Background help?

[Daniel Thomas]

I think he's referring to the early stages of a sketch, where I think scribbling is very important. Aside from adding looseness and speed to the sketch, it often triggers many invalueable happy accidents. If you're for instance doing a forest scene, and you start carefully drawing trees etc, you'll often end up with generic boring stuff. By contrast, if you scribble away happily, you often end up with some weird shapes that you start interpreting as some kind of foliage with some weird rock next to it in front of a stream or something; the kind of stuff that's very hard to come up with if you draw careful and intentionally.

Composition is after all about large shapes where the content of these is irrelevant. From a composition perspective, the less expected these shapes are the better, and scribbling is a really good way to achieve this.

Just to clarify, maybe the word doodle was better(or not?), I did not mean that you shoul sacrifice the speed, the loosness or the open mind to opertunities. I just meant that you dont put random stuff down with no intention - the sketch for composition should have the intention to seek out a good composition(and all which that mean). The artist-glasses is on in the proccess. So sketch = exploring, seeking, study - for me.


I think it would be great of more people come with  suggestions on how to get the early stages posted, if there even is an interest for it. I like the idea which you started with be BG-blitz - that it actually become an learning experience - for me, and probably some other, I mainly use it as an exscuse to make something(inspiration) and practice, and probably doesnt take it that serious(which ofcourse is a shame). And many bgblitz seems too short for such a proccess?

[Andail]

I had a couple of activities called "from concept sketch to functional background" or something similar, which was basically about me giving a sketch that forumites could continue on and finish.

Oh yeah here it is:
http://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/yabb/index.php?topic=13151.0
Unfortunately most of the entries, including the sketch, are now buried in the sand of time. Which is a shame, because a lot of them, like Ben's, turned out great.

[loominous]

I had a couple of activities called "from concept sketch to functional background" or something similar, which was basically about me giving a sketch that forumites could continue on and finish.

Remember starting on an entry for that one - it was a neat activity.

A modified version of that one might work well for the purposes we've talked about. It could be based around a sketch from the CL, preferably containing most common errors, and it could be used in a similar fashion for:

- Compositional experimentation, where different solutions and approaches would be submitted and discussed

- Design experimentation, where the generic design often found would be developed into something interesting

- Value experimentation, where different lighting setups would be submitted and discussed

- Colour experimentation

Not sure how this would be handled, if having for instance one week for each of these would be best, or handling them parallel etc.

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One thing that bothers me a bit about this is that while this could provide an in depth discussion, it feels a bit like deserting the CL instead of trying to improving it. While having an activity like wouldn't exclude trying to improve the CL simultaneously, and it may very well lead to indirect improvements by raising attention to neglected areas, we would probably be moving discussions away from it.

Also, these kind of things require management and initiative, while these kind of situations pop up spontaneously in the CL.

Perhaps the best way would be to let these things spawn by themselves in the CL, and then, if a thread seems to have promise perhaps migrate into the C&A forum. Or why not both.

I dunno, I do have a preference for self sustaining system improvements rather than initiative based momentary actions. Probably the swede in me.

I just meant that you dont put random stuff down with no intention - the sketch for composition should have the intention to seek out a good composition(and all which that mean). The artist-glasses is on in the proccess. So sketch = exploring, seeking, study - for me.

Oh, just a terminology mixup then. 'Scribble' to me just means very quick sketching(/writing), not unintentional'.

[Daniel Thomas]

What do other people think? Ildu, Jburger, nihilistic, mashpotato, everyone else?(the ones that just came to mind)

I dunno, I do have a preference for self sustaining system improvements rather than initiative based momentary actions. Probably the swede in me.

Same here

[ildu]

I'll have to take some time shortly and read through the thread in detail. I just haven't had time to delve into the discussion, although I've wanted to comment.

There was some talk about 6 months ago amongst me and zyndikate (as well as other #ags locals) that we should host organized art workshops. Basic topics of different areas of art production would be taught to some 5 students by a more experienced artist, and during the process every participant would create their own art piece (and hopefully learn something, too). I was gonna start it up personally, but then I got sidetracked by work, and I've been busy ever since.

[TheJBurger]

I really like the idea of a 'workshop'--not so much a competition, but a gathering of members--where we could be given a specific topic and then all post our work in stages for critique and improvement.

I remember loominous suggested this in the Background Blitz multiple times, but I didn't catch on, maybe because I was too much on the competitive side of the competition to post my unfinished work.

[loominous]

Good to see some more faces! Hope there are more people interested out there - don't need to be experienced or anything, just interested and motivated.


To get more practical, what kind of activity would you all prefer to see more precisely?

Seems like there are two main roads with their own benefits:

I) Working from a certain provided sketch/scenario - where through discussions and edits, solutions for the specific scenario would be worked out.

I think this one has the benefit of provoking much discussion, and a myriad of ideas, as everyone would be trying to find solutions for the same problems together. A con would be that it might make some people hesitant to join in, as they may feel like they have nothing really to contribute.

The benefit of working with sketches might help here, as, aside from being quick to make, they don't require any rendering skills, just something clear enough to indicate what you mean, which can be done with a 2 sec scribble. So it becomes more about ideas and solutions than anything else. Which is really what those stages are about anyway, so anyone could contribute.

