EvilRaccoon's art Reviews on Newgrounds

[Father and dughter]

Hi, HMD. I've recently taken a look at your art, and you have some good ideas. You have a few areas I would suggest looking at to give yourself a bit of a boost. Here are some crits to help you on your way. PM me if you're wanting any more advice.

When creating a piece of art, have some form of inspiration beside you. This can be your fav anime show, or a great piece of art that is close to you. At first when you put pencil to paper, or use Sketchbook Pro think composition. Never go straight into detail. Block out the body and a pose first. Many people start with the head. But my advice to you is not to. The problem with starting with the head is that a body then becomes an appendage, when realistically the head is appendage to the body. So give that a try.

As for techniques there's a lot I could go into.. But before I start to bombard you, I want you to take a look at this website. When I started creating digital art,a nd anime especially for the first time it was an excellent resource. You have a japan edge to your art, and I know this guy is american but the techniques are there for you to use all the same. So check out polykarbon it's a good website which will help you break into new areas and gain potential.

http://www.polykarbon.com/tutorials/

Stay away from bold colors. if you sample colors from other pieces of art etc you'll see that when they select colors it's never a full saturated color. At times there's more desaturation in it which gives impressions of light and darks. Once you are familiar with Polykarbon, and have done a bunch of new drawings hit me up again, and we'll see how you are progressing, and I'll point you in a direction of new materials to push you into new unknown territory which will enhance your ability. Good luck! You have potential, it's just a matter of unlocking it.

HMD224 responds:

thanks for the advice. in fact those drawings are old, i have new one that are improved. the reason i didn't upload them here is because nobody notices them. and what do you mean by PM?

[Cathode Raybits]

Totally getting down to this! Awesome!!!!

SinclairStrange responds:

Yay! Hopefully it'll play awesome too >.<

[RX-7]

Keyshot is an excellent program, I haven't had time to experiment with it myself, but it looks really simple to use.

I do think you have lighting and surfacing issues though. The car is stronger lit that the environment and some of the shaders are picking up crisp reflections which look unrealistic. The car's slightly too reflective imo, so you're killing alot of the realism in it by making some of the dark blacks completely gone. As a car artist within the games industry I suggest baking out an AO pass, and using that to maintain your natural darkness. A reflection fall off on your shader should also be looked at, cars don't have perfect reflection like an HDR reflection ball. Reflections should be nice and clean, not stretched.

Also watch your geometry, some of it is quite wavey which causes the distortion you will see in your reflections, another reason why you may want to dial down the reflection. Keep it up, you've progressed well from looking at your other works.

BlazingEclipse responds:

I've never worked with an AO pass before, I'll have to experiment with it on my next model. Thanks for the feedback!

[Propagation]

Haha! Love it!

Brilliant! A lot of effort going on here, definetly one of my favourites of the competition. Good luck!

TheShadling responds:

Thanks mate.

[17th of May]

Good work but...

Coca Cola: Flying to you across seas.

The refraction is nice, and everything looks good, but that sky texture should be super crisp. Also don't add those camera filters of the darkened edges. Unless your using an old olddddd camera you would never get that.

Stand back from your 3d stuff from time to time and compare it to photography, things that stand out are the table's texture is far stretched looking, it just doesnt fit and the sky, which is dark in areas that has been suggested that sunlight is hitting it. If you have a sky image with white clouds because of sunlight then you can't force that sky to have an impression of clouds with depth as the image on that area is overexposed, such as as you can see it in the top left cloud, it just looks dead flat because you have darkened a prewhite image.

Just something to watch out for.

<deleted> responds:

Thanks, finally some constructive critisism. Luckily NG does not only have people who rate 10 just because it's 3D

[Gamefreak Logo]

Agree with Kensei

I actually have to agree with Kinsei. He knows what he's talking about.

Apart from the DOF (depth of field) what is there really that made this a challenge and worth top marks? Maybe if M1kclark looked at the brick image more closer he would realise that the resolution is not high enough to support the final image. It's not a good choice of brick texture, as the crispness of the text is far superior to the image map. Extruding text is a simple act, as well as Vray Global Illumination which depends on the plugin to light realistically so there is little challenge there. I dont know why M1Kclark presumes its wood, the texture looks more like plaster as its super smooth and off white.

A logo has to make an impact, it has to be rememorable, it has to describe the product its advertising and convey instantly to an audience what it relates to. Stand back and ask yourself these questions and you will realise why Kensei gave this such a low score, and so did I. Your lack of preproducting sketching, concepts that create a strong design shows.

