Topic: Background Blitz - Now for something completely different - [WINNER ANNOUNCED]

[nihilyst]

And now for something completely different ...

This fortnight, your task is to make a background with a theme of your choice, and I mean that: if you want to paint a cathedral in space, do it, if it's a giant hamburger with doors and windows, be my guest, and if your end result looks like something from Bob Ross, I'd be happy to see it.

Just one thing: Do it in a way you never have done your backgrounds before. You all know how 304's backgrounds look like, you can spot your zyndikate from miles away, and you even can name a loominous blindfolded. Many artists have their own distinctive style; so do you. You have your paint program, your workflow, your colours, your line arts all figured out. This episode's task is to forget about your usual way of doing backgrounds.
For example, if you're into pixel art with limited colour palettes, try a classical painting with different brushes. If comic-style backgrounds like in DOTT are your way to go, then try something more realistic. You may even switch from digital painting to oil on canvas and then scan it for us to see, if you like. As a bonus, it would be great to see other stuff of yours to compare your new style to.

Restrictions: no resolution restrictions this time. Go as you please.
This Blitz ends April 12th.

And now go for it

cheers
nihilyst

[Armageddon]

Eh, pencil sketch scanned in, a bit of matte and blob coloring and light gradients.



The perspective is off.

Premise: Earth has been teleported near Jupiter and is now orbiting Jupiter harsh weather has killed off the human race. Giant perfectly square blocks of granite fell from the sky wrecking what the people of Earth once saw. Heavy rains covered the earth for many years. Now your ship has wrecked and fallen into earth. It stands floating in the atmosphere over sprawling metropolises. Can you escape earth?

EDIT: After looking at it for a bit I'm going with this, high camera on an avant-garde mini-set with strange backdrop and huge Styrofoam blocks.

[Misj']

Just one thing: Do it in a way you never have done your backgrounds before.

Well Nihilyst, I both love and hate this theme (love, because it was one of the ideas I had for the previous Blitz, hate, because if I find the time I definitely can't resist joining this). I love playing with and developing styles. But, of course, I can always pick out my own work (the movement of the lines, the color-choices, etc). But the task is to do something I've never done before, so that's going to be a nice challenge.

As a bonus, it would be great to see other stuff of yours to compare your new style to.

I'll add some of my Blitz entries (and two other pieces) of recent years (the first Blitz I entered was with the birdy...wanted to go all vector in that one).



Anyway...this is going to be fun (or frustrating...not sure which one yet)

[nihilyst]

@Armageddon: That's one hell of a fast entry I like it.

@MisJ: I see you have fiddled with many different styles before. I wonder what you're coming up with

[Sane Co.]

I might try to make this contest, I'm a bit busy though...

[Misj']

@MisJ: I see you have fiddled with many different styles before. I wonder what you're coming up with

I wanted to revisit once of my pieces: the Damsel and the Dragon. I love the way it tells a story...and I never got to finish it (some of the rendering is way off). I also wanted to get out of my comfort zone (which is basically the whole point of this Blitz), and I wanted to do something I've never done before. So I decided to recreate this piece as an homage to the Space Quest 2 era; limiting myself to 160x120 pixels and the EGA colour-palette, and a style that fits Sierra of those days (though I wanted to keep some of myself in there as well). And then, to top it all off, I wanted to turn the piece into 320x240 with CGA-coloured dithering to see if it would still work.

Yes, I did cheat on the CGA and EGA screen-resolution to match the original image proportions

The Damsel and the Dragon

Everybody knows the story about the brave knight who set out to slay to dragon that imprisoned the beautiful damsel...well...sort of...

Now in glorious 16 colours:


You with 4 colour-machines are not left out:



Ps. Nihilyst, it was more fun than frustrating

[nihilyst]

Ps. Nihilyst, it was more fun than frustrating

You can tell from the result. Groovy

[Misj']

You can tell from the result. Groovy

Cheers!

just for fun I've also included some (cropped!) in-game screens:



I didn't have a colour-screen back then, so I remember these games in gold-plated monochrome (and that kinda made Roger look even cooler...as they would say back in the day).

[2dMatty]

I haven't really locked in a consistant style as of yet except maybe in the last six months as proof by a small board of my art :S



I decided to give my hand at something animated and moody using watercolours for the first time.
Below is my entry for the compo, hope you guys like:

A Rainy Day at the Palace Theatre

Recently boarded up but the automatic lighting is still on.
A homeless man has made it his new nest for the evenings.
Fresh graffiti mark the walls as crates containing contents of what was in the inside of the building get shipped out to collectors

[Armageddon]

Very nice, the rain really sells it.

[oraxon]

Nice ones, Armageddon, Misj', Matt.

I just tried to keep things fast and use some new brushes. For once I didn't use thick outlines.
Maybe with a moving fog layer it would tie things together in a real game...

[Dualnames]

Hey mattcoles, nice art there. In general, everyone in this topic so far gets a kudos from me.

[nihilyst]

Two days left. Anyone out there who wants to venture into new spheres of his background-making abilities?

[Cuiki]

Cool theme. Decided to throw something together for this.



So.. this is my puny attempt at what the future might look like (or, if you want - A Parasites' Paradise, something along these lines).

As for a distinctive style, hmm, I don't think I have any?
Well, I still tried using as many new approaches as humanly possible, like faster strokes, different colour palettes, a wannabe old-school-comic look, aaand.. I didn't use any reference pics, for once. That has to count for something, right?

Here's some of my older stuff, if you're interested:
Click
Click
Click

[Lad]

 Ok, I thought I will give it a go. Didn't have much time, so it's quite plane and could use some more work. Saddly I can't  work on this piece more - not only because of the deadline. I googled for different images. Downloaded them and mixed together in GIMP. Never done anything like this before, but it was very interesting.

Thanks for this topic!

Ok here is the BG. It's supposed to be 320x240.

[Eazy-O]

Well, I've been lurking for quite a while now, though I did help make a game some time ago. Here it is: http://www.bigbluecup.com/games.php?action=detail&id=1339

Some of the backgrounds are mine, so that gives some idea of what I've done so far.

For this blitz, Cuiki convinced me to draw something, so I decided on doing an EGA 320x640 post-apoc themed background. I call it 'Outta fuel'.

x1


x2


Used mspaint for drawing and GIMP for layering and color palette reference.

Fun topic.

[nihilyst]

Alright, time to vote. The categories are:

[code]Idea:
Atmosphere:
Functionality:
Technique:[/code]

That are some pretty cool entries. Thanks for participating.

Voting will end on monday 16th.

[Secret Fawful]

Idea: 2DMatty
Atmosphere: 2DMatty
Functionality: Eazy-O
Technique: Eazy-O

[Armageddon]

Idea:Cuiki
Atmosphere: 2dMatty
Functionality:Misj'
Technique:Misj'

[Eric]

Idea: Eazy-O
Atmosphere: 2DMatty (Just barely beats out oraxon this time for me)
Functionality: Lad (Could see this being spiced up quite a bit by some objects)
Technique: Misj