Coop's art Reviews on Newgrounds

[Zach's Crayon Drawing]

3 year old's tag

This is what I can see a budding graffiti artist starting out with, before he's old enough to graduate to spray cans and become the next Banksy. I think that you need to work on the control and if this is drawn on a computer, give yourself more time, before you publish a piece.

Try zooming in and using a slightly smaller tool, as this will enable you to have a more controlled drawing action, thus when you zoom out, the piece will look tidier. Perhaps use Google Images for more inspiration for your images as the large expanses of white are quite off putting on this piece.

[Review Request Club]

ZJ responds:

Mmm, this is exciting. Thanks for the review, baby.

[Cube City]

Lack of detail hinders, perspective is out

The main problem that a drawing such as this will have is that you don't have enough detail to draw the attention away from the issues you have with the perspective in such a case as this.

More work is required on the shading, so that you can get the pencil strokes going in the same direction at the same speed, so that it looks the same. Particularly on the front building, you've got an issue with the shading going in 3-4 different directions, which really does lose you marks on the whole piece overall.

Other than the obvious, you could also consider investing in some coloured pencils, in order to get yourself a more workable palette to produce these piece with. It's not like you're incapable,a s you've laid a foundation, but try to add some more bits and pieces that stop a street looking like a uniform concrete jungle, like a street map says it should be in most American cities and add some life to the works - street furniture, trees, clouds in the sky, an aeroplane, for example. You've got some good possibilities, so work with them and see what you can produce.

[Review Request Club]

ZJ responds:

Will Do. Thanks Coop!

[Self Portrait with Characters]

Nice work, but could use colours

I think you've done a wonderful job of balancing the shading in this piece - the way that the focus softens out as the picture heads into the background works so well, keeping the main focus on your actual self portrait, albeit a manga version of it.

With how the jaw line looks so smooth, I believe that there is room for more detail here and I absolutely hate the drawing style that makes the eyes so massively out-of-proportion with the rest of the face. There could certainly be more detail on the neck,a s there are so many natural contours there, that just beg for artists to show them off.

Despite the shading being absolutely fantastic here, I could certainly see there being enough room for more colour, since even if you just went and added the occasional splash of colour to things like the eyes, it would provide more detail to the image, which would take it to the next level.

It looks like you've got some great quality pencils there, so perhaps invest in some great quality coloured pencils and have a go, to see what you can do with them :)

[Review Request Club]

AkujinRuukasu responds:

Thank you. I kinda forgot to add enough details of my neck, I have to agree. As for the drawing style for the eyes, everyone is entitled to an opinion, and I respect that. They are a bit smaller than those in some of my earlier works. That may not be what you had in mind, but would you consider that, somewhat, an improvement? I do have have some colored pencils. I'm just not sure if they would be considered high-quality, though. Thanks again for the compliments and suggestions. I greatly appreciate it.

[Arch Vile]

Moody

Looks like everyone in this image has a problem with the artist / viewer, except for the kid on the far right of shot - he looks quite apathetic. You've worked well with the faces, but the expressions that they have there isn't really very different from one another. Perhaps have a little more wide ranging there, just for the practice.

With how it all pans out as a wider piece, you've got a good sky, but it could use being darker and more menacing, to let the lightning show up against the backdrop. Perhaps your scanner didn't pick this out too well?

Finally, when I look at the setup of the characters, the middle rank are too close together - they get too obstructed by the central figure's shoulders. Try pushing them wider and see what the results are. More cleavage for a start ;) Isn't that one of the major focuses of Manga style artwork?

I think you need some colour on this - inks would be my best bet to get the best results from this piece, but they do take a lot of practice, so you will need to spend a lot of time, before you move to this image. It's worth it though, as the payoff is usually pretty grand.

[Review Request Club]

AkujinRuukasu responds:

Thank you for your advice. You are right about the scanner. The sky was intended to be darker. As for the expressions, I was aiming for a dark look that would also look good either on the back of their first album or in the booklet. I have to agree that Edge and Kiyomi need to move just a little bit from DevilFace. Also, at the time, I didn't have the time to purchase colored inks. I also feel that colored pencils would be too bright to apply. Thank you for your time to review this picture. I appreciate your suggestions and compliments. Again, thanks. ^_^

[The Elegant Parasite Black]

Nice logo, more detail required.

