Opinion On And Help With A Background

Started by Ens. Megane, Wed 05/08/2015 15:33:02

Previous topic - Next topic

Ens. Megane

I‘m not a very original person (yet at least), so as my first game, I wanted to do something little about a show I‘m quite fond of: CN‘s Regular Show, but starring one of the beloved, but not often focused on side characters as the player character. Since she works at a coffee shop in the show I wanted to make a background for that location, both to determine character dimensions and for having something to use later.

Initially I intended to just trace the reference picture and go from there, but then I noticed for the first time in five years of watching the show that the backgrounds tend to not adhere to the rules of perspective in some parts. Plus, the same locations can be inconsistent or even contradictory over different backgrounds.

So I decided to „fix” it, and this is the result so far, stopping at plain colors, reference picture included (the stools are still missing).



Would you say it looks too sterile and rigid like this? It‘s possible that after doing more coloring work it might look better, but that‘s another problem:

I just don‘t know how to continue.

I know I should have the lines colored accordingly, but I have no idea about how to apply anti-aliasing well, or how I should texture the surfaces. You can see how they applied some 'abstract' texturing in the show backgrounds in the reference, and while I would like the background in the game to look similar, I think I lack the skill and knowledge to pull that off. And as an amateur, I feel slightly overwhelmed by all those tools and tutorials, the latter of which a good deal is defunct. So in part, I'm also asking for guidance.

Thanks for reading, and in advance.

Blondbraid

QuoteI noticed for the first time in five years of watching the show that the backgrounds tend to not adhere to the rules of perspective in some parts. Plus, the same locations can be inconsistent or even contradictory over different backgrounds
I guess that I have quoted him before, but I find this quote from Francis Bacon inspiring:
There is no exquisite beauty… without some strangeness in the proportion.

It might seem weird, but sometimes things can seem more "real" if the perspective is "wrong", like in this painting:

If you hold a ruler against the picture, the ladder looks bent and does't go in a straight line, but it doesn't look wrong to the naked eye.
With that said, the perspective on the left picture looks weirder than on the picture to the right, especially the table looks off.
I was once given the advice to never use a ruler when I drew pictures, but instead use my intuition.

As far as drawing goes, my tip is to use transparent layers on top of each other,
first a rough sketch at the bottom,
then outlines on top of that,
and then colors and shadows underneath the layer with the outline.
But this is just my personal opinions, and I am quite new to this myself, but I nevertheless hope that this may be of some help to you.


Ens. Megane

Thanks. Back to the drawing board I guess. I don't think the lineart is what's bothering me most though, it's that I have no idea how to apply color or texture that'd be a satisfying adaption of the style in the original.

But no point worrying about that as long as the lineart isn't finished. I will be back once that's done.

Cassiebsg

Well, it's digital, so just use another layer for the color, and experiment... ;)
You can try a soft brush with 70 or 80% transparency, then try and add dark where you wish dark and light where you want the light to hit. And if you don't like it, delete or freeze the layer, and start again. (nod)
There are those who believe that life here began out there...

CatPunter

Sometimes the perspective has to be wrong (I have a background in animation, so I was taught it a certain way).

The problem is that unless you fudge a few things here and there in the background the animation crew can't fit the characters in properly, or the background just won't look good. If you look at the characters you'll notice that they're drawn flat on so the background crew has painted the table and chairs in the same perspective. If they animated it in your perspective they'd have to be top down which is actually really tricky and not used regularly. Since the characters won't go into the background area they're free to do whatever they'd like with this.

That also applies in games as well. If you have dead spaces where the character can't reach it or it doesn't matter what goes on back there you can put in a lot of interesting things just to make the scene more full. Sometimes it's about the feeling of what the scene is rather than being mathematically correct.

For your version try to change the lineart to a midtone/light grey to match the cartoon. There's also probably a watercolour paper overlay or brushes used to replicate that soft, blended texture. You can find a lot of tutorials on how to overlay an image like that onto a painting. Good luck!
Art Director and Lead Artist for "Kate and Shelly Stick Together"

Ens. Megane

It's been a while, hasn't it? Not that much progress, but I think I will go with the pixel style for now.



Details are missing right now, but I think I can handle cups, food, notes on a pin board and shadows. My main concern is still the floor. Does it work like this? In the original in my opening post, what exactly the floor is supposed to be is not clear.But I suppose it's some kind of parquet floor.


Cassiebsg

The lines on the floor don't work that way IMHO.
The lines need to be paralel to each other.
There are those who believe that life here began out there...

Superkumi

What bothers me about the floor lines, I think, is that the lines aren't parallel to the room's main orientation, in this case the wall in the middle.
It just feels like at least most of them should be closer to the same angle as it is, or at the very least the ones close to it.

SilverSpook

If you're going to do a warped perspective, maybe make it slightly more consistently dysfunctional, or you'd need to alter the art style IMHO.  The MS Paint, highly digitized, straight-lines-n-fill-colors doesn't lend itself to fish-eye type views.  Have to go more painterly, but that is more work.

Ens. Megane

@Superkuni
I noticed that as well when looking over the floor again, and I made some adjustments (still not finished).



@SilverSpook
Unfortunately, I have no idea how to make it look more painterly or change the art style. At the end of the day, it's more a trace than an original. Which might change, since this is just a test to see what I can do. I was, however, working parallel on a painted version, but that's even more just copying an image to learn how to handle a tablet.




SilverSpook

#10
By painterly, I just mean less straight lines and matte colors, and more like you hand-painted everything with a brush and ink.  More random non-straight lines, gradients, etc.

You have a bunch of straight-line-tool black that are paint bucketed in, everything looks very exact.  Lines are going to be perfectly straight across objects, so if you throw in one sudden jarring alteration -- like the table with legs out of alignment with the top and the wall -- then it just kind of looks like you screwed up or got lazy. 

Maybe I just don't like Cartoon Network's art style.  It's possible! 



In Primordia, one of my all-time favorite point-n-clicks, you've got almost no straight lines.  But the entire world is stylized with wild paint strokes that look like melting wax, and the entire world perspective is fish-eyed and subjective, so a weird perspective here and there doesn't look out of place.

Ens. Megane

Oh, now I see. I thought you meant specifically more painterly drawn pixel art. Which I'm sure exists somewhere. But Primordia was painted digitally in high res and then scaled down, wasn't it?

I actually went reference hunting for the coffee shop interior, using screenshots from the show. It's weird, it feels as if every episode the shop has an appearance, they drew another set of backgrounds. And those tend to be very inconsistent in both layout and perspective, sometimes even within an episode! Which is why I think that, instead of recreating screenshots from the show, it might just be better to sketch one possible layout, stick to it, pick some shots and just draw it myself, limited as my experience drawing backgrounds might be.



I did start coloring the outlines, which might help make it look a bit nicer. But i think I might try drawing the lines freehand with the tablet.

SMF spam blocked by CleanTalk