SourCherryJack's art Reviews on Newgrounds

[Hotline miami]

I like the idea you have here, it's a good start for sure. The placement of the two characters sets the drawing up for a strong and interesting composition. However your coloring style, color choice and lighting really bring it down. To start you need to sharpen up your shading a lot, right now its very soft all around; and it looks like you use straight white to get lighter tints in there as opposed to using lighter tints of the color, this gives you a sort of plastic-y look in a lot of places, particularly the jacket. Right now the brown of the other room and the brown of his jacket are kind of making the drawing too brown, you should change the floor's color; from what I understand Hotline Miami has really bold colors, you should take advantage of that and really use some stronger, bolder and more vibrant colors, the floors could use it a lot. Look up the time period and place, I'm not an expert but 1980's Miami interior design were not really into brown and pale pink as colors, from my understanding the went more on the ivory and marble floor type things, shiny and lighter. Your highlights are too much, the huge white splotches on the floor and the walls should be gotten rid of entirely, they kind of look like clouds and attract too much attention, I understand that you're going for the muzzle flare's lighting and that's a good read, but the light on the walls would be much dimmer for one and be much more evenly distributed as opposed to super focused on those spots.
You should do some perspective studies around your house to get a feel for how walls and floors line up and how to better keep it consistent, right now you've done a decent job, but walls in a building are generally all comprised of right angles and the divide between the two rooms and the far wall aren't lined up as well as they could be.
Also that box looks like it is floating, doing some basic object still lives can really help with getting objects to line up with a base, I strongly recommend doing some. The 7,500 above the chicken guys head is a bit out of place in that black box, if you removed the black box and made it bigger I think it would stand out and fit much better.
I hope this helps in some capacity, keep up the good work!

IceBreak23 responds:

too long, but yeah to make an background is not that easy it takes alot of time to make, i'm just tyring my best.

[Witchsona]

I like the how clean and crisp the is, the line work and shading are very nice an consistent and go quite well together. While I don't really care much for the design philosophy of this kind of character is it is unarguably largely well executed. Her legs not being there for me is a misstep, but the manner in which you have omitted them is much better than simply having them run off of the page so good work with that. The light blue glow of the threads do a great job of offsetting the mostly muted earthy tones of both her cloths and skin, as well a create a nice direct line to guide the eye and strengthen the overall composition (which in admittedly would be much harder to pull off if you had included the legs). There are a few issues with the color fills going outside of the linework, most notably the hand on the right. The biggest issue I have with this character design is with her belt, the band on her hat her gloves and the line across her skirt and by extension I suppose all of the cosmetic stitching on her jacket as well. Right now you have two different, white-ish colors going on, for the sake of continuity in her color scheme they would definitely do better as the same color as opposed to the two. Its really nitpicky, but considering the large focus on just the character it stands out much more. Also another strange thing is the lightning bolt on her hat and the bolt earring she's wearing. I don't know your character, but she definitely has a sewing thing going on what with the thread, the dolls, and the stitching on herself, I would think, again, for the sake of character design continuity instead of a lightning bolt she should have a thimble, or a spool, or a pincushion or a bobbin or some other sewing related item, the lightning bolt is kind of random. Same goes for the bolt earring.
Either way it's a very well drawn design with excellent shading and a lot of personality. I don't personally care too much for the actual design so that brings it down a bit for me. Hope this helps in some capacity excellent work!

justZaz responds:

holy crap, kudos just for taking the time to write this, but many thanks for doing so.
admittedly i got lazy in some parts (the different white-ish colors for instance i just kinda did because i had some swatches lying around and just sort of picked at them haphazardly). the bolt and lightning thing do have something to do with her actual character though (this is just a costume design i suppose - not canon, as it were).

im still learning, but stuff like what you wrote could only help me get better, so thanks again!

[Self Portrait]

Looks great man. You've got some excellent contrast coming through on this and really great, crisp shading. I especially like the way you've changed up shading techniques and color use between the face and the hands, it adds some really good dimension as well as shows an understanding of the differences between skin and the way light interacts with skin on different parts of the body. That being said you could definitely refine that hand a bit more, right now its largely featureless, especially in the middle, and lose its form a bit as it meets the cuff of the jacket, it stands out much more because of how close it is to the detail on the face. The jacket is also very well realized - and more than just being very well shaded with the folds - it gives a great amount of dark/light contrast with the hand and face which also works great with the gradation on the red background.
The biggest issue with this drawing though is one that I didn't even notice until the end of this review: you made the image to large. When viewed in full size there are definitely very noticeable cracks in the armor, you lose a bit of the crispness of the jackets edge against the red, some of the highlights lose a bit of there umph (super technical term there) but that can be fixed by just re-sizing the dimensions and uploading that in place of this one. Choosing the right size, or distance to view art from is a huge part of the process that is often overlooked, especially with digital. Case in point here, it does a disservice to have the larger size available.
Even so, awesome job on this, hope this helped in some capacity, I'm definitely looking forward to seeing more from you.

