iCE
9812 - score: 7.5 out of 10
God Among
Lice:
Darkmage's "Summoning" has a wonderful sculptural feel to
it. There's something about it that makes it seem more a
creation of the hands than of the tools. Unlike most renderings,
the depth and the shapes seem less obviously defined here.
The main sculpture in the foreground isn't made up of continuous
tones of light and shadow, but separate areas of distinct
shades subtly graduated, more like the work of a painter's
brush than an algorithm. I think it is the atmospherics
which help to flatten the scene, and focus our attention
more on these distinct flat areas of the objects and their
relation within this fine 2-dimensional composition. 3D
artists should keep this in mind.. that their finished product
needs to be placed within a 2-dimensional picture plane,
and composed accordingly.
Hfaze has some fresh-looking
watercolor toon/anime pics. Nice to see something besides
airbrushing for once. (Now seeing something besides toons/anime
- that's a different story). Maybe you could tone down the
texture a little, though? When I see these watercolors it
makes me think they've been painted on Quilted Northern
toilet paper.
I wish my system wasn't so
outdated and I could have seen Jamie McCarter's MOV file.
His still image characters seem like they'd be much more
at home bouncing around in an animation than as still pictures.
I feel like I'm just looking at documentation of something
else he's done. It's horribly unsatisfying. So in the future
I'll fix my system up to view anything imaginable and hope
that ice decides not to release more animation stills. Maybe
you guys could start releasing animations separately from
the packs, or in their own archives ß la cia? It might encourage
more people to release them and you wouldn't have to worry
about bloating pack size for those who can't handle the
downloads.
I loved the picture by Mantis.
An actual creative and original rendering... hard to find
these days. A kind of neurotic/worried looking "basket"-case
is confronted by a massive creature whose green color and
thickness doesn't belong to the thin/pointy/orthogonal and
decidedly non-organic landscape. I like the play of horizontal
vs vertical vs round, and the depth of field effect.
Some more quality stuff from
Necro in this pack, you should know what to expect. One
thing though, I'd like to see his images saved at highest
quality jpeg, since often the detail in his work goes down
to the pixel level. I feel like I'm missing out when I zoom
in and see shitty jpeg halos.
Some of sq2's stuff shouldn't
be seen in an ice pack. That RNP logo looked like it might
have been created by some warez group's art dep't. Xten's
logo/design work was nice, especially the (presumably) vector-drawn
Absolut ad. Root88's stuff seemed a little rushed or unfinished.
Cyberise has a sweet gigerish style going on. It seems like
it might have more character than Borian's pictures did,
though not the compositional completeness of a scene that
his usually had.
A very viewable pack this
month from ice overall, though I don't think it carried
the punch that last month's had.
score: 7.5
Mongi:
As we still lack
interested reviewers, I have to continue review iCE, we
don't have any choice if we want iCE reviewed at all. After
a couple of months of outstanding packs, this one isn't
up to the previous packs, but still it's good.
Cyberise is making an appearance
again and blows us away with a genuinly appalling alien.
The level of detail is awesome, the bubbles, "freckles",
scars, stitches, everything! (If you look closely there's
"ice" and "insane" tattooed above and
below her left eye.)
Darkmage brings us another
dark movie-like image. The atmosphere is great and the shadows
realistic, not forgetting dropshadows and stuff as many
other artists do.
Hfaze's work always keep high
quality. The rendered image looks really nice with the lights
and all. The x'mas pics are hilarious! God I hate that snowman
=) The technique used to emulate watercolor is fascinating.
Have a look at the tutorial
in the tutorials section.
Mantis have rendered another
piece, which I think is a classical painting. I haven't
done my homework, so I can't recall who it is. The idea
of rendering old paintings in 3D is really awesome. Or it
just might be original work.
Squidge brings us loads of
logos this month. Although keeping a high quality and great
design, the logos are not as original as we would expect
from Squidge. The only logo that really caught my eye was
sq2-sq1.jpg.
Oldschool ansi artists Leonardo
(not to be mistaken for DaVinci) has really shown he knows
how to paint hirez too, which much attention to detail.
The Necro has an almost demoscene style in his work, which
means pretty damn special. It shows he was really fond if
Fuel when it existed =)
PS. Some notes on my own pics.
The hirez.org promo needed more work, but I really like
the iCE promo. DS.
score: 7.5
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