I'd like to ask all the artists who try to draw more or less realistic backgrounds, what's you're take on perspective?
How high do you draw the horizon line? Do you prefer central perspective or do you use multiple vanish points? Is it a good idea to use vanishing points far outside the screen area?
How do you work with perspective in scrolling screens? Do you use one vanishing point, or do you split the screen into multiple perspectives, like those "panorama" pictures you can piece together from photos?
The reason I ask these questions is that I've recently worked on a vertical scrolling room, and perspective was a pain. Basically it was two screens on top of eachother, and I placed the horizon line at the exact middle. So the upper part looked totally distorted, because you're not used to backgrounds shown at low angles. I ended up cutting off most of the top part and resizing the image vertically to get a non-scrolling room instead.
Anyway, I'd like to hear about your techniques.
Not that I'm a good background artist, but some nice AGSer has kept an article by Bill Tiller on his homepage where he talks about backgrounds and the Monkey Island style in general, and his first rule is "Avoid one-point perspective if at all possible."
Here's the link to the article (http://www.freewebs.com/lucasstyle/downloads.htm) - I think it's really great, it might help you too.
http://user.tninet.se/~vqb114l/ilb/tutorials/pers.htm
Thanks ThunderStorm. That's a great article. Strange I've never seen it before. I've read all of Bill's stuff over at AdventureDevelopers, but this was new.
I totally agree with him. It's not really the issue of the walls on the side as much as it's the back wall (if the room is square that is :)) becoming totally flat, it's top and bottom totally horizontal. That was the case with all the early games - Maniac Mansion, Zak McKracken, Indy 3, all the AGI games like Space Quest and Larry 1 - but even more recent games have rooms with that problem. The voodoo museum in GK1 was like looking into a box with one side removed. It's probably that old platform game tradition where everything moves in one plane in front of a background.
Edit: Thanks Jannar. That's a really good tutorial. One thing I've had trouble figuring out though. How do you calculate the forshortening of objects along a perspective axis? Working on the computer, you can always lay down a grid, but that's not really possible when drawing by hand. I usually just draw what looks right, but there must be some kind of real technique to do this?
Haha. Thunderstorm, I clicked on the link and I said to myself, hmm, this site looks familiar, then I thought I did something wrong, wondering why my site came up.
Ah, so the mystery is solved :)
I didn't remember it was your page, as all the posts are signed either by 'Lucas' or 'Scott'. Anyway - thanks a lot for digging up and keeping that article. In fact, it would be a shame if it was lost.
GarageGothic: About your forshortening question - I could post a scan from a book about perspective, but I'm in a hurry right now. I'll try to do it tomorrow if noone can give a better source. But in general - as long as it looks right, it doesn't matter if it's 'correct' I'd say.
"Draw how you see it, even if it is wrong" has always been my feeling on drawing. If the pose is "wrong" or forshortning is bad its fine, so long as it looks good. I have an example around in one of my math notebooks. I'll go upload it now...
Edit: From some math notes, on LCD blue paper...
(http://invis.free.anonymizer.com/http://www.geocities.com/lobsterswithlasers/mathdrawing1.gif)
Okay, due to my persisting upload problems, I wasn't able to upload the picture until today.
The url is here (http://home.arcor.de/oleschinski/stuff/perspektive.jpg). I didn't direct-link it, 'cause it's rather large.
I hope this is what you need and you can understand it, as the text is German, but it shouldn't be too hard.
This page was taken from the Book "Perspektive leichtgemacht" by Phil Metzger, without kind support of the author. Great book!
That's awesome Thunderstorm. Although I don't read German, I understood every single step. This was exactly what I was wondering about. Diagonals, strange, I never thought of that.
Thank you very much.