Background Blitz :: ending 5th May :: [WINNER ANNOUNCED]

[Daniel Thomas]

Topic: Castle/stronghold/fort - May it be old/new/modern/future, an entrance to one, a paitningof one, one made out of sant or inside one.

Rules: AGS restrictions

Votes starts 2nd May unless someone asks for more time.
Have fun and good luck!

[ThreeOhFour]

Wooohooo first entry again!

[TheJBurger]

I have been playing a lot of Oblivion lately.

edit: touched it up a bit.

[ThreeOhFour]

Awesome!

(as per usual )

[riseryn]

My image

[Questionable]

I have been playing a lot of Oblivion lately.

edit: touched it up a bit.

Burger, I need to know the process that created that! It's gorgeous!

[lord_hellfire]

My entry.



Small keep, used mostly as lookout point and base for troops patroling surrounding area.

[Daniel Thomas]

another 24h to go, any one needs more time, let me know.

[Traveler]

I'd like to get 2 more days, if it's OK with others. This time I have a chance of finishing my background so I'd like to enter.

First of all, many, many thanks to Zyndikate for granting the extension time - I wouldn't have been able to finish the image without it. It was a lot of work and I hope others will think it was worth it. Without further ado, let me present you the very first stronghold... on the Moon!



The player would be confined to the area within the laser fence and specific closeups would be shown when reaching an important site (like entering the comm center or going to the solar panel block.) In case someone is interested, here is the exact location on the Moon: http://img293.imageshack.us/img293/7859/moonbaselocyl8.jpg   

[Daniel Thomas]

Surething, voting 4th 23:59 unless someone asks for extension (you can just pm)

[Daniel Thomas]

extended for another 24h, voting the 5th at 23:59.

[Daniel Thomas]

ops, another 24h asked for, lets vote around 6th 23:00 (gmt+1)

Let it be the last one guys.

[loominous]

A sort of scholar's castle, of greek/weddingcakish design.




Here's a mockup, to show how it might work with a sprite included:

[Daniel Thomas]

Voting started!

One vote in each category:

Idea - The underlying idea to the background. Doesn't
necessarily have to coincide perfectly with the theme of the
week, just strike you as interesting/amusing/inspiring; a place
you'd really enjoy visiting within a game.

Atmosphere - How well the image manages to evoke a certain feeling or mood.

Design - How well the elements in the image are designed,
such as landscapes, buildings, decorations, clouds, doorknobs,
etc.

Composition - How well the elements in the image work
together/are positioned in relation to each other.

Functionality - How well it would work when adding sprites,
including appropriate walking distances, a good angle for
character sprites, clever walkway solutions, easily understood
exits, etc.

Technique - How well the ideas are executed in form of
rendering.

Voting will last 48 Hours, 8th around 23.59(gmt+1).

[Eggie]

Some of you people frighten me with your abilities...

My vote goes to JBurger, I love the atmosphere.

EDIT:
Thingies:

Idea: Traveler
Atmosphere: JBurger
Design: Loominous
Composition: Loominous
Functionality: JBurger
Technique: Loominous

[ThreeOhFour]

All my vote are belong to loominous.

Excellent, excellent work.

[Andail]

Loominous, really good job, man.
Almost a bit overworked for a game background, but it's damn beautiful.

Burger, great job as well

[miguel]

Idea: Loominous
Atmosphere: JBurger
Design: Traveler
Composition: Loominous
Functionality: JBurger
Technique: Loominous

[Brad Newsom]

My vote goes to Loominous. Id love to see a game just like that. Its visually impressive.

JBurger comes in a close second for me.

[loominous]

Thanks!

Almost a bit overworked for a game background

Ironically, it's the quickest one I've done so far - though I guess that isn't saying much, as I usually tinker with my stuff for quite a while (this one took about a day).

I think what might give it a "worked" look is that I put in some details in the focused parts, as well as in the far away regions, where instead of just fogging out with a few mountains, I scribbled in some details that gives a fairly realistic and "worked" impression, even though they were very roughly n quickly done. Which goes for 75% of the background really, which isn't in focus. As you know, as long as it's the right value/colour in the right place, we'll buy pretty much any scribble. And this one is 75% scribbles.

Edit: corrupt sentence

[loominous]

Oh, and my votes:

Idea: Traveler
Atmosphere: JBurger
Design: JBurger
Composition: JBurger
Functionality: JBurger
Technique: JBurger

Meant to include some WIP images during the making but never got around to it, but here's a late GIF anim showing the process. Sorry about the file size, tried to minimize it as best as I could (250kb):



Here's a larger version (900kb).

