A Background. Please C&C!

[InCreator]

2x:


Title says it all. This is most likely the best bg I've ever produced and also record of time spent on bg; I drew it yesterday 7 hours non-stop...

After all this work I somewhat hesitated to ask for C&C since bigger improvements that take heavy time again are something i'd rather avoid... but if I got this far, let's make this perfect.

BTW, for fun facts: reference photos I used were: a scene from streets of city of Prague, a Japanese research center and a scene from NY City  And of course, lot's of freestyle drawing.

So, criticise and comment my background, please.

[Nacho]

I wish I could draw like that, because whereas I can make some quick and nice BG's in my style, I like yours a lot, as well... Anyway, I think that the blue car has a different perspective than the rest. Maybe it s a problem when tracing, dunno, but for me it seems that the "camera" taking the "photo" of the pic should be raised a bit, to show more of the roof of the car.

Hope it makes sense.

[Babar]

Nice! Very Picturesque. I'd make the trees fuller, though. I'd have thought it was winter, but the bushes underneath seem pretty green. Also, the zebra crossing looks like it gets larger moving from right to left.

If it took 7 hours to make that, how many years till the game ?

[AlbinoPanther]

Increator we give you a PERFECT 10!
C&C finished

[vict0r]

Woah my god That's great! When i first looked quickly over it, i actually thought it was a real picture I would love to see a game with this style! Dont have anything to critizise on it

[InCreator]

If you mean light blue thingy at the back, it's van-like car-
If you mean purple Ford Sierra at the front, it's door is open a bit (intentionally) - which may confuse a bit.

Please clarify if there's really something wrong.

[Ozzie]

I think Farlander means the van most behind. And I can see what he mean....but not really explain.

Some other things:
I'm not sure, but if this red *something* behind the black and before white car should also be a car it looks like it's squeezed between them. Must be really small...

Also, is the black car supposed to have no back window, or is it toned? If the last, then I think it's still too dark, it should have a contrast to the..............borders. Also, shouldn't the wheel that's more behind at least be half covered? The perspective seems weird this way...

Hm, I leave other criticism to people who understand something about drawings, but overall it looks pretty good.

[TheYak]

Sir, if you'd said you spent a week's worth of waking hours on it, it would be no less impressive.  Nevertheless here's the nit-pickery:

- I see what others mean about the black car towards the front.  I'm a little confused as to where some lines of it end and the next car begins.  How it looks to me is that all the cars are in the same perspective, but the black one's at a 90° vertical perspective so that the roof is only a pixel thick.  The dark colors of the car behind it lend to the confusion.

- The light-blue vehicle does look a little skewed, perhaps the rear 10 degrees further from the viewer.  It only stands out to me because of the bright high-saturation color.  Even if it's a very bright blue, nothing in the picture's catching that much light, so it looks out of place.  Maybe a lower sat color or overall fog layer?

- The house to the rear, most central to the viewer, the roof (particularly the bottom edge) stands out as higher saturation that other things at that depth, maybe a very subtle atmospheric layer? 

- The trees' leaves - look great for the most part, but some of the bunches look very circular, some more visible sky to break them up just a bit might help.  The tallest tree on the left suffers from this circular pattern as well as looking 2-dimensional.  It might solve two problems at once to vary the tone in the leaves to give them more depth.

- The aliasing on the closest house, the window frame and ledges have many jaggies.  Replacing the corner pixel with a color blending the ledge and wall shades might get rid of it. 

- The arched doorway on the center-view furthest back house: The door frame bottom on our left hasn't been treated with the same darkening/blending bottom as the rest of the buildings.

- The bottom sections of the house to the left, there's a visible edge there where it meets the ground, particularly enhanced by 1-2 pixels on the bottom lines that are brighter than the rest. 

- The window reflection technique leaves some windows looking fogged up rather than shiny.  Increasing this fog-effect is that you shaded the panels individually after the frame was in place rather than treating the window as a whole.

- The brighter circle of pixels around the sign with its back facing us almost gives it a beveled look.  The edge pixels also stand out a bit against the backdrop.

Of course, I wouldn't notice any of those in game.  The list of praises for the drawing would be much lengthier. 

[InCreator]

Thanks for professional C&C!
Here we go...


2x:


After some pixel cosmetics...

