Hallucigenia
9810 - score: 5.5 out of 10
God Among Lice:
If you're looking for the pack with the best Halloween theme,
this is the one to get. Most of the other Halloween-themed
packs I've seen are pretty half-hearted compared to this
one. The pics of pumpkin carvings are a nice touch. (my
pick for best pumpkin goes to Ice :)
The fact that Hallucigenia
isn't afraid to venture into media other than digitally
created pics lends a strong variety to the pack. Spirit
Wolf's traditionally-created (not sure of the medium) duotone
Knights and the orange Winter both impressed me. Uneide's
colored pics appealed to me more than the pencil sketches.
They look to be colored before they were scanned, though
I'm not totally sure, and don't really care anyway. The
Mermaid especially struck me.. reminds me of that famous
photo of a guy returning from WWII who's kissing a random
girl in the street. Uneide's toon/photo collage was also
interesting, though I'd say the bottom pic works much better
than the top.
As for the digitally-created
pics, Optik Nurv sure is trying hard to be like Catbones,
and could very well succeed in his quest someday soon. Whether
that's a good thing or not, I'm sure you already have your
own opinion of. The rendered pics from Tim Bowling seemed
rather crude, though the color was nice in a couple of them.
As for the rest, there were
a good number of throw-away pics that didn't need to be
in the pack, some of which might have been in here just
for their halloweenness. There were probably more pencil
sketches than I really want to see in an art pack, too,
and few of them were developed at all.. just little sketches.
A pretty solid release from the Hallucigenia people, I'd
give it a..
score: 6
Root88:
Optik Nerve had the best images in this pack by far. ON-DECAY.JPG
really stands out. Most of the other pics were just ok.
This pack was filled with art that were merely pencil sketches.
Some of the sketches werenÆt too bad, but they didnÆt do
much for me. The pack would have been twice as good if the
artist tried to color them on the computer, or at least
with some colored pencils or paints. If the artists arenÆt
comfortable doing this, I suggest doing a joint pic with
someone else. The fact that half the images were photos
of jack-o-lanterns didnÆt impress me at all. I would have
appreciated if they were released in a separate zip, or
just left on the web, so I wouldnÆt have wasted my time
with them. The packs rating also suffered a bit by artists
using Metacreations Poser to create their 3d models. I would
much rather see a smaller pack with more quality artwork.
Their NFO file was informative
and they gave a URL to a newly revamped website, although
I couldnÆt connect to it after numerous tries.
score: 4.5
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