Deck of the villan's ship

[Mats Berglinn]

The latest finished background or rather "almost-finished-but-maybe-need-some-improvement" background. This is the deck of Captain Pepe Roni (you haven't forgotten him, have you?).

I have looked at the ships from MI3 (from the insult swordfighting) as references. I'm not entirely sure about the planks in the floor and the same goes to the ladder to the cargo hold. I will add some detail like the ship's wheel and some lamps later.

If you wonder that those things are on the floor, the circulars are the shapes of the knots and the ones with black holes are the knot-holes.

So, what do you guys think?

[viktor]

I't looks nice. But it's a little empty. Why not add some ropes to the mast. And some barrels on the deck to make it alittle more full. I also noticed that the stairs don't realy look like stairs. More like a ramp or something.

I have looked at the ships from MI3

Well those ships were prety empty since they needed the space for the sword-fight.

[Babar]

Using vanishing points and perspective lines from the beginning is a good idea with these backgrounds. Right now the perspective is a bit messed up on the planks (the middle one is most obvious, you should make it a bit wider from both sides), ladder and the position of the cargo hold itself as well as the railing behind the front railing. I agree with viktor about the stairs, they kind of look like a ramp.
Maybe you could add some pegs or a ladder to the mast, so that people can reach the crow's nest easily. If you want it to be villianous, maybe you use darker colours and add skulls and weird wood carvings on places like the stair railings

[Khris]

I did a paintover to illustrate the proper use of a vanishing point.

I used the waterline (=horizon) and the railing on the far right as reference where to put the vp.

[Neil Dnuma]

I tried some drawing, didn't care much about the distance between the steps, but you should get the idea. Also, the stairs have to stick out on the floor, otherwise they'd be 90 degrees steep, and hard to climb.

[Mats Berglinn]

Here is a new version of the deck.



I have darken some of the colors, fixed the stairs, added some barrels, the ship-wheel (although I had trouble paint the other "handles" on it so I just made the top, right, bottom and left ones) and what-was-those-again on the mast. I also fixed the planks on the right side (thanks khrismuc and Neil Dnuma for the paintover and blueprint of stairs) and fixed the opening for the cargohold (I will add the grate and ladder later). I'm not sure how to fix those other planks but I will check it out myself. If I can't, I'll tell you guys.

Just some info here: This ship is a two mast ship and it's the front mast that has the crow's nest, not in the one you see here.

[BlackMan890]

Well, you should make the wood follow the vanishing point
And make the stair come a little front, make some of the wood disapear behind it (see what Neil Dnuma did)

I will keep posting when i can get my computer on

[strazer]

The BG looks nice but could use some shading and has still a lot of perspective problems.
I found this tutorial very helpful: http://www.lyndale.vic.edu.au/viscom/drawingsystems.html

Also, I'm not quite sure about the size of your characters. The door is very small yet the railings on the stairs are huge. If your characters should fit through that door I would make the planks smaller too.

And the edges of the stair steps should overlap the railings like in Neil's example. Still looks more like a ramp to me.
Also, the stairs shouldn't end at the bottom of the wall but extend below it (see Neil's example).

[viktor]

now that you hawe barrles on the ship it is a little improvment. It dosn't look so empty. But now the barrels a stapeled up in an unnatural way. On a ship you newer set objects like that since there is a danger of them falling.
Also the hole in the flor should folow the lines of the wood on the flor.

[Mats Berglinn]

I'm back from Christmas celebration at my parent's and finished on the latest version of this background. It have been a lot of work. I know it's not finished yet but I'm posting this to check if I'm heading in the right directions.



Changes

I have added some shading (although it's not complete, I'll take care of the rest later)
Remade the stairs with help of the example of Neil Dnuma. Trust me, it was very hard to do them.
Changed the perspective of the planks.
Also I got rid of some of the barrels, not only because of Viktor's point but also because of the new stairs.

[InCreator]

not too bad. I see that you're still learning, so picking on every single part of the image wouldn't be too constructive or helpful.

