backgrounds

[Tolka]

Whatever I do.  It's always the backgrounds that give me a hard time.    I'm commutable working on characters, and animating in 2D and 3d.  But when it comes to drawing out backgrounds… it just   flops.

In my first game I went with computer line drawing with water color it was simple, and it worked out rather well I think.  http://www.tfsnewworld.com/game/hallway.jpg  but it was only doable because of the 3 rooms being indoors and relatively baron.  I would like to have a slightly more organic and detailed look to the backgrounds in my next project and after a few hours on it this morning… I came up with this.

http://www.tfsnewworld.com/game/circus2A%20copy.jpg

The perspective is a little off, and it could use more detail… but over all It doesn't look to bad on its own.  The problem is when I drop a character in it just doesn't mesh… at all with the style I draw them in.  http://www.tfsnewworld.com/game/charinsamp.jpg   

I think it has to do with the lines… the characters are crisp while the backgrounds all fuzzy.  I'm going to try tracing the objects in Photoshop tonight and soften the colors.  See what happens, but I'm open to ideas.  I really need to make better backgrounds.

[aussie]

Once I made a step-by-step tute. I'm not sure if it helps, since it's probably too different from your style, but you may get some ideas.

http://www.geocities.com/pscribetute/

You need to cut and paste that link on your browser, otherwise geoshitties won't find the page.

[DoorKnobHandle]

Yeah, I have an almost similar tutorial, it just doesn't fit your current style very well. Check out the "background"-link in my signature!

[Elric]

A perfect way to learn how to paint backgrounds, is to learn from the start. Tutorials are useless in my opinion, since they teach you technique, and technique is something you develop after you've studied art. Buy a book or two, learn about lines,tones,composition,perspective,proportions etc. With a good amount of work, you'll begin to compose things that will "feel" right.

I can offer no advice on the backgrounds you posted, since there are major flaws in all the elements of art, yet you shouldn't be discouraged. Learn and come back to see the difference. 

[DoorKnobHandle]

A perfect way to learn how to paint backgrounds, is to learn from the start. Tutorials are useless in my opinion, since they teach you technique, and technique is something you develop after you've studied art.

I haven't studied art and still I wrote this tutorial. My tutorial simply shows a way of drawing backgrounds that I stumpled upon while trying to improve as a graphical artist. I realize that my final product from the tutorial is no way near a real piece of art or something very pretty, it still does is purpose and is better suited for adventure games than a lot of other graphical attempts out there. I don't think you have the right or reason to call tutorials "useless".

[Elric]

I, by no means, meant to offend you or tutorials in general. I realise I used an inappropriate word and I apologise for that. What I meant to say, is that tutorials can get you only that far. Studying art will be much more fulfilling.
I hope I made it clear now

[DoorKnobHandle]

That's true. Of course, tutorials on the internet, no matter how good they are, will never replace a full knowledge of art or anything. But for independant adventure-game creators, I personally think that the know-how that you can gain by reading good and effective tutorials is more than enough to create satisfying background- and spriteart for independant adventure games.

No offense taken.

[Candall]

Studying art will be much more fulfilling.

I suppose it depends on the person, because I found the opposite to be true of myself.

My studies in art were great for fine-tuning technique and learning the basics of various media, but all of my great "Eureka" moments came while I was experimenting on my own or lost in thought attempting to solve a problem.

[zabnat]

I, myself find tutorials almost the only way to go. But this requires that you have a strong mind and vision of what you want to do. This means that don't just take one tutorial one take all the things said in that as the absolute truth, but do many tutorials, see what fits you best and combine things in those.

And yes, I think your problem is mostly with the lines. Fitting your sprites with background requires them to be with same style. Now you have refined sprites with black outlines and sketchlike backgrounds with coloured outlines. Propably you need to go with more detail with the background, refining it to almost at the level of sprites (remember to keep it so, that sprites don't get lost in the background).
As with the first game you have black crisp outlines in backgrounds, so they don't seem too much of different style.
Let's see if this makes any sense tomorrow when I'm sober

[Elric]

Studying art will be much more fulfilling.

I suppose it depends on the person, because I found the opposite to be true of myself.

My studies in art were great for fine-tuning technique and learning the basics of various media, but all of my great "Eureka" moments came while I was experimenting on my own or lost in thought attempting to solve a problem.

I agree since individualization is the next step after studying art. Only by experimenting can you achieve a sufficient level to challenge the viewer. So naturally, taking the fundamentals of art and implementing them in your own psyche leads to the development of a style

[LilBlueSmurf]

I love your new character, just thought I'd get that out of the way.  Two things came to mind when I saw the character.  The first was already mentioned - taking a long time and working on the background until it is refined on a pixel by pixel bases.  That of course takes a lot of time (the sharper and less painted looking, the longer) and takes a lot of practice.

The other thing I thought of was simple cel shading.  The easiest way for me to get that look is using a vector program (illustrator or corel draw).  You can keep things fairly basic and easily keep nice clean outlines.  You could even start off in a vector program and get some nice clean shapes and a general layout and then bring it into another program to add in details if you feel they are needed.

At any rate, you seem to have a pretty good art sense, but I don't think you are taking enough time.  Backgrounds are not just going to happen in a few hours, and most likely not even in a couple days.  When you hang around on forums like this with some awesome artists that can churn out some great work relatively fast it is hard to remember that sometimes.  Just take it one step at a time starting from a fairly detailed sketch (or an equivilent).

If your stuck for ideas on just what the final results need to look like to acomadate your sprites, you could always cruise around the forum and grab a bunch of backgrounds other people have done until you find one or more that work pretty well.  It is always nice to have reference art and there are plenty of different styles on the boards.

[Tolka]

thanks for the comments.  some of them were helpful.

just to touch on a few points.   I have lots of art background and theory and training.   most of it focuses on 3d, characters, animating characters, and so on.   The problem is I have very little practice with environments.  And I have a hard time with inorganic objects in general outside of a 3d environment.


the "new" character is an old one I used in the first game...   I'm putting her into the game right now just as a visual test.  she's in the right style, and since the characters I will be using in it are still trapped in my sketchbook (around 7 or 8 in total, one, maybe two, playable. 

I find that I learn the most by doing my own thing... with side of tutorials.  I never really do them I just look them over and pick out bits here and there that look useful about perspective or layouts or line weight or what have you. As I found with Maya, and with character drawing.  there are as many different how's, as there are artists.   So I don't really try to copy specific technique to much.  Just learn from it.

As for working pixel by pixel,    whew.  if I was working at a lower resolution I might be able to manage that.

I did two more quick tests based off a new sketch.

http://www.tfsnewworld.com/game/circus2c.jpg

test one,   the character definitely fits better,  but I still don't like the lack of detail,   I don't think it is going to work overall.   this is the style I used for my first game.

http://www.tfsnewworld.com/game/circus2b.jpg

This one the character fits better... without black lines... I think it's the crisp edges that do it.     But my attempts at detail were going horrifically so I aborted it...  I was using marquis select to fill areas of color then going in and trying to shade in painter. The results were kind of... not good.  But it's closer to what I would like.    I'll take another crack at it latter.  Cept without painter,   and more cell style...  probubly a diffrent layout sketch to.


edit,  ahha  I think I got somthing.

hows this look?