A witch's cottage (Abandoned background) with tutorial

[Andail]

Hello all, this is your good old forum patron speaking.

Earlier this week I did a sample-background, a comission-piece, for Nexic, who offered money for music/art.
http://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/yabb/index.php?topic=19243.0

Well, after ten hours of hard labour, it appeared his budget couldn't afford a background artist anymore, so my piece still isn't sold.
If you know somebody who's doing a serious, commercial game project, let me know and I can still try to be hired somewhere.
I will of course do some researching myself. Too bad it's an awful market for these things....

Here's the piece:


it's a bit dark and has low resolution, so you might want to crank up your brightness/zoom in.

Step by step:
perspective grid sketch, outlines
http://www.nolore.com/witchcottagetut1.jpg

walls etc, basic textures
http://www.nolore.com/witchcottagetut2.jpg

starting to furnish:
http://www.nolore.com/witchcottagetut3.jpg

not much here:
http://www.nolore.com/witchcottagetut4.jpg

more details, passepartout:
http://www.nolore.com/witchcottagetut5.jpg


Cheers!

[mätzyboy]

Beautiful! I love it! It's a pity the man took his offer back, but on the other hand we all got the opportunity to see this beautiful piece artwork! I don't think I can come up with a single crit, except that one of the plants looks like an octupus on it's back, and that's not even worth mentioning, 'cause some plants do I guess...

[Nexic]

It is a wonderful piece, and if I could afford Andail I certainly would. But I only have so much money in the bank.

I'm truely sorry.

[Andail]

Hehe, I'm only grateful I got some incentive to create something serious. Without your carrot, I would never have put down so much work and energy on a background.
Thanks mate

[Kinoko]

Gorgeous! ^_^ It's simple, yet interesting,  realistic and "dark" while still being bright and colourful. Hope that made sense to you.

[Kweepa]

Excellent. I'd probably have stopped at stage 3 and been happy (ok, delirious). The final lighting pass really makes it!

For some criticism:
- the plants don't really look finished
    - the pots have no "shape" and don't sit on the shelf well
- the floor is very smooth - could do with some unevenness at cracks
- the scrolls look a bit like bones with ribbons
- the line thickness is very uneven - I'd say too thick around the rocking chair, for example
- a lot of things could do with some ambient shadow (like the chair has)
   - the stool, the bed, the edges of the floors, the roof beams, the bottle shelf
   - see how dark the side of the cupboard and the side of the bed are, compared to the wall and floor
   - where's loominous?
- it doesn't look very "witchy" to me
    - it's very square - particularly the roofbeams
    - the cauldron is subtle
    - the other elements (crystal ball, skull, hat) are all tucked away in the corners and overlookable

Cheers,
Steve

[Flippy_D]

The chair's perspective is a little cranky, but it's very good work.

[big brother]

It's a pity you didn't work out a contract beforehand to guarantee a percentage of your commission upfront.

As for the background itself, I think you should focus more on the shapes of and tangents created by your objects. Right now, they seem very distinct and separate from each other. If you overlap them, it'll create more interesting positive and negative space. 

Also, I would darken the objects in the foreground (the two desks) and keep most of my detail in the middle ground.

[Nexic]

Just want to point out that I didn't offer him any payment for this piece. All I asked was for a demo of what he could do, so I could decide if he was good enough to work on my project.

It's not like I said "Hey, do XY and Z and I'll give you Y dollars" and then changed my mind about him. I took several samples of this kind from other artists too. It is a necessary process in deciding who is best suited to the project's needs. It just turned out that I found a really good character artist that would require most of my budget to hire, so I hired him instead of a background artist. Background art was at the bottom of my list of priorities, as they are something I *can* do myself.

[andail_unplugged]

sure mate, I completely understood the terms.
This gave me the opportunity to show what I can do, so I'm prepared next time the situation arises 

for the others; thanks for your c&c. For most part, it was more a question of letting the background go, rather than not knowing how to improve it. More thorough shading would be my next step, more details and textures as well.

Both the bed and the stool, as well as other minor items, completely lack cast shadows.

Another thing I'm not 100% satisfied with is the lack of a proper colour-perspective, i.e, the saturation and lightness is not consistent in terms of spacial distance.
For instance, the skull and the scrolls are unproportionally bright considering the light conditions in the room.

But you have to stop working on the background at some point, or it would be impractical.

[BlackMan890]

If you wan't it to be wichy, you could add some things like:

* Skeleton head
* Potions
* frogs, and lots of them

and some more to make it EVIL

[Sam.]

but there is a skull...

[Kweepa]

But you have to stop working on the background at some point, or it would be impractical.

- It's useful to have finished pieces in your portfolio.
- This is the critics lounge.

But, given bb's comments, I think this bg could do with some work to make the layout more interesting before polishing it.
If you want to get professional, it's worth putting the time in.

[loominous]

You seem to be aware of most of the issues so I won't bother with an edit.

Think another work order might've benefited the background in prioritizing the most relevant parts.

I) In order to get a more interesting layout I think you should ve started with loose sketches just tossing out ideas.  Especially with a witchresidence you should be able to come up with pretty much any quirky layout while still seeming believable. Since the sketches are loose and quick you're not wasting precious time when discarding ideas.

When you've found a good layout you can correct the perspective and make a tighter sketch. Make sure you flip the page horizontally quite frequently to make sure it looks correct - the current background is leaning slightly to the left which could've easily been spotted at the sketch stage (in PS you can bind a key to this in the later versions for quick access).

II) In order to get the general values/colors right it helps if you start out by working with a thumbnail. Basically, resize the sketch to a small format (I prefer around 150xXXX,  but depends on the image) and start adding values and, if you like, colors until the image looks good in this size/distance. If it does the chances that it'll look good later on are vastly improved.

By working in this format you force yourself to ignore details and focus on the general look/feel which will benefit the picture composition and save time since changes are quickly done.

III) Resize the image and use the old highres sketch, or just use the thumbnail as a reference.

At this stage you can safely start rendering objects in detail.

-

By doing these steps you ensure that the image is coming along in the right direction right from the start and can discard ideas (sketch, colorpalette, values) at an early stage with minimal time/workloss. Since the values and colors are set early on, the general idea, mood and composition is present at an early stage and details can be added as time permits.

Just some thoughts.

[Andail]

thanks Loominous, always nice to read your wise word.
However, I have indeed done many sketches for this piece, which I decided not to show since I haven't even scanned them, so they were mostly conceptual.

I also have a habit of flipping my pictures on regular basis (funny you should mention that!), which is a terrific way of refreshing your seeing. The original sketch even has the door to the left.
I still missed the leaning part though...not even flipping could help me out there.

[DCillusion]

Andail, you have a professional art style, and I hope this doesn't sound like AGS treason.....but have you thought about textures?

Anyone can take a photo & make it seamless, but companies pay pretty well for quality hand-drawn textures.

No disrespect to Nexic, but a company like Ubisoft might see something they like, purchase it, & ask for more without even having a working project.

Just something to think about