My first decent room. What do you think?

[Wretched]

Yeah, go on and make a game. Your graphics will improve, not that their at all bad anyway, with time, so why not release some games along the way.

[hedgefield]

Looks great, very adventure-gameish. Keep it up!

[Das Plans]

Hey there!

Thanks a lot for the comments!

@Ionias: Masterpiece, huh? OK, I'll go for the extra shadows.Ã,  Ã,  By the way, I'm using Photoshop according to one of those Kafkas-Coffee-tutorials about indexed colors.

@MrColossal: I see... I guess fading the edges will be my next lesson. Thanks for that!

@Helm: Yeah, I know about the scaling. This is what gives me real headaches. At last, somebody recognizes the weirdness of that lamp, though.Ã,  Oh, about framing a sports-car: Jerry Seinfeld does it! What a reference.

@Farlander: Yupp... Maybe I should have mentioned that I used that hotel room from FOA as a reference. I learned from it. I didn't copy it. At least I tried. Thanks for the encouragement.

@Aussie: Consistency is the most important thing in my eyes. I'll just see which improvements I can still make without losing control over my "style".

@all: God, I love this community. Talk about being helpful. Thanks!Ã, 

[Shane 'ProgZmax' Stevens]

You've done an excellent job with this background, aside from the relative sizes of the objects (which has been covered) and the apparent continuation of one gradient into another object.  When I look at the walls and then the panelling, it seems as though the same gradient was used to fill them both and then just tinted a different color.  This makes the items seem less individual to me, since the effect of light on a wall will look different than light on the wood panels.  As for the shadows, I'd say add basic shadows (under the table, candelabra, book, chair) unless you are comfortable with more complicated directional shadows (mirror, the corners of the walls).  Also, note your placement of the light source.  It's current location would not provide equal lighting to all areas of the room, so the outer walls, door, and plant would be darker as well as part of the floor in front of each wall (based on the light angle).  Again, these are more complex lighting issues and I'd only try it if you feel confident or want to make the overall image look more realistic.  Great work!

I did a really messy shading edit to give you some ideas.  Bear in mind that I eyeballed the lightsource and used only the colors in the original image.  The main point you should look at is since it is a dome light, the ceiling and walls above it will diffuse to shadow.  Since I used your palette, this didn't carry over as well as it should have.

[Helm]

excellent edit.

[Das Plans]

Excellent, indeed...

Thanks a lot for that, ProgZmax! I see, what you mean. My mistake was, that I did things in the wrong order. I shaded the walls, the carpet and everything, and only then I added the lamp. Next time shading comes last!

Boy, these were some helpful hints, you all gave me. Can't wait for the weekend, to give it another shot.   

[Shane 'ProgZmax' Stevens]

Glad you found it useful, just realize that, as the light moves from the corners of the ceiling toward the center (where the dome is) it should get darker rather than an equal shadow as in my edit.  I use an 8-bit program (Pro Motion) and since your palette was already full I couldn't add more colors to make the shadow effect look right. 

Also, this is a very easy effect to accomplish if you follow the general path light should take.  I'll explain what I did in case you want to give it a try:

1.  Look at the light source(s) in question and try to determine (either by drawing lines from the center or by eyeballing) where the light will fall.  Areas that are not directly hit by light will get darker as they fall farther away from the light.

2.  I stencilled out the colors for the outer walls and mirror and then applied a black transparent brush to it.  You could achieve the same result in Photoshop by applying a black layer with 60-85% transparency.  I repeated this method for the far left wall, bearing in mind that part of the wall would be hit by the light, so I used a gradually lighter shade (or a higher transparent layer).  I repeated this same effect with the ceiling, just guessing the shape the light from the dome would make on the walls. 

3.  The floor and ceiling corners needed to be dark as the walls will cast a shadow, too, and the door knob, light switch, painting, candelabra, book, chair, table.  The wall cast a shadow over the tree as well.

4.  Highlights.  I went back and put highlights on the tree, book, and candelabra.

Again, you can achieve 90% of this easier than I did it just by cutting out pieces of the background and pasting them in as layers with different transparency levels.

[NoHopeForSome]

What Programme is this on? This is amazing

[Khris]

You won't suddenly be able to draw great backgrounds just because you start using a decent graphics program. That assumption is so horribly wrong.
You've got to practice, that's all.

Please don't dig up months old threads just to ask a question like this. You can always PM the thread starter.

And there's this stickie right at the top of the first page:
The Big List Of Paint Programs!

[Xtiph]

Hi there and congratulations on this nice room. I wish i could do that.

One thing that's disturbing me though is that the round table is casting a rectangular shadow.   

Cheers Xtiph

[Kweepa]

That's the pattern on the rug.
This thread is four months old. Whee.

[Penguinx]

I know. I wish people would stop posting to it already.