last minute reviews - march 1999

CEG #06
Chaos Energy Group are reviewed for the first time on hirez.org ever. Having releasing six packs, I have to admit this is the first time I have viewed one. They're using html to present their, which is nice. It's plaing and simple, with info and links to their previous pack.

Bazooka Bob (this handle got me laughing a while ;) looks like a promising artist. He has still got pretty simple ideas, and the technique need some refining. But it shows that he's put effort into his work, which I admire. A lot of artists, whether they're newbies or not, doesn't put as much effort into their work as they can. Newbies tend to get done quick, and really good veterans are sloppy some times. Mad Lizard has very cute art, most toony work. Pretty nice but not very exciting. Nazgul also looks quite promising, producing vectorbased art. They're newbie-esque, but interesting. Sparky has really good photomanips. The actually have a subject (which a lot miss out on), it's not just slapping filters and pasting a couple of photos together. Sparky have created completely new pics that have a meaning and it's well done too. I would say he could easily be compared with the veterans in the bigger groups. The rest of the work is pretty average.

score: 5.5

Fluid #03 and #04
Most of us thought that Fluid was going to disband after the news of Starks being a major ripper, but apparently they have kept on releasing. Funny is that no one actually have seen these releases since they aren't available anywhere. These packs were sent to me from Starks to be reviewed.

Most of both packs consists of so called "furry art", e.i. art of cats and foxes. While they are pretty cute and well drawn toons, there isn't much else to them. They're just toons, not very impressive technically, and definitely not very "artistic" and the sense of expressing feelings and whatnot. Some are quite well done blending 2D and 3D rendered art. A lot of the work is also just sketches. Although also well executed, they're still not complete artwork.

I'm still concerned about the involvement of the members. A significant part of the art are from 1995-1997, which is pretty old. Do the members know each other? Do they know what their art is used for? #04 shows a bit more member involvement with 2 or 3 pics actually saying Fluid in them.

score: 5

PFC #03
The Power Flower Crew doesn't release artpacks very often, but they apparently have a lot of other stuff going on. It isn't a very big pack, and the art is pretty mediocre. Green Drug mostly seem to be playing with effects and different techniques, but seem to have some work put into them anyway. The only font colly in the pack isn't good at all. They're just truetype fonts with filters, the design and layout is next to non-existant. The grafitti Zmogk is pretty decent. I don't know grafitti all the well, but I think they're quite nice to look at anyway.

score: 5