Hey, remember Ben Jordan?

[Grundislav]

Hi all,

Forgive me if this thread is particularly self-indulgent, but I figured someone might get some amusement out of this. I've been tweeting this stuff, so if you've seen it, disregard this thread

So this year I decided to get better at art. Even though I've been making games for a while, I still have a lot of weaknesses in the art department. I decided to start practicing every day, and challenge myself to get better at drawing stuff that's given me trouble in the past. As part of this exercise, I've gone and revisited some of my old backgrounds, so far from the old Ben Jordan games. I still have a hell of a long way to go, but here's what I've done so far, accompanied by the originals so we can all laugh and wonder how I got away with such terrible stuff.

Also before anyone gets too excited, I am not remaking any of the games. The reason I decided to do this is because right now it's easier for me to practice with something I'm already familiar with rather than just draw something new. Hopefully this will inspire other people to practice more and get better!

Case 1



Case 2



Case 3



Case 4

[eMTe]

[Mandle]

Wow man! Quite the stunning improvement!!!

The Ben Jordan series was one of my first AGS games, and my first ever adventure game series, even including commercial titles, and what a fantastic series it was. I guess when I was playing I was far too caught up in the story to notice a slight lack of detail with the backgrounds.

I do remember the art getting better and better as the games went on though. Not sure if that was your stuff or not though. I remember the front of the London pub with the rain effects being the background that most impressed me though. At a guess I would say maybe it was Ben Chandler's work? Well, if I'm wrong and it was yours (or someone else) then that's a very big compliment right there I guess...

* Mandle feels inspired to go draw a background!

[CaptainD]

Forget remaking Ben Jordan, you should just make a new game, but with those screens!

They all look fantastic apart from the tower... not sure what it is, something about it doesn't look right.  But it also (I hope you don't mind me saying this!) seems to be a big improvement from the art in The Golden Wake too (not that the art in AGW as bad, but these strike me as significantly better).

[st.]

Ben Jordan admirer here! (1) Oh, how much time did you spend drawing a detailed background like that one with the forest?!  My current skill aside, considering the amount of spare time that I have available, better graphics don't mean such a density of detail; more detail certainly, but also a better choice of what to detail... (2) Let's suppose that I will someday engage in making something similar to your beauties. I remember enjoying them also for their lightness of demeanor which was partially derived from the style of the drawings. Even if you occasionally played around gruesome topics, I don't remember BJ as shocking and this higher class of art form is, I believe, also determined by the playful look of the graphics. From among the photos above, personally, I enjoy the white lighthouse more. (3) The backgrounds that you presented correspond, if I remember correctly, to passing through scenes. Well, if you show me such a heavily detailed background, would it not leave too great an impression to be connectable to close range views in ulterior scenes where the player interacts with characters and items? It feels like it would warp me out of the story... And I would probably want to stop right there (hang the game) and enjoy imagining myself in that scenery! (4) All this lushness makes me want to wonder about and interact with the plants, the stones and the critters. It does more than create atmosphere, a general mood - it evokes a living, breathing world. I could feel deprived of a complete experience - like a child that is shown a gorgeous toy, but then is told he/she can't actually play with it. -That's about all I can think of. I hope I didn't offend you. You probably thought of these matters yourself and discussed them with others. Let's look at them as an intelligent enough excuse to say something to you, shall we? Big fan! I look up to your accomplishments.

[Andail]

I would give 10 bucks to see some of these in the critics lounge and open up some nice art discussions.

I don't know why more ags oldies won't use the CL more...

[ThreeOhFour]

I've actually thought about doing some more stuff in the CL, Andail, I learned a lot in there in the past. It's always a "When I have time" thing, though! I don't know if I count as an AGS oldie, though.

[Fitz]

Nice! I will agree with Cap, though: the lighthouse scenery is the weakest among the otherwise quite impressive make-overs. The sky could use a more uniform, darker tone, to match the lighthouse, and the grass could benefit from deeper shading -- and maybe a different hue, this emerald green just doesn't do it for me. Conversely, you might want to flatten the shading on the mountains in the mine's background -- so as to indicate it's far off, not right behind the hills. See how nicely you depicted depth in the woods by tinting the foliage in the background more blue. I'd also make the distant tree trunks greenish or bluish instead of pure black. Artsy tricks aside, air isn't 100% transparent and various impurities, even if it's just vapor, on the clearest of days, will make objects appear bleaker and/or discolored -- the more the father they are from you.

Still -- GREAT job! The color choices, the composition, the style itself all show great progress. I'd definitely like to see more of these.

