Background depth

[nihilyst]

2x


Hi,

today I started making backgrounds again. So I took my old-fashioned tablet and started drawing. I wanted to do a landscape, like something you would use as an overview map. I'm quite satisfied with the sky and the overall look of the landscape, but it somehow looks very flat. I guess that has to do with the poor flat composition on one hand (including the rather sad use of a fence in the foreground) and with the use of colours and lighting on the other. Now, besides changing the complete composition, how can one add depth to an image?

Thanks in advance
nihilyst

[Andail]

A picture speaks a thousand words, so I present "colourdepth":




I have to say I really like your style, it's refreshing to see some traditional techniques once in a while.

[Moresco]

Very nicely done, Andail.  I always like to accompany the pictures with words, so here goes. 

nihilyst: Basically you just needed to present a color perspective and value perspective to create depth (I believe you've established some value already, but maybe you could do more) - which is how I know these terms, they go by other names however to other people.  Basically separating the foreground, middleground, and background...which is basically what Andail has done.   Most of the time, you'll find that your darkest darks are in the foreground and progress lighter as you move back towards the background.   Color perspective would show that from the foreground to the background, it goes warm to cooler color.    Very simple things to keep in mind.  And that's about all that I can add.


Edit by ProgZ:  No need to quote an image directly above your post.

[nihilyst]

ARGH! Now that you name it, I should have known it ;P





- Gave it a bit more colour depth and a new layer.
- Added some things: cave, bridge, wind facilities.
- Changed the tone a bit.

Thanks so far.

[Moresco]

haha nice wind power! energy conscious =p Woot.

[rbaleksandar]

Looks great ^^ But don't forget to put some road(s) in there

[Kaio]

I love it. Will the river be animated?

[Shane 'ProgZmax' Stevens]

I think the grass texturing and overall design is great, nihylist, but I would recommend focusing on the water texture and how the river winds through the hills, since right now it doesn't really resemble water to me but some tar-like substance.  I would focus especially on the river line, where it lacks convincing depth.  You can simulate this by adding some shoreline around the river and darkening one side, or if you don't want a shorline you could just make a somewhat deep outer edge to the left of the river line.  Try less saturated and dark blues for the areas of the water exposed to light, perhaps show a bit of transparency near the shorelines and some rocks partially exposed and that should make your water more visually compelling.

Edit:

I made a rough paintover to show you what I mean.  I couldn't change the blues as much as I wanted because they're tied to the sky texture, but the use of whites/light blues around the rocks and shoreline should get the point across.

[nihilyst]

@progzmax: Thanks for the suggestions. I didn't really know what to do with the water the first time, so I guess it ended up rather "thick".

I gave it another shot:

[TheJBurger]

I really like the small details you've added.

One other thing you can think about doing is adding some kind of foreground other than the black fence, although it may seem a bit arbitrary at this stage. The reason being the rest of the background seems a bit foreclosed from the subject's point of view.

[Shane 'ProgZmax' Stevens]

Water looks much better now!  I get a sense that it's flowing to different places instead of just one solid piece.  The more I look at the river, though, the more something about the perspective on it bothers me.  Would a river really sit that high on a hillside, I wonder?  I'm thinking it might look better if the river actually cut between two hills rather than carving itself along one, so in this case you'd only show the brief area where the river bends into the hills and then bring out the front hill so it's clear there's a gap there.  This could just be me.

[Jakerpot]

maybe some aa on the fence? I think it is looking like it's a pixel art thing, but the bg isn't. is it?

[subspark]

I think you could make the following improvements.

• Water (Reflections, glistening, ripples)
  
• Lighting (Defined mountain curves, Darker valleys and troffs)
  
• Diversity (More plant life, areas of no or little plant growth, more items of interest)
  
• Depth (Extreme Distant hills, blue atmospheric hue, sun reflection on wind poles)
  
• Detail (Sharper image, more contrast)
  
  Heres my interpretation of the above improvements:
  
  
  
  And thats not doing much at all. I'm sure you can take this much further!
  Keep up the fab work mate!
  
  Cheers,
  Sparky.
  
  Edit: Are you using Photoshop?

[nihilyst]

Hi, subspark,

thanks for the suggestions. When I have some time left, I'll see what I can do.

EDIT: No, I'm using ArtGem.

[Uhfgood]

No offense or anything but don't those windmills look HUGE.  I thought I was looking at mountains and stuff, not little mounds of dirt/grass :-)

[rbaleksandar]

Maybe that's the point Depends on the storyline behind this background

[nihilyst]

These are wind generators. They ARE huge. Take a look:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/be/Cuxhaven_groesste_windkraftwerk.jpg

[Uhfgood]

not really a good image to judge perspective on, that house or whatever looks really small, but then again it could be far away.  Need something to give it some scale.  In fact there should be something in the actual background that shows the scale, otherwise it looks confusing.  Like if the house is really tiny compared to the windmill, okay sorry WIND GENERATORS, in any case same difference :-)  Need something to show a good sense of scale.

[Misj']

These are wind generators. They ARE huge. Take a look:

I wasn't going to say anything, but it really bothered me as well from the beginning. It's not that (HAWT) wind turbines are huge...it's that the ones you drew are insanely huge for a wind turbine. I'll proof my point:

The trees you drew in the picture are - from the looks of it - possibly Swiss Pines or Norway Spurces. It could be another member of the Pinaceae family of course, but from the looks of it these two trees are quite likely. A Swiss Pine has an average mature height of 25-35m (according to Wiki), and the Norway Spruce has an average mature hight of 35-55m. So let's for the sake of the argument use the smallest size for these mature trees: 25 m...then the hight of the trees surrounding the closest turbine is approximately 5 pixels. The hight of the 'stem' of the turbine itself is approximately 80 pixels, while the total height of that turbine would be 101 px (actually, if the sail were straight up it would be 106 px).

So that implies that the stem of the turbine is 16x taller than the Swiss Pine next to it...in other words: 16*25 = 400m (taking the sails into account we come to somewhere between 505 and 530m). It gets even bigger if the trees are tall Norway Spurces because than it would be 16x55=880m (or with sails: between 1111m and 1166m (so more than a kilometre tall)).



Now from wiki I've also learned that the record holding HAWT wind turbines have an overall height of 198m. So that means that your turbines are at least twice as tall as they should be (even more, if the overall height included the blades, which is likely).

Now of course it is possible that we don't see Swiss Pines in this image, but much smaller members of the Pinaceae family (it is possible, but it should be noted that the Swiss Pine is one of the smallest members of the family itself), and that I over-estimated the size of the trees: in reality they are half the size (~12 meters). Well...that would mean that we are likely looking at White Spurces that grow between 15 and 30 meters tall...however, first of all, they really look more like Swiss Pines, and secondly, it is unlikely that in a (seemingly) rough, untouched environment the trees don't grow beyond their minimal height, so one would expect these Spurces to grow to a size close to 25 m, which means that the same problem arises.

So I fully agree with Uhfgood, and say that the turbines are disturbingly huge...and are much taller (about double the size) than they are in reality.

Misj'

Ps. you can either make the trees taller (10-15 pixels rather than 5 next to the turbine) or the turbines smaller. That depends on the story.

[rbaleksandar]

If he makes the trees taller, he'll have to make the whole landscape bigger. Unless we don't know the story behind this background, you can never tell if it's too big or too small. It migt be from the future, it might be from another planet. BUT if it's supposed to be now on Earth - huge indeed.