Coop's art Reviews on Newgrounds

[Demonios Felices]

Different

Hmm... I like the way that this is entirely hand drawn and not copy / pasted, to fill up the image with carbon copies, which you just tweak, which would be a little lame, to tell the truth.

Okay, so they all do seem to have the same facial expression, which creeps me the fuck out. Where you've added the tongue to the central one, it looks even more strange and ever so slightly off-putting.

The main issue here is a lack of colour. Yes, I appreciate that you've drawn it black and white, because that's the colour of ghosts, but to me, it seems like a cop-out. By that, I mean that while you're drawing white imagery on white paper, you could use the background to full effect, by adding colour around there. Who says that ghosts have to be completely opaque? I've seen popular representations where they are quite translucent and the only way you can see them is that they make the background lose focus. That's a more advanced technique, but coloured pencils can do the trick, if you get the shading technique right.

[Review Request Club]

[Evil Guy]

Hmm

Well, this piece is a little better than "Timmy", but not by much. I think that there's three parts that need to be considered - the background, the head and the... body.

Background: Get the straight lines sorted on the building - perhaps even leave the occasional light on for some realism. Black lines protrude over the edge and make the piece look a little messy. The same as last time, you need to concentrate on drawing in the outlines, get all of that sorted and then filling the corresponding areas with the colour of your choice. The rain is also a little thick for my liking, to be honest.

The head is a nice creation - the expression is one of malevolence and it gives a real impression of evil, which is what you were aiming for. Perhaps give him some hair or a hat, to stop the big bald head dominating the piece.

The body is a little egg shaped and the arms are awful - clasped hands didn't work well here - I struggled to identify them as arms at the start, but on closer inspection, there they were. Consider filling in the sleeves and making the hands a different colour to the jacket sleeves - otherwise the viewer will have difficulty like I did in working the image out.

[Review Request Club]

[Timmy The Psychopath]

Not the best

Does he have buttons for eyes? This piece is confusing on that part, because I look at it and think that if his eyes should be buttons, surely there must be four holes for the threads to go through in the traditional context.

MS Paint has never been a strong media for drawing. Unless you're really good, then you should be able to earn enough money to upgrade to something like Photoshop, Flash or something similar. I'd recommend Gimp, as that's free, if I recall. This will at least give you a feel for the tools available to the professional, even if you're still drawing with a mouse.

The best thing I can offer advice-wise is to zoom in, so you can get greater control over the cursor. When you've made it look decent, you can zoom out and see how it looks in actual size. This will take care of angular corners on round surfaces, like Timmy's jaw line and the jaw of his victim, which has an ugly thick black line around it, where you have corrected it.

With the black outlines, get them right, before filling, so you have the look you want, before adding colour to the proceedings. It will help you quite a bit. The next ambitious step you can take is to make the lolly a traditional red and white striped affair, so that you can show off you skills of putting uniform stripes in. A little margin for error is allowable, because of the manufacturing process, which helps you out ;)

[Review Request Club]

[Flight Test]

Beautiful

The pure agony and despair that you've captured in the still for frame 5 here is the crowning glory of the piece. Had you done it with a human, there would have been a theatrical dive involved and Joe's friend would probably have plunged to his untimely death... or at least a nasty set of bruises and a stay in traction.

I love how simple the fairy wings look, though if you're going for a fairy princess look, I'd suggest that you add a bit more light and sparkle to them, which is easy enough to get going, using your program, no doubt.

The background is very functional and the cloud patterns that dance across the sky changed all the time - this was only let down slightly by the fact that there appears to be no difference in the tide line between frames 3, 4 and 6. I'd have expected some sort of wave to be forming, even if it weren't something like the wave washing over the beach and climbing slowly up the beach. Just something to think about there, even though this is just a few seconds long in real terms.

[Review Request Club]

[Party Hearty]

Not sure I get this one...

The art is fantastic, as usual and I love the background and scenery, which is now not quite so ambiguous, actually representing an office environment, with the notice board n the wall. These strips look fantastic, yet very simple, as far as the backgrounds go - draw the shape, fill with colour and add a few scribbles for detail, as necessary. The real effort comes with the construction of the characters themselves. Do you draw them separately and then import them onto the background, or draw the whole frame as one item, before colouring as you see fit?

Emotionally speaking, you can really put a lot into the features of the guinea pigs, making them show a wide range of emotions with just a few lines. Sure, this joke was a little lost on me (I prefer to say that as opposed to I didn't find it funny), but the drawing style is certainly impressive enough to make me anticipate the next cartoon with interest.

