I've been slowly working on this background for almost three weeks now. It's still not finished, but I'm getting impatient and hungry for some sort of feedback to stay motivated. So I thought I'd just post it here to get some thoughts on it. I know it's hard to criticize when it's still work in progress, so some parts are obviously sloppy because they're not finished... just give me your general impression if possible. Thank you!
(http://hvavra.sweb.cz/vstu.png)
3 weeks?! Wow, that's commitment to a background. Though you probably should've done it earlier I think.
The perspective is all over the place, did you try this background with a character? You can draw this, but if you try to put a character with proper scaling, I think it'd be impossible.
For example the gate on the left and the corner with column certainly give the impression of 2 vanishing points on the same horizon, BUT stairs make it seem like the horizon is much higher (where the top side of a stair turns into a line). The door in the back is maybe scaled with the other door, but again the stairs indicate it should be much farther to the back and thus smaller. The table is overall a very strong indicator of perspective (because it has very clear straight lines, but again it seems like it has a separate vanishing point.
I really like the style, the rendering and the details. I think lighting is rather good (I suck at it, but not sticks out for me so far). One thing, maybe that table has a texture that seems very repetitive.
You really got some skill, but you need to sketch out and properly set up the perspective and then paint and texture.
Well, it's been small steps every day, I'm not talking about three weeks of full-time work. Plus I draw everything with my mouse, which isn't the fastest technique ;).
Anyway, thanks for the input! I've only recently gotten into the whole setting up a perspective thing, been reading some tutorials on vanishing points, but only after I've already gotten most of the objects placed. Apparently I don't have much of a spatial imagination, but I think I have a rough idea what you're talking about - I'll see what can be done with the stairs for example. As I imagine it when I look at the picture, the stairs getting smaller is not only indication of perspective, the top ones are actually smaller than the bottom ones... but I realize now that doesn't make much sense ;).
I'm not sure what's wrong with the table though. If somebody placed it on the floor like this, the perspective would be more or less similar, wouldn't it? Or is this just an aesthetical thing - that it should be facing another direction so that the lines are in tune with the rest of the objects? The texture on the table is hand-painted by the way, no copy & paste... but I agree it does have that flat, tiled look, I should work on that.
I guess next time I'll sketch the basics in google sketchup first to get the 3D elements right. Thanks again!
Oh and I actually have tried it with a character and it seems to work. Only I can't let him go all the way up the stairs or too far into the foreground :)
Being rather not an artist but a beholder, I give my opinion as the latter.
Honestly, I do not like lightning very much. It's a bit annoying being like that (drawn in stripes), though that may be personal feelings. What's more important, it looks irrealistic when being drawn all over the background. We cannot not see the light in the air, we see objects lit by the light. Dust, for example.
Also, judging from geometry, the foreground would be well lit, but the background around the corner should be much darker, in my opinion.
Shadow from the table is wrong, unless you assume there another light source, above it. With the light coming only from the portal, table's shadow should be on the opposite wall (the one we don't see).
Hm, it seems you have spent an unfortunate amount of time on details, while neglecting perspective and light/colour scheme. My advice is to paint the whole scene again, with hardly any colours or lighting. Then you decide on the light source, and start painting surfaces hit by that light. Remember that the light source must be the brightest part of the image - the light emitting from it can't be brighter!
Crimson Wizard: Thanks for the feedback, I'm planning to work on the light beams, make them more irregular and maybe lower their opacity. I'll think about the shadow of the table.
Andail: Well, I'm definitely not going to start completely over :). Could you please be more specific about what you think is wrong? What you say about lighting is correct, but I don't see how I neglected it. If you're talking about the blue color behind the door, that's not finished of course, there will be something painted inside it. Colors and lighting can be corrected quite easily without repainting the image, it's all separate layers.
I understand that the perspective is off at some places (mainly the staircase), but I don't think it's so botched up as to redo the whole image. Or is it? Again, specific tips would be more helpful. But thanks anyway :).
I am not the one to give a helpful critics, but nonetheless I like the background and the somewhat strange perspective.
The stairs are the only thing that don't work for me, but that has been told already.
For me the colors and patterns look good and if there will be a reason for the light to come through the left door in separated beams (like a grid) it looks fine to me, too.
But it's always facinating to see the tips and explanations of our specialists about perspective and such things in this thread. So I hope someone will find the time to come up with such a helpful example/explanation-image here, too.
It looks fantastic, and definitely has a certain style to it. It reminds me a little of Disney movies.
I'd follow the above advice to get a more realistic looking image. If, however, the perspective is a style choice, then I would focus more on the lighting issues (rays, shadows).
A few additional things: You may want to darken the foreground rocks a bit more to add contrast. Also, the wall to the right of the stairs seems to lack detail in comparison to the rest of the image.
