sirDark's art Reviews on Newgrounds

[The Flower]

Very stylish

It looks great. I love the sketchy yet tight style you have going on there. I also like how you use that sketchiness to make the body of the robot(or whatever) more busy than it actually is. It creates fake details witch looks good in here. The piece looks good as concept art but I can imagine that this picture would look a lot cooler if you would add some kind of background if even a vague one. Unfortunately it also looks a little bit too flat. Kind of like a cardboard figure. I suggest you play a bit more with shadows while colouring and rely less on the shadowing of the black lines. Right now it does not give me the feeling that it should be 3-dimensional although I understand that with your cartoony style its a bit harder to accomplish but I have looked at your other works and I can see that you can do it. Hope this helps.

JWBalsley responds:

Thanks a lot for your very detailed response, I'm glad you had some good to things to say about it as well as some solid constructive criticism. The importance of black and shadows can be very significant.

Cheers!

[Lucky day]

Stylish

Very well stylised and I see that this is your way of drawing but I would like to offer some places to improve. The lack of any background makes it look like a sketch and not living up to the potential. Adding some backdrop would have made the piece feel more like a whole and less like somekind of concept art. Maybe that was your intention and I am wanting too much from you but when I look at this picture I see so much potential that has gone unused. You can make some amazingly stylized art if you put just a bit more time in your works. Anyway just my opinion.

[Thrustworthy Passage]

Vibrant, lush, atmospheric.

Its a very good piece for being made in an hour. What I like about it is that I can almost taste the atmosphere in your work. My only gripe in an effort to give some critique is that its just a little bit too monochrome. I get that its a part of making the atmosphere so effective but some pieces of another colour would have been nice. Maybe some added detail to the background as well. Like some mysterious ruins looming over the jungle or something like that. Anyway that´s just my opinion and do with it what you want.

Kamikaye responds:

Yea I see what you mean. A few ruins in that light would have been nice. But I diodnt thionk of that when making it, next time.

[the necromancer]

Holy F***

You make me visit the art portal more often. I tottally love your art style. Mind telling how do you accomplish that effect? (The Jouste Effect) This picture is very epic. Also how much time did this rob you of?

jouste responds:

hey thanks sirdark!

i first lay down the lines in sketchbook pro at 300 dpi, then i color it in photoshop, but the thing that really helps the image is overlaying textures on top to make it look more varied. i specifically use plaster textures from cgtextures.com.

this one took a bit longer cause i painted it so big, but i'd say around 5 solid hours when all is said and done which is close to the longest i've ever spent on a piece.