[Snarky]

Cool beans! (I'd seen them on Twitbook already.) Can't really say anything else since this isn't the CL...

[Ibispi]

(...)
Also before anyone gets too excited, I am not remaking any of the games.
(...)

I was already too excited when I read the name of the thread and noticed the reprises of old Ben Jordan backgrounds and the developer of Ben Jordan being the creator of the thread and this not being in Critics' Lounge thread.
After reading this sentence I am very disappointed.
Yours sincerely,
avid Ben Jordan fan

Ps. Smailholm background is my favorite from those.
Ps.2. The case 4 background looks obviously a lot better than the original background. But, I feel the original one is a lot better due claustrophobic feeling it provided and the big door being the only thing in the background, when I played the game it looked quite scary. I feel as if when improved, this background loses the touch it had when it was a lot simpler. I could be wrong though, since I'm not a graphical artist.

[Grundislav]

Nobody needs to worry about offending me. Like I said I still have a long way to go and I've only been practicing regularly for about a month now, so I myself will probably hate all these backgrounds soon enough!

I prefer the truth, and the comments so far have been very helpful!

Might as well move this to the Critic's Lounge. Mods, want to help with that?

[AGA]

Nobody needs to worry about offending me.

Oh yeah?  Well, you smell!  And you make bad video games!!  And yo momma isn't that great at Scrabble!!!  At least one of those statements is true.

[selmiak]

finally in the critiques longe.

They all look great! Better. A lot. I'm probably telling you nothing new, so here we go:
Your painting and the drawing techniques is getting really good, but get used to using some PS tools after finishing painting.
I hope you use photoshop, but gimp probably has the same option, I just don't know where.

Use some curves to make darker parts darker and brighter parts brighter. This adds more dynamic.
Then (or before) level up the saturation.
I did this for the case 2 BG, this is by far the most interesting composition.



the unedited version imho looks like on a bad weather day, while the final version looks like some heated desert...
while painting don't be shy and add some very bright highlights. But don't overdo it, use them, make them really bright, but use them sparsely.

the case 1 repaint reminds me so much of bob ross

[Andail]

Hm, I agree that many of the bgs need more highlights, but I'm not sure about cranking up saturation like that.
I would select a few areas to add some interesting lighting to, and furthermore work a bit with colour perspective, to make the distant hills look more, well, distant (usually just softening them up with a light blue hue will work). But uniformly increasing contrasts may not be the way, imo.

I would definitely work more with complimentary colours, to make the colour scheme more vibrant. So instead of just adjusting lightness, you add a dash of warm yellow to the highlights and cold blue to the shadows.

[Grundislav]

Yeah I'm trying to take things step by step. First step was getting my perspective right, since that was a BIG weakness of mine. Now I'm moving towards interesting composition as well as color balance. I notice that I tend to lean towards very muted colors, so I'm trying to play a bit more with complementary colors. In the BJ4 background I tried to get the warm glow of the lights to complement a sort of bluish tinge around the dark areas.

I agree that the hills are a bit too dark, so I went back and lightened them up a bit with a wash of the blue from the sky, which makes it look better.

Thanks for the feedback, it really is appreciated! Keep it coming

[Ilyich]

This gives a very nice and concrete insight into how one can improve their art - a lovely display! It's always great to see this sort of progress, thanks for sharing!

And since we're in the CL now, I wanted to offer a small tip that might help with figuring out aerial perspective, levels/contrast issues and composition overall, and the tip is - try looking at your image in terms of values from time to time. Which basically means turning it to greyscale. Let's try and see how this works, then:



O-okay, so the bright road and the tree help save this one, but the foliage part is barely readable, with way too little sense of depth and space. It's important to remember that the closer the things are to us - the higher the contrast between shadows and light, and the further away they are - the lesser the contrast and duller the saturation. And you really want to exaggerate those relations, and you want the silhouettes of closer objects to read against the more background ones, you want them to pop.

Here's my quick, somewhat washed out edit of the greyscale picture with those things in mind: 



And here's how it translates to the coloured image (the result of putting the edited greyscale image over the original with "luminosity" blending mode and some minor additional colour-correction):



Hope this helps a bit! Obviously you want to design your image with those things in mind from the start for a better result, but switching to greyscale still might help you notice important issues at every stage of the process.

[Mouth for war]

I...FREAKING...LOVE...THIS... AMAZING WORK!!!!