Good work!
I am very impressed with that background! That is seriously awesome!
Quote from: Honza on Tue 13/11/2012 12:56:27Well, I'm definitely not going to start completely over :). Could you please be more specific about what you think is wrong? What you say about lighting is correct, but I don't see how I neglected it. If you're talking about the blue color behind the door, that's not finished of course, there will be something painted inside it. Colors and lighting can be corrected quite easily without repainting the image, it's all separate layers.
I understand that the perspective is off at some places (mainly the staircase), but I don't think it's so botched up as to redo the whole image. Or is it? Again, specific tips would be more helpful. But thanks anyway :).
The problem is that perspective is fundamental to the whole image. You can't tweak perspective after you start. You either set it up correctly before you do anything else, or it'll be wrong, and there'll never be any way of correcting that. Think of perspective as like building the foundations for a house. If you get it wrong, the house will fall down. And you can't just change it a bit, because by that stage you've already started building a house on top of it.
The problem with your image is that you seem to be working to three separate vanishing points, which is too many for this type of image to begin with (you use three vanishing points for aerial views, usually). For this image you should be using two vanishing points, and they should be aligned on a horizontal plane (the 'horizon line'), which yours aren't. This means we end up in a situation where different objects in the world appear to be obeying separate laws of perspective, which is why - for example - the table looks weird even though it's positioned at an angle.
Here's a good tutorial on two-point perspective: http://www.technologystudent.com/designpro/twopers1.htm
As you can see, your horizon line always remains flat, but you move the scene 'up' or 'down' depending on your viewing angle. And the best way to draw items accurately is by always first drawing lines from your vanishing points that join up with the objects. You delete these afterwards, of course, but it's near-impossible to get the perspective bang-on without following this process, like so:
(http://www.explore-oil-pastels-with-robert-sloan.com/images/4-TwoPointPerspective.jpg)
Does that help at all?
Lewis: Yes, it helps, thanks for taking the time to explain thoroughly. As I said, it seems I don't have much of a spatial imagination, so while I understand the theory, I don't notice mistakes others see right away. The table actually looked ok to me until I compared the texture of the table to the texture of the floor. Now I recognize it's slightly off, but it still doesn't bother me as much as it probably should. If you could point out where and why exactly is the perspective wrong in my picture, I would appreciate it a lot, but of course I don't expect you to... your feedback is helpful as it is.
In keeping with my tendency to do things in the most complicated way possible, I've decided to first make a rough sketch of my background in Google Sketchup, then choose a camera angle, redraw it by hand, scan it and color it in Photoshop. Here's the first draft that came out of this process:
(http://hvavra.sweb.cz/predhradi_3D+.png)
(http://hvavra.sweb.cz/predhradi_kreslene%20kopia.png)
I was rushing to try it out, so I didn't model everything in 3D, and now the parts I've added by hand are still off. But I'm making progress :)
dactylopus, pharlap: Wow, thanks for the compliments! As much as I value the honest and constructive critique others are submitting, my ego is most grateful for those two short posts :)
The new background looks great! I think SketchUp will be a very good tool for you. I'd love to see this when it's gotten the same level of detail as the first.
Your early art already has me interested in the final product.
It almost seems to suggest the end/begin of a bridge-like structure this way. I think it would do wonders making it steeper:
(http://i48.tinypic.com/m6ouq.png)
Btw: even steeper than in this outline thingie. :D But you get the point. :P
I like what you are doing/showing here. And I also agree with Crimson about the "light" effect from that first post. It is so distracting and detached it almost seems like a cheap watermark on top of some real nice artwork.
Thanks for sharing. :D
Good call with the steps, I imagine it really would look better - will give it a try. I completely agree with you and Crimson about the sunbeams, they're more or less a placeholder and I'm about to work on them.
It's really good to have feedback, makes me want to continue working on this :).
There are some great tips on perspective here that I may well take on myself. My backgrounds are pretty terrible.
(http://tinypic.com/r/50o9aq/6)
(http://i47.tinypic.com/50o9aq.jpg)
My main problem is a total lack of artistic ability. The above represents a great de3al of work.... I just cant draw worth a damn. Its proving to be my main obstacle. Ive produced many games but havent put any up yet as the graphics just spoil the product
pharlap - maybe this thread will encourage you to get something out there: http://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/forums/index.php?topic=47133.msg633382#msg633382
pharlap: A lot can be improved by hard work. Just look at art you like and try to break it down into small tasks - rough sketch, outlines, colors, shading, etc. Then take a pencil and an eraser and redo your image ad nausea until it comes close to what you like in other artists. If you really have no talent at all, it probably still won't be breathtaking, but you could get well above average.
