C&C on style of background

[miwi]

Hello,

I'm starting a project, and I'm trying to decide which style to use.

Since I REALLY can't draw, and wanted somewhat nice graphics to blend with my (hopefully) mature history, I decided to take some photos and play around with them to make them look like paintings.

Well, there are, like, a hundred ways of achieving that, and I'm having a hard time trying to figure out which one is better.

These are four tries I had with a single photo, and decided to ask which one you guys think is nicer, which one has more of that feel "it's a really nice painting", well, which one would you like to see in a game.

Comments about other ways of doing that would be apreciated, too.



And, uh, since this is my first post here... hello, I'm a 20-year-old girl, from Brazil, who loves games. Well, that's about it Oh, and I have a blog, but most of you don't understand portuguese, so, whatever :p

[Ryan Timothy B]

I found an interesting tutorial, I applied it to a few images and it doesn't look that bad.  You have have to do a little tweaking (applying other layers over the blur that have had a different effect, and set opacity to low. I did that a few times, sometimes just to define the edges. But it was mostly just fooling around.)

http://www.trap17.com/index.php/turning-image-into-cartoon-style-photoshop_t8438.html

I hope this makes your image look better than the 4 you have.

[cat]

Why not use the photo directly as background? There are some games that use photobackgrounds.

[InCreator]

Honestly, I don't like any of them, but one on lower left is one I would pick, if at all.
Ryan Timothy's tutorial is quite good, but I would add posterize filter after the tutorial and reduce levels alot.

[miwi]

I'm taking a look at that tutorial, but I'll have to adapt it since I only use Gimp.

Meanwhile, what do you guys think about these other two pictures?






(sorry about jpeg)

[Snarky]

Try VectorMagic (linked to earlier by someone in a different thread).

Using their vectorization service and a few Photoshop filters, I got something I think looks halfway decent:





(Original image from Wikimedia commons)

You'll have to either crop out their watermark or pay up for the non-marked version, obviously.

One thing to keep in mind is depth-of-field. As in: paintings (usually) have everything in focus, while many photos only have the main objective in focus. If you're starting with a photo with blurry areas, no amount of Photoshopping is going to make it look like a painting.

Does it look like a painting? Eh, kinda. I think you're still able to tell that it's just a photograph run through a bunch of filters, but it's probably good enough for many purposes.

I dont' think this style is particularly useful for adventure games, however. Why don't you just try to paint over the photos, using the underlying shapes and colors as guides? It's going to look more genuine than all this trickery.

[Zufub]

Same things that you made in gimp you may easy make in Irfan View ;P But picture from photoshop is.. nice ;P

[nihilyst]

Try to add a sky. It will definitely improve your BG.

[miguel]

Hi miwi, I was thinking about a way that characters would fit in that type of Bg's and I think you'll have to photograph them and use the same filters otherwise it's going to look weird.
It's only my opinion but maybe the cell-shade look would work here.

[miwi]

I'll give VectorMagic a shot, thanks for the link.

A sky is a really nice idea, indeed.

And I was thinking about using photos of the characters and giving them the same effects... I mean, I'll probably use 3D rendered characters and give them some effects, or something like that.

Thanks for the input, folks

[Phemar]

You'll have to either crop out their watermark or pay up for the non-marked version, obviously.

Or you could just make your image a bit longer than the original so the watermark doesn't go on the picture... Then just cut it out afterwards.

BTW, of the original 3 posted, I think the 3rd looks the best.

[Ali]

That seems to be a potentially visually striking location. Rather than simulating a paint effect, I would use photo-editing software to make it a really striking photograph: Play with levels and colour balance; dodge and burn to add subtle light bloom or a vignette The bottom left image is the closest to what I'd like to see, but I think the diffusion is over the top.

'Art' effects always look rather generic to me, and they'll destroy the unique details of the location. I'd rather see a striking photograph than a fuzzy 'painting'.