Experiments with hand-drawn backgrounds

Milo87 · Tue 06/03/2007 19:08:45

For my current A2 Graphics project I persuaded my teacher to let me make an adventure game. The theme of the game is "treasure", and I was going to try and go for an MI style humour-adventure. But anyways, I digress.

I decided to use hand-drawn backgrounds - coloured in Photoshop - for this project, and I thought I'd post a test room up here, for all of you to ponder over.

basically, I started off with a pencil sketch, and because all my inking pens ran out, inked it in Photoshop and then coloured it. The white space is where the Lucasarts style GUI goes (thanks to Proskito, of course

)

Note the portrait. It's become kind of a thing with my projects.

Andail · Tue 06/03/2007 19:25:47

Well I say that's a perfectly functional background. It's cute and small and low-res and full of atmosphere

accolyte · Tue 06/03/2007 20:19:19

I agree.

Milo87 · Tue 06/03/2007 20:19:53

Thanks

Medical Waste · Tue 06/03/2007 23:05:33

Very nice background dude.

A couple things that bother me about it have to do with the horizontal beam nearest the back wall. The portrait looks like it's somehow jammed up behind it, and the cupboard thingy looks like it is very close to the wall, yet it goes higher then the beam behind it, which makes it seem like it must be cutting into it, or something. These things don't really make it look bad, they just bug me in a logical sort of sense

Da_Elf · Wed 07/03/2007 02:03:51

i love to see hand drawn styles, yours is looking good I would try to draw these things a lot larger to get in way more detail though. i know its well debated but i love the hand drawn style of MI3 CMI and the detail in those backgrounds

Daniel Thomas · Wed 07/03/2007 03:49:21

Looks good, Although I would prefer thinner lines myself..

I think it lacks a clear lightsource, it now looks like the chest is the lightsource.
Or maybe im wrong.

Milo87 · Wed 07/03/2007 16:43:30

Quote from: Medical Waste on Tue 06/03/2007 23:05:33
Very nice background dude.

A couple things that bother me about it have to do with the horizontal beam nearest the back wall. The portrait looks like it's somehow jammed up behind it, and the cupboard thingy looks like it is very close to the wall, yet it goes higher then the beam behind it, which makes it seem like it must be cutting into it, or something. These things don't really make it look bad, they just bug me in a logical sort of sense

Thanks for the feedback. I would have inked it at 0.2 before scanning, but didn't have a working pen :

I've found one now, though, so future backgrounds will be like that. Yeah, the beams bugged me too, I'll bear that in mind.

Quote from: zyndikate on Wed 07/03/2007 03:49:21
Looks good, Although I would prefer thinner lines myself..

I think it lacks a clear lightsource, it now looks like the chest is the lightsource.
Or maybe I'm wrong.

Quote from: Da_Elf on Wed 07/03/2007 02:03:51
i love to see hand drawn styles, yours is looking good I would try to draw these things a lot larger to get in way more detail though. i know its well debated but i love the hand drawn style of MI3 CMI and the detail in those backgrounds

I think I'll definetely start off with a bigger source drawing. The one at the moment is a few centimeters smaller than A4, so maybe draw them at A3 or something. It'll be interesting to see what works. Inking by hand will lead to thinner lines, hopefully

Da_Elf · Wed 07/03/2007 20:18:02

that was A4? isnt A4 a little larger than 8.5x11? the lines look a little thicker than i would have expected. ah well. a nice drawing pad size would be great i guess. but i guess the question is how big is your scanner? Ive been enjoying a wacom tablet recently but it sure doesnt beat pencil on paper

Milo87 · Wed 07/03/2007 23:27:29

Quote from: Da_Elf on Wed 07/03/2007 20:18:02
that was A4? isnt A4 a little larger than 8.5x11? the lines look a little thicker than i would have expected. ah well. a nice drawing pad size would be great i guess. but i guess the question is how big is your scanner? Ive been enjoying a wacom tablet recently but it sure doesnt beat pencil on paper

I've never really got the hang of tablets, but I guess that's a just a question of practice. We've got an A4 scanner, but stitching two A4 scans together isn't that hard in Photoshop. I traced the lines in Photoshop at I think 3px, so they are a little thick. I may trace the lines before scaling the room down to 320x240 resolution, since an A4 scan at 300dpi is massive. That would lead to thinner lines.

Oh, and to match the aspect ratio of the scaled room, I draw them in a 9x5 inch rectangle (not including the blank space for the GUI). Obviously that could easily be an 18x10 rectangle if I drew at A3 size

thewalrus · Thu 08/03/2007 15:10:35

I'm sorry that this is off topic, but will you still be workin' on completing Welcome to Dark Lake? I loved that demo and it would be a shame if that game goes unfinished....

Milo87 · Fri 09/03/2007 11:30:58

Ah, I was wondering if that was going to come up.
Don't worry, Dark Lake is still being made, in fact it's almost finished. But at the moment I'm coming towards the end of a lot of college deadlines, and this graphics project is taking up a lot of my time.
Dark Lake will be out at some point in the near future, though

Ubel · Fri 09/03/2007 22:30:25

I just LOVE the colors. That's it. Pablo out.