Cyberpunk Backgrounds, Dirty Shading Advice

Started by Armageddon, Wed 17/12/2014 05:37:15

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Armageddon

Hello, I've been toying with some backgrounds over the weekend. Pretty happy with the mood and color. Am wondering how readable they are though. Maybe I should do really clean shading? I tried to get that Gemini Rue style, though my rooms are about half the size.

Bedroom:


Living room:


Let me know what you think.

Andail

That ultra-low resolution is quite cool, even though it will make many modern players scratch their heads...

I think your backgrounds mostly work, and I can definitely feel the Gemini Rue vibes, but you need to tone down the lighting slightly. It's almost hard to read the lower picture, when the shading/highlighting is so haphazard and egregious.

miguel

A way too dark on my screen. Lovely pixels.
Working on a RON game!!!!!

Mandle

#3
The bedroom for me was just a bit confusing. Before I read in the title that it was a bedroom I saw it more as a lab where a corpse was on a slab and some high-powered generators behind were powering up. Of course this also means I took the scene 100% out of context and if I was playing the game and my character woke up on that bed and then got up from it, perhaps peered out through the "blinds", and said something cool and noir about the view outside then I would maybe accept it as a bedroom in a Blade Runner-ish world.

The pillow combined with the lighting on the bed really looked to me like there was a dead body lying there. Also on the right the wardrobe looked to me like there was another character standing there at first. As said before: out of context observations.

As for the living room: A bit clearer, but splashes of light with the shading here and there are confusing like down by the lower left-hand corner of the right-hand door. I can see the drawers and the pictures hanging above them and that makes me want to look at them and learn more about myself through some exposition text/speech.

The ceiling light does its job on the ceiling. The lighting on the floor not so much for me. I kinda understand that its coming in through the window through which we see the futuristic city-scape, but to be honest the window frame is just slightly too 2D that it could be mistaken for a large, framed oil-painting hanging on the wall. I think it needs a bit more depth and maybe a glass-ish hue to convince me that it's a window looking out onto the outside world instead of a flat picture.

One last thing I would say about the living room is that walls, floor, and ceiling colour tones are all too similar for me. This makes the room look like the inside of a cardboard box instead of a real place where the character lives. This might of course be the intention: Again, observations taken completely out of context.

EDIT: All that being said: Now that I have really looked at the art and understood it more through careful observation: I really LOVE the feel of the bedroom. The bright light coming through the narrow slats induces a really nice oily-smelling claustrophic feel which is increased by the ceiling fans (animated I assume) and I really sense the life of someone living in such an environment. Beautiful background but confusing without context through gameplay...

Armageddon

#4
Thank you all for the great feedback. I'll work on the living room more tomorrow I think. I made the apartment corridor today.



Colors look a little flat maybe?


EDIT: Felt too straight on with the lighting, gave it more of a angle.


Snarky


Mandle

#6
Quote from: Armageddon on Thu 18/12/2014 04:50:01
Thank you all for the great feedback. I'll work on the living room more tomorrow I think. I made the apartment corridor today.



Colors look a little flat maybe?


EDIT: Felt too straight on with the lighting, gave it more of a angle.



Personally, I much prefer the top one...It is beautiful! The bottom one is just too dappled with shading for me...

EDIT: Actually now that I compared them more the bottom one is starting to grow on me...

Armageddon

Thanks guys. I think I'll touch up the hallway a bit more and add some objects since it's so sparse. I redid the living room window, I hope you can recognize it. :-D


Gurok

[img]http://7d4iqnx.gif;rWRLUuw.gi

selmiak

Weird Science!


if this is a ingame capture make the animation faster or the walkspeed slower, the character is floating over the ground rather than walking.

Mandle

I love the shades opening animation but nothing changes with the rest of the room's shading before-during-after opening the blinds, making it kind of a "this region only" effect instead of an effect that could convince the player that they are fully in the world.

Also, I know how hard it is to do all of that extra animation and then you have the whole issues where if it's not continued throughout the rest of the game thing, increasing your headaches...So please forgive this comment if you just want to move forward with your story instead of doing possibly useless animation on the early stages and then having everyone complain that the same effects were not consistant with the rest of the game...

aikex222

loved the atmosphere of those rooms.
Hoping to see a great game with this style, well at least i hope this is for a game xD

Monsieur OUXX

I think your shading is good enough for getting rid of those black outlines everywhere. Well, not everywhere, but at least the lines separating the floor from the walls.
 

Wicked

I definitly love your shading and the overall framing of the hallway thats friggan cool!

Armageddon

Thanks guys. This new one is also a little bare but I think it'll serve it's purpose.


cat

This one has a strong BASS feeling, but it's less atmospheric than the other ones. I did like the super-low resolution.

miguel

I'm with cat, the previous style is way too cool to dismiss. Also, like Monsieur said: avoid those black lines.
Working on a RON game!!!!!

...

Question.
Is that style of light source and way of its reflection on walls on purpose?
It really makes me nervous, a very wild style you have going on there. I'm feeling more like 'ouch'.

I guess, I'm more a person of harmony.  ;)
If you wanted churn people, you got it.  (laugh)

Armageddon

Thanks for the feedback! The first two rooms are supposed to give a feeling of claustrophobia, then it opens up some, that's why they're so small I guess.

@adventuress: That's exactly the feeling I'm going for! :-D


I tried to do one without any outlines, it's a lot more colorful than the other ones though.


Mandle

#19
I love the last two rooms except for:

The view outside the window suddenly looks a lot more mundane than the other "uber city" Blade Runner look before outside the window of the living room.

I'm kinda wondering if this is a flashback scene or if we are in a completely different city, otherwise it just doesn't match up for me.

EDIT: Also the whole no outlines thing is certainly working!

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