SourCherryJack's art Reviews on Newgrounds

[MALFUNCTION//METAMORPHOSIS [2K24]]

Dude, this is sick. Great choice with the blue hue too, it really adds to the atmosphere

CobaltRogueX responds:

Thank you!

[Ding fries R done]

I was just singing this to myself out of nowhere the other day.

[Halloworm 2023]

worm

[Undressed]

It is!

DieterTheuns responds:

Therefore it thinks.

[Electrique]

Damn, Phil! This is juicy as hell.

SuperPhil64 responds:

Thanks! : )

[Hopeless Falling]

In response to your review request:

This piece would benefit from reducing the size. Shrinking the height down to the 2,500 px - 3,000px range would make the full scale viewing suitably large, but also not so large that when viewed at full scale little imperfections in the edges would show through.

You have some good color choice, but the shading can be more interesting, maybe putting some color into the highlights on the coat and boots, maybe a yellow or blue, depending on your feeling on the temperature. Getting some of that deep red toward the bottom of the background in the shading on the shirt and hair would help bring some more unity in to the piece.
Th shapes and soft shading are overall very pleasant, but I cant help but feel like the pose itself isn't as natural as it can be. Looking at references of people falling backwards their backs are all around much more reclines, and angle of the bend in the waist a bit more obtuse, so that may be worth looking into.
Also the simplification of the coat looks to lose continuity in the curve at the bottom swooping up, then coming back down and swooping back up again. The way the tails meet so far up makes it feel uneven in the distribution of fabric. There's exaggerating and taking liberties for effect, but you gotta look out for pushing it too far and becoming a distraction. Keep in mind the structure of a trenchcoat, the tails meet in the middle and are symmetrical, having such an intense discrepency needs to be justified with folds and further warping. My quick fix for this would be get rid of the second droop on the left, and just have it go straight from the fold under his but to the middle part.
Maybe drop the saturation on the jeans too, they're very blue, a little too blue for jeans in this minimalist style.
Also the top hand needs to be redone, hands are hard, but you really got the lower one done well, you are more than capable of a better hand than what you got right now. You got a reference attached to you, if you really need to, take a phot of your hand in that position at that angle and trace the shape in your art program. If you can take a shortcut take it, no shame in tracing your own hand, and no one needs to be any the wiser.
In general good, job on this one, the style looks nice, and there's some good textures, a bit more refining and you'll really get it going.

[Alex My Boy]

In response to your review request:

I think on this one you were working against yourself in a lot of ways with the color choices. You've set the seen at night, but you're afraid of embracing that with the colors and values, really play into the night scene. That light/mid gray of the buildings should be black, or at least the darkest areas of the piece. The lights in the windows should push the contrast and inform the shape of the city, and should not fill every single window in a building. Look up references of city skylines at night, and use them; some buildings will catch the light of big light fixtures and reflect that light so if there's a big neon sign the buildings next to it should be that color too. There is also a phenomenon called city glow where the sky around a city is a perpetual hazy yellow color, so that would gradate up into the darker sky. I'd recommend gradating from yellow to maroon to violet to blue-violet.
You can also add depth to the background with some more washed out buildings being cut off by the closer buildings, and then further obscured by city glow.
Also some smaller but closer buildings in front, or some ships on a dock will also help to sell the concept of this being a city on a lake, or port, and look a little better as you transition to the bottom of the buildings to the top of the water.
At night water tends to look black more than blue, but it is dark blue and does match your current BG, so it works, but having the buildings perfectly reflected wouldn't happen. They should be more distorted, and diffuse to be wider as they go out, and the yellow of the lights would catch the tops of little waves that are white.
The character lit as though he were standing in daylight, again use references for skin tones, or establish that the surrounding area has a bright lightsource, something as simple as lamps in the background, but that would require pushing the ground he's standing on back, or extending the width a bit to manage. Beyond that look up how skin is affected by low light, or if you were to add a lightsource how it is effected by the color.
His legs look pretty awkward, I would recommend turning the foot on our left in more, even just mirroring the outline should work, right now he's pretty duck footed. The pant legs on both legs would probably look better if the curves were flipped to cover over the shoes rather than bend up; right now both feet look to be bending forward in front of the legs themselves. There also looks to be a kink, mid-shin on that left leg, so watch out for that.
Looking at the right foot, it's out of line with where you're denoting the knee on that leg to be, I would recommend shifting it so the knee matches the foot more, right now it looks like he's turning the right leg into himself, which disagrees with his chest and waist.
The folds on the pant legs are a bit dramatic, I can see they're informed by reference, but it looks like the shading got lost a bit in the translation, the way the highlights are catching agrees with the coat, but then there's a shadow on the edge of them where the light is being caught.
The sword is also really bright, if it's supposed to glow, make it a light source and clearly denote that, if not, make it so the only bright spots are it catching light.

