Reviews for Vikings!

[Knuckstrike]

Good atmosphere

The detail and the atmosphere in this piece of art are what attracts me to it the most. The atmosphere part attracts me because of the colours that are used: almost everything is black or red, which fits well with a scene of vikings burning down and looting a whole village.
That this scene takes place at sunset is a good choice. It's just light enough to see it, but still makes a dark atmosphere.

The detail is good in a way that I didn't find anything odd in the 3D-modelling, and that the reflection on the water is done nice. The burning houses also have a nice level of detail and realism.

I would like to see more vikings though. Now there's just two of them, and I'm not even sure about one of them if he's a viking. The vikings fighting are what would attract me to it the most, but there are hardly any.

I did notice an odd thing with the wind though: If you look at the sail the wind seems to blow, while the the smoke columns rise straight upwards.
Another thing is that there are too few smoke columns for the many houses that are burning.

tl;dr : A nice picture with good detail and atmosphere, but a few small mistakes.

Review request club

samulis responds:

Ya, my problem is that my program doesn't allow really more than five to seven characters (I could probably push it with 12 or 14). Ideally, I would have a good 25 vikings and a pile of dead guards, but that's really out of the realm of possible with a real-time engine like this one. However, I am looking into getting some super low-poly characters, even just static models, I can use as stand-ins.

The age-old solution for the program is exporting out alpha-transparent images of characters then using a flat graphic "planter" tool that allows one to randomly "plant" characters around the set... the issue is that you can't adjust lighting and well, they ARE flat. :P

I could have changed the atmosphere... next time, I will make sure my particle FX are fitting and working in conjunction with the flow of the image.

Thanks for the feedback,
-Samulis

[Haggard]

Review Request Club

I like this picture, it caputers a moment of heat (literally) in a single image. I also like the "blurry effect" of the things that are outside of the main battle. First, it draws attention to the things that are not blurry and second, it creates a feeling of movement, as if I was running through the scenery (either as an attacker or as someone who got attacked) and my focus lies on the burning village. The rest is kind of suppress by my mind.

Anyway, I think the smoke needs some more work. Right now it just goes straight up into the night sky, but I think this would be very unlikely. There has to be some sort of wind blowing, moving the smoke either to the right or to the left. I also think, the smoke could be a bit thicker, darker. That way it would even strengthen the atmosphere of "battle" and "menace" it is creating right now.

{ Review Request Club }

samulis responds:

ya, the smoke effect wasn't really that good. I did darken it significantly from what is was, but I see that I probably should have probably even replaced the template effect with my own more detailed image for the particles... throw some sparks and flashes in there too. I'll work on some new smoke effects for my next big entry.