This isn't a bad piece, but it looks like you've gone and put in a distinct lack of background, which does somewhat put me off. If you've going for this to be an ident for your flash animations, perhaps you could have it animated in just a few seconds, so that it leaps out of the page at you, with this image as the finish point.

There are some pretty good details in the outline of the piece, but as for the body, it seems devoid of them, which is probably the main issue I have with you drawing style, as a whole. Perhaps a few flashes of white across the body would just give you the detail that you've got from the outline, but being careful not to go mad, as I know your style is minimalist.

With how it all looks, in the action pose, I might have expected something like blood dripping from those 'shear-like' claws that just gives a more distinct impression of malice, as opposed to the borderline insane that it currently shows from a casual glance at the facial expression.

[Review Request Club]

Celx-Requin responds:

I concur...
Thanks,
- Celx

[Two]

Not that bad a cliche

Well, this wasn't that bad a cliche - if you were going for the two faced cliche, you should have had a prissy good girl putting her makeup on and seeing a goth chick in the mirror, or something like that ;)

What density paper were you using? How many g/sm was it, since that can make a big difference to how the acrylic paint reacts with the paper. Perhaps you could try doing something like this on canvas?

The detail is pretty difficult to deal with when you're using acrylic paints and you have made one or two errors, such as the imperfect divide with the hair and the smudging around the pupil of the red eye and the white not looking so white there. I think that with the way the red hair invades the blue side of the piece is good, but would it be possible to see some sort of a fightback from the lighter side of the personality, since that appears to be the symbolism.

[Review Request Club]

InsertFunnyUserName responds:

It's 90 lb paper. I've been thinking about getting some canvas, but never got around to it. I use this paper because it's heavy and can take a lot of paint, but getting something smoother would probably help, yeah.

I think the whiteness problem comes from me using the wrong type of white, lol. But yeah, there are a number of inaccuracies. I wish I had a bigger canvas to work on so I'd have better control over detail.

Thanks for the review :]

[Self Portrait]

Not quite Picasso

I can see that there have been elements of throwing interesting shapes into the piece and this can make it look a little distorted, thus removing a little of the realism from the piece as a whole.

I like how the shading works with the coloured pencils and it picks out great details, such as your moustache and the incredible detail of your hair. I think that there could be better work done with the background, but it's certainly a very nicely detailed piece, which shows of some accomplished work.

Did you have the light sources working and then a webcam for the picture, of did you do it via a mirror, for example?

[Review Request Club]

Scarifying responds:

My art teacher took a picture of me next to these three different colored lamps. So yea it was just a photograph that I was working with. I agree about the picture coming out somewhat wacky with the sections that are dividing my face, I could have done better. The fact that you called my art a "very nicely detailed piece" makes me want to make another one! Thanks for the review! :)

[Shark: Shattered Guns Poster]

When is the film out?!

Well, there's a collection of scattered weapons and a guy standing there as if he's just killed each sword's master prior to the shot being made.

I think that there are a few details missing, where there could be blood (represented in black here?) dripping off the end of the sword and possibly a few bits and pieces of severed limbs being scattered about.

I like the way that it is set out, much like a film poster, only without the horrible little blurb showing who stars, directs, wrote and produced the piece, in that awful little font, that is very difficult to read when it is replicated anywhere other than the silver screen.

[Review Request Club]

Celx-Requin responds:

I thought about adding blood but was on the fence about that... Seeing as it was a poster & I wanted it rated E so more people could see it should it ever be accepted to the art portal.

I plan to release the next session within a few months time,
although the session that was supposed to follow snowblind ended up getting
spliced into the new incarnation, so shattered guns will actually be the 3'rd session chronologically (confused yet?).

So if you want to see what was supposed to follow snowblind it starts at the middle of snowblind+, & it's about 2 minutes of extra animation.

Thanks for the review, and sorry for the late response!
Sincerely,
- Celx