ScaredyDave responds:

Very great advice! I often forget to resize the image to one that makes the cracks go away. I usually work in too large a file size and forget to look at it in full size when its all complete! Thanks so much for the very informative critique! I will implement these suggestions soon! (I can at least do the size tonight though!)

[Rikio Kamamoto]

This type of style has a lot of potential, when I first looked at it it wasn't particularly grabbing but when I took a closer look I noticed that you have a pretty strong understanding of shadows and that the linework is seriously holding this piece back. I would recommend you refine this style some more, ditch the lines entirely and bring out the features and details exclusively with values as opposed to the lines, you're already practically there. The value work is especially notable on the face and jacket. I would recommend working in three tones of each color to cover the standard color, the shade and the highlight areas. I think going with that type of style would really make your art stand out from the rest as well as improve understanding of color tones and values.
Also the reflections on those sunglasses could use some work, the lights should better follow the contour of the glasses right now it looks like you're trying to get that effect but not really committing to it, pick up a pair of sunglasses and study the way the light wraps around the glass parts as well as the frames.
Hope that helped in some capacity. Good luck moving forward, man.

AniLover16 responds:

Thanks!! :D
I'll do my best and thanks for the tips.. :D

[Dragonblade Riven]

Really nice character design you have here. The silhouette is distinctive and very crisp as are the armor details. I especially like the way it is in that perfect medium for a characters armor of not being overly complex and busy yet not being to boring and simple as well. Your values are very good in the mid-dark to light grey/white area but I would definitely like to see some darker darks in the armor to really bring out the lights some more. The biggest issue that I have with the drawing is the way it cuts off the legs, it is unfortunate because this is a very strong design and all of her not being present is a glaring omission especially since the cropping cuts off the sword which from the bit that is visible is potentially a very interesting weapon design. Upon close scrutiny there are some areas along her edges that could use some touching up and refining, but it is still a very well designed character, great work.

Veavictis responds:

Thanks I appreciate your comment very much. Digital art is so hard, so I know at some points it didn't work out very well like the sword, but I think it gets better every time I draw digital. I like to hear from you aswell that it is an good design. Thanks for the hints and tips I will work on it the very next time!

[ninja]

I really like the way you did the background on this, the incompleteness would normally bother me, but for whatever reason - maybe the way it looks so intentional - it just works. Also the character design is solid and while the coloring on the shirt under closer scrutiny could use some work the value work is largely very good the only real gripe on that would be darkening the left leg (our left) to better distinguish it from the front leg, but I think I see where your coming from on the lighting with that. also that cast shadow pretty damn nice. Great work dude.

RimKeLLo responds:

This is useful. Thank you.
This kind of feedback are so rare on art forums, as a gold dust in a river. So thank you again

[COYOTE JONES, WILD WEST HERO]

This is a pretty good start for a character design. I like the style and the overall shape of her silhouette and your base colors are at a good starting point I think. That being said there isn't enough variation in the values of the colors and this leads to her kind of blending into herself. Her cape should be darker than the front part of the coyote's head and there could be some highlights to bring out the shape of the muzzle some more. Also try darkening the entire coyote in general to further separate it from her skin tone.
At the moment the huge braid in the back along with the front part of her hair and the cowboy hat all create a sort of blur of dark grey. Try making the hat the same color as either the tan of her shirt/boots or match the coyote and put a black band on it as oppose to what it currently is.
Also to add a greater sense of unity in the color you could add some tattoos or war paint the same blue as the coyote's eyes.
I get that this is just a character concept render type drawing, but a better background would definitely help, nothing complex just something with a little more personality than grey. Look up pictures of the desert to get an idea of the colors she'd be around mostly.
Hope that helped in some way, keep it up, man.

ninjaslave responds:

thanks a lot! those are all good points :) if you don't mind me asking, what experience do you have?

[Heid Knight]

There is a lot of good stuff going on in this drawing. I really like the way it fills the whole page and has a very clear foreground, middleground and background. The composition is also fairly strong with river and river bank breaking up the detail of the grass and trees area ( the river bank could probably benefit from some very light detailing but its fine as is). Where it unfortunately falls short is in the the contrast, right now everything in the drawing is a very similar tone. You need to have more variation in dark to light to get your objects to read better, right now a lot of what's going on is lost in the grey to where the view has to really look to distinguish what's going on. Adding darker values will help to define a clearer focus as well as make the drawing stand out and look more complete. great job so far though, hope that helped in some way.

gustavolesmo responds:

thank you
thanks for the review.
about the contrast i guess is about the style i like to do... something like "nothing is in focus"
i like to think that the eye is free to look at the whole picture cuz i think that, sometimes, if something got too much focus, it starts to erase the rest, you know?
but thanks. i think that one got too white, i could made some more darker tones....

[Lurker]

Love it, dude. Excellent color choice and composition. The only issue I can take is the girl's pose feels a little too subtle. I think it's coming from her legs which are a little too spread out to convey "huddled in fear" as well as they could if she were more recoiled.
But overall I still love it, still gets five from me. Happy Halloween!

ZaneZansorrow responds:

Happy Halloween to you too Jack D Curleoest! Thanks for the critique :{3