[Armageddon]

Really good stuff, can't say much more than what everyone else has already said. Just need to work on the color more, as it's very very very very very bland/flat. Light bounces a lot, over everything. So a green plant in the foreground won't be the exact same shade in the background you know. Also think more about contrast like Ilyich said because otherwise the image just looks like a mess of the same colors. Look at any decently made movie, the cinematographer's job is to use lighting to separate the points of interest from the background in any given shot.

[Grundislav]

Taking some of the advice into account, I tweaked the BJ2 background a tiny bit.

[AprilSkies]

Also before anyone gets too excited, I am not remaking any of the games.

Please next time write in the title of thread
Or at least in the very first line of the post

I started reading... get excited... Jumped directly to the pics... get excited more...
Then I realized that I won't play remakes cause you're not going to make

Really great stuff tho...
in he BJ2 BG dunno if I like more the curves+contrast version. The original version, a bit desaturated has something old fashioned that attract me more.
The very last version you posted is perfect.

[Creamy]

Cool pictures.
Ilyich edit adds a lot of depth and space to the forest.

Another thing you might want to try : use brushes to add texture to your foreground and get more depth.
A quick edit :
[imgzoom]http://creamy.r.c.f.unblog.fr/files/2015/02/grundiforest_colour1.jpg[/imgzoom]

[Misj']

I think most will agree that the forest-path and the mines-entry are the superior pieces (and with the added haze for depth they come alive even more).

There is, however, one thing that bothers me in all four of them. But when I look at the four new images as in-game backgrounds, then I fear that the walk-in is too long. For example, in the original you were immediately at the entrance of the mine. Now you have to see a walk animation while Ben is getting smaller in the distance. The same is more or less true in the forest. In the indoor scene you used to start at the door, now we get another walk animation while Ben climbs the stairs. The house already had this in the original, but since the new door is smaller, I fear that the character would have to shrink more and thus (physically) walk further.

The new images are much better. There is no doubt about that. And they present a much more interesting scene (especially the forest and the mine). But for a game I fear this would slow down the pace too much...especially because some feel like simple transition scenes to go from place A to B (mainly the forest and the doorway).


ps. also, I kinda don't like the house, and feel it's weird that the banister and floor just end in a straight nothingness (fading them into an unlit area would be better I think)

[Grundislav]

Fair enough, Misj.  I agree with your statements about long walkable areas, which is a result of remaking backgrounds from older games. Nowadays I think about backgrounds in terms of the least amount of scaling possible, so if I were to do any from scratch, I'd do the composition with that in mind.

As for the house, I'm not a big fan of the hard edges either. I think I'll go back and tweak those to see if it looks any better.

[Snarky]

I feel more qualified to critique the originals than the remakes, but here goes anyway...

Case 1: I love it! The path, the foliage, just excellently rendered. To me it looks more jungly than Everglady, but I trust you know the landscape better than I. I don't entirely agree with Ilyich's edit: your original already has some nice atmospheric perspective (partly conveyed through a blue shift that isn't apparent in the monochrome version), and I think it's too much with the white filter on top of that. If you were to add some more haze, I'd also apply it to the vegetation alongside the path as it recedes. As a minor nitpick, I might also try to break up those three columns of leaves along the path to form more irregular shapes. Finally, if I remember the game correctly you have to do something with that tree trunk (get sap, maybe?), and in that case I would probably make the interactive elements jump out a little more.

Case 2: Another excellent one. Same as selmiak, I find the color balance in your original version a bit drab, like it's an overcast day. It's cliché, but I think in a screen like this the viewer expects more of a sun-scorched, almost overexposed look, like Breaking Bad. Upping the contrast makes the colors a bit cartoony, but highlighting the brightness of the lit regions (and maybe darkening the shadows) would make it pop more. Also, the paint on that sign doesn't look right to me, unless it's painted in nail varnish or something. And on close study, the lightsource on those hills in the distance doesn't seem to match the foreground shading and the shadow of the bathtub, but that's nitpicking.

Case 3: Along with Case 1, probably the greatest improvement from the original. The way you render the contours of the terrain and the texture of the grass is great, but there are some issues. The building is a bit fuzzy, and I can't quite make out what's going on with the roof. (I don't remember, is it supposed to be a ruin?) However, the biggest problem here is a lack of scale, which makes the whole thing look almost like a model landscape. And I think part of the reason for that is that the boulders all have about the same apparent size, no matter how far away they're supposed to be. Similarly, that golden stuff (not quite sure what it's supposed to be... flowers?) doesn't seem to scale much, either. Here I think the foreground ones should be much bigger and more detailed than the ones in middle distance, and you might also want to add one or more much smaller farther ones. Other than that, just the tip of some distant hills visible on the horizon would also help establish scale. Or a bit of sea, like in the original. I also tend to agree with Fitz that a simpler sky might work better, because the clouds currently draw the eye more than probably intended.

