Forest stream BG

[Dualnames]

I really like Andail's edit, somehow the lighting strikes me odd, and Andail's edit fixes that and it makes the reflection look better, cause initially it looks as a standard effect from the early 90s. Impressive background overall.

[Eric]

What's more impressive to me than the final product is your process gif. Thanks for sharing that. I've still never figured out how to go about the last stage of rendering where everything comes together.

Also, this thread is amazing in general. Cheers to all.

[Giraffadon]

I wish i was there right now; looks relaxing.

[Snarky]

It's amazing how much it helps to step away for a while from a picture you've made; when you come back to it you see it quite differently, and have whole other ideas for how to change it. I think I will do another pass on this, when I get the time.

Out of curiosity, what paint program did you use for your background?  I'm extremely impressed by how you manage to convey the individual leaves with pixels.

Photoshop. I paint in 3:1 size (with a bit of safety margin around the edges) and scale it down with nearest-neighbor. For the leaves I use spatter brushes extensively (with two or three layers of foliage on the upfront trees, mainly because I was planning to animate them), working with locked transparency once the basic shape is down. Here's how the final version (except for the water, which is placeholder, and the mist, which is missing) looks in full size:



As you can see it's rough; things don't blend and don't have consistent brushwork etc. (plus some things are cloned, resized and so on), but it doesn't matter much when it's meant to be downscaled. I don't think this is a rational way to work, but it's the only way I've figured out to paint. However, at this point I might try proceeding in the final resolution.

What's more impressive to me than the final product is your process gif. Thanks for sharing that. I've still never figured out how to go about the last stage of rendering where everything comes together.

Thanks. As Andail and Ben have pointed out, this hasn't quite come together yet. For the steps so far it's mostly just been a matter of plugging away at it, bit by bit.