Futuristic Street: I need advice!

[Albino-I]

So I'm in trouble. First of all, take a look at the background..


320x200 pixels


640x400 pixels

..and tell me what the hell is wrong with it?

I think it's a nice scene overall, but I just can't figure out what's its problem. Maybe its the shadows (mostly because there isn't much of them) or something with the perspective. Drawovers are welcome and any advice which can help me to improve it.

Oh, the scene where this background appears starts from the top of the screen and then slowly scrolls down in a cutscene to reveal the 'noodle restaurant' and the place where the player character can walk and interact with objects. It's also supposed to be a futuristic chinese street with lots of neon lights.

[AlbinoPanther]

Are you aware that this 320x400 will not fit screen

[Albino-I]

Oh, the scene where this background appears starts from the top of the screen and then slowly scrolls down in a cutscene to reveal the 'noodle restaurant' and the place where the player character can walk and interact with objects.

[AlbinoPanther]

Huh sorry we are little

[DonB]

Very nice background, especially the top view of the town far away, very nice, and I like the idea of scrolling down at the beginning, but..

-I think the buildings on the foreground are a little too dark
-I think the advertising markment is way out of perspective and way too empty (the green/orange blocks is nice but useless, put something in like a real advertising)
-Also I think the lower perspective isn't right, the floor squares arent equal by perspective as the bar or the buildings on the foreground, and the bar ain't got the right perspective anyway too.

Much things about perspective above, where is your vanishing point?
Well.. not that my pictures exactly always have the right vanishing points but you should change that for sure for better looks

[ildu]

Here are some suggestions made on the image:



First of all, you should really raise the horizon, since the vanishing point is on the horizon. If the horizon would be where it is now, you wouldn't see any background at all. Make the tilescreen clearer, but less prominent. I still don't know if it's a wall or a ad banner. You need a lot of depth as well. Add buildings to the black areas that arent in the skyline. Add sides to the signs and the stools to add depth. Add levels of color to the foreground that lead to total black. Also, don't connect the foreground building on the right to the skyline, unless it's colored in some way. It just looks confusing when the two blacks overlap.

When the camera is lowered to show a new scene above or below the original, it's called booming. When it's tilted to show the scene above or below the original, it's called tilting. Basically that means that in tilting the vanishing point stays in the same place, and in booming, it moves with the camera. So it depends which you shooting for. Since you're showing the tops of the buildings and everything is straight, you're probably using booming. So you gotta fake the vanishing point moving somehow. A good way is to use parallax mapping. So when you scroll the image down. Move the foreground objects faster than the the main objects and the skyline slower than main objects. But in terms of the image itself, you need to use one vanishing point for the lower half of the screen and another for the upper half (which isn't really that necessary, since there are little to show perspective there).

EDIT: The tile banner is occupying too much space of the upper half of the image. If you put your hand on the lower half, you'll see that it's just too distracting and big. So make it more plain or add an image there or something.

[Azaron]

One idea for the tiled wall would be to make an add out of the blocks. Pick one color block to be the background color, and the other to make a picture out of the squares. Leave it tiled though. If you're into animated backgrounds, makes it change as the sccene scrolls down.

Overall, I like this background, although it does seem a little off kilter toward the bottom (the vanishing point). Blade Runner-y

[RocketGirl]

You know what I think the rea problem is, at least for my eyes? It's that this noodle restaurant looks like it should be inside. I'm not really sure exactly why, but it just doesn't look like an outside kinna place.

I think part of it might be the foreground, actually. It looks more like clutter than buildings-across-the-street. The framing makes it feel like we're looking in a window.  And the sidewalk blocks aren't quite big enough; they look more like floortiles, and since the road isn't visible because of the foreground clutter, it's hard to know that is a road.
And then there's the background. There's a street on the left with only one building and then a big black space where another building might be. Kinna confusing.

The checkerboard isn't just distracting, it's confusing. I have no idea what that's supposed to be, and it appears to serve no function. So one might spend way more time than necessary looking at that since it also draws the eye...

I think the barstools are also a problem. Most outdoor places I know have chairs that can be brought inside out of the rain. Of course, I live in Seattle, so...

I guess I can just sum this up by saying "too confusing". I spent the first minute looking at the picture thinking, "What am I seeing?" and "What's that supposed to be?". I think you need to simplify.

[Rel]

It's an interesting scene, and certainly very striking. I think the main problem I had when looking at it was that I couldn't work out what it was â€" the checkered billboard being the main culprit (at first I thought it must be a decorative screen on the back wall of the noodle bar, until I realised the bar was a separate building in front). The bar itself was the last thing I noticed, since it has much less contrast than the rest of the picture. Usually the foreground would have the strongest colours, especially when that's where you want viewers to focus.

One way to fix it: add atmosphere. Eg. objects further away look more like the colour of the sky (and have less contrast) than those close up. With such a dark sky, I'd also expect the noodle bar area to be much darker except for where you have lights.

The following is a quick example of what I mean:

I'm guessing there's a foreground object that extends up the right hand side, so you might want to decide what shape it is & seperate it from the background.

[Kinoko]

The only way those silhoutted building in the background make sense is if they're on a really, really high hill.

If they are, you're okay ^_^ I like the style very much!

[Shane 'ProgZmax' Stevens]

The one thing that stands out to me is it is so sterile.  It's difficult to believe a futuristic city without urban decay- be it rust, metallic bits here and there, and even trash.  Having a look at Blade Runner might give you a few ideas on how to achieve a gritty sort of look (and if I'm not mistaken, it seems to be an inspiration here with the outside chinese restaurant).  Will look even better once you differentiate the different constructs in the scene more.

[Andail]

The biggest issue is the mixed perspective.
For instance, the ground is in a central perspective, whereas the counter and some of the buildings are drawn in an isometric perspective.
Consistency in this department is cruical.

The second biggest issue I can spot is that the foreground shape (which is very big and prominent) blends in with the distant skyline, which makes it confusing to the eye.