Hi!
Using tuts to pump up my drawing skills, I've managed to amaze myself by drawing this. (it's for this months MAGS.)
But since no man can judge himself, I'd appreciate it to know what bugs you about this. And if somebody knows a tutorial about drawing sand, I'd appreciate a link; I'm not too happy about those sanddunes.
(http://i264.photobucket.com/albums/ii175/twinmoon_1979/outside-1.png) (http://i264.photobucket.com/albums/ii175/twinmoon_1979/chucks.png)
This background uses extreme character scaling (100-25%). I've put some quickly drawn guy next to it to show the proportions. The fence is meant to be half finished, in case you're wondering.
I like it, It looks good.
The only thing I would suggest is, change the tree into a palm tree or something. The sand reminds me of a tropical island island or a beach somewhere. The tree just looks out of place IMO.
Of course that's just me, and you might have good reason for the tree being the way it is :P
Otherwise, keep up the good work. I like the Character too, it all looks very clean.
EDIT: Forgot that it was for MAGS, so yeah it's fine the way it is. Might ruin the 'point' of the MAGS this month if you change it. I dunno. 8)
All looks fine to me. Stick with this style and you should be right on the money as far as graphics are concerned.
I like the tree, reminds me of a farm :P Only gripe with the tree is to make the greenage more, sort of looks flat ontop of the tree.
Have to say I like the style its awesome, and this would even make a really good style in a more hi res drawn way too.
Keep it up, what tut did you use?
Thanks for the positive reactions. I made the light green area a little bit bigger, which improved it. (I tried adding lighter areas inside the tree, but it just didn't look great.)
That's a good point about the cactus. I won't change it, but I'll let the characters notice it. It can be easily integrated in the story.
Quote from: Afflict on Tue 04/03/2008 13:11:43
Keep it up, what tut did you use?
I didn't use one tutorial specifically, but read a lot of them to learn the basic techniques, especially shading. I guess I owe most of it to Increator's background tutorial (http://www.hot.ee/increator/draw.htm).
EDIT: And I used Eric's tutorial for drawing lo-res characters (http://kafkaskoffee.tripod.com/tutorials/chartut.htm).
Twin Moon's link seems to be broken. Here's the correct link (http://www.hot.ee/increator/draw.htm)
No, just made some weird typing error. Fixed!
I would like to know why you made the downcast shadow of the fence and the dunes with a gradient or houndreds of colours while the tree, the cloud? the house are very minimalistic in this sense?
The fence at the very front... Where does the light come to it? From this perspective it looks as if the sun was behind it to me. I mean when you look at the shadow it casts, straight to the side, not to the back. Just some little things you might want to think about. Depends how perfect you want it to be with a months notice.
Quote from: Tuomas on Wed 05/03/2008 20:27:44
I would like to know why you made the downcast shadow of the fence and the dunes with a gradient or houndreds of colours while the tree, the cloud? the house are very minimalistic in this sense?
The picture uses 146 colours, so that's allright.
I could have chosen to do the shadow on the fence in two-three colours, but since I already used so many colours on the sanddunes, I decided to use a gradient.
Does it really look out of place?
Quote from: Tuomas on Wed 05/03/2008 20:27:44The fence at the very front... Where does the light come to it? From this perspective it looks as if the sun was behind it to me. I mean when you look at the shadow it casts, straight to the side, not to the back. Just some little things you might want to think about. Depends how perfect you want it to be with a months notice.
I'm not sure I follow. That yellow thing in the sky is the sun, it's light hits the fence from the right and casts a long shadow to the left / down-left.
Could you perhaps explain with a quick paintover? (for me this image is an excercise in shading, so I'd appreciate it.)
I really don't want to, and I really don't have the time. I also find myself very lackign at drawing backgrounds, but as I did open my big mouth, I'm sure I must at least do something. So see here http://www.2dadventure.com/ags/outside-1_copy.gif . I drew the red lines to indicate how I see the fence and the sun going together. I also drew kind of a shadow. About the dunes, I can't really say. I just feel, that a gradient is usually the cheap way out, it doesn't look drawn, and you really don't need it, as in, looking out the window, you see a lot of shadows, and they donät really have a constantly changing shadow. Sure, the light bends due to its nature, but only to the extend of making the very edge of the shadow a bit blurry compared to the rest.
Now sand dunes have a tendency of being round to some extent, so it would be easy to blur, but only the top part of it. However why I said they looked out of placce is, that you use obviously less colours in the rest of the picture. It seems as if you made the whole image in MSPaint and then opened in Photoshop to add the shadows. If not, then, shouldn't the cloud too be a gradient. Perhaps you might want to try something close to the style you have in the cloud to the dunes. Also, googling for some images might help :) I'm sorry if I just confused you or took your time with unimportant things, just thought you deserved to know.
I knew I might be asking you for a lot, so I really appreciate your clarification. I feel it has helped my understanding of shading.
Quote from: Tuomas on Wed 05/03/2008 22:35:16However why I said they looked out of placce is, that you use obviously less colours in the rest of the picture. It seems as if you made the whole image in MSPaint and then opened in Photoshop to add the shadows. If not, then, shouldn't the cloud too be a gradient. Perhaps you might want to try something close to the style you have in the cloud to the dunes. Also, googling for some images might help :) I'm sorry if I just confused you or took your time with unimportant things, just thought you deserved to know.
I sorta agree with you there. While gradients look nice, they clash. A case of 'kill your darlings'.
I adjusted my picture and came up with this: (24 colours now!)
(http://i264.photobucket.com/albums/ii175/twinmoon_1979/outside.png)
I still have a lot of work to do on my shading, though.
But on first look, it looks a lot, I mean, *a lot* better than before when it comes to the shadows/the dunes.