First background!

[sharksweetheart]

I had a crack at my first background today. I wanted to recreate my pen & paper style digitally, and I'm pleased with the effect. It's all glowing, colorful and mystical, which is what I was going for.

However, I've never drawn much else than people/creatures and faces, not even on paper (I'm stubborn, only just accepting that I need more skills than that), this is my first shot at doing a scene, so my composition might not be the best (but being inexperienced I'm unable to judge that).

So basically, I'm happy with my style, I just want to know how to enhance the more technical bits! 



Made in PSP with a mouse (only just pried myself away from MS Paint, too, lol). It's a bit bare, but I'm working on all the pretty details and stuff now. I learned from browsing these forums that people like to discover little details and stuff, and nobody likes a blank, useless background. So yeah.

While I'm here I might as well show my first attempt at drawing in PSP, there are many things wrong with it, I don't intend to edit it any more so I hope it's alright to post here (I kinda screwed that up by using 569584604 effects and merging layers, oops!):
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v665/delia123/sugartree.png (huge)

Oh and if anybody was wondering, I'm not using the sprites from my other topic with these.

[Oliwerko]

Man, I like your style, I've never seen anything like this before.
On the other hand:

1. It does not offer much interaction (don't know if you want an interaction here though).

2. Looks a lil bit flat. I guess the blue thing is a river. I would maybe add some trees to background to incerase the depth of it.

3. You'll need to create a char in the same style, which may be (may be not) difficult.


But I'd love to see it in a game, like the "shadow of the wicker man rises up again" from the trees of glowing forest  .

Keep up the good work!

[sharksweetheart]

Thankyou!

There will not be much interaction. Just some small things littered on the ground or hanging from the trees. It's sort of like a "hallway" in the game - the character enters via the river (though this isn't the start of the game, haha, it's morelike the start of the second chapter) and pretty much goes straight forward through the tree-archway, into the next bg.

I did draw trees in the back, but if you didn't notice that obviously means that they're to dark, so I'll try to make them more noticeable and depth-givin'!

[m0ds]

It's a nice art style, but it might be a bit overwhelming in a game. I think it really depends on how your characters look against it. If they are as blurry as the trees etc then I think it would make a nice style, but adding a really clear, defined character in there will probably look quite wrong. Anyway, keep it up. Very nice work

[sharksweetheart]

Aha, you noticed the blurriness.
I was aiming for 640x480, but when I noticed the quality I considered going smaller. However, if I can work with it I'd rather have it larger. Thanks for the tip~

I tried giving the background, mostly the trees, more depth. Also, the colouring of the two purple "hand" trees seemed rather bland compared to the 3 ones at the front, so I tried spicing them up a bit. Let me know if I succeeded!

[Oliwerko]

Yeah, it's definitely better.

But still, I see "two layers" of trees here only. Look at the trees on the left - the front is bright, the second is only a *little* darker and the third one is completely "in background". I would make the second one a bit more "balanced" between the first and third one. I would make a paintover, but I can't draw in style like this  .

I like it.
The depth is significantly better than in the first one.

[sharksweetheart]

There we go. How about now?

[Oliwerko]

Don't fear to use more red!

There is too much contrast between foreground and background. You must use the middle tree to "insert" a "third layer" between them.

Really ROUGH idea of what I mean:

[sharksweetheart]

I just realised the last two images I posted look EXACTLY THE SAME. Aaagh, I swear, they looked so different at 2am.

And I do get what you mean, I just can't seem to accomplish it well, it either comes out  waaaay too bright, or all muddy like your paintover.  :'(



I added some mushrooms though.
I think I'll leave it for now, and try again later on, or bribe somebody.

And then I had a crack at another scene.



Do you think the pink gives enough contrast? I thought of adding a small pool, so I could add blues and greens, but I'd like to be able to accomplish that without having water in every background!

[sharksweetheart]

Oops, quoted instead of edited. 

[Candall]

You definitely don't need water in the scene to justify using blues.  Your scenes are very fantastical in nature, so you can do whatever you want color-wise.  Also, it's common practice to use dark blues in shadows.

[sharksweetheart]

Good point! I guess I do have yellow and purple trees.

[Stupot]

Also, you could add some green to parts of the trees to make it look like some kind of moss or fungus growing on it.

Really like these pictures.. if they were on paper i'm pretty sure they would glow in the dark... hehe

Keep it up

[Scraseface]

These backgrounds are so trippy and unique, that personally, I'd very much like to see the character that goes with them.