[Review Request Club]

[Gummi Treats]

Just a shape

A great sense of humour required for this one, but I love the way that you've made it very appealing, by putting the Guniea Pigs there instead of humans, as that could be seen as slightly wrong, or in poor taste.

The way that you've given them a background, as if they are within a house of their own, yet it is ambiguous enough to perhaps be the home of their owner, with no furnishing visible for things like scaling, etc. A nice way to give background colour, but not to make the reader think too much into it.

I almost wish you'd do the artwork for the Gummi series of treats - the puppies, orphans, kittens, tadpoles and so forth.

Very funny, keep them coming!

[Review Request Club]

[Eyeball Tree Helix]

Where does the arrow point..?

Not a bad piece, with a good dollop of surreal symbolism attached to the whole piece, where it transforms from an optic nerve to tree roots. I think that you could do well to look at Norse Myth for further research, as Heimdall could be the best point to look at - guardian of the bifrost, with keen eyesight and hearing, who watches for the onset of Ragnarok and ultimately guarding Yggdrasil, the world tree.

Now, turning to the art, I'd suggest that the first place to make a change would be the meld between eyeball and optic nerve / root. Why not have the roots start off pink and flesh-like, becoming hard and wood-like a little way after they leave the eye? This would be a more potent transmutation and I feel that it would add greater significance to symbolism, if that was you initial intention.

The lens of the eye looks a little too pronounced - I know that this is correct in a scientific drawing, but there is an issue that the dome of the lens looks to protrude a little too much - rounding this off a little would still give a good impression within the image, I feel.

I think that with the level of detail on the helix for the tree trunk, you could have put a little extra into the leaves - you set the bar here and there is no detail such as the characteristic veins that run particularly down the centre of each leaf. In the small version, this is not so prominent, so not an issue, but when viewing the piece full sized, it become painstakingly obvious.

Overall, I like this piece and taking some of my advice will help you to become a better artist, I hope.

[Review Request Club]

Galneda responds:

The arrow is my signature "G"

Interesting perspective that it links with Norse Mythology, I'll definitely look into that, thanks!

As for the coloration of the root-nerves, I think it would lend better consistency to the artwork if I kept it mostly wood-based, leaving the fleshy organisms to the eyeball alone. That's why I have a pinkish shadow beneath the roots to further imply that they are also veins. I think it would look unintentionally weird if the roots were pink (as opposed to intentionally bizarre, lol)

Perhaps the lens is a little too pronounced, and I think the color of the background doesn't do that effect any favors. I agree that it could probably stand to be rounded off a bit.

Put a little EXTRA detail on the leaves? I guess if I'm going to do it, I gotta do it right eh? :D

Thanks for the advice and the detailed review.

[Shape Up Pumpkin]

There's a reason I don't carve pumpkins

Because I couldn't do much better myself... and I don't like pumpkin, so why waste it?

Anyway, this is very similar to last year's Tall 'n Short. There's a distinct lack of ambition in this piece - making a Tetris scene would have been much better, as there's a lot of detail to something like that. I know it's based on SardonicSamurai's work, but that's still no justification for a pumpkin being carved like this. Last year, the joke was amusing, this time, it wasn't so good.

I suppose that I should give you props for straight lines, even though the level of the block on the right looks to be just a little higher than the rest. You could have used some sort of straight edge for that, perhaps a bucket, so that the pumpkin is lowered to the correct level, thus enabling the carving to be done, while also providing a handy line to use as your "ground floor".

[Review Request Club]

ZJ responds:

Yeah, I agree. It was a lazy copout on my part. I gotta get my shit together...

[Skullface Makeup]

Creepy, but I'd still ask you out :P

Just with the skeletal face, you clearly still have a body to go with though, so feel free to drop me on the pile of potential suitors as well, who weren't the guy you were after.

Corny desperation aside, you've certainly made an impression on me with this makeup - the detail level is fantastic and all performed in front of a mirror, to boot! Clearly, you've had a lot of practice and the overall effect is quite creepy, but still looks the works. Have you got a costume to go with the rest? Do you intend to branch out into making kids' faces up at things like summer fairs, or even for Halloween parties?

This could be the start of something great.

[Review Request Club]

Sabtastic responds:

Oh, you.

I did do a little bit of face painting a couple years back at a community fair/shin-dig. Never again though. All those little buggers wanted me to do were tigers and spiderman... for EIGHT HOURS. DB

Anyway, thanks for the uplifting pick-up lines. lol