Background of House

Danman · Mon 28/12/2009 13:12:52

I am starting on my Episode 2 of my game now. And this is my first background. But I am not happy with it so can I have some idea's on making it better please.

criticize on everything cause I want to improve this a lot.

Atelier · Mon 28/12/2009 14:00:10

I made an example to show how you could rearrange the different parts to make it much clearer. I'm assuming it's a modern house so I've changed the colour to an off-white rather than grey.

By all means use what you have already, but look at this to give you an idea of what you could move around.

PS. Backgrounds for the first one are almost finished!

Danman · Mon 28/12/2009 14:51:17

AtelierGames for some reason your picture doesn't show on my PC.

I think it is your image host.

or maybe your link cause I can see ur signature and thats from the same image host

Danman · Mon 28/12/2009 19:47:54

Here is one improved version
I took AtelierGames advice on making the house white and does look a lot better Improved the shape alot and changed the grass to make it look more like grass.

Really would like more criticism.

Scarab · Tue 29/12/2009 05:09:08

Is the darker area at the top the roof? If so, then you've got some major issues with perspective.

Take a look at the road, this is what you have defined as the horizontal plane, and the roof sits clearly at a differen angle (granted this should be true to some extent, because the roof is higher, but the perspectives here are way too different not to be noticed.

Also, if you look through the windows, you can see more of the floor in the upper level than the lower level, and this just wouldn't happen (remember the planes!).

Furthermore the water in the corner doesn't look like water mainly for these two reasons:

It has no texture
It has no effect on the grass around it, and looks like it has been painted on

In short, one colour is not enough to make water look like water on what appears to be four shades of grass.

Also, the horizon is a bit plain, perhaps a skyline, the ocean or some mountains could help break up the monotony.

Peace,
Scarab

p.s. The grass looks great!

SpacePirateCaine · Tue 29/12/2009 06:01:28

Hi Danman,

The picture is starting to come together, certainly. I wanted to point out that the house's perspective is a little out of whack, causing it to look a little Escherian. After you sheered off the front (left side) of the house a tad, it didn't quite look anymore like it's part of the driveway, but it's still hard to get a sense of depth.

I don't want to say you should completely redraw the picture, but the house could use some tweaking to help the player understand from first glance that it's a house..

Now, regarding your background - I think one issue I'm getting out of it is that the horizon is completely flat - that also makes it harder to get a really detailed feeling of depth. There are a few steps you can take, but I think the easiest to accomplish would be to add in some movement to your horizon, maybe a few layers.

Of course, mountains or hilly regions are an old favorite. You can do wonders with some jagged lines in the background and a washed-out color that suggests haze.

This is an example that I pulled from my backlog of work. The horizon is still flat, though I pulled the sides up in a growing foresty area, and in the back, just added the outline of mountains, and a big cloud bank in the back.

Heavy, ground-bound cloud banks can help to give the feeling of a cold morning. You can also create wispy clouds with a few uneven off-white areas on your sky - if you like I can try a quick edit of your background to show you the idea.

If you don't want mountains, there's also 'ocean', but it's a little hard to pull off in some ways. Is the black area behind the house a freeway or something of the like?

Danman · Tue 29/12/2009 13:02:26

Thanks for the replys. The water I was going to make reflections and more detail too but I was going wait a bit maybe look at some tutorials first on reflections.

This is a real house that's in a neighborhood so I could draw more houses in the background and hills.

I am definitely going to add some more trees and plants and things in the garden I just haven't had an idea on what texture or color to do palm trees and plants.

Great advice on perspective I really needed some help on that thanks.

The black behind the house is a wall but I need to add a texture to it I will do it but maybe when I get photoshop.

SpacePirateCaine: if you could do an edit of my picture to see how you do clouds it would be great.
I never really had a good idea on how to do good clouds. Thanks

I will give an update on the picture on Thursday

.

SpacePirateCaine · Tue 29/12/2009 20:21:24

Alright, so this only addresses the issues of the background.

In regards to clouds, there are plenty of ways to do clouds, but I like generally to stick with the good ol' cumulus, which is usually flatter on the bottom and bumpier on top. The main thing to keep in mind with clouds is though, yes, they are basically amorphous white masses, they can still be shaded.

It looks to me like you're using a 'spraypaint' type of tool to make your clouds, and though you get plenty of spatter doing such, I generally advise against using a spray tool of any sort like that when doing pixel art - I much prefer a sense of 'controlled chaos'.

The mountains I added to the background are also mostly just for filler, but hopefully it looks to you like it breaks up the monotony of the skyline. Remember - very few places in the world are truly flat, so unless you're on a huge stretch of flatland or looking over the ocean, it's best to put something in at ground level.

