Love it!

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I'm unstoppable, just like space lightning.

Wooooooo!!!!!

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"Stop making sense"

I like the sprite you chose for Mario and how it seems like he's doing an "OH SHIT... i'm in trouble" face.

HOWEVER, I am not sure I like your overall composition. The Banzai Bill is quite cut off, so unless you played the game, you wouldn't really know that it's a Banzai Bill that's moving at a greater speed than Mario is running. It also severely weighs the painting down on the left side, but if you were going for imbalance, then you succeeded.

Also, I don't know if it's your camera or not, but the colors seem quite muted. Any way you can fix that?

I've been frustrated with my camera lately and despite having tried every white balance setting the pictures I take still are very dark. I have to mess with the brightness/contrast settings through photoshop which attributes for the the washed out feel. In the painting all the colors are very vivid and am in fact most pleased with the color accuracy on mario than in any other painting I've done so far.

It was a difficult thing deciding where to play each character sprite in this. If I brought Bill further in to the right it seemed wrong. I can't really be more specific than that but I will say it was not an easy decision. I also forgot to put in trees on that side and having painted over the grid at the point of that realization it was too late to put them in. This might add the the imbalance issue you mentioned.

Thx much for taking the time to give me some real criticism. Its always appreciated. I think its all too easy to leave totally positive comments or none at all but to voice constructive criticism helps me to reanalyze aspects of my paintings which I might have overlooked.

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This is my way of the nerd.

I think most people are just too lazy to write any real criticism or they just don't know what to say because they don't know how to criticize art properly. So they usually just stick with the ol' standby: "OMG, THAT'S AMAZING!"

I would recommmend possibly going outside to do your photographs. It's even better if it's cloudy outside so there is very little ambient light. Early in the morning or late in the evening is usually the best time. I know it's "just for DA" but you'd probably want to get some clearer shots for your own personal website.

Ambient lighting and a camera steadiness are key for photographing paintings, drawing, and the like especially if your indoors, which is usually the case. The cost of putting a good studio together for this can be somewhat daunting though and not having put much time into it thus far I think I've succeeded in taking some pretty poor quality pics. But until the last few paintings I was okay with it. Now I'm investing 40+ hours into each project it seems reasonable to fork out the extra dough to be able to represent my paintings accurately.

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This is my way of the nerd.

I somewhat agree with InfinitiesEnd... the balance is a bit off, but in my opinion that just adds to the intensity that mario must be feeling... (but the background trees would have fixed that)

and I hear what you said about the "look" being off if you moved bill more towards the right, but because you cut him off right at the edge of the circle, he kind of looks like bowling ball bill instead of banzai bill...

no worries though, it's a fun little piece and that truly is a great mario sprite that you picked... ^^ (oh, and I'm also envious of your range of grey...)

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Join the sensation...

Kickass bead-sprite making since March 2007

Instead of playing around with brightness/contrast I suggest you rather play around with curves, generally you get a much better result that way. The scene in itself is rather simple and easy too look at, meaning it would probably be a good thing to have on a wall. I was, however, hoping that your SMW project would be a bit more elaborate and detailed, giving a stronger SMW feeling. If you have photographs of how the image goes across the edge then that would also be interesting to see (I'm watching your scraps btw).

I messed with the curves some too. I think ill try some daytime pics and see if that helps.

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This is my way of the nerd.

That's damn impressive when thinking it's a real painting. Really good

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I'm Roulette Boy in the "Gregory Horror Show" crew