But here's how to continue your studies:
1) practise drawing things in right perspective as much as possible. It can be "totally learned" like memorizing a poem or math formula. There's several ways to make it easier, such as vanishing point system, which khrismuc demonstrated, or drawing over 3D scene/photo, etc.
It wouldn't be too hard. Even without any use of additional help, it is possible to draw things at right angle, just by feeling how things should go. This comes from experience.

2) And second step would be shading. Now, shading isn't a science you can "totally learn", there's many different techniques and ways to do that, and if learned enough, each artist develops his very own style. This is what you should practice trough whole time you spend on drawing. I'd suggest to start with 2-color shading: take every (differently) colored part of the ship, pick just few tones darker tone, decide where light source is - and try to add second color according to that.

Ah, I also made a little pic to show how trapdoor's perspective should really look like


note: this edit was according to my "perspective feeling", using vanishing point system would give much more precise result.

[Khris]

Some help with the construction of the stairs:



took me about 10 mins

[Pod]

He's using one point perspective, not two.

[Khris]

I know...

But the second vp is needed to make the steps equal in depth.
If you know how to do this with just one vp, I'm all ears...

[Neil Dnuma]

Here's how I think you can do that with one vanishing point...



These stairs are still pretty steep, and would benefit from being pulled a little more out over the floor

[Mats Berglinn]

That's good, Neil but think you can fix pic by pic instructions instead of a animation, please?

[SpacePirateCaine]

I find that one of the most important thing in setting up a good room is foreplanning - what Mr.  Dnuma was attempting to express in a condensed form is how to map out your steps on your 2D surfaces, if I am correct.

Allow me to elaborate a bit, to save him the trouble.

The first step is to create what I like to call bounding boxes (mostly because of my quake level designing days). What you want to do for starters is to have your wall and floor, and to know where your stairs go on both surfaces. Your image is a straight-on, single vanishing point image, so it's relatively easy, your vanishing point is mid wall level, so the first point will be to create a 'bounding box' (In my own terminology) for your stairs, thusly:



The green lines represent your vertical surface(s), and blue, horizontal - the red is your horizon, and the little vertical line is your VP (You know this much, but I'm just reviewing for the sake of posterity. I just kind of arbitrarily decided on a length of the stairs (poking out on to your deck), and boxed it off. The purple lines are your slope - if it looks too steep, pull the bottom edge further down and make your bottom step 'deeper'. Remember, it'll end up a little shallower than this, so keep that in mind.

The next step is to determine how many steps you have, by plotting them out on your wall (vertical surface). In order to have all of your steps the same height, and consequentially depth, all you need to do is measure them so they are equally spaced on your vertical surface. Here is my image with the steps measured off:



The next step is the tedious one - you need to plot out your step surfaces in relation to the VP. They will intersect your 'slope' lines (purple) to make the slope of your steps. Now, you won't be able to see the faces of the steps above your horizon line, but it's still crucial that you measure all of your steps this way so that the steps are placed correctly. Your lines will travel from the VP through the corners of the steps, thusly:



If the last step was done correctly, the lines between your slope and VP lines should be perfectly horizontal, like this (I erased the lines on the back wall to reduce confusion):



You're almost done, now - as you can see, we have a bunch of platforms now that just need to be turned into blocks with vertical lines. As you're not doing any funny 'overhead view' perspective sort of work, that can be handled simply by drawing lines straight down from the points where your step faces and the slope line meet, like so (The orange lines):



Now, we connect those axes below the horizon line (The ones above are invisible because they're above our line of sight), and voila! after a little cleanup work, erasing the slope line and other stuff now blocked by the stairs, you're done. Deceptively easy.



And with a little coloring, for good measure.:

[Pod]

Excellently done

[Khris]

He's using one point perspective, not two.

True, but if you want to stick to just one vp, everything has to be parallel. Take a look at the cannon's stand, its bottom lines should meet at another vp far to the right.

Neil Dnuma & SpacePirateCaine: very elegant! I hadn't seen THAT diagonal, although it was right before my eyes

[Mats Berglinn]

A new version. I know that the stairs are unchanged but I'm going to them next.
I have made two changes here.
I changed the stands for the cannon and added the grate for the cargohold. Does those look correct?

krismuc: I do have some shading. How could you miss that? They are right there!