As for the expression, I'm assuming he's winking and doing a cat face at whoever he's pointing the gun at, which given the information we have is the only real assumption here. His eyeline is not at the viewer like the gun is so it's got a bit of disconnect.
Another general composition note is put something in the foreground. A crate, the shoulder of his target, really anything that will sell the scene a bit better. It looks more natural and also will serve to frame your character and draw the viewer's eye to them.

That was pretty big wall of text, so let me say it's great that you're doing full compositions, and taking on more challenging poses and concepts. There's a lot going on in this image, drawing a character, skyline, ocean, all at night, is ambitious, there are a lot of great references that are easy to find of scenes, they're going to help you a lot.
My main advice would be get more comfortable with working with bigger shapes. The cityscape background can be accomplished with a few well placed large brushstrokes and then gone in with a smaller yellow brush to dot in the windows and a more transparent brush to get some highlights and shaping in. You don't need to go straight in for linework or shape tools, especially for BG's. Same with the water, going in with a big chunky brush and implying the lights and waves would be quicker and probably look more naturalistic.
Keep drawing, keep working on anatomy, Posemaniacs and line-of-action are both great websites for anatomy. Use references, and think more in terms of shape than line, when it would be applicable.

[LanternBeast]

DUDE!
Yes. excellent, all around great work here, and the rest of your gallery!

[Wasp]

When using halftones/ben day dots, it's important to use them with intention. The way you're using them in this piece is not an effective execution of the technique. The overlay is superficial and does not serve the image you're trying to create, because it isn't being used properly.
Halftones and Ben Day dots were used to simulate a continuous color or gradient, due to limited printing technology. Having a digitally colored image under a bunch of little black dots, on top of just looking like you added the little black dots without real intention, kind of gives the impression she's being viewed behind a net or something.
This idea would work better if you limited the black dots to one area of the character like the yellow of the dress, skin, or wings, and even then it would probably work better in black and white to simulate shading with dots like that. This is kind of a half measure to tweak a piece like this to work with limited effort; to really effectively use this coloring process I recommend really studying the techniques, technology and process of why old comics look the way that they do. Basically the reason for the dots in skintones is that old printers had a very low dots per inch, on top of a limited palette with cheaper inks, being printed on the cheap paper, so colorists had to be smart about how they went about achieving the colors they wanted. This resulted in a lot of tricks that get us the alternating colored Ben-Day dots. When you're putting dots over solid colors like in this piece you're not achieving anything that the solid colors aren't already doing; and when you're putting black dots over colored art with black outlines, you're muddying up your linework -- the teeth, nose and whites of the eyes are specially affected by this.
Studying the history is going to make your modern simulations of the old effects look a lot more authentic and clean; as opposed to superficial and muddy.
The youtube channel Comic Tropes has a good video about The History of Comic Book Coloring that is a good start for a broad overview.
Good luck going forward!

[Connect - Inktober 2021]

Fantastic work on this one man. Great design, concept, and scale!

Kobbodokk responds:

Thanks man!
Glad you like it :D