Coop's art Reviews on Newgrounds

[Flower /SN/]

CD art?

Not a bad first try - the colours seem to be a little over the top with the purple, particularly on the flower. I wouldn't suggest that you remove them completely, but tone it down some on the flower itself, thus creating a nicer contrast for the rest of the piece. Otherwise the flower just fades into the foreground.

I'd certainly recommend that you take a screenshot from this image (once it's been tidied up a little) and use that for your 46x46 icon for some of your audio submissions, it's a great start and I'm sure that you'll get better with practice.

[Review Request Club]

SessileNomad responds:

ive been working on a few different 46x46 images here and there, i think fixing up this one and using it actually may be the best option

[The Lovers]

Holding on for death's embrace

A very poignant image, which certainly brings home a sense of impending disaster, combined with the sentiment that love is not bound by the mere rules of time. Though the couple may perish, their love will last forever.

Looking at the image, I was a little confused about the shapes and position of the male's arm. Looking at the way that my own arm looks, there would seem to be more space between where the bicep rejoins the line of that arm and the joint of the elbow. Correcting that would help the elbow itself to look less out of place at the back of the arm. With biceps that large, it might be in favour to bulk up the tricep a little to the rear of the upper arm, adjacent to the shoulder.

The female's lines are good and the piece is a little dominated by her gigantic eye, since below, there is not really that much detail to be taken into consideration.

What does raise a question in my mind is the lines around the crescent of the moon - is that some sort of Space Elevator that you have incorporated in there and possibly a chance for humanity's salvation?

[Review Request Club]

Merol responds:

Wow, thanks a lot for the great feedback on the guy's arm. I'm actually considering on getting a anatomy book.

Eyes are very important for me, and I know I already said this, but I like drawing girls with big eyes.

Heh, not at all! That's a rope pulling the moon to sink it deep down into the water!

THANK YOU VERY MUCH FOR YOUR REVIEW!

[Marine Dance]

Says Orca to me

Ah, I love seeing this one - it looks like you've got a pair of Orca leaping forth from the water and rolling backwards, pretty much as I recall from Free Willy, effectively landing on their backs, which seem whiter than I remember, but with abstracts, the detail looks a little different, so I'll let you off.

Quite a choppy sea scene, if I'm honest, but you do have a good variation and a range of colours spread across this piece. Having now checked your notes, I can also say "go me", as we're looking at similar things, if not entirely the same.

With the range of colours that you used, I'd probably question the reds and yellows, since it doesn't seem normal for the scene to be there. If you could show why you felt that was right, I'd be interested :)

[Review Request Club]

Hacsev responds:

By all means. While the blues and greens are dominant colors in a seascape, there's no denying the fact that elements with their complimentary colors do exist at sea.

[Fred]

Scooby Snacks?

Hmm, a little "pac man" with the ghost and your usual quirk of the colouring roughly doesn't seem so noticeable this time - you're almost making them perfect, but not quite.

Personally, I'd have gone for more detail on the neck tie and shirt, but made the outlines look a little less obvious, as the thick black that you're using at present just seems a little too dominant, especially with the white of the shirt and the ghost.

You've captured Fred's features nicely, though I can't really see too much of the face. The quiff is well drawn and you've picked out his wardrobe choice well.

[Review Request Club]

up-a-notch responds:

why thank you my good sir :)

[A Duck!]

Interesting perspective

Good clean lines for this piece, with a very nice muse in the centre. I was a little confused by the perspective you have used, as the mountains can't be that far in the distance, due to the size of the trees on them. Perhaps I have been drawn away from the beauty of the piece by this error and the fact that you highlighted it in your notes.

The pastels that you have used for this piece give a nice soft look to the project and you can really benefit from something a little more harsh along the outlines of this. You've tried to do outlines in charcoal, but it doesn't seem to work. Careful though, as if you overdo it, you could ruin the image. I'd suggest an editing suite, such as Photoshop for that, since you can always delete the lines, without smudging. If you've already done this, consider darkening them ever so slightly.

The best part of this picture is the sky - it has so much going for it, with the lazy swirls that set it apart from a traditional sky scene. No clouds, but the effect of the waves and swirls really gives you a great impression.

