This is an image hopefully bringing the Massive AGS Project a step closer to massiveness:
(http://www.2dadventure.com/ags/Heliopolisv1.gif)
The backdrop is for a cutscene introducing the city of Heliopolis, a modern city strongly influenced by Ancient Egypt. The over-all style has been defined by Big Brother here (http://www.americangirlscouts.org/snarkywiki/index.php/Style_Guide).
The Egyptian influences in this image may be too suble, but I tried to draw upon the Egyptian revival in Art Deco styles.
The trainline in the foreground is the Dead Line, which travels through the Necropolis. You can see the fringe of the Necropolis at the bottom of the image.
For the background to the story check out the SPHINX Wiki (http://www.americangirlscouts.org/snarkywiki/).
I'd like to know how well you think it suits the narrative. In light of the project's open nature, paintovers are more than welcome!
One thing that bothers me is the hue of the frontmost row of buildings. Usually objects in the distance get more bluish the further away they are, so it seems wrong to have them purple while the buildings behind them are more reddish. It's can't be explained by them being in the shadow of the other buildings, since you have a clearly defined light source from front/left. (I didn't notice the buildings in the bottom of the screen, but being their natural grey they work better).
The clouds could also use some more work. First I interpreted the sharply defined shadow on the cloud to the left as an airplane. Now I think it makes the cloud look like a pair of buttocks. Perhaps something as simple as lowering the contrast between cloud and shade would solve this.
Other than that, I think it's a beautiful skyline you've come up with. The egyptian influence is rather subtle, but it's there. I love the scarab-O's on the Heliopolis sign. Great work.
I agree with GarageGothic on the purple houses in the foreground. And I'd like to add that the railtrack is not quite fitting in colourwise. Since it goes from where the beholder is standing all the way to the city, the track should be colored differently far away just like the houses are.
Other than that, it is an amazing background!
I like this background a lot, the only crit I have is on the city colours, but not for the same resons as GarageGothic and fovemester. The city seems a bit smoggy and dirty, particularly if it is supposed to be in a sunny place. I don't know if that was the intention (I looked at the wiki, but I felt too lazy to read much :-[), but if it wasn't, I found that increasing the contrast improved it (IMHO), but the hue and darkness might have something to do with it as well.
A lovely background ^_^
Thanks for the positive feedback guys.
It's interesting that you picked up on the colours. The game's pallete is really limited but I think you've identified a few areas where I could improve.
Garage Gothic: The cloud shades have been set out in the style guide, so I can't change them, but I will attempt to reshape them to look less like buttocks!
I used the purple shade for the nearer buildings to try and create a distinction between the city proper and a shanty-town. Being tinted blue does look like I'm using aerial perspective backwards though. I might try tinting them a dirty sand colour.
fovmester With limited colours and no gradations/aliasing I found it really difficult to change the track's colour as it gets further into the distance. I might attempt something, but I'm not sure how well it will work.
MashPotato You're right, it is dingy. I think I'm dingy by nature, though. I think it should be somewhat industrial and smoggy, but I'llÃ, consider altering the hue/contrast if it doesn't fit in with the core team's idea of Heliopolis.
Hey I love your background image!
Magnificent style
To add some crit along with the rest.
I think the rail-track's perspective and position are a bit strange.
It looks like the track is very high, maybe this is the way you want it, but I suggest lowering it a bit.
Besides that, I think the width of the track starts too wide.
The track-width at the point where it vanishes in the city is like 2 pixels.
If the city is so big that a big track like that vanishes there, I'd suggest to make the track less wider at the bottom of your sprite.
When I re-read it, this post is quite hard to understand :P
Hope you get what I mean