Well here is one of the backgrounds for a yet to be announced project. I would love all c&c you guys can give me, I want to improve my skills a bit more.
(http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v706/rdsf/screenshot_original.jpg)
[~EDIT~]
Final Version?:
1x:
(http://www.2dadventure.com/ags/Background_forest1_layers_x1.jpg)
2x:
(http://www.2dadventure.com/ags/Background_forest1_layers_x2.jpg)
Really nice! It's got it's own special style. Like a painting. I especially like the treetrunks.
Quote from: fovmester on Wed 23/03/2005 21:24:53
Really nice! It's got it's own special style. Like a painting. I especially like the treetrunks.
Thanks, I dont knoow what to call my style these days, I usually go with ''VGA-like''. Thanks again for you're kind words. Im currently working on a portrait, man they are so hard. Give me a background anyday. ;D
i find the horizontal a little bit wrong (or weird) (i mean that the sky goes (i think) a little bit too low on the horizontal)
It's like a hill, the player will walk down it.
I'm a big contrast fan, so I added more contrast to some parts of the bg, also I tried to fix what I think was wrong with the water. I didn't do very well myself, but if you get what I'm trying to say, then I'm happy.
(http://www.shadowreality.co.uk/images/13/screenshot_crappyedit.png)
I think what Hardass is trying to explain with the water edit, is the fact that in your original pick, it looked like it was just a slope with a flood. It seems that the grass goes down past the water line. In Hardass' pic, he's showing the earthy parts around the rim of the pond/river/lake, where nothing really grows.
I think he's contrast boost has improved it, too. The original seemed a little dream-like with the fadedness to it, like they have in films.
Awesomely pretty pic, tho.
One idea might be to keep the original contrast, but make sure your sprites have high contrast. That would really make the characters stand out while enhancing the ethereal quality of your scene.
Honestly that contrast makes it look rather crappy. But I will make it slightly darker and add some mud. Thanks guys, I hardly get any comments on my work, and do aprichiate (sp) them.
I only have one word to comment:
Details.
It's very nice bg with much detail in it. Why not the tree leaves?
If I had some more time, I'd draw every tree some leaves, instead of these green clouds with fruit. It would be soo-o much better.
Well the leaves are there just very small, How long would it take to draw EVERY individual leaf. I'll give it ago though.
Ever heard of mass drawing technologies?
Well, it took about 4 minutes.
(http://www.increator.pri.ee/i/critshelp/forest_bgedit.png)
But if I'd spend at least 14 minutes, it would be perfect.
Quote from: InCreator on Fri 25/03/2005 01:12:03
Ever heard of mass drawing technologies?
Well, it took about 4 minutes.
(http://www.increator.pri.ee/i/critshelp/forest_bgedit.png)
But if I'd spend at least 14 minutes, it would be perfect.
Looks worse in my opinion.
well like one user said:
if you are going to quote a pic, then PLEASE don't write one line comment
about the pic:
like he said, if he had been 14 minutes workin on it, it would be perfect, so maybe that explains why it won't look so good (for you atleast)
i like the edit, but a little more work would do the trick (and maybe another way)
and like i said befour:
Spoiler
there should be at least a little more ground on the horizontal, looking at it, and i looks like the hill is right next to the ocean (cause the sky get's so low)
anyway nice pic, but i would say, slightly useless (cause there is nothing in it :p except you are suposed to do something with the water ot the tree trunk)
Goél raises an interesting point - does this scene serve a practical purpose, or is it just a 'filler' bg the character has to cross in order to get somewhere else?
It would certainly look lovely as a filler bg - sierra used them in the kings quest series nicely, but for such a beautiful scene (which it is!) I'd love to see it be taken full advantage of.
I do prefer the original contrast of your picture, as do I like the simplicity of the 'green clouds with fruit' :) It's very atmospheric. But I do agree with the others about the water. I imagine this scene is taking place at the BOTTOM of a hill, where the ground has levelled out, there's a pond, and the hill rises off beside you. But at the moment, the ground doesn't seem to have a level. It just seems to keep sloping down, in which case there would be no water there. It would all have run down to the bottom.
Quote from: Peter Thomas on Fri 25/03/2005 03:46:35
Goél raises an interesting point - does this scene serve a practical purpose, or is it just a 'filler' bg the character has to cross in order to get somewhere else?
It would certainly look lovely as a filler bg - sierra used them in the kings quest series nicely, but for such a beautiful scene (which it is!) I'd love to see it be taken full advantage of.