* Added another reflection of NYC to the window at upper left
* Fixed the tree... sort of. Or made it worse. <undecided>
* Desaturated house roof and van-type car (how are these called, anyway? these little cars postals and delivery services drive?)
* made roof of van-car thinner
* removed red car (it was quite weird even on photo)
* finished second VW-Golf-like black car and made first one more gray (yes, two cars there), also fixed windows
* Tried some trippy shit on house roof (getting brighter thing)
* Pulled lousy trick on office building windows to "unite" their shade
* Used my n00b skills to manually antialiase (sort of :/) the ledges and sign
* also n00biased and straightened the damned zebra (god, it's hard to draw despite of being so simple thing!)
* colored some bushes
* ruined the area where frontmost building meets the concrete(orangeish yellow + darken processor = burned & ugly)
* Gave my optical mouse a good beating, the way only NES controller got it decades ago... that's why my post may sound agressive  The thing totally refused to perform a function called "dragging" releasing button by itself after every pixel

I think that's better now!
Maybe I still missed something?

[Nacho]

I was talkig about the first car, the one with the door opened. Look at the wall close to it. The line that goes to the vanishing point is different to the line that the cars make... Hope this image explains it.



See? I think there are two vanishing points when there should be only one.

[InCreator]

Huh? 

[Snarky]

Do you mean one single vanishing point, or that the vanishing points should lie on a horizontal line (the horizon)? The vanishing points should only be the same if the cars were parked parallel to the street and fence, which they aren't (for some reason).

Edit: Could you loop that gif please, InC? It's kind of a blink-and-you-miss-it effect right now.
Edit2: Ah, cheers.

[InCreator]

Stupid game maker!
*Didn't have any decent GIF software installed

[Phemar]

Here's one crit Increator: Try making it good. Seriously, it sucks right now. I could draw better than that with my gran stapled to my hand! I mean, how long did you spend it on it? 2 - 3 minutes?

Hehe, just kidding. It looks great, Increator, seriously. I would've mistaken it for a real photo had I not known otherwise!

Farlander: Is the perspective not just like that because the cars are parked at an angle?

[Snarky]

One thing I would like to see would be a layer between the bushes (and the farthest close buildings) and the skyline. As Farlander's post makes clear, the horizon line is up near the top of the bushes, so unless everything was completely flat between here and Manhattan, you would see things sticking up. (Also compare to the photo, with all the buildings behind your current cutoff distance.)

It could be semi-faded, no more than the height of the far wing of that building. But it would really help make the image seem more real, less like a movie set.

[aussie]

'tis excellent.

One thing that kinda bothers me is mixing blurred (mostly the cars) and pixelated details (tree leafs, no-way sign) in the same bg.

IMO these tend to clash. But that's just me. It's hardly noticeable, BTW.

Also, I think the blue building on the right stands out a tiny bit too much. The color looks too bright to me.

[Tuomas]

Nice big, admitted... but There's something about the second car to the front, the black one: What's the black block under the right back window of it? And then the shadowy thing under it looks very weird. Somehow the depth is missing, the two black cars look more like a back of a one black car, with the exception of both back wheels showing.

Then the frontal car's door, I was waiting too see a joint of somekind there, but I don't and that bothers me... I would have srawn a pic to explain better, but I still can't use Photoshop that well

[Nacho]

That reference pic works perfectly to show what I mean InC. As said, it's a problem when tracing over real pics. The cars in the original pics, specially the blue car and the blue van, show a pair or 3 pixels lines more of the roof, which make the line that the cars form reaching the vanishing point. While in your background, the vanishing points are different. Hope it makes sense, but concentrate in taking a look to the gif... See there's some kind of animation when you see the cars... the roofs go down. It's only some pixels, but it makes the whole perspective go wrong.

Anyway... It's almost perfect...  Don't get to annoyed for this, it's only "ultra perfectionist" C&C...

[InCreator]

*shudders*

Layers? For your knowledge, none of Adobe products are never ever involved in any of my art... especially Photoshop.'
Or anything else that hi-tech.

Layers. I knew I should have kept em'
I was thinking about transclusent pure white rectangles myself, both fore- and background have same contrast/influence and fading/fogging horizon out a bit sounds good.

What pain is to do it all manually now

[Snarky]

Errr... you don't need to use an Adobe app to get layers. Paintshop Pro supports them, as does The GIMP, and really any halfway decent modern paint app.

And Farlander, the "lines the car form" would only point towards the same vanishing point if the cars were 1) all neatly lined up, and 2) parallel to the other lines. Neither is true. There may be something wrong with the perspective, but it's not because they should have the same vanishing point.