Coop's art Reviews on Newgrounds

[Blue Eyed Dragon]

Very detailed

As I well know, this took some Herculean effort to draw the dragon scales on this piece. Please can you refrain from ranting so much about it, because it was most definitely worth it!

The blue eyes go against my own perception of dragons, but let's not go into that - they are certainly a captivating centrepiece that draws the viewer into the picture, before allowing them to look at the magnificence of the image.

The background is nice, but a few tweaks here and there with the rock face, you can perhaps give a more evident portrayal of three dimensions here - it looks a little too flat. The plant life is well detailed, but a nice touch in just blending the leaves into the background, leaving the soft focus effect there helps keep the main attention on the dragon itself.

When it comes to the dragon, I have two main concerns. The muzzle - there doesn't look like there was enough of a point between the nostrils for the actual nose-ridge there. The second concern is the shape of the dragon's right shoulder - do the scales really behave like that, or is this something that just has a tiny positioning issue.

[Review Request Club]

EchoRun responds:

The nose ridge... does it need a point? why? Plenty of animals have a ridge but a flat end to their nose! It is supposed to flatten out towards the end, maybe that just isn't showing through enough? That is what you are on about, right?

The shoulder is a bit of a mixed thing, drawn from a few sources, reptile, animal, fiction, and probably a a little human in there too. For the scales I have drawn from the plates on some of the more heavily armoured reptiles, like the armadillo lizard and the giant sungazer lizard (I REALLY REALLY want one of those!! So beautiful... *sigh*). I'm not too happy with how it turned out, mostly because of his back, I think I needed more of that on show to make it look better. Oh well.

The background... well, I am still working on those in general.

Thanks for the review. :)

[may I take yours?]

Etch-a-sketch?

The background looks better in this one, because the red, orange and yellow have been blended, rather than separated with black lines - it's a trifle uniform, but that can easily be remedied.

The detail of the old man needs to be worked on here - you seem too eager to publish and don't spend enough time touching up the fine detail. The speech bubble is done more harm than good by the fact that the Y in yours is backwards and the I should be a capital letter.

A lack of hands and feet really signals your intention to give in and not submit the finished piece. Please pay attention to the details, add a splash of colour to the characters and then try submitting, it will make such a difference.

[Review Request Club]

Silent-G responds:

were you there? did you see what he looked like? no, I don't think so, you didn't follow me in my eight wheeler and jump the multiple canyons and dunes. You didn't camp with the Monchoookaa tribe, you didn't smoke the Lablayay leafs, and you sure as hell didn't have sex with Tanoonoo. So don't tell me what he looked like, and don't tell me I gave in. I never gave in, and I never gave up, I gave it my all and if that's not good enough well then you can pay the child support you alligator testicle pillow. thanks for the review.

[help me out]

Tidy it up

I think that this piece is in desperate need of tidying up - the black line between the sky and land should never have been there in the first place - try blending the colours together, to give an impression of a landscape where grasses wave in the breeze, for example.

The cloudscape is a decent effort, I'll give you that - While it could use the attention to detail that a lot of this image shows, you have got that certain abstract feel to it, which is nice.

Finally, the three figures - try making their eyes look less like random scribbles and if you're trying to make them look perfectly round, spend some time making it look round. If not, at least fill them in with black, as it will look much better.

They have coloured flowers on their lapels, so why not give their suits some colour as well? No self-respecting person ever wears a white suit with white shirt and black tie. At least some colour in the shirt should help.

Lastly, you need to sort their mouths out - the teeth don't follow all the way to the lips - perhaps drawing some gums would help, plus it's a colour opportunity. Also, I've just noticed the copy / paste / flip that you've done here - it's a cheat and does your work no justice.

[Review Request Club]

Silent-G responds:

you're literally being literally literal mister little literal literature licker. thanks for the literal review, literally.

[feel what I feel]

Too much writing

If you're going to do a submission that's based around writing, I would suggest that you get yourself a lot more practice with drawing the fonts - tidy them up and make some sort of billboard out of it, with the foreground taken up with the massively happy chap, that's doing drugs.

A quick change from the ultimately negative approach, shows that the colour scheme is nice, though I would assume that the reason that you've displayed the colours on one side as monochrome and the other as Technicolour, due to the symbolism, that without drugs, life is dull. It's not the case, trust me on this ;)

I'd recommend that you spend some time tidying up the image itself - smoke needs to be more than just a few lines rising up the page, the happy chap's head isn't quite completely satisfying in shape - these sorts of thing make all the difference.

[Review Request Club]

Silent-G responds:

I wasn't trying to base this submission around writing, it just happens to be there. and surprisingly, you're the first person to ever dislike my hand writing. You also assumed that everything in this picture was a drug reference, which I can understand, but is in fact not the case. Who ever said the lines rising from his head were supposed to be smoke? You're making way too many assumptions. Thanks for the review anyway.