Case 4: Like BSP, I think the original composition, crude as it is, conveys a certain almost Kubrickian sense of dread that is lost in the remake. The new one is nice, but for my taste you could be a bit more dramatic with the light and shadows. For example, wouldn't the wall facing us on the right in the stairwell be in shadow, and wouldn't you get the shadows of the banister projected on the other inside wall on the left? It's also a bit of a pet peeve of mine when the light spots look like they're simply layered on top of the subject, which tends to wash out contrast (much like those atmospheric perspective filters). In this case I would try to make sure that the darkest bits of the lamps, particularly the one on the left, still maintain that contrast. Oh, and finally as a matter of verisimilitude, I think an old English house like this would normally have carpeted stairs, though possibly not all the way up to the attic?

Overall, all of these are impressive, but more than anything, I'm impressed with you doing one of these a day as practice. Even if I could draw as nicely as this, it would take me like a week to finish a single screen!

[Andail]

Ok, I uploaded one paintover but was in a hurry, but now I can describe better what I've done.
Before:

Paintover:


The original picture had only one hue (greenish), so I introduced yellow and blue to create a more dynamic colour scheme. I also added lots of highlights, but made sure they were localized to strategic points, and not scattered around too much.
Made the sky blue, and reduced the contrasts a bit.
Added some perspective to the roof of building.
Cropped the picture so that the tower matches the golden ratio point in the composition.
Also added some custom brush straws in the foreground - it's sloppy but it's just there to add some more defined, sharp shapes.

[Creamy]

Wow, that's a big rework of the original picture. The light coming from behind and reflecting on the left wall is a nice addition.
The colour balance seems better too.

[Monsieur OUXX]

@Selmiak's edit is really good BUT the mountains in the background should keep a much lower contrast

@case 2: you have a tendency to draw everything (I mean, the whole scene) with your chalks. That works really nicely for 99% fo the scene, but I would recommend not to do it for busy elements such as grass (I'm talking about the grass in the bottom-right-hand corner). Instead, you might want to use the mouse. Try to draw the grass or any busy texture at a pixel level, with little antialiasing. In a nutshell: grass leaves are very thin, your chalk makes them look chunky. Chalks have a tendency to make everything look smooth.

@case 3 : you have a tendency to underestimate the contrast required to a scene. I'm actually very impressed by all those drawings, because you didn't do it in any of them, usually you do it all the time. The only exception is case 3 : the couldy sky should be very luminous (yes, I know, that sounds paradoxical but it's true) while the foreground should be globally quite dark (because the clouds dramatically reduce the ambient light), especially on the outline, where it contrasts with the sky. Also, vertical surfaces should be much darker than horizontal surfaces. EDIT: I just saw that Andail did this.

[Snarky]

the couldy sky should be very luminous (yes, I know, that sounds paradoxical but it's true) while the foreground should be globally quite dark (because the clouds dramatically reduce the ambient light)

That doesn't sound right. On a cloudy day you have nothing but ambient light (because the light from the sun is diffused across the entire sky). Haven't you noticed that you don't even cast a visible shadow when it's really cloudy?

EDIT: I just saw that Andail did this.

Andail's edit is beautiful, but as I recall, the atmosphere of the game is supposed to be just wretched, drizzly weather all the time, and I think the golden light breaking through the clouds kind of messes with that. (Of course, there might be an argument for changing the visual aesthetic of the game to something prettier, along these lines.)

[Monsieur OUXX]

ou have nothing but ambient light (because the light from the sun is diffused across the entire sky). Haven't you noticed that you don't even cast a visible shadow when it's really cloudy?

We agree, I just didn't phrase it right : I didn't mean that the directional light was stronger than ambient light. Indeed, there's nothing but ambient light. My point was that the house and ground should be much darker than the sky, as seen on Andail's drawing. Note: There may be parts of the ground where the ground is very bright and colorful, but then they will be very likely to be caused by holes in the clouds.

However the part of my advice that wasn't 100% relevant was the art about the vertical parts being much darker than the horizontal parts. That's where the "only ambient light" situation would step in, and make all surfaces evenly lighted. Yet, one must not underestimate that vertical surfaces are always darker, even when there is mostly ambient light.