Something that far in the distance doesn't necessarily need detail more than a silhouette, though more patient and dedicated artists than myself may deign to add in some shading or even more detail to the mountains as well. There aren't a lot of flat colors on your image here, so you may actually want to do that.

All up to you - this is just one set of ideas.

SpacePaw · Wed 30/12/2009 00:35:04

just a quick perspective correction. Not close to perfection but you should see what is wrong

also try to draw clumps of grass (Mine are just messed up

Didn't try too much, just wanted to show you how perspective affects their size

)

Danman · Wed 30/12/2009 11:53:52

I love your edits their a lot better perspective and good clouds and hills.

But I am going to do some house's (maybe just roofs and a couple hills but green forest like hills and lots of trees.

To do my clouds I used a tool on Pro motion called the smear tool which doesn't work well. the way you do clouds does look a lot better than my funny looking white blobs.

With the perspective I will show another background I made tomorrow of a close up of the upper window.

Thanks gave me some good ideas. Great Help

SpacePirateCaine · Wed 30/12/2009 13:18:59

Hey Danman,

Good stuff. Always better to really work on ironing out all of the bugs in your technique before you have to go back and fix multiple images.

I noticed that you also mentioned water reflection - put very simply, to get a convincing reflection, all you really need to do is flip objects so that they're mirrored (obviously) and darken them -- as a general rule of thumb, water reflections will be darker - chromatic reflection will be the same color, so anything reflected in them is going to look a darker shade than its actual counterpart. Of course, having the water right at the base of your building there, without anything it can really reflect and show to the viewer as a reference, will more likely look like a patch of concrete.

I'd suggest maybe taking your little pool and extending it to the right or left (or both) to have something to reflect (Either the window to the left, or the edge of the building and sky to the right).

Danman · Wed 30/12/2009 13:35:39

just to a ask quick question about the reflections what could i do to make it look more like a pond maybe I should use a green shade like a transparent shade ( i forgot the word a low opt--something). and then to animate should I use a layer and distort it or something

SpacePaw · Wed 30/12/2009 18:19:26

I wouldnt go animating a pond. It's a still water. A static reflection and maybe a water lily and you're all set

the word you forgot is opacity

make the pond greenish and make the flipped reflection semi transparent

Danman · Wed 30/12/2009 19:02:04

Opacity that's the word

. But I do want to animate something there I don't like static water it just doesn't look right to me

and I am the director

of my game. What I will do then maybe I will make an animation of a fish moving in the water or jumping out the water. Great I will give a huge update on this tomorrow very likely 24 hours from now.

Danman · Thu 31/12/2009 16:07:24

Updated I took most of everyone's advice. But i couldn't do the clouds like Space Pirate's
But I did my own style. For now it will be a static reflection until I decide on how to do the fish.

So please criticize.

SpacePaw · Fri 01/01/2010 01:15:56

Umm..I can't see updated version...Is it just me?

Danman · Fri 01/01/2010 19:48:26

Here can u see this one.

. I think it was the image host coz I can't see it either.

Atelier · Fri 01/01/2010 20:10:44

To me the perspective looks good, but you have some scaling issues. Those parking spaces are diddy and the furniture inside the rooms are much too small. I suggest you make all the windows a uniform size (at the moment all of them are bigger or smaller than each other) and blocking them out with curtains so there's no need to pixel the inside. The grass (great textures by the way) could have a path winding through, towards a main door on the front.

Just some suggestions, but it might help to stop the background being too top-heavy.

Danman · Fri 01/01/2010 22:49:34

I think AtelierGames was quite right about the windows. So i changed it.

I added a gradient to the sky.
But had to reduce the colors so a some of the colors are different.

I added a path changed the parking.

And I would like some criticism on this close up of the top floor Room
I am going to make the windows bars but I was going to edit other things first.

So let the criticize begin please.

Scarab · Sat 02/01/2010 04:53:17

I urge you to look at the windows of Spacepaw's, mainly looking at the amount of floor shown in the upper and lower windows. That magic word beginning with P comes to mind

In regards to the pond, look at the roof of the lower level, on the left of the picture. This is a dead flat area, and think how big it is (the size of a large room).
If you compare that to your pond, you can see that the shape and size is all wrong considering where we are looking at it from.

I'd recommend putting in some perspective lines on a different layer just to help you keep things consistent (because on its own, it's a very nice looking pond

)

With the close up, I'd suggest adding a character as a size reference, because the table looks either very big, or very low to the ground, and as such it is hard to tell how big the drawers at the back are, and thus how far back the room goes.

peace
scar