I hope it can show that an image will often look crappy and sloppy during large parts of the process if your focus is on the big picture, and that this unappealing appearance is something to look beyond, as what matters is how it'll look in the end. It can be a bit discouraging if you're not used to it, since you're working on faith that it'll turn out good, and have no real evidence of whether it actually will until the later stages. But I wholeheartedly recommend it.

Keeping the image zoomed out whenever you're not working on details is a great way to keep help you keep the focus on the entire image, and I usually have it occupy perhaps 1/6th of the screen. There are other advantages with this: you don't need a seperate thumbnail stage, as you're working in that size, which means that you can just continue working on whatever "thumbnail" sketch you choose, without having to resize it, which leaves ugly artifacts. It also avoids the gamma/brightness problems of most LCD screens, where the brightness of the screen is quite uneven (can often notice a gradient going from the top of the screen to the bottom), but as the image only occupies a part of the center of the screen, the brightness difference is neglectible.

[vict0r]

50/50 on loominous and JBurger! I'm amazed..

[Daniel Thomas]

Can people try to tell who they vote on and in which category, it helps both the participants and me counting the votes - I can show who got most votes in each category.
Thanks!

[riseryn]

Im very impressed by Loominous work

Idea: Loominous
Atmosphere: Loominous
Design: Loominous
Composition: Loominous
Functionality: Loominous
Technique: Loominous

his picture is really great

[Neil Dnuma]

Idea: Traveler
Atmosphere: Loominous
Design: Loominous
Composition: Loominous
Functionality: TheJBurger
Technique: Loominous

[Jens]

Idea: Loominous
Atmosphere: JBurger
Design: Traveler
Composition: Loominous
Functionality: JBurger
Technique: Loominous

Loominous, did you train the use of those colours? Looks great. They remind me of the american landscape paintings of the mid 19th century that I like very much (like that one). An adventure in this style would be something new.

[loominous]

Loominous, did you train the use of those colours?

If you mean formal training, then no. I just observe stuff and experiment.

One of the many nice things with working digitally is that you can really experiment freely n quickly, whereas with analogue media, you're pretty often stuck with what you put down, or have limited or time consuming ways of altering it.

One thing I noticed when I started looking into the colours used in movie/tv-series/game screenshots I liked (which are my primary sources), was that the colours often had a clear bias towards a certain colour/s. So a picture might lean towards blue/violet, (like JBurger's entry), where everything, regardless of what colour they have under more normal circumstances, has a blueish/violetish hue.

Upon further investigation I noticed that there was often a quite rich variation within these limited colour ranges, so while they appeared monochrome, they still contained clear diversity. Another thing was that the hue seemed to often change in correspondence with the value, so a sky wouldn't simply be in one hue, but go from perhaps cyanish brights to purple darks. Which also goes for stuff like grass, which might go from pure orange brights to cyanish darks. Both these things help the image from looking "dead", which I found to be a common issue when doing more monochromatic stuff.

Here's what the colours actually are in the current version (just picked the main colours with the colour picker):



You can see the clear bias towards yellows/orange, where even the blue sky goes from yellow brights towards green darks, and that perhaps 8/10th of the hues available weren't used.

I also found that while it was easy to make monochrome like palettes for more unusual light conditions, such as early mornings/evenings/nights/artificial lights, it got trickier when doing more day time like scenes, and this pic is part of my experimentation with this (this is more early noon). The reason is that during daytime sunlight gets very white, and since white light contains all colours, objects will reflect these in the way we are most familiar with, so a blue ball will reflect the blue spectrum of the sunlight while absorbing the rest. So you can't get away with too much monochromaticity (probably just made up that word), or it won't look like daytime.

Can compare this with, let's say, late sunset light, which is very red. Since the light that hits objects only contain a range of reds, the objects can either reflect or absorb them these colours. So this means that green or blue objects have no green or blue light to reflect, and can therefor only absorb or mildly reflect the red light depending on their hue (making them either dark red or black). So this scenario by itself makes everything monochromatically red, and we have no trouble buying it.

There's lots of stuff to say on the subject, and I've been meaning to make a practical tutorial about light, but I haven't got around to it yet.

Edit: corrupt sentence

[Brad Newsom]

Can people try to tell who they vote on and in which category, it helps both the participants and me counting the votes - I can show who got most votes in each category.
Thanks!

