First Attempt.

[Ethan D]

In my previous game my brother did all the artwork but he doesn't want to work on this next one so I'm learning how.  This is my first attempt at a background.





The things I cant figure out are:  

1. The stars don't look realistic. (I'm not sure what colors to use.
2. The wall doesn't seem like the right color for the carpet and all I could find that
worked was a gray color and that matched too much with the house in the           previous game.
3.  The lamp looks more like a giant flashlight.
4.  I'm not sure how to do lighting... (I'm using Microsoft Paint)

Sorry if these problems are to simple but I'd appreciate any help.


Edit:  I intend to make it darker over to the right so the empty space wont be a problem.  I just don't know how to do the lighting yet.

[Ghost]

In low resolution, you don't need to "be totally realistic"- creating an image that looks coherent is often more important. At low res, people tend to imagine the missing parts.

Some ideas:
* use three shades of grey for the stars, and add one dark cyan tone. That often looks very convincing- the dark grey stars will also add some depth
* try a not-too-bright orange for either walls or floor, and dot it with two additional shades that are a bit darker and less saturated.
* have a character remark on the very cool and superior shape of the lamp. It looks okay, I think I have a Sims household with a very similar lamp...

Paint, simple as it is, is not bad, always remember that. We have some very skilled artists who swear by it.

[Ethan D]

Thanks for the reply.  I tried two different things with the carpet.  For the lower floor I made a pattern with three different colors and for the upper one I just used the airbrush and used two patters.  The star tip worked great.  And you can see what I did with the wall.  I also changed the lamp to make it slightly skinnier.




If anybody has anymore suggestions I would be glad to hear them.

[Bensch]

first of:I'm no genius in paint so do not hesitate to dont like whatI'm proposing.

When working on a space-shot-em-up a long time ago i found a neat way to make your stars more shiny
(vary with there forms and brightness a bit)

the colorsceme below is a very powerfull tool (rightclick any color and it'll show up) to do some lightnings or shadows.

and light effects are nearly the same, here an very crude example on how you could proceed:

with far more shades it will look more realistic.

it is a lot of work for an effect which took you 2 clicks with a more appropriate  tool called "gradient" which is implimented in many comercial programs (paint.net is freeware i guess)


your brother seemed to used another program too cause the "preview screen" of your last game contains a gradient