No post work doesn't make your image better. It makes you lazy. All work has post on it.

eagle3000 responds:

No disrespect, I will try to clear out some things, in details:

-Not high enough resolution? It's 1500x1000 + It's tiled without seams. All tiny pixels I can see are fairly blurred by the render engine. What should I do to help it? :S

- Extruding text. The final work should not be judged by effort put into it, but by beauty. It is art after all, isn't it? >:-|

-I know VGI depends on the plug-in to light realistically, but what does that have to do with the review? Your statement is unexplained. :|

-The material of the letters is plastic with low glossiness. :)

-As far as the logo concerns... That has nothing to do with 3D stuff I posted this picture too. This picture isn't promoting my work, so as far I'm in charge, it could have been a poop. Not the impact making poop.

-Again, picture is not made for designing 3D letters! It's made to show a bit of bump maps and realistic rendering! Just sharing stuff, not showing off.

-I did not say post work makes my image better. I just wanted to state that out, because some people were consuming that the text is rendered in 3D's Max and then "glued" to the brick picture in Photoshop. Laziness is a disinclination to activity or exertion despite having the ability to do so, post editing is fixing/beautifying/ the work. Editing, objectively. And not all images have post work, for instance, image above is a proof.

I hope this clears your vision about my work, my style and my ideas. And I really hope you will change your opinion and take a look from the other perspective at some stuff. ;)

Oh, and please, don't take this personally ;)

[NG Elite Soldier]

Love it! :D

Haha awesome, great concept!

It's a shame the competition won't allow users to go with advanced texturing with this, it forces you to paint the highlights and indents into the colour(diffuse) map instead of creating a spec, bump, normal, etc.

Great work, the best yet!

3D-xelu responds:

yeah =( it was really hard for me to resist the urge of using bump and specular =)

also.. thank you very much

[Modern Apartment]

Over populated.

For an Interior VE shot it's way too overpopulated with randomness. Your ability should never outweigh your reasoning to establish composition.

Things like the oversized orange, folders, premade teapot and especially the crumpled paper shouldn't be in this shot. They detract from the focal point which is important to sell that higher class of a modern apartment. Your clashing modern sleekness with clutter and therefore detracting from the possible potential. Also, why is the light on? It shouldn't be. Once again, just because you can do something, doesnt mean you should. A look lit with daylight causes artificial light to be lost, the light emitting from your lamp is far too dominant.

The thing that hinders this image is your scaling. You need to measure objects before modelling them if you are unsure of sizes. For instance, look at the size of your pencils. Compare that to the length of the folder lying down. The pencils would be at least 2/3 the length of the folder. As well as mention the orange, or even comparing the size of the book case to the sofa. It just eats up the focus, throwing our eyes everywhere.

Stand back from interior renders, and exterior if its a single render piece. Imagine a large plant instead of the oversized shiny bin. And take away the one on the coffee table at the far back. It would add more warmth to it. Balance of nature v modernism would work much more, rather than the objects you have lying around. Things also to look at is the style of carpet. It doesn't fit. The material appears to be wirery rather than comfy. The desk, should look smooth, but at the point of the specular highlight appears to have a grainy texture. Something that would feel somewhat rough on the hands.

Your sofa is the most impressive object here, but should have some cushions to break up the hardness of it all. You'll find some interior renders of bedrooms have the sheets open, to soften up the bed. This is an important realistic yet obvious product shot you should have went for with this. And remember attention to detail, hinges on windows to open them up, caster wheels on a chair, ceiling lamp, etc. all important things to research before making something like this.

I suggest looking at interior magazines. Not 3D ones, but photography. Look at Ikea mags, etc. It will give you a base idea of approach.

Good job overall, just your inconsistencies are pulling your true potential.

<deleted> responds:

Thank you for a very, very useful review. I found it very helpful and I will keep this in mind!

[Camaro Revenge]

Lack of Credit to the original.

Sorry, but I don't think there's enough to classify this as 3D for a number of reasons.

The original 3D 2010 Camaro Concept was created by Dale Earnhardt Jr not yourself. Tracing a 3D Car doesn't make your piece a 3D piece of Art. It makes the piece Vector, Vexel, Raster, Bitmap. - Basically an illustrated piece.

It's a good piece of vector art but by being vague in your description you neglect to credit the original 3D Artist who created the modelling, surfacing, composition and lighting. The majority of the work was already done for you.

Blud-Shot responds:

Lol dude I made a mistake of putting 3D and you write a review that seems like I stole the artwork.

[Space Ship Corridor]

Excellent work!

Excellent stuff, just remember Fake where your light source is coming from. Make lights, lamps, LED dials, then light your scene dependant on these sources.

Superbly done! (I was so sure I had you on favs, cant believe I never! WTF Was I thinking? So sorry bud!)

Kinsei responds:

sweet I made it to some one's faves list >:)

I tried to get the "tube lights" under the grate to work out better, but I still seem to be just slightly off.
When I'll be working on a control panel later tonight, so I'll be sure to try and get things right.