[Review Request Club]

Merol responds:

Thank you!
I didn't use charcoal for the oulines, I used a 5B pencil, and you're right. I wish it would look darker.
I put my old stylographs in alcohol and have been there for like 3 days already, I hope they still work. It should look better with ink than pencil.
I use photoshop, but only to crop and resize my drawings. I don't know, I like them looking the same as the original, that's why I stopped coloring them with flash.

THANKS AGAIN!!

[Ikebana - Sun of Ikebana]

Explosion!

Well, that is the first impression I get from this piece - I couldn't really identify that much from the picture, so I grabbed what I could and ran with it. It seems to be a person whose lower torso has literally exploded in a shower of black and white sparks.

Right, symbolism and so forth aside, I think that there is more to this. Thanks for confirming my suspicions with acrylic on canvas. The one thing I would suggest for improvement is the direction of your brush strokes. Perhaps take them along the lines of the black and white, to give an impression of movement, without really doing anything different or radically altering the image.

[Review Request Club]

Hacsev responds:

I'll take account of your suggestions. Thanks.

[Flathead Lake]

Could be a little more crisp

I know that the idea of this piece wasn't to focus on the detail, but the overall impression is one of a very well presented piece. Particularly the jetty style construction in the middle of the lagoon is where my attention is drawn to, possibly by the level of detail there, which may be confirming my issue with the rest of the piece.

It seems that there are a few areas where there is no colour at all - an absence of art, if you will. Personally, I prefer to see these taken up by colours and brush strokes, that cause the page to feel more encompassing and perhaps even make me feel like I am there. Slight tweaks will permit this and make the piece so much better.

[Review Request Club]

Joshsouza responds:

Thanks for the review Coop, (I just noticed that you changed your username) I think I might tweak it a little bit later and fix the details on the Mountains that are far away, and the sloppiness on the trees near. I noticed the lack of color on the lake on the bottom-left and the rest. Thanks for the review.

[Yesterday Afternoon]

Interesting brief

"Yesterday afternoon, I went at about half a dozen of my paintings with a craft knife and made a collage out of the remaining pieces." That's what I see.

Some of it could be ceramic wall tiles (top left, for example), while other parts could easily be mistaken for fabric (The mesh looks like one of those pieces of cloth that children are given to teach them sewing). The piece is highly fractured and contains a plethora of detail, though it is difficult to see the bigger picture when standing back from the piece. Some more hints and tips with the comments section would work here. If I try really hard, I see an outline of a woman, looking left to right, with folded arms and a bird in her hair.

Is this acrylic on canvas, or is it actually a collage. With the bottom left, I really can't tell, to be honest. I'd love to hear what you make your pieces from.

[Review Request Club]

Hacsev responds:

Your comment about the collage is valid in the sense that it is an expression of visual perceptions through space and time.

[Yum!]

Much smoother

Well, this piece is a nice smooth form for a cake, with a strange colour scheme and a weird array of additional "goodies" sprouting out at intervals. I'm not sure what to make of the nutritional value, but in a setting, such as Mario World, it probably isn't that much of an issue.

The same thing as with the Mushroom, this piece is bereft of a background, so I'll expect to see this randomly cropping up in future images, only shrunk down and almost hidden, as per "Where's Wally" or something of that ilk.

Of course, this could be a stepping stone for your productions in the form of flash or games. I'd love to see you incorporate it into those as some sort of Easter egg, for example.

[Review Request Club]

EventHorizon responds:

Thanks for your fun review, you gave me an idea of what I can do this cake, it's a secret for now.

[mushroom!!]

Pixelated

I like the idea of this and how it will look when you shrink it down to get the intended size. Also, some of these in conjunction with a few badgers and perhaps a snake would be epic!

Weebl aside, we have to consider that this isn't necessarily the best possible combination of colours that you could have chosen for the project and the background is non-existant. Overall, the detail level is good, for a pixelated image, so keep up the good work and show us what else you're capable of creating, possibly with this little masterpiece shrunk down and strategically placed in the background, for example.

[Review Request Club]

EventHorizon responds:

Thanks!