SourCherryJack's art Reviews on Newgrounds

[Gaster's Story page 4]

You've got the start of something good here, but it isn't fully realized and needs a lot of tightening up. To start off with, the full canvas size is impractically large, shrink it down to something less massive, 25% of its current size is plenty big enough to get all of the details at full size, but that's just for viewing convenience. Compositionally speaking I'd say this works alright; the panel construction is solid and the big to small "zooming" in of the character creates enough interest for a page especially if its leading to a reveal of sorts on the next page. Where this falls apart though is in the shading and color choice.
As it is right now everything is too blurry, the method you used for shading makes everything look out of focus and unfinished. There isn't enough contrast and your value range isn't big enough to grab interest. Your character gets a bit lost in the background, there are a few ways to fix this, but the most direct way is going for harder shading, not being afraid of making hard lines in your shading, comics (for the most part) live and die by strong contrast to create drama. The lack of contrast paired with he messiness of your linework create a very out of focus and unfinished look for this. The sketchy look can be done well but you're going to need to use a hard brush for that - in fact, I would suggest going with anti aliasing turned off to create a very cool pixel look that might suit your work well. Also that border isn't working, it could work, but its too similar to the panels and the bright violet eyes on the skulls pull attention away from the panels. Doing border art for comics is a slippery slope of making the border art itself look interesting while not only not distracting from, but enhancing the panel layout and action in the panels. I would recommend doing studies and figuring it out more before implementing it yourself, because when it doesn't work I find that it takes a lot more away than is worth it.
Clarity and drama are what you should be aiming for above all else with comic making, and the best place to start with both of those is bold solid shading and characters.
Hope this all helped, good luck going forward.

MissMezmer responds:

Thanks for taking the time to review the page, its a helpful insight to what i need to improve on, I'll take your points into account before I start the next page, cheers :)

(looking back on the page I get what your saying lol)

[Neon Mountainside]

Dude this is some excellent work! Fantastic color choices all around, great designs and variations of techniques. What I love most of all is the sort of earthiness to the mountains, most work with the polygonal/vector styles takes on glossy glass-like textures but the matte mixed with the subtle vhs style lines really make them stand out as unique. It's really impressive the way every layer is interacting so harmoniously with one-another but my favorite part (beyond overall color use) are the pills orbiting the splashy circle, that element really completes the piece for me by taking us out of the old school vectors and sort of breaking the mold the rest of the elements established in a way that isn't necessarily expected. Great work, dude.

VaguelyWonderful responds:

Wow thank you so much I really appreciate it!
Your review has really inspired me to make more large scale pieces of art like this one :)

[Yasuo, the True Musician]

This is a very well done portrait, good color choice, fun pose and good emotion all wrapped in a very nice style that suits it all very well. The simple background does a great job of contrasting with the blue of the scarf and metal as well as interracting and harmonizing with the tans and browns of the skin tones, hair, recorders and leathers. The subtle, but very well defined, highlights go a long way in pushing the form of the character as do the thin dark blue outlines. All around I'd say that this drawing as a whole has an excellent sense of form and weight to it, that being said the armor and the scarf are shaded in very similar ways, which makes them feel a bit like they are made of the same material. Maybe pushing the highlights and shadows on the metal a bit more will help with that, I'm hesitant to say do anything to the cloth because I really like the way it is realized as is.
One of the most noticeable issues with this is the way the colors occasionally dip outside of or don't fully cover the inside of the blue outlines which does a lot to undermine their purpose, it's tedious but sitting down and working it out may be worth it. Also on the scarf those two reddish-brown folds don't fit too well since that's the only place that color occurs in the drawing, ditching them all together would probably be the easiest way to go about it. Before I forget, those hands are very well done and great to look at. Back to it - the highlights on the cloth on the (our) left shoulder and on the right edge folds opposite of that are not very convincing. As a rule of thumb don't use white in a way like that to do highlights, mix it with yellow or whatever the light source's color (in this case the background color) is and mix it into what is being highlighted, it will make for a more unified sense of light and interesting color pallet. I really like the highlights on the left and right side of the head, they're great for the for, and have great colors in themselves.
You mentioned that you're interested in more effective methods of using color and my friend, that is a deep rabbit hole to go down, I took a color theory class last year and the first thing the professor said was "the more I learn about color the less I know about it" and I believe him on that. There are countless ways to use color and color combos to convey information and this drawing has a very straightforward use of color and for this style it is very well suited. Though a few key things to keep in mind for future use of colors beyond complementaries, tint, tone and shades is that yellow is your brightest and violet is your darkest. When used in small amounts I find using violet tints, tones and shades to be very effective in bringing out shadows while still creating interest and not just going the darker shade or adding black. I'll probably drop by your thread and give you more color advice as you continue to post since it really is hard to be brief about possible combinations and interactions. If there's anything in particular you need assistance with feel free to message me, I don't know everything but I am pretty good with colors, but as always the best way to learn is through continued experimentation, so keep at it and you'll be a-okay.