Alternatively, make a deal with an artist. If your games are short, I, for example, would probably like to help you out in the art department :)
Quote from: Honza on Sat 15/12/2012 08:44:07
pharlap: A lot can be improved by hard work. Just look at art you like and try to break it down into small tasks - rough sketch, outlines, colors, shading, etc. Then take a pencil and an eraser and redo your image ad nausea until it comes close to what you like in other artists. If you really have no talent at all, it probably still won't be breathtaking, but you could get well above average.
I agree. They say practice makes perfect. I think that includes working with your own limitations, at any given point, and that can yield very interesting results too. Communication is more important than making things look all fancy. At least that way you will be sure you are not just getting lost in just pleasing the eye. And in the end you will get better at what you do anyway. Have a deeper understanding of where it came from. It's nearly imposible not to pick up on widely used tricks in the long run.
Also: pharlap, your screenshot doesn't hint of any artistic lack and communicates a great deal imo. But yes, if thats not the aesthetics you are looking for, either get some help or keep at it. There is always the eraser.
One thing you might wanna try is working backwards. Rather then draw a tree take away the things that are not a tree. That might work if you have more of a sculptors temperament.
Keep at it. :D
tamatic: Come on, let's be honest here... that image communicates an almost complete artistic lack ;). But then, how long did it take to create? 15 minutes? An hour? And how much thought, planning and attention to detail was invested in it?
Why so many people think they can't draw is that they assume it shouldn't require any effort. Especially no mental effort. "I don't know how to draw a tree right away, thus I'm no good at drawing". While all it takes is to type "a tree" into google, study how a tree looks like and slowly learn to copy what you see.
What really makes an artist, in my opinion, is vision. Once you can see in your head what the result should be, there are various ways to achieve it. Talent is just one of them.
By the way, this is an earlier version of the castle/cave background:
(http://hvavra.sweb.cz/jeskyne_original.png)
While the current version isn't great, I think you'll agree there has been some progress :).
Quote from: Honza on Sat 15/12/2012 11:13:22
tamatic: Come on, let's be honest here... that image communicates an almost complete artistic lack ;). But then, how long did it take to create? 15 minutes? An hour? And how much thought, planning and attention to detail was invested in it?
Well, I am not kidding. And believe to sense the effort put into it rather well.
If you want to discuss such matters maybe make another thread named idiosyncratic aesthetics?
Hehehe. :D
Quote from: Honza on Sat 15/12/2012 11:25:47
By the way, this is an earlier version of the castle/cave background:
(...)
While the current version isn't great, I think you'll agree there has been some progress :).
Yup, I especially love that piece of collapsed, eroded ground you added.
I made a perspective stair guide for a friend awhile back. It assumes some perspective knowledge, and I spelled auxiliary wrong multiple times, but hopefully it is easy enough to follow along for anyone having trouble with them.
Btw, this is my first post, hi everybody! :P
(http://i.imgur.com/EoEus.png)
xrg: Hello and thanks! I'm afraid I still can't grasp the basic concepts of perspective. Let me show you the picture my spatially challenged imagination paints for me :). Let's say I draw a simple cube using two-point perspective, like this:
(http://hvavra.sweb.cz/perspektiva_priklad_01a.png)
As I imagine it, from a bird's perspective it would look like this:
(http://hvavra.sweb.cz/perspektiva_priklad_01b.png)
Now I can move the cube around using auxiliary lines from the vanishing points, but as I see it, the cube is still facing the same, convenient direction. Like this:
(http://hvavra.sweb.cz/perspektiva_priklad_02a.png)(http://hvavra.sweb.cz/perspektiva_priklad_02b.png)
.
.
.
My question is, what do I do if I want to rotate the cube into a less standard angle?
(http://hvavra.sweb.cz/perspektiva_priklad_03b.png)
Applied to your tutorial and my background, I understand how to draw stairs facing the same angle as numbers 1 and 2 in the picture below. But what if my staircase looks like 3? How do I work with auxiliary lines then?
(http://hvavra.sweb.cz/perspektiva_priklad_04b.png)
I assume there is something very fundamental I'm not getting, but I can't figure out what.
pharlap, tamatic: I've just noticed the sentence "The above represents a great de3al of work" in pharlap's post. I missed that before, and I'm sorry for judging it as a quick job.
This often happens to me (as can be seen in this thread ;)) - instead of trying to learn something from others, I resort to endless trial and error with little progress. It takes far more time than if I actually tried to learn something, but it's much, much easier mentally - I don't have to struggle to wrap my head around how others do what I can't do, I just enjoy the "freedom of creating". If this is your case, my advice would be to use other images as examples and watch tutorials. I've spent countless hours doing things the hard way, only to find some obscure video on youtube showing that they take a few minutes if you take the right approach and use the correct tools.