[Frost Blown Hill]

Icy Clouds

Like staring at clouds on a lazy summer's afternoon, this image can conjure up many different interpretations within the design itself.

This piece, while quite basic in concept has certainly given a good view to how it can expand from something quite small, almost reminiscent of various parts of one of the symphonies in Fantasia, by Disney.

I can certainly see some icy flowers in there and perhaps even the beginnings of a crystalline dragon of white and blue, slowly emerging from an icy chrysalis of a cave entrance...

[Review Request Club]

EchoRun responds:

*grins*

Yes, I like how much you can see in fractal images too. I have a few saves that look like a real mess but the longer I look at them the more I see, just like looking at clouds...

Thanks for the review. :)

[Loneliness in Blue]

Interesting texture

The texture of the background reminds me of a pastel effect. It's a nice blend of the blues, but I would suggest that you spend some time making it look more blue - lose the white, it doesn't help the situation ;)

Of course, I think it would look better if you got rid of the tri-colour effect all together and made it just blue.

The three buildings to the character's right look a little too uniform for my liking - architecture is rarely like that, so throw in something different ;)

[Review Request Club]

Insanimation responds:

Yeah, I see that you mean about the buildings. Thanks :)

[Mike (colour)]

Psychedelic

I think I used to have a pair of shorts in these colours ;)

A wonderfully abstract explosion of colours. The wonderfully bright summer shades, combined with the patches of black look quite surreal and I love the depth that you've managed to encapsulate in the image with the way that the image appears to run off down a tunnel into the top right corner.

Did you create the background separately and then work the black over the top, or did you do it the other way around. The blue and cyan circles on the left look as if they were purposefully drawn after, but then the arch in the middle at the bottom looks like the detail is just picking out background colouring at random. Superb!

[Review Request Club]

NEVR responds:

Done in Photoshop, I put a black layer over a white layer and cut out the details, which resulted in the black and white version of this piece. Then I painted in the colour underneath and played about with it a bit... blurred certain bits, etc.

It's really very simple in theory, but it took a while because it was all drawn with a laptop touchpad.

[dreamy cloud]

Doctor Who

Kind of reminds me of the time travel sequence in either the Tardis in Dr. Who or in the more obscure Bill & Ted films :P

The cloud-scape has too much purple in it for my liking. I think that the addition of either more colours (less black and white), or thinning out the purple for a more blue approach will make it more cloud like.

[Review Request Club]

kiwi-kiwi responds:

I originally went for the blue approach, but I settled for this one in the end because I liked the outcome more.

As for the Doctor Who resemblance, I guess this would look a whole lot better if I added some depth, thank you for the idea.

[Star Fairy]

Not your best

A shame that you got a little carried away with the background of this piece - a few too many stars and perhaps a little over eager with the spray can tool. Still, let's not dwell on this too much. Perhaps darken that area down a little and pick out one or two, using a corona effect around them, to make use of the background.

The shooting stars look good, as does the fairy. A nice try to pick out the gossamer like wings that this creature has and a good use of this corona effect. Perhaps using a moon would assist with the lighting effects in this piece?

[Review Request Club]

EchoRun responds:

Ah, such is the over enthusiasm of a gal with a new toy... *sprays stars everywhere*

Thanks for the review.

[Demon Scorcery]

Great look

Firstly, let's start with the background - the floor and the walls are so detailed, with the glow of the mantle below showing through. Possibly some minor glowing effects could have been used here to accentuate this effect, but otherwise, it looks great.

The intricate detail of the pedestal is fantastic. I can certainly see passing this to an ironmonger and seeing what he can make of that for a centrepiece sculpture - certainly the focal point for conversations.

Finally, the demonic being itself looks great - I love the shading that you've used on the torso, as it looks really realistic, with the muscle layout. Perhaps it could have used a little more shading on the shoulder muscles, but other than that, it's great.

I'd have had the thighs slightly larger, as he's probably carrying some weight around on them, plus the only other real issue I have is the position of the wings - don't be afraid to have them slightly closer to symmetrical, but with the left hand wing, as we look at it fanning off the edge of the frame.

[Review Request Club]

EchoRun responds:

I suppose my reasoning behind the way he is holding his wings is in his character - he is a proud, pompous, vain, egotistical prick who loves to strut his stuff, even if his audience is only captured little souls he is manipulating. He is showing off, basically. Perhaps some more subtleties in any future illustrations of this character would illustrate that better - like a full length, fancy gold framed mirror (yeah, very subtle!), only the kind of reflections it would make would be a pain to draw.

Thanks for the review. :)