Help with lighting and colouring a background, please

GreenBeams · Fri 24/04/2015 19:53:40

Helloooooo!

i started out strongly wth this month's Background Blitz but have really come a cropper and wondered if anyone could point me in the right direction? I'm happy with the drawing so won't be changing that at this late stage but i would really like some advice on how people colour their backgrounds and if anyone is using a simialr process to the one i'm trying.
Any help would be really appreciated, thanks!

i started out with the scaled down "finished" lineart:
[imgzoom]https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/107389340/AGS/BG_Blitz/Dragons/day_5_PROGRESS_ValueCompLINE_1.jpg[/imgzoom]
Then i painted in an occlusion pass to give it a sense of volume:
[imgzoom]https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/107389340/AGS/BG_Blitz/Dragons/day_5_PROGRESS_ValueCompLINE_2.jpg[/imgzoom]
Lastly i reduced the whole thing and tried to come up with some lighting conditions and value structure:
[imgzoom]https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/107389340/AGS/BG_Blitz/Dragons/day_5_PROGRESS_ValueComp.jpg[/imgzoom]
Now i'm absolutely knackered when it comes to the colouring as i honestly don't know where to start. Maybe i've been staring at it too long and am missing something obvious but could someone please help me out with this. I really don't want to hand in a BW to the competition

nihilyst · Fri 24/04/2015 23:13:41

That's one lovely line art, and I think you did very well on the lighting structure.

I'm not much of an artist, but my approach would be to find some colours that would fit the mood, and apply them as a gradient on an overlay layer:

Then I would start to brush in the gradient layer and adapt it to fit the shapes and forms:

That is of course quite rough, but it would get me started.

GreenBeams · Sat 25/04/2015 03:05:27

a gradient in Overlay - that's excellent thinking! That way i could keep the values and start painting with the new colour information. Thanks so much for your kind words and for helping out!

Andail · Sat 25/04/2015 09:21:16

Lovely lineart indeed - my first advice would be to keep the second or even first version and colour it, and save clouds and other atmospheric effects until later.
Also, I would avoid using pure blacks or even very much shading before the colouring stage, as it gives the picture the feeling of an old-timey photograph that has been coloured retro-actively.
Not to imply that Nihilyst's colouring isn't a good start!

Mandle · Sat 25/04/2015 16:15:37

Firstly just let me say that I'm not a very good background artist and I just wanted to play around a bit with the excellent job nihilyst did with the colouring example.

I very roughly made a warm/cool lighting/shadows mockup on the top levels of the buildings:

and then applied it gradually to the original picture until it looked about right to me:

This was more of a play-around project for myself to get a feel for lighting, but I thought I would just post it in case it helps in any small way...

GreenBeams · Sun 26/04/2015 06:41:58

I get what you're saying with the colouring a BW photo feeling, Andail. I went with your advice and removed the smoke and stuff and went back to the lines themselves. Thanks Mandle for weighing in too - i was inspired by your yellow vs blue and decided to set it at night.

i went back and gave it a purple background and then added a blue/cyan gradient over the top to mimic the moonlight. i then went over this with the eraser to sort of establish some shadowns to show where the moonlight was falling. At the minute i'm trying to work out where i want my warms to fall and am here... still at 0134 in the morning... ah, coffee and late nights painting!

if anyone can see anything a miss or suggest a way to bring out the foreground or liven up the steps or, well, anything really; i'm still taking all the help i can get!

Thanks so much for the nice comments and taking the time to offer crits and valuable paintovers. I love the AGS crowd, i really do!

Darth Mandarb · Sun 26/04/2015 08:32:37

Any chance of the RAW line-art file? (PSD maybe?) with layers in-tact?

Mandle · Sun 26/04/2015 15:25:03

One thing I noticed was that the glass in the windows doesn't look like glass in that recent version...

You are probably already doing something about that for all I know but I did a rough paintover that looks more like glass to me at least:

I selected all the areas that I thought were supposed to be glass with a 3 pixel feathering and increased brightness by about 50% and contrast by about 45%. Then added some streaking on the glass with 20 pixel airbrush using white colour at about 3% weight over and over until it looked about right.

Added some orange reflections on the side that faces the gate and in the bottom shop window lower right corner.

I also put a few orangey glows on the steps and the walls facing the gate...

GreenBeams · Sun 26/04/2015 16:18:55

@Darth Mandarb - Sure, no problems =) I will however ask that i can send you the link via PM? Anyone who wants a copy can just give me a quick shout and i'll send you the links too =)

@Mandle - you're a superstar, what are you? Yes that's right! Loving the orange bleed on the hightened glass and it gives it a frosted quality. Thanks so much for doing that!

Monsieur OUXX · Mon 27/04/2015 11:54:07

Lots of super cool concepts. Candy for the eye.

GreenBeams · Mon 27/04/2015 19:02:54

I think i'm finally putting a finised sign on this one and wanted to say thank you so much for the help!

Misj' · Mon 27/04/2015 22:22:40

Quote from: GreenBeams on Mon 27/04/2015 19:02:54I think i'm finally putting a finised sign on this one and wanted to say thank you so much for the help!

I know you said you finished it, but I felt it weird to comment on it before you entered it into the Blitz. Now that you have, I wanted to to weigh in.

I added a bit more depth by fading out the houses in the background. While I like the duo-tone of the piece, I added some very faded brown to the roofs and some of the wood. Just in a few places to break up the blue a little bit and to give the impression of color. I also added color to the banner, because in my mind the puzzle was to get into the candy-store, go down the chute, into the meat-processors' yard. So I wanted to add some subtle focus on both the chute and the candy-store (though I think I overdid it a bit).

Finally I made it a bit more desaturated and added a layer that darkened the sides to make the overall piece a bit more gloomy (a more saturated version can be found here).

GreenBeams · Mon 27/04/2015 22:57:11

Wow, thanks, Misj! You're right too. it looks far better with low saturation and i felt that there was just something wrong with it. Also, you've done a far better job with the atmospheric perspective than i did. I'm not too sure about the painting the sign, though. I get it and you're right about drawing attention to the chute into the yard but here's my reasoning.

I thought that if it's lit by moonlight then it'll just be blue light as all of the other sun's colours in the UV spectrum have been absorbed by the moon. That's why i did it monochrome but, and to be perfectly honest here, i still think yours looks a ton better. Thanks so much for doing that and i totally get it about weighing in while there's a competition on. i hadn't even thought of that but it is a little weird, i'll grant you =)