Quarl's art Reviews on Newgrounds

[Teaser Screen!]

I SEE A TRIFORCE ON THE WALL. IM TELLING NINTENDUR CORPORATE, NEVER STEAL ZELDA. EXPECT A LAWSUIT. HOW DARE YOU STEAL IDEAS!

*has a small seizure after noticing the pillows.

Bleak-Creep responds:

Haha, you spotted it!

The couch and pillows are a nearly exact replica of my own couch and pillows, caus I love my beautiful green couch.

[CONQUARLERCREEP - Now Girls Night out will never end!]

The colors are great, looks like a 90s era kids cartoon. Would vibe with Hey Arnold or Thornberries. That background feels like a massive inside joke as the letters from our screen names merge into childlike gibberish and curved DNA sequences straighten up like "wtf is going on?" This is wonderfully bizarre, I've always wanted to be three fursonas packed into a singular organism! Rock and roll :3

controllerjar responds:

Thank you very much! it’s lovely isn’t it, now you’ll never be alone!
And I know that was supposed to be personas technically, but just you wait.
Ive got somethin cookin real good!

[One for the haters]

You think that hurt? Stand back if you value your soul.

*Responds with the entire violin solo from The Devil Went Down To Georgia*

[Sitting on the Dock of the Bay]

Quarl AIM 2022 Review
Composition/Structure (0-10), Production (0-10), Emotion (0-10), Relevance to Artwork (0-10)
supermelon-creations, Sitting On The Dock Of The Bay: 10,9,9,10 (38/40)

It's not the most amazing production but you managed to do several key things I griped on everyone else for missing. You included some atmospheric samples, waves crashing. So many people failed to tie the music to the illustration and atmospheric samples are powerful tools to help exactly that. The only problem with crashing waves being that I grew up on an island and I know my waves. These waves are oceanic and clearly don't fit in at a lake or pond. It's such a stupid criticism though because you still managed to convey the location with that sample. You wrote a very relaxing, minimalist track that conveys the image nicely and would fit in many commercial setting like a video game or podcast. I'm not sure how well the percussion fit into the scenery but it was a very gentle drum kit. I'm hearing so many dubstep drums in this contest for scenery that doesn't call for dubstep at all. A little chalk clap or snap snare, some unobtrusive shakers, an off beat tambourine rhythm, all of it works with this sunset by the water. The art and the music both convey a surprising amount of depth using very few techniques. This is perfect minimalism.

I'm trying not to give out too many perfect scores so to justify the two points I'm taking off from "production" and "emotion" I'm going to nitpick that aux percussion being a little too loud compared to some of the surrounding percussion. A good example is that percussion I hear at 00:51. You could turn it down but I also want to suggest experimenting with a little reverb on it. I get stupid nutty with my percussion, you can fake dynamics with an automation lane on your drum volume knobs. Drums of all types benefit from evolving dynamics, volume is one of the few tools a percussionist has to convey emotion with. The static dynamics still suit the image nicely but I'd have a much harder time allowing myself to take points off if they were "perfect." You could have squeezed some orchestral percussion sounds into this, cymbal swells, booming bass drums, a gong, chimes... I wouldn't be taken off guard by windchimes quietly adding their twinkle once in a while. You could even argue that something gentle like chimes echoes the glittering of the stars seen in the illustration.

Thank you for writing something about the art, too many musicians missed the point of the contest and wrote nothing at all. Saying literally anything about the art makes it harder for the judges to ignore your hard work or assume there wasn't an attempt to participate fairly with the art that was chosen. I took it on myself to write something for everyone in the contest, language barriers might come into play for many of them but I actually like seeing languages that I can't understand because I love this community and I love knowing we're a global family. Hello Netherlands

I will admit that I wasn't expecting much when I saw the name "supermelon-creations" but I've learned to never judge a book by it's cover when talking about music. You wrote an incredible song and I really do love it. The competition this year is fierce with some undeniably amazing tracks. I nit-picked two points off your score but if this wasn't a contest, and if I didn't put my own money into the prize pool, you'd have got a perfect 40/40. I hope to hear some more music from you in the future melon :3

[Comm: Hey big guy]

E: for everyone xD

[Lovely Book [Art Fight]]

Who doesn't love Bleak? Garden is a bundle of good energy and her drawing style is really clean. This is a solid rendition of her cat Celestial. I love those sketch lines. Garden often skips line quality completely and I can see you playing with that on the pleated dress but you really went buck wild on those outlines and I love it <3

[Insecurities]

Feels.

[Yo Before Mermay End-]

I love fish now. I can't tell if this is wholesome or not but I need more of it. Such wonderful colors and shapes.

[9th annual AIM contest promo art]

This is absolutely beautiful. The colors are very inventive. The buildings are giving off a Tetris color scheme. There are certain things I would nit-pick like perspective or figure but I think it's actually perfect for the competition. The style speaks to the accessibility of the competition and comes off like a grand invitation. Drawing more figures would have complicated the drawing, perhaps unnecessarily. It's like she's saying "come one, come all!" She's waiting for the contestants to show up and rock out :3

Phaox05 responds:

Yeah you identified my main issues when drawing, I kinda hate drawing people because I never manage to make their body with good shapes (for example the legs being just one part even if in my sketch I designed them being two to emphasize the knees).

Talking about perspective I wanted to show distance between buildings and that's how far I managed to do without making it look strange or low quality as the drawing started to get really fuzzy with things at the back of the girl. (I'm planning to change the program I use soon as I suffer from the quality levels it gives me)

I like your point of view of the message, makes an extra context to the drawing itself, thanks for giving feedback I will work hard to improve my drawings!!!

[Oh Dae Su's writing skills]

Ok, I came to your page to comment on the AIM illustration but I laughed when I saw this character drawing. I watched Old Boy back in 2008, it's such a strange classic. In the relative simplicity of this style, you've managed to convey that character perfectly. Sunken eyes, frumpy hair, disheveled button down shirts... and of course "tinta roja," bahaha.

This is a fun drawing :3