I do prefer the original contrast of your picture, as do I like the simplicity of the 'green clouds with fruit' :) It's very atmospheric. But I do agree with the others about the water. I imagine this scene is taking place at the BOTTOM of a hill, where the ground has levelled out, there's a pond, and the hill rises off beside you. But at the moment, the ground doesn't seem to have a level. It just seems to keep sloping down, in which case there would be no water there. It would all have run down to the bottom
I also like the cloud like trees, it adds to the mythycal atmosphere. I removed the sky and added the mod and some additional shading:
(http://www.2dadventure.com/ags/forest2.jpg)
I dont believe in filler scenes anymore, and you're all wrong, there is much you can do in this background:
A) Pick Berries. (fetch spell or DIY)
B) Pick Tangerine. (fetch spell)
C) Drink water.
D) Put water in flask.
E) Searching under/in log.
F) Take vine. (levitate spell) (fetch spell not stronge enough)
G) Talk to magical creature living in trees. (not shown here because she is hidden, the player will get hints of *something* being there.
H) Pick Flower. (fetch spell or DIY)
(8 in total)
Well most backgrounds dont even have half as much interaction as my backgrounds do. All my backgrounds have the most extreme interaction.
Bleh, i dont like it without the sky. And sorry, i really didnt like InC's edit.
...now how's that for constructive criticism?
Well I like it :p
It actually took me a minute to realise what the difference was. At first I thought you'd just reversed the image, and then it hit me. I have no idea how I missed it in the first place...
It looks like the forest keeps going deeper and deeper now, which I like. It makes it look more mysterious and haunting. Unless, of course, this is set on the edge of a beach or something.
Oh, and you're totally right about all the interactions. But it seems to be getting towards the trend of "if there's not a big box sitting in the middle of the floor, there's no need for interactions...". Well, at least from what I've noticed, and I'm talking much broader than just the AGS community... Lovely to see you're taking advantage of the 'natural' opportunities...
I like the new one. The blurry grass still seems distracting somehow. You should make ALL the grass well defined, not just parts of it. If you don't want to spend too much time, you could use the clone stamp (or whatever it is called in whatever you are using). The tree bark looks nice, but the shading on the centre tree is different, as it has darker shades appearing again on the right, while the other trees have the brightest shade on the right. Also, I would suggest using a more gradual change of shading in the leaves. Right now they look like they have light green outlines
The background now has more tree texture.
(http://www.2dadventure.com/ags/forest3.jpg)
I dont think grass is such a major issue, I cant spend all my time doing the grass pixel by pixel. ;)
Thank you all for the comments and keep them coming.
in my opinion the grass looks perfect, don't change it ;)
i think the cloud-like tree leaves is a unique feature of the artist, don't change it ;)
the water in the newer still looks a bit like a flood, i'm no artist but i'm sure you can get it right :)
the red ?berries? on the floor look a bit odd - i'd advise not so many of them spread out. just doesnt look right
:D great pic anyway
Quote from: Dan2552 on Fri 25/03/2005 13:29:23
in my opinion the grass looks perfect, don't change it ;)
i think the cloud-like tree leaves is a unique feature of the artist, don't change it ;)
the water in the newer still looks a bit like a flood, i'm no artist but i'm sure you can get it right :)
the red ?berries? on the floor look a bit odd - i'd advise not so many of them spread out. just doesnt look right
:D great pic anyway
Those are the flowers. The berries can only be seen when used in full resolution. Thanks for the comments.
Quote from: Reptile on Fri 25/03/2005 12:31:42
I dont think grass is such a major issue, I cant spend all my time doing the grass pixel by pixel. ;)
Quote from: Babar on Fri 25/03/2005 12:24:34
you could use the clone stamp (or whatever it is called in whatever you are using).
The grass would be OK if it was all blurry, but having some blurry and some defined is not so good looking.
The grass looks the same all over to me.
The water looks strange. I'd make it more blue. Else it's good work.
Actually, the water should be darker and more murky, because the forest is thicker and so there is less sky for the water to reflect off. In the first picture, the sky in the background indicates there's enough light, so the water was fine there.
I actually liked the first version better - with the horizon you could have drawn some mountains in the distance, and that could have fixed it up (you can also say that it's the edge of the forest, which would explain why it didn't seem to get thicker).
With the second version, the trees further away should look darker (like as you walk into the forest, it gets thicker, and hence less light) .
About the tree foliage - well, it's nice in a stylised way :) If you're aiming for something more realistic, maybe it's better to define the areas of the tree in which the leaves are coming out towards the viewer. Leaves will cast shadows on itself, so you should have some areas which are brighter, others that are darker...
The grass, I think is fine. If you want sharper grass though, maybe it's better not to use the grass brush in photoshop (Or choose two colours that contrast a lot more).
I thought lighting could have been brought out more, shadows particularly.
