Sketchbook is a Flash-based slide show of sketches. Both the slide show and sketches were done by Newgrounds.com user Matt Roszak (matt-likes-swords). The slide show is set to the music of Nobuo Uematsu, specifically the song from Daguerreo, a location in Final Fantasy IX. This collection of sketches was submitted to Newgrounds.com on January 9, 2010, and won a daily second-place award on January 10, 2010, as well as a Review Crew Pick award on January 12, 2010.
According to the author of this Flash-based submission, this sketchbook contains 100 pages of sketches dating back to 2003 up to 2009. As stated by the author, a good portion of the sketches are for the Black Mages series and for the Mecha Dress Up.
Also, many of the drawings in Sketchbook are of tanks, swords, and mushrooms. This is also mentioned by the author of this flash-based submission. This rather strange collection of sketch motifs can be appealing to a wide audience, which can explain the submission’s multiple awards and high average score among the Newgrounds.com community.
Sketchbook is simple and accessible. Basically, to view the next page of the sketchbook, click on the bottom-right corner of the screen. To go to the previous page, click on the top-left corner of the screen. At the very top-left corner is an icon of a musical note. Click on this to mute the background music.
The background music is a nice touch to the whole project, creating a soothing, museum-like atmosphere that gives this presentation of sketches an air of respectability.
A few things can be done to improved this submission. First of all, it would be nice to have an index or table of contents that organized the sketches and provided quick links to the corresponding section in the sketchbook. This would make it easier for users to easily find sketches that they would like to view again. With the sketchbook the way it is now, users who liked something in the middle of the sketchbook have to click through many pages of sketches just to find that one sketch. An index or table of contents with links to page numbers would help greatly. Even just including links to pages at the bottom of the sketchbook would help make page turning easier.
Also, though the music choice was a good one, it can only loop for so long before becoming a nuisance. Because this sketchbook is filled with 100 pages of sketches, having different music instead of looping just one track can make the experience of viewing the whole sketchbook more enjoyable.
Overall, Sketchbook is a visually stunning collection of sketches that really showcase the work of the author. Sketchbook is also recommended for those who need a little spurt of creative inspiration, as a lot of the sketches are rather imaginative themselves.
