was suppose to be built as if I was building it for a first person shooter I wanted to play around with the atmosphere a little and get that creepy feeling in there.
I'll have to do some more thinking ahead on the design though to fix the design issues with moving equipment threw the passage ways though.
Thanks man.

[Harrison MkII]

A little grey and boring

To be honest, the 3D skills are great. I love how you've captured the essence of what makes a mech read for games like BattleTech, MechWarrior and the like. The only thing that I really have an issue with is that the colour scheme is bland and un-inspirational. I think that this could certainly go down as a work in progress (Tick the sketch box on your submit page) until you've managed to get a good splash of colour going on that vehicle.

Again, it could certainly benefit from having a background and I think that while there is shading on the vehicle itself, there is little to show where shadows would be cast on the ground, or even a ground, so to speak. These touches make all the difference to a piece and as a result, you'll earn such a misrepresented score for an unfinished work like this.

[Review Request Club]

Kinsei responds:

Thanks for the compliment on the 3D my man. I have the Mech's repair bay up so feel free to hop on over and take a look, it has the paint on it that every one seems to want.

[Cyber Ship]

Nice 3D

I think this is a pretty well created little piece - it's got a lovely layout and it looks CGI on the main hull of the ship, while quite cartoon-like on the wings - this might be down to a lack of 'clinical detail' or hard edges, but it's something that certainly looks very interesting for a start.

I know that it's just a piece to be added to a later work, but the background could be a little more inspirational - adding a quick Sci-Fi layer wouldn't ahve killed you, after all :P I like the shadows and I'd have been particularly impressed to see how you tackled that when compared to some sort of building, for example. With the wings again, would there be something different for the shadows there, as they look like they are made of glass or perspex, of some description.

I look forward to seeing what it is a part of.

[Review Request Club]

Kinsei responds:

I don't know a sci-fi layer might have done me in, those things are dangerous man....
o.0
yeah, an issue with a lot of my stand alone models it that they lack any sort of context, not background at all. probably something should work on.

If this doesn't get chosen for the Cyberpunk ship I have an animation I want to play with. so it's cool all the way around.

Cool review, thanks

[Good Grief]

It's a good start

I think that you've certainly gone a good way to capturing the essence of Charles Schulz' Peanuts Cartoons. The facial expression of Charley Brown is a great image and shows that you've really studied this well.

I think that you could have done a little more with regards to the shape of Charley Brown's face and smoothed out some of the lines - these things come with practice, so they will start to look better after a while. I'd concentrate on the difficult parts, like the collar and places like where the legs join the socks. Paying attention to detail is a great thing here and doing something to the background wouldn't hurt.

I think with the background, you can get away with using a straight edge, as I'm sure that Schulz himself would have. Get that sorted, then do something about the colours - a more vibrant yellow, a more imposing black and making sure that you stay within the lines - there's the one piece over the left shoe that looks a little weird and out of place.

Taking those pieces in your stride, I'm sure you can make good progress.

[Review Request Club]

Fro responds:

I didn't even think of using a straight edge. If I were to do this again I think it would be better to color on the computer because crayons just don't cut it lol.