Quote from: Honza on Sat 15/12/2012 13:48:56
xrg: Hello and thanks! I'm afraid I still can't grasp the basic concepts of perspective. Let me show you the picture my spatially challenged imagination paints for me :). Let's say I draw a simple cube using two-point perspective, like this:
Now I can move the cube around using auxiliary lines from the vanishing points, but as I see it, the cube is still facing the same, convenient direction. Like this:
My question is, what do I do if I want to rotate the cube into a less standard angle?
Applied to your tutorial and my background, I understand how to draw stairs facing the same angle as numbers 1 and 2 in the picture below. But what if my staircase looks like 3? How do I work with auxiliary lines then?
I assume there is something very fundamental I'm not getting, but I can't figure out what.
Unless you are making very technical drawings, the perspective grid/lines are used mainly to make everything more easy to read. Get a feel for a consistent space. Guidelines for aligning things, get a feel their relative size/distance and spot unfitting parts more easy. (Sometimes with photos also to correct the lens bending.)
You could also use it to plot out those unaligned and complex shapes. For that its handy to be aware that, in this kind of 2 point perspective, the vertical lines always remain vertical no matter where. Then you can to go into denser resolution (just add more and more refrence lines till it makes sense)
But depending on the nature of the work, and to save time, I would stick to only plotting the main lines,- create the main feel of the space and go from there.
In your top view example
shape 3 would be behind the horizon.
You know, people keep arguing about perspective, but in my opinion the original isn't that bad. Remember that this is a cave, so we shouldn't expect everything to be right angles and perfectly flat horizontal surfaces. A staircase where the steps seem to slant down? No problem!
Quote from: Snarky on Sat 15/12/2012 14:51:25
You know, people keep arguing about perspective, but in my opinion the original isn't that bad. Remember that this is a cave, so we shouldn't expect everything to be right angles and perfectly flat horizontal surfaces. A staircase where the steps seem to slant down? No problem!
Hehe, it's indeed not recommended to get very technical about rock formations and their projections into idealized 3d space. Well you can but then you might have to become a mathematical genius. :D
Like I said.. the lines are simply a guide, not to replace your own gut feelings on how things can/should look.
Judging from all the comments saying the perspective is irreparably wrong in my background, gut feeling didn't work out for me :). So I need to understand where exactly I went wrong. People are trying to help by demonstrating the theory, for which I'm grateful, but I'm still not able to apply it to the specifics of my image. I see some details that seem a bit wrong, but it doesn't look off to me as a whole.
Just to be sure, this is how I imagine the room in a top view (not that I planned it this way, but it's what I see in the picture as it came out):
(http://hvavra.sweb.cz/jeskyne_top.png)
Yeah, I think you could just take that liberty with that room. Unless you want too animate someone walking/rolling down those stairs. You could cut to the next scene when they only do the first few steps.
It's a cartoon-like world.. why should all the perspective and proportions make sense in the first place?
But if you are worried about it... Then think about the size of that door in the back.. and the size of the character when it would be standing there... that would be about just as big when he reached the top of those stairs according to your top view.
And I might add I think your earlier version is great. Reminds me of the work of Marten Toonder.
I just can't get over the childishness of the first version... I may try to pass it as a style, but it just looks inept to me compared to the newer version. Then again, the second one took about ten times as much time.
Well, since I'm at it, I might as well post two other early versions of backgrounds, both to be redone completely.
(http://hvavra.sweb.cz/pokus2.png)
(http://hvavra.sweb.cz/pokus3+.png)
I really like what your showing here. Good development.
I particularly like that shot with the character. Lots of interesting things going on there.
Sometimes, you really want to have right perspective. But on these pictures... I like the wacky stairs. It's part of your style. From these two, I like the first one. If you spend more time on that, it could look really good.
Quote from: Honza on Sat 15/12/2012 13:48:56As I imagine it, from a bird's perspective it would look like this:
(http://hvavra.sweb.cz/perspektiva_priklad_01b.png)
The black line is the horizon; in the 3D view, the points on that line are at infinite distance from the viewer (where parallel lines meet).
Thus in the top view, you don't see it.
To draw angled cubes, you simply move the vanishing points. Or, if you have already established a two-point perspective, you can construct the position of each corner individually.
Shape 3 is tricky to do; you'd have to approximate the curves.
Starting from your sketch, I constructed a 3D view:
(http://i.imgur.com/TpOam.png)
Stuff outside the circle isn't actually visible.
It's really tedious to do this for complex scenes, especially staircases are annoying to draw that way, let alone curving ones. I'd go the Sketchup route.
Khris: Thanks for taking the time to do this! It seems my instincts weren't as wrong as I thought they were. Did you really draw the 3D version using the lines shown, or did you use some transform tool?
Anyway, Sketchup it is :)
I didn't use a tool, no. The curved lines are guesstimates, btw.