The input wouldn't have to be in the form of sketches or similar either - can be anything from just written ideas to screenshots from games/movies/tv-shows and paintings that contain solutions to the problems. (I'm an avid screenshot taker myself)

II) Working on independent pieces - similar to the Background Blitz

A benefit here is that people can choose the content that interests them personally, and can potentially use them in their own games or portfolio or whatnot. A probable con would be fewer discussions and less interaction, as people work on their pieces independently.
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I'm torn myself, and I guess both could be tried out.

[Andail]

Funny, Loomy, I was just composing a post starting with "I see two options here, really..." which pretty much contained what you just said, but then I had to go AFK for an hour, and now, voila....
So yeah, I concur exactly.

I say we just grab a background from the cricits lounge (with the artist's consent ofc) and start a major, focused revamp.

[MashPotato]

I) Working from a certain provided sketch/scenario - where through discussions and edits, solutions for the specific scenario would be worked out.

I personally like the sound of option one more, as discussion and showing the process of making decisions is what seems most important in an activity like this

There was some talk about 6 months ago amongst me and zyndikate (as well as other #ags locals) that we should host organized art workshops.

I remember you bringing that up in the CL a long time ago too.  I'd still be interested in participating in something like that as a student

[loominous]

I think having some kind of scenario, where specific things need to be considered, would help make it less about pure aesthetics, and also about finding practical solutions, which is part of most kind of painting.

To explain what I mean:

Say that we're for instance working on a castle pic, where the only info is that it's a background containing a castle. If that's all there is to it, then there aren't all that many real variants - you'll probably want to show it from some kind of front angle at the golden ratio with the rest of the pic framing it nicely.

If you however introduce the need to have an inn in the same picture (where the protagonist would be staying), and that the main door and a window need to be visible and useable, and that the distance between the castle and the inn is about a mile, you'll have to start working out solutions that are both practical and aesthetical, which is fun and challenging.

[Daniel Thomas]

Yea, I agree with that - It should be based on some kind of scenario, we are afterall basicly working on adventuregames backgrounds where it needs to be practical too to actually use ingame. Or so I would like to think.

[Stupot]

I love the idea of some kind of workshop.

The way I see it working would be if we all agreed upon a generic theme for a background (castle, forest, beach, whatever) and we went away and drew a sketch of that scene, with those of you who are more advanced giving some general advice about composition, etc.  Then when enough of us have posted our sketches, we can discuss each others work and give each other tips and moral support.

Then we would keep introducing new elements of discussion each week such as lighting/colour choice etc.  and we would all post our progress at each juncture and have a little discussion and take abuse before moving onto the next element, until we all have hopefully, a wonderful masterpiece at the end to show for it.

I think the benefit of this would be that it would certainly help those of us who don't have a clue about certain aspects such as colour, and it would help us to develop our own styles.

Then when that is finished we could move onto a new topic, such as Low-Res backgrounds or sprites...

However this pans out I should be well up for taking part... God knows I need the help.

[loominous]

Glad that you're interested Stupot - I agree that something similar for sprites would be a good idea.

I think skeletal constructions/poses are to sprites what compositions are for backgrounds. They're the basis that determine the rest, and they're almost equally neglected in the CL.

I'm not sure that there's any actual difference between making a hi res backgrounds and lo-res one, especially in these early stages, but I guess some EGA fans could add a dithering stage at the end, where they could work on those things.

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Anyway, the idea I had for this activity was along the lines of:

We'd agree on a set of stages, for instance:

I) Composition

II) Design - a bit hard to separate from composition, as the design of the parts affect the composition, but some generic design could be used during the composition stage, and be improved in this one.

III) Value sketch

IV) Colour sketch

We'd move through these one by one, finding what we deem the best solution we can come up with before continuing on to the next.

So in this case we'd start with the composition. We'd come up with solutions and post these continuously, and since we'd be trying find the "ideal" one, discussions would naturally ensue about the benefits and problems with the submitted solutions/edits, and how they could be improved.

Once we're out of ideas, we'd either hold a vote about what solution to continue with, if there are a few rivaling candidates, or if some idea has appeared generally favored, we'd simply go with that one. And off we'd go to the next stage.

[Shane 'ProgZmax' Stevens]

"I think you should change this", which isnt really interesting, whats interesting is WHY someone think its should be changed, is there any theory behind it, does it really help, do I have my own experience of it?

I agree 100% with what you are saying here; many of the people that post casually to the CL suffer from what I would call limited feedback.  Since I began moderating I've taken active steps to encourage people to offer more detailed feedback by example, but obviously I can't 'force' people to be clear in their advice any more than I can force them to be accurate.  I think once you watch the CL awhile you can spot the people who know what they are doing and give thought to their feedback while avoiding the feedback that is limited/unhelpful.  This is mainly why I try to always provide a paintover of some kind, because as they say, a picture is worth 1000 words, and my opinion of improvements can be immediately observed in the edit.  I don't limit it to just an edit, though, I also explain briefly why I changed certain things and how. 

I really think you should post some of your work or at least offer some paintover advice from time to time as you clearly have skill with background art, and I wouldn't worry about advice harming your skill, strictly speaking.  You are intelligent enough to pick out the bits that make sense to you and discard the rest

[Andail]

Ok, Loomy, you have my authorisation to kick this off over at the activity forum.