Art Style Suggestions

Started by SilverSpook, Sun 07/09/2014 03:11:33

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SilverSpook



WIP of the title graphic / ingame background for Neofeud, a game I'm currently porting to AGS from Shadowrun Returns.

I dub this, "Journey Of Self-Discovery That I'm Not An Artist."  I'm still on the look out for one, so I'm doing my own in the mean time.  Took me.... God don't want to think about it how many dozens of hours.  Still not sure if this fuster cluck of an art project is shaping up to be something more than an arrangement of proportionless rectangles drawn by an epileptic ferret, who forgot to snort half his coke lines and passed them off as, "city lights".  Sorry, had to get that self-hate fest out, it's just been a lot of really frustrating evenings.

Any suggestions on... anything, especially how to get the buildings to be a bit more... believable?

I'm trying to imply feudal trappings and near-future sci/spec-fic subtext, simultaneously.  That's the diarrhea-and-bile color palette plaguing the lower half, where the "low-borns" live.  Flea bottomites, Chiba City rejects. 

Overall I'm going for Neo-reactionary-ism, taken to the nth degree. Dark Enlightenment manifest destiny, a libertarian wet dream.

I'm trying to hone in on some of the cornerstone symbolism on which to pour the cement, or cobbletone as it may occur... I need the "Pillars" so to speak. Reminds me, need to add Greco-Roman pillars to that balcony, fluted.  Needs more gold maybe.  Gilded.

If you're not sure what the hell I'm talking about, join the club!

Thanks for having a look, in advance!

P.S.  Here's anot.er earlier version.  Didn't like it all that much, but it has the title in it!


monkey424

Hi SilverSpook.

It looks like you've painted this and then taken a photograph? The first picture looks blurry, presumably due to a poor photograph? The colours look too dull for my liking. And the detail needs to be sharper. The building sizes are inconsistent in terms of ordering. The central building is too big where it currently sits in the middle and should be brought to the foreground. The smallest buildings naturally go to the back, and medium size buildings in-between.

I like your second picture, although it's not the style you're trying to achieve. The contrast of the silhouette buildings against the bright skyline colours is more pleasing to the eye. Try to adopt this technique in your first picture.

The woman looks sexy. Good work! I prefer her wearing blue.  :)
    

SilverSpook

The first one is actually completed digitally painted in Art Rage, no photography in the making.  The central building is intentionally colossal in comparison to the surrounding buildings, and so I set it in the middle ground to emphasize its scale, although it's location could be made more obvious.  I was going for something more subtle there, probably a bit too subtle with the low contrast.  The colors at the base are supposed to be more dull / swamp-o-sphere looking to emphasize the grandeur of the castle in contrast to the "unwashed lowborn masses" who presumably live below.  I'll see about maybe brightening things up a bit.

Thanks for you opinion on this, and glad you enjoyed the femme fatale in blue.  (I guess if you take the blue pill and make an arrangement with Mouse... :))


NickyNyce

IMO I like the red dress pic. I like the angle and the gloomy feel to it. It does need to be cleaned up a bit and the buildings on the right seem like they were done with less care. Draw more of the buildings that you have on the left side of the pic onto the right, and I think things would look a lot better.

SilverSpook

Hm, you know I think I forgot to take those buildings on the right side out of the pic.  They were part of some previous iteration of the scene that should've been thrown out, my bad.

Thanks for your input, good to hear someone digs the gloomy aspect.  It's an acquired taste thing I guess.

Cassiebsg

I like the picture and atmosphere in general, there are a few things that I think could be better though.

1) There's this red "aura" around her neck and shoulders. That breaks the effect of the big building completely IMHO.
2) Buildings on the right, like NickyNyce said, don't work, loss those.
3) The dark ones on the left I like (they could maybe have a bit more sharp edges, but that's painting style, I guess).
4) I Don't think the lighter ones on the foreground work though. Try darkening them as well.
5) Think there should be more roof tops, maybe just barely visible, or just a darker "cloud" in the shape of it.

As the second big goes, I like it too. Only thing I really don't are the rounded edges of the buildings. Think that if you made them straight and sharp it would make for a much more dramatic effects, than it currently has right now.
There are those who believe that life here began out there...

Bavolis

The layout definitely works, it does have an epic feel, you just need to work on the polish.

A couple of tricks that will help if you use something like the Gimp or Photoshop for your art (I believe the Gimp is still free).

1) You can better blend those buildings with the fog by putting the fog color on a brush at 50% opacity and just painting until they sink into the background.
2) You could try animating the fog by redrawing it two times and then cycling the background at a slow speed,depending on if it is supposed to be intimidating or still.
3) This is a style call, but if you want really straight lines for something like the grid in front - you can use the rectangle selection tool as a stencil to make sure they're all perfect.
4) Consider breaking up the top of the scene with clouds or stars or anything to draw the eye out of the deep blue pool. You do have scribbles there, but they need a bit more detail.
5) Since that big building is the focal point of the picture (the woman's arm and gaze are both directing the eye to it), consider animating the flags, spotlights, etc. Sometimes when I'm not entirely happy with a background, I give the player something else to process in the area of the scene that looks better :)

SilverSpook

#7
Thanks Cassie and Bavolis.

@Cassie: Nice catch with the aura -- that was slipshod Photoshopping just to get something out of my art software and up for a critique.   Great eye for finding the cracks!

@Bavolis: Thanks for the tips from a real pro, sorry I can't pay you for the consultation :)  I chose to handpaint the railings to give it a bit more painterliness.  I was trying to go more analog, traditionalist (Art Rage instead of Photoshop as a modus operandi) and paint manually as much as possible, even though this takes longer.  Operating under the notion that this might lend a bit more cohesive style and character to everything given the idiosyncrasies of actual paint-on-canvas.  I'll consider putting away the (paint) bottle and going more straight-edge, in the future though.  Definite time-saver!