RadiBits responds:

You are fantastic! I really appreciate the feedback and I thank you for the time you spent on this, I know it must not be easy setting aside time to go through critique requests and be so detailed. I especially like your comment about using violet tints in shadows, I will definitely keep that in mind from now on. I read in a fantasy illustration book that using the complimentary color to the lighting is also good when it comes to shadows, but I think it will be fun to see what I get adding some violet as well.

(btw the reddish brown in the scarf aren't folds, they're actually tears in the scarf with the skin exposed underneath. Looking back, I don't think I pushed the values dark enough or made the ripping dramatic enough to make that apparent, so that's my bad.)

[FAT MAN - ART]

You should really mention that the original linework isn't yours; in a lot of cases it could mean the difference between having this deleted by a mod, or even potentially getting you unscouted if a mod decides its art theft or that you're intentionally implying this is all your work. The best thing you can do is link to the linework artist, provided you know who it is. Good job on the shading and colors though, even if there is quite a bit of artifacting upon some scrutiny, the shading on the man looks to be largely consistent and does a lot to bring him out. Still I have to acknowledge your lack of acknowledgement on the linework and rate accordingly, props to that guy though for a really neat design.

Wondermeow responds:

Hi Dude,

To be honest JackDcurleo, I totally forgot your post thanks for the reminder mate. Changes are above if it still troubles you or you felt I left something let me know

[Switch]

This is a very cool drawing. The character has a ton of personality and has a very strong silhouette. The shapes in the background also look really great and do a lot to complement the character and the pose he is in. All of which makes it very hard to have to grade this so low.
Your drawing is horribly represented here, it's at an angle, the paper isn't flush against a backing, there's a bunch of the background showing, the lighting isn't great and most of all its not properly oriented. These are all very simple to fix by just spending a bit more time on the picture. Retake the the pictures and be sure to crop it all out so that it is just the drawing and nothing else. Presentation is extremely important in showcasing art and if it's bad the viewer's opinion of your work will automatically have a cloud over it.

PixelMink responds:

I totally agree with you, but it just really hard in the set up I'm in, but seriously thank for the feedback, I needed to hear that.

[Don't Starve Together - YouTuber Edition]

I think you're off to a good start on this. Many of the issues are common mistakes that will work themselves out as you draw more and more, so long as you push yourself.
The first thing that jumps out at me is the shading and color palette. Right now you have one major light source and one minor light source and you do shade largely within how those would send light out (with some issues with the light intensity of the areas hit versus those not), the problem lies in the actual colors you've chosen to represent the light casted. Right now everything is lit in a way that suggests a very clinical white light when in actuality the fire would cast much more intense orange-ish warm glow that would show much more, especially on that robot dude and the guy with the white and red shirt. Also the the darker areas on the characters and logs could be made much darker to push the contrast. This lighting would also apply to the grass, if you observe grass at night around a campfire it really doesn't look too green at all, it takes on oranges and browns much more prominently. As for the areas that the fire doesn't hit make those all cooler colors and darker, try using blues, greens and violets to push the contrast that the oranges from the fire would create (something that is already going on a bit here, just expand on it). Fixing up the lighting will help to sell the atmosphere of the drawing as well as push the contrast and intensity of the piece.
The poses of the characters are all a bit stiff, I think the best two are the girl and the dude in the middle but there is still room for improvement there. Look into the line of motion concept for poses in order to get more personality communicated in your poses also doing some studies of sitting figures will help in communicating the depth and volume of your characters sitting down. Drawing people sitting - especially on abnormal surfaces - is very tricky and I think you're off to a good start here.
Your linework is a bit wobbly, you can do a few things to fix that, the first and best (in my opinion) is to be more confident in your strokes, do them faster and use your shoulder as opposed to wrist or elbow to do the motion, this method is in general a good thing to get comfortable with if you aren't already since it will help you not only get better lines, but also keep you from getting carpal tunnel.
As for the composition, this is a bit vanilla, standard sort of shot that you see a lot, not that there is anything wrong with that, but if you want more drama in your pieces try playing with camera angles.It does create more obstacles to overcome in terms of foreshortening and depth of field, but the results are much more interesting to look at. Simple things like lowering the camera bit and tilting it up so we're looking up at these people even slightly can go a long way in making the whole scene much more dramatic and ominous.
Also as a side thing: from what I understand Don't Starve has an art style that utilizes very clear color palettes in each level or stage or whatever, I think if you were to emulate the game's color choices more closely, or try to use color in ways that it does, you'd have a much more successful piece of fan art and maybe step a bit outside your comfort zone, which is always good.
Anyway, you're on a good track taking on full scenes such as this, just keep pushing your art and you'll be A-Okay.

