First background, needs detail

mouthuvmine · Fri 31/08/2007 02:08:00

I'm not sure if I'm just a little retarded with color or what, but it looks all wrong to me.
Also, are there any recomendations for paint progs that are very photoshop-like?

CS3 is the devil...

BTW, the player is only ever reaching in the window, so there's no concern as far as walkable area. Any suggestions, even just on new programs, would be awsome.

pslim · Fri 31/08/2007 04:46:09

The biggest problems I have with this bg are the high contrast in the carpet texture and the stray pixels in most of the outlines. They both create a sort of unpleasant, noisy effect.

The perspective is a bit weird but it really doesn't detract too much, in my opinion, and the style is lively.

The saturated colors are reminiscent of classic adventure games, but if you're unhappy with the color scheme my suggestion would be to see what happens if you work with the same colors at a lower saturation.

I think the march of primary colors in the closet is a bit unrealistic; most wardrobes have a more subtly gradiated palette, I think, emphasizing the individual's favorite colors or the ones that they think are most flattering on them.

Overall I think this is a cool draft, and it could work all on its own if you were doing the whole game yourself and didn't want to get bogged down with spending too much time on each individual piece of the art. Since you want to improve it, though, I suggest that you take a bit more time refining the shapes of the objects in the room. Some of them read very well (the clothes in the closet, the jeans on the bean bag, the clouds) and I think it would improve the whole background if you brought the others (the nails in the wall which look a bit like spit balls, the bean bag which doesn't quite rest flat on the ground, and the spray bottle, which took me a while to figure out) up to the same level of clarity.

If you're unsure how to improve the look of an individual object, reference photos can be a huge help.

mouthuvmine · Sun 02/09/2007 00:51:18

EDIT : I pulled back the saturation quite a bit, and played with contrast. Outside of the last suggestion involving the line tool ( I'm just stubburn and like my lines

), I'm not really sure what else to try. I think it looks better now though!

R4L · Sun 02/09/2007 05:14:36

The actual perspective seems wrong for an adventure game. Is this for a cutscene?

Anyway, looks pretty good! Main character has a nice old disney cartoon feel to it.

mouthuvmine · Sun 02/09/2007 05:47:58

It's not a cut scene, but you don't actually go in the room. You just reach in like from a ladder while holding the window open. So I intentionally made the room small and kinda closed off. Wasn't really THINKING disney for him, but that's cool too.

Thanks though.

Stupot · Wed 05/09/2007 02:59:30

I like it. It has a fun feel to it. maybe knock the saturation down a tad to make it more eye-friendly.

Also remember, if any objects are going to be pick-uppable you can't paint them on the background because you're going to wantthemt to 'disappear' when you character picks them up.

Grim · Fri 07/09/2007 16:50:40

The colours are too raw and strong. Tone it down a bit. Also using a straight line tool would help you IMO.

Sean · Fri 07/09/2007 19:58:04

I agree the colours are a little strong, and the edgers are a bit 'hard'. I tried to soften up the edges, and wash out the colours a little to give you some ideas. I'm not sure if this will help at all but if it does and you'd like some details on what I did feel free to ask.

I love your art style by the way, but you're colouring could use a bit of work ! Good luck

(I hope you don't mind paint overs, if it's a problem let me know!)

mouthuvmine · Fri 07/09/2007 21:41:35

I like the colors, just not so much the glow everything seems to have. I tried lowering the saturation in photoshop, but the colors only became washed-out. I couldn't find a good middle area. How did you accomplish what you did? Since there's really no light in room itself, some of the "glow" (I don't know what it is) actually looks right in my mind.

Sean · Fri 07/09/2007 22:30:57

Alrighty,

In order to get the colour's a little muted I added a Hue/Contrast layer and played around with the sliders until I got something slightly less 'in your face'. I
After I'd established the colouring, I chucked a fresh layer on top. Painted across, and around the edges of the window with a white brush at medium transparency (30-40%), painting across certain patches more than once in order to make them less transparent. I then switched the layer style to Soft light and brought the layer transparency to 65%. This helps add a bit of ambience around the window.

I duplicated the original layer, and switched it to 'Lighten' 50% transparency and 50% fill. Then I threw this layer though a bog-standard blur filter. This again add's some atmosphere..

I added a final layer (again a duplicate of the original background) and manually smudged the pixelly bits such as the floor. I added a layer mask to this layer, and hid it. The parts of the image that looked a little sharp, I painted over on the mask layer "revealing" the smudged layer. (If you haven't got much experience with masking this bit isn't neccessary, and doesn't make a huge amount of difference)

To finish things off, I duplicated the image and flattened it (merged all the layers into one sheet). Before adding a soft/gentle omni light that darkened the edges of the image.

I'm a little tired right now so I'm not sure how much sense that's going to make, I've cleaned up my original edit a little and I'm going to attack the .PSD so you can take a look as that might help you out.

I've done a bad job of explaining this I'll try to bullet point everything when I've got some sleep under my belt. Hopefully you'll be able to toy around a bit and find something that works

http://rapidshare.com/files/54098342/Softblur.psd.html

mouthuvmine · Sat 15/09/2007 09:44:56

This is what I came up with. I like it.

Here's a really stupid question; How can I resize a BG image (larger) with out it coming out stretched awkward. I went through the PS tutorials, and googled it, but maybe I'm just not wording it right. I have a BG (not this one) that's too small for the character, and I want to resize it witht ehsame image quality.

cat · Sat 15/09/2007 10:01:32

Well, I did like your other one better. Now the colors are somewhat dull and do not fit the bright blue sky outside.
If you want to keep it that way you should atleast make some light beam that is coming from the window to the bed.

mouthuvmine · Sat 15/09/2007 10:13:57

Want to do that, but the character is only ever in the window, so I'd want figure out a way to anitmate that. I wanted it to feel like no one was home, but the rest of the game world is well lit and colorful. If anyone would have any idea for the sun beams, that would be awsome. I'm almost done with the sprite for the window, and I woud like to try to have him casting a shadow in the suns rays.

Steel Drummer · Sat 15/09/2007 23:55:28

Quote from: R4L on Sun 02/09/2007 05:14:36
The actual perspective seems wrong for an adventure game. Is this for a cutscene?

Anyway, looks pretty good! Main character has a nice old disney cartoon feel to it.

Main character?? I don't see a main character... anyways, looking good, it reminds me a little bit of the art style from the 'Duckman' cartoons and game.. however I liked the rough edged style you had in your original version better, instead of the smoothing out job you did on the latest one. You should keep the same colours, just not have some things in the picture smooth, and some of the pictures rough-edged. It still looks good though, I really like the style!

mouthuvmine · Sun 16/09/2007 00:26:33

SteelDrummer:
He's not really "done", but this is the main character

boobah · Thu 20/09/2007 23:01:44

Wow, you've gotten much better at this than I remember. Way to go. When I get a computer of my own I think I might start one or figure out a way of being part of yours. (That's why I signed up here, in hope that I'll use this forum later) Could you email me what you have done so I can have a look? oisterpunx@yahoo.com

Evil · Fri 21/09/2007 01:11:41

Character looks good, but his head forward could be one pixel wider so it'd better match the side view.

Mazoliin · Fri 21/09/2007 14:19:23

Don't forget to shade the hair in the window animation... but do you think he will fit good whit the dark background? Maby you could try to make the character darker when he's in the room. I belive the light is going to be behind him when he's in there.