Quick rough paintover of some of my suggestions:
(http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v140/Fizzii/reptile.jpg)
For the foliage I used the leaf brush, and two different greens. I don't usually use that brush (I usually paint with a 1-pixel round brush).
It's a great improvement on your previous paintings Reptile :) Keep it up.
Damn, I wish I could draw like that ;) It looks great!
Any chance of you having a .png version of that image? I'd like to see it up close to really see what's happening.
Umm... no I didn't save it in png format *feels a bit sheepish*
I take it you wanted to look at the leaves in greater detail? (Most people have problems with that, myself included)
I had a go at doing the foliage again, this time as a png image :) I couldn't replicate the same results as before though...
(http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v140/Fizzii/reptile.png)
I used the scattered maple leaves brush, size 3. As I said before, I don't really paint leaves like this, it was just a quickie. The main idea is to have an idea of how the leaves should sit on the tree, and which parts of the tree would be in the light or in the shade...Ã,Â
Thanks. I can learn something from that :D
Yeah. I wanted to study up close what you had done in that image, and were disappointed because the jpg artifacts destroyed it for me. Great detailed work I must say.
Now that I have the zoom plugin for firefox I kinda like zooming in on everything :P
Fizzii> Thats simply amazing, I really will take you're advice and use it on my other backgrounds. Can I use this paintover?
this picture has improved much from the criticisms so far!
the mushrooms are all the same size. they should be of varying sizes, and they should get larger in the foreground like the trees do
Quote from: stuh505 on Mon 28/03/2005 20:37:34
this picture has improved much from the criticisms so far!
the mushrooms are all the same size. they should be of varying sizes, and they should get larger in the foreground like the trees do
*flowers. ;)
I have made them slightly smaller if you look closely. I think the flowers arent a issue really. I think the background looks perfect now.
Stuh is right about the flowers - they should get much more smaller as the forest gets deeper (perspective).
You can use the paintover if you want - you'll have to fix up the lighting on the log in the png version, and tidy it up here and there as well.
I'll work on it. Thanks.
Expect another background soon.
... EDIT ...
Sorry removed it for now, will be improved soon.
Heres the final version, Comments and everything is more than welcome, I really apprechiate you're thoughts. ;)
1x:
(http://www.2dadventure.com/ags/Background_forest1_layers_x1.jpg)
2x:
(http://www.2dadventure.com/ags/Background_forest1_layers_x2.jpg)
That is wunderbaum, Reptile. Keep up the good work!
Final version's really lovely, one thing though, the grass looks a little bit too blurry.
Other than that, great stuff! ;D
Looks like I'll really have to make a template for me to use to define the grass in all my backgrounds, wish me luck. <Grey hair springs out of head>
<I've made a lot of backgrounds, Im currently working on a japanese style one, when our hero travels there>
these are great backgrounds. one thing i would suggest is making a faint white line or two indicating a ripple at the waters edge to better define it.
Whoa, That's a beautifull background, how on earth do you people do that?! (Did you use a tablet for this one? or was it all photoshop?)
Very quick edit just to illustrate how the lighting could be improved. Notice that I couldn't be bothered to create real textures or details.
old:
(http://www.2dadventure.com/ags/Background_forest1_layers_x2.jpg)
new:
(http://www.nolore.com/picmisc/backgroundedit.jpg)
* The shading is more consistenly performed, with lights coming from the right
* added some light in the distance, to create a better depth
* lowered saturation
My edit still needs more work of course, just some pointers
Quote from: Sonny Bonds on Sun 03/04/2005 16:15:37
Whoa, That's a beautifull background, how on earth do you people do that?! (Did you use a tablet for this one? or was it all photoshop?)
I started with a sketch and then coloured it on my PC.
Thanks Andail, I didn't draw the semi-hills in my sketch thats why I didn't have them. Thanks a bunch for the painover. Im not good at shadows, I always try not to overdo it.
I think that makes the background perfect, I'm going to make a grass template to use on backgrounds with lots of grass so it looks better and is less work.
One thing I noticed that you removed the shadow of the large tree on the right. Do you think the shadow should be more to the left instead of the centre because I just noticed it looks odd.
Glad to see people are taking on to my work well. Looks like many of you might enjoy this game. ;D
Andail was pointing out that the lighting wasn't completely correct - it was something I overlooked. The 'hills' in his paintover are actually areas where it should be brighter :) Because the trees are lighter on the right side, and shadowed on the left side, one would have to assume that the sun light is coming from the east (so little light touches the left side of the trees and hence they appear darker), and shadows are cast towards the west. So the lighting is correct now, unless you want to redefine the placement of the source of light.