How to improve this background

[Kazzus]

Hey guys, this is my first post here. Just need some help with this background.



This is my first game and I'm not exactly the best artist around. I'm happy with how this background turned out, except for a few little things. I have no idea how to do shading, I just try what looks right but it might be a little off. So, I'd like to know how I can improve the shading, or hell, how to do it right. One other thing that I don't like is the ground, which looks a little bland to me, but I'm not sure what could be done about it. Any suggestions or tips on how I can improve it? Thanks.

[InCreator]

* Make tree leaf bunch much larger, and tree taller. It looks like a mushroom right now. Make it darker green too
* In daylight, ground should go brighter as it's further away, not darker. It would be even better if further away, colors start to include amount of sky color, more and more
* More detail into foreground! Trees, rocks, bushes, grass lumps, a road sign, etc.
Who cares if there's a detailed houses far away when most of the screen is empty and boring?
*  Road is a bit too yellow, too bright to be believable. Dark edges contribute nothing to it. Make it more grasslike, in a color of mud or dirt.
* Your shading on tree bark works. Try to add third, brighter color, and make it face left sides of curves. Like you did dark brown shades on right of every curve, make light brown ones more on center and left. Don't let the bright color reach edges, or you'll kill cylindric shading.
* Google is your best friend. Ever.
Search for pictures-photos using something like "landscape", "forest road", "plains" etc. Observe the photos, try to match color range and contrast. Using reference is always universal - for any kind of background and gives quickest results. Why re-invent a wheel if you can look at billion photos and pick the ideas you like, and draw them onto your picture?

I repeat again, real world has all the tips you need. Real world is on photos or outside. Google image search returns loads of photos. Use it!

[Andail]

I think you have broken just about every thumbrule about composition there is.

My advice would be that you place every object on a different layer and play around with them, to see where they look best.

[TerranRich]

The first thing that caught my eye was the dark green outline around either side of the foreground path. And then pretty much everything that InCreator said. The farther away objects are, the more blue they appear, because of diffraction of light. It's what makes the sky blue. If you look at distant mountains or buildings, they can sometimes appear bluish, and less saturated with color as well. So the background grass hills should be more blue and less green the further they go.

[Kazzus]

Well, I fixed a lot the things you guys mentioned. I'm sure it's still very amateurish, since, like I said, I'm really not an artist. This is actually my first time trying to draw something like this, so I'm surprised it's coming out even half decent. I don't even know the basics of drawing. But anyway, here's the result after some work, let me know how I can improve it even more.

[Evil]

You've got to ask yourself the functionality of this room. The player would only be able to access the tree and the rock and they have little walking space to do so. Why not make the sign, the tree and the well one room and the pond and the rock the other, assuming the rock has a function. If not, make the sign, well and tree one room and the pond another.

The tree is still not there. You've got this massive trunk but the branches are short and there is no leaf volume.

This tree has a pretty decent sized trunk, but it's really wide. When it comes to drawing trees, the trunk is around 1/4 of the height and the height, for big trees, is usually about the maximum width. What you've got is good, I'd just extend the leaves past the left portion of the image and over to the other side of the path.



The hills seem too tall. You want your castle/mansion to be higher than everything else, but you don't want your horizon line too high or the image feels tilted or dragged down. I'd make the hills closer together and less "high."

Not too sure about the line thickness. It doesn't feel consistent enough. 

[TerranRich]

No, no, no.

I'm sorry. That's TOO much blue hue in the grass. I'll do a quick paint job to show you... slight variations only...



Slight variations in the hue, small steps. More brightness, less saturation, more of a hue shift toward blue. But not huge pallette shifts to a pure blue color.

Hope that helps.

[Snarky]

Although you're getting sound advice (and there's clear improvement between the edits), I'd like to also state that I think it's a good-looking, nicely drawn background. While you have a lot to learn, I think this screen would work quite well in an adventure. For a first attempt, I'm impressed!

One thing that bugs me is the pond. For reasons that should hopefully be obvious, ponds do no occur on the side of hills, only in the troughs between them. (For similar reasons, wells are rarely dug on hilltops.) Another problem is the golden apple on the tree. It blends in too much with the castle behind it. You should move it so that the shape reads more clearly.

[ildu]

I did a pretty substantial paintover:



I mostly addressed the issues of composition and atmospheric perspective:

- First I separated the levels into layers, and moved 'em around to the following positions: the castle should be visible and clearly an important focus, the midground should be tilted to the right and downwards to make the image more dynamic, and the foreground downward with the road converging in the middle.

- I made the amplitude of the hills very large and I showed sky at a very low point, so that the horizon would be indicated as quite low. This gives it more of a fantasy look, as well as makes it a more interesting perspective. In addition, I made the far-away roads a lot thinner than they were, for obvious reasons.

- I changed the cloud design to something a little more dramatic and fun. I also added quite substantial atmospheric perspective to give depth to the image. They both contribute further to the fantasy-look.

- A lot of the linework was very shoddy and scribbly, so I smoothed everything down. Tablets are useful for pixel art, too .

- I moved the tree to the left to close off the composition and I added detail to it (and the red apple), as well as to the yellow brick road. I also made the road open up towards the viewer, to give more depth and indicate a better and more interesting viewing angle (at least for an adventure game).

- When in doubt, add a cartoony cannon !

Pay attention to the composition first - it ties the whole image together. Then do the the design. Color correction comes in at the very last stage, at least if you're working with layers. Use more time to make better linework - it's the details that make the image shine.

Hope it helps!

[Kazzus]

Thanks for all the help guys.  That paintoever was really good, ildu. I think my problem was probably that I started with the tree and just went from there, without any real planning. But I guess I do have a lot to learn. I think I'm just going to scratch this background and try to start with something simpler, something that I can actually do. But thanks for all the tips, I've really learned a lot. I'll try to keep improving, and maybe some day I'll be as good as you guys.