Idea: Loominous
Atmosphere: Loominous
Design: Loominous
Composition: Loominous
Functionality: Loominous
Technique: Loominous

[Neil Dnuma]

Thanks, loom, very interesting notes again. I think I brought up the old American landscape painters at one point too. Also, perhaps you're familiar with J.M.W. Turner who did some very interesting pre-impressionist paintings.

I found the notion of details very interesting. I sometimes felt I spent so much time on getting details good, that the image as a whole suffered and turned out rather stiff. To be honest, I'm a fan of a little more sharpness though, maybe this is more noticeable in the foreground area after you put the sprite in.

Also, working in the same hue for sky, grass etc always felt safe and looked ok. But it didn't "jump out" as anything special. Good obeservation work! Any movies/TV-series you've found particularly inspiring?

You should start working on that turtorial ASAP. Also, what about the workshop there was some talk about?

[loominous]

perhaps you're familiar with J.M.W. Turner who did some very interesting pre-impressionist paintings.

Not really, no. I'm really ignorant when it comes to classical art, or artwork in general for that matter. Which is a shame since those old guys really knew about stuff like composition, and looking at nice landscape art always reminds me how stiff and boring my solutions usually turn out, and how they could be improved.

To be honest, I'm a fan of a little more sharpness though, maybe this is more noticeable in the foreground area after you put the sprite in.

Hm, you're right. The odd thing is that those areas are quite sharp in full size, and might've gotten a bit blurred when I downsized it, while the sprite outlines remained sharp. Another reason might be that the light "bloom" added to the bright spots might've blurred out those parts in this scale. Sharp sprites do call for sharp backgrounds.

Any movies/TV-series you've found particularly inspiring?

I dunno, I think lots of movies and series, whether you like them as movies/series or not, feature nice footage and grading that fits different situations.

('Grading' is the post process where the camera footage, which usually looks very pale and unattractive when scanned, gets treated. Apart from simply upping the contrast and fixing the colours, there's usually an artistic grading done, where you basically add colour schemes to the footage, to give it "looks", much like in a painting).

For instance, a show like CSI shows how you can turn boring lab environments into cool looking office landscapes by limited, selective light and heavy colour bias (everything is basically blue, with warm spots of light).

Shows like Dexter how you can build a realistic everyday palette with two very dominant colours (the very predominant turquoise and red)

A show like Smallville how to achieve extremely warm friendly palettes.

Animated movies such as any Disney production often have quite particular compositions, with heavy foregrounds and strongly focused light, which translates directly to 2D game art, where you're trying to achieve maximum depth, to compensate for the 2dness. So they're always interesting in that regard.

On the whole, I think most movies and series, if they're well funded, have nice visuals that you can get inspired by, and even if the footage/grading is bad, they can still feature interesting objects and such, and I find myself taking screenshots from pretty much whatever I happen to watch, though in lesser or greater extent of course.

Btw, a screenshot/reference tip is to have a screensaver that cycles through your reference image directories. One problem I often found was that I never actually looked through the stuff that I had saved/captured, which this solves nicely. It's preferable to have two screens (or a laptop) though, to allow for one to work like a gallery when you're not using it. iSlideshow is a nice free one with a nice Ken Burns effect (slow panning/zoom and dissolve) and Nostalgic Screensaver is pretty much exactly the same, except it works better on crappy graphics cards, but can only show jpgs.

Oh, another thing is to have a good way of triggering the capture of screenshots, so that it doesn't become a hassle. Having a single button to push is an easy solution, if your media player supports it. The nicest solution I've found is to remotely trigger the screencapture by using the my cel phone, this via bluetooth. If your phone supports remote desktop, it's quite easy to set up. So I simply press "0" on my phone to capture, and by using a viewer like BSPlayer, the screenshot is then automatically saved with the name of the file watched and the frame number as the file name, for easy management.

Also, what about the workshop there was some talk about?

I'm thinking that I may do a special 'Background Blitz - Workshop edition' if I get to host the next one. Basically the same as the BB but with workshop features. As it's so close to the BB, it feels better to have special BB editions than separate workshop activities, as that would just divide up the interest.

[Daniel Thomas]

Idea: Loominous5 Traveler3
Atmosphere: JBurger4 Loominous4
Design: Loominous5 Traveler2 Jburger1
Composition: Loominous7 Jburger1
Functionality: JBurger5 Loominous3
Technique: Loominous7 Jburger1

None-category votes: Loominous3 Jburger3

TOTAL:
Loominous 33
Jburger 15
Traveler 5

Congratz to Loominous, and good work to all who took a part of this.

Take it away Loominous!