Simultaneous senior moment / present-shock!  Totally thought that Dubai pic was some sort of artistic rendering for Blade Runner II, etc..



Latest version here: modified the front-stage lighting to more aureate-tone... suggest she's a point-one-percenter standing on a Smaug-esque mountain of gold, and also trying to legitimize the yellow-orange light cast horizon-ward onto the 70% angle structures.

Especially the halo (or in this case, oily miasma) of neon-filled cloud surrounding the buildings.  Shanghaied from a photo of Dubai superscrapers piercing fog

Also added the "enemy" *chateau forts placed about a mile out.  Hopefully these rival feuding castles lend enough credibility to get the audience to invest in this "Game of Thrones meets Bladerunner" speculative fiction pitch.

(*presumably the others belong to House Tyrell and House Stark  ;) )

Snarky

#8
Pretty nice overall!

I would check some of your lines with a ruler, because the whole foreground looks a bit askew to me. In particular, the railing leans pretty noticeably to the left.

It can also be helpful to flip the image horizontally in order to look at it with fresh eyes. This usually makes lots of problems you haven't noticed about the composition etc. very obvious.

With all this fringing between different elements (like the halo around the woman in the first version), I'm wondering if you're painting everything on one layer? That's probably not a good idea (I'm assuming ArtRage has layers, because otherwise WTF?!). I would say you should at least have the foreground and background on separate layers, and turn off layers in front when you paint, so you don't just paint the background around the foreground objects but behind them too. (Personally I would have one layer for the sky and fog, one for the big building, one for the other buildings, one for additional fog, one for the balcony and one for the woman.)

In terms of actual artistic criticism, two things stand out to me:

1. The woman doesn't seem to have any feet. If that's her dress going all the way to the ground, her legs are too short.
2. You have a bunch of bad tangents, where edges of unrelated things line up. For example, the big building disappears into the clouds right at the top of the railing, and the roofs of two of the other buildings also follow the line of the railing. This tends to flatten the composition and make it look to the eye like the buildings are attached to the railing somehow.

The buildings all look pretty good, but I can't figure out the roofs on the two big towers (if that's what those Christmas light-looking things are supposed to be). They look out of perspective and don't really make sense with the rest of the architecture.

Oh, and know your horizon. The perspective on the buildings around those far castles is way out of wack with the closer ones.

Lasca

Hey SilverSpook!
I really like the image, and I think you have an intresting and expressive style!
Just some thoughts!
I think you're rework improved much, but personally i prefered the blue tiles. Mostly because I feel like the golden ones steal too much focus.
The building right below the "main" castle, could perhaps be reworked, or even removed! Moste it feels a bit weird because the line of the roof is the same line as the rail, but also because it feels a bit like the big castle is resting on it.
I love the light on the castle, but the spotlights on the... battlements (is that the english word?) looks a bit like brooms ;). Perhaps you could rework them to be a bit more "misty"?
I'm not very good with anatomy, but is her legs perhaps just a tad short? I'm uncertain.
Lastly: I prefered the red dress ;)

edit: oh. Wrote this at the same time as snarky. Was not my intention to partially just repeat what he said ;)

Cassiebsg

Just tid bit to add to what everyone already said.
I agree with Lasca, the blue tiles looked better.
An those new castles further away, they should not produce that much light, try to dim the light. Further away = less brightness.
There are those who believe that life here began out there...

SilverSpook

@Snarky:  Thanks!  Yes Art Rage does have layers.  I just exported the pic really quickly forgetting half the foundation of the central supermansion, and hand-painted it in quick, just to get it out on the internet before going out to paint the town red, etc..  I've racked up a solid bible-worth of layer-pages for this particular artwork.  Could probably do with some curating actually, remove some of the old subdermal detritus of old thrown-out brush strokes.

@Lasca: Hi, and thanks for the esteem boost!  I wasn't sure if I had a style going or just a lot of random and poorly controlled muscle spasms passing for brush strokes!  I am going for a more expressionist / impressionist tone here to convey the undercurrents of the science-fictional world.

Shoot!  Yes those spotlights need some airbrush TLC... very broomsticky.  Nice catch!

@Cassie: Thanks!  Hm, well that's one for red, two votes for blue dress.  Poles are still open!



SilverSpook



Latest version:
-Reconfigured buildings / railings so the result has less overlapping lines / edges.
-Added high heels: kind of looked like a footless hovering obake-ghost without them.
-Added Victorian wrought-iron balusters. 
-Fixed broom-like spotlights illuminating the castle's crenellations.

Lasca

Nice fixes! Heels improved her a lot, and the railing lines are much better.
About the spotlights, I did a little paintover:



I made the left one a little longer, I felt it was too separated from the building, and added some opacity and yellow to light "outside" the walls. I've never done light like this, and I don't know if it's more "correct", but to me it looks just a tad better. However! I believe you should be the judge of that. If you ask people will always have tons of opinion about your art, but the only one that REALLY matters, is your own. Just a thought.
I would also suggest that you let the picture rest a bit. It's already powerful, and you don't want to let the painting get you pissed! And don't let it make you loose the ejoyment of painting.
Good luck!

SilverSpook

Thanks Lasca for the illustration of your suggestion for the spotlight. 

You're right too about putting the brush down for a bit and letting it go.  It's been a source of enjoyment and inspiration but also frustration, and I do have a creeping OCD-spectrum disorder that drives me to make adjustments constantly.

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