Syrupmasterz responds:

Thank you so much for taking the time to write such a lengthy review, I've never received feedback this detailed before. :)

I agree 100% with the lighting advice you gave as I originally intended to have the lighting be more orange/fire like, but somewhere along the lines I forgot to take the time and add it. Campfires aren't light bulbs, they don't give off white light. :P

I'll pay more attention to the colour pallets I use as well, but I'm sure using orange lighting would have solved that problem. Composition and poses would have been better had I used some more reference images, most of this was done by memory/freeform.

The thing you mentioned that intrigued me the most is 'drawing with my shoulder'. I am finicky with line art and learning tricks that could lead to straighter lines are always welcomed. It makes sense though, the hand can only move so far before you have to adjust, so using the whole arm gives me more room to maneuver. I'll look into that technique.

Other than that, I should be able to iron out most of the kinks as I go along and improve. The common mistakes will be solved commonly.

Thanks again! :D

[Jordan Barlo]

There's not really a whole lot going on in this drawing, but right off the bat the three components don't mesh very well. You have a blocky dude with some basic shading and some cartoony proportions with light shading, in the back a svelte looking shadow creature and then a photograph for a background, there's no unity here and the work suffers for it.
As for the individual components, the dude in front's biggest issue for me is the inconsistent shading, you've put some shadows in, such as the ones from his hood and under his lips, but none under his nose, earlobes on his sweater or anywhere else. Also being slapped in the middle of the page like that and having his head continue up most of the page makes for a very symmetrical and boring composition.
Other than not fitting with the dude, your shadow guy is just sort of there, he's not interacting or even looking at the dude. With shadow people, especially skinny shadow people like that all sorts of opportunities pop up for interesting was to shape them and have them interact with normal people. Other than that there's not much to say about him since the head on, bust composition doesn't really allow for too much.
The background is a weird choice, making the sketch of the current drawing the background to the final can be an interesting concept but here it isn't really utilized at all. The problem here is that your dude and the shadow guy are almost completely blocking out whats behind them, so it doesn't make any sense, it just looks like they're standing in front of a mostly blank white photo.
I think if you want to stick with this sort of head on bust composition you really need to learn to render the characters better, and throw in a lot of details and shading to compensate for the lack of dynamic motion in the composition. Barring that what you should do is look into dynamic compositions in order to better create interest, things like the golden spiral, rule of thirds, diagonal line etc. Also look into body language and consider the personalities of these characters going in your drawings and try to make all that translate through the poses and interactions between the two. Hope this helps in some way.

Psychopath responds:

Yes, I've actually heard of the golden spiral. I've been looking into methods of applying mathematics to art & have been blindly looking around for things like that & have stumbled onto a few things like De divina proportione but I haven't had the time to read up on it all. I'll add the other things you mentioned to my list.

Oh by the way, just a heads up on the review I left on your speed drawing video. You won't like it. I'm saying this because you seem chill & I was a dick.

[Und morgen? (And tomorrow?)]

Really good job on this one, your details in the clothes looks really nice and really brings out the folds in the man's clothing. You have a really solid display of dimension in the figure overall, I feel like there could be a bit more value range between his pants jacket and shoes, maybe have the scarf overall darker or the coat darker than the pants just to mix him up a bit, but in doing that you would run the risk of losing some of the focus so the lack of variation works well stylistically.
I especially love the background, the way it is simply a silhouette of a city rather than doing a more detailed drawing. It pushes the homeless man forward a lot and frames him well as well as adding an unfeeling, ominous tone to the scene that really gets the message across.
The face of the man is a little wonky in some ways, but again stylistically it works pretty well. The actual documentation of this image could've been a bit better, the edges show a bit of what's behind the paper, but overall its still a very strong drawing. Great work.

Nersul responds:

Wow, thanks for that feedback!
Im very glad you like it, especially the background, where I wanted to do exactly what you said "pushing the homeless man forward" and that you take the time to give such a detaild feedback.

Wuih!