Here's a test image I made in FOA style. C&C welcome.
(http://www.2dadventure.com/ags/indytest.gif)
Looks like a photo.. Especially the water. Try copying some colours and textures frm a FoA background.
Scotch, thats what I did.
That looks like a Gabriel Knight 2 background.
OK, but how can I optimize it?
I dunno, I'm really bad at FOA type or pixel artwork. (GK2 used photographs for backgrounds)
I know that GK2 used photos as backgrounds, it is full motion video.
There is a photoshop trick you might use to make bits of your picture look more "handdrawn" (the water for instance). Select the part of the picture you want to alter (use the lasso or marquee tool), crank up its' contrast and after that apply an artistic > cutout filter. It doesn't work wonders, and especially with surfaces like the water you may have to add some detail afterwards, but it is a nice and quick technique for "downgrading" scanned photographs.
The landscape looks good though! ;D
Sorry Miez, for I am using PaintShopPro. Look what i did to the water though. It looks a lot better now.
(http://www.2dadventure.com/ags/indytest2.gif)
I did a trick to the photo after resizing it and adding the textures - i reduced the colors to 128 and then increased them to 256 again.
Ah ... hmmm .... PSP probably doesn't have one of those handy filters. The trick you used works well! but the water looks very blue and flat - maybe you should add some reflections of the coastline in the water?
Can't wait to see your tutorial, Miez!
hehe - it's done, all 16 pages of it. As soon as the FoY website is up again (somewhere in 2016, I guess) we'll make it available. You can have a sneak preview of the finished tutorial image:
(http://www.xs4all.nl/~omnia/foy/final.jpg)
Good luck with your picture!
surely maaaarrrkkkeeehhh can find some where else to put the site while its down like most sane people
Miez, I would be glad to host the tutorial for you until the FoY page is up again. I have 1GB of traffic per month, but I doubt my own homepage uses much of that. I can't wait to see (read/study) that tutorial either!
What d'ya think?
That's a very nice offer, and I could host the tutorial on my own server as well. However, it IS part of the FoY website, so I'd rather wait for the website to come back online ... put it in its' proper place, so to speak. If it looks like the FoY website is going to stay dead for a VERY long time, I might host the tutorial somewhere else, in which case you'll be the first to know :)
Yeah, I understand about that. Hey, it's always good to have something to look forward to. :)
Hope that the site is up again really soon.
Vel: I really like your background. The only problem I can see is that there's not really much room for characters to walk around, but it surely would look great in a cutscene!
:o :o :o :o :o :o :o :o :o :o
it seems that....lots of people will be expecting your tute,Miez! ;)
BTWY,that BG looks great Vel!!!!
Miez, i tried to make a reflection with a low-density brush, but that doesnt seem quite right.
[img[http://www.2dadventure.com/ags/indytest3.gif[/img]
Miez, i tried to make a reflection with a low-density brush, but that doesnt seem quite right.
(http://www.2dadventure.com/ags/indytest3.gif)
looks like MS-paint paintbrush :)
It is Jasc PSP!
Here's it a little bit more updated
(http://www.2dadventure.com/ags/indytest4.gif)
it doesn't look bad at all - very nice in fact. I'd blur the reflection a little more, and add some short horizontal lines on the water surface using the water color (where a wave or ripple reflects the sky instead of the landscape).
Here's the final picture.
(http://www.2dadventure.com/ags/indytestfinal.gif)
Very nice! - maybe you should make the lines on the water that are close to the "camera" (near the bottom of the picture) somewhat longer than the ones near the top. That way you create some perspective: after all waves that are closer, look bigger.
Looks good Vel, good luck. And yep, as Miez said, the tutorial will arrive as soon as the FoY site is back online. Which is supposedly soon (within the next week or two).
m0ds
Vel, I also use Jasc PSP 7 and don't know how to do good water...
BUT, with PSP 3 I get good results with the brush (with wave patterns)...
If you can get PSP3, you'll have your problem sorted IMO...
I did the water that way:
I made a gradient with colors light and dark blue. I copied it into a new image, then reduced the color number to 5. I pasted it into the picture. i added the reflection with the textures from the landscape, but with low density and opacity. The I made a pattern with 6 hues of blue and added the lines.