First background - perspective, proportion, colouring advice

[Mancomb]

Decided to finally get to grips with this background making business. I realise this may not be the best way to do it but I started in greyscale and am now midway through colouring it.

It is single point perspective - the blue cross is my horizon. The main character would be about the same size as the default roger sprite in AGS if he were walking on the pavement.

I am trying to go for a misty city scene from perhaps 40-70 years ago. The road is supposed to be a flyover type thing so the 'base' of the foreground buildings is actually about mid way up. The cylinderical thing in the middle is supposed to be an exit with steps going down to a lower level. The arch is supposed to be off centre but help getting it right would be appreciated also. I had the idea of using low saturation colours everywhere but the main areas - at the moment only the blood seeping out of the manhole cover and the lamp (can't get that dithering right...)

So I would like some advice on the perspective - is that reasonable? The proportions? Am I going the right way with colour? I've been playing around with a brick effect on the leftmost building - any advice on how to improve this? I like the idea of having the black outlines in the background and none on the player character. Any other advice you feel necessary welcome too.

2x

[cobra79]

The first thing I noticed was that I would not feel safe with your fence. A continuous handrail is an absolute minimum for me.
Perspective-wise it looks good. The tunnel leads nowhere and I think you will have to insert an additional layer of houses.
From memory I don't know how big Roger is at the moment, so I added one of my small sprites (42pixel high) and it looks good, but the sprite should not be any larger imho.
I like your color choice and would only slightly desaturate them to increase the feeling of height.
Very good background and a nice idea.

[Khris]

I really like the clean style.

-Definitely add another layer of buildings. It feels like there's a river or something between the colored houses and the rest of the city. Maybe that's what you intended, though.

-Add roofs. Just a grey bar at the top, maybe a little cube representing the roof access, a chimney, something like that. It looks too much like Cube City atm.

-Nitpick: Going from the height of a story compared to 40px (Roger's height), the houses are set back a good deal from the street.
The lamp would never shine on the side of the building like that, nor on the archway's wall.
And don't color the brighter parts yellow, instead, increase the brightness slightly.

[Mancomb]

Thanks for the help so far.

Changes made: coloured pavement, midground buildings added, removed yellow pixels around lamp and moved it one pixel right, added rooves, desaturated blue buildings.
I tried to add some shading on the archway a la cobra's edit but I am not convinced this is the way to go. And I decided not to put windows on the midground buildings so it makes them less busy and seem less important.

[pslim]

This is a cool background and I love what you did with the sidewalk in the latest edit. Because most of it looks so neat, the blood seems to be a bit flat in comparison.

[Oddysseus]

I think the midground buildings should have gray outlines, like the lamppost has in your most recent edit.

Looks good so far, though.  Kudos.

[tube]

There are some objects that do not adhere to your chosen perspective. Check the leftmost and uppermost windows of the building in the right for example. The errors are small, but sufficient to draw my attention.

You should also listen to Odysseus and make the outlines of the new midground buildings stand out less. It's a bit disconcerting that the edges are very well defined while there's no other detail. You might want to go a step further even by dropping the saturation of these buildings somewhere between the foreground and background to make the distances more apparent. Hints at windows and other low-contrast detail might not hurt either, but this is for you to decide.

How about getting rid of black outlines altogether while you're at it? Try out using dark shades of the fill colour for outlines and maybe none at all at the inside edges.

Otherwise a nice idea and an interesting perspective, even though it does call for quite a lot of sprite scaling.

[Mancomb]

I've changed all the outlines and I think it is much improved for it. Also adjusted saturation of midground buildings.
tube - as to the window in the upper right of the pic - I found that I couldn't change it without making it look more out of perspective. And you implied there were others, could you point them out?
Next job is to work on that brick effect/texture/thing.

[cobra79]

I don't have much time at the moment so I will make it really short.
I like your new roofs.
I would not color the pavement.
I took another look at the tunnel and it looks odd, because the inside is wider than the outside, so I tried something different.
For the second layer of houses you could place the buildings in such a way, that you take good use of the vanishing point and the foreground houses and only have to paint the front.
The sign merges to much with the background.



The windows in the background are probably a little too small.

[tube]

tube - as to the window in the upper right of the pic - I found that I couldn't change it without making it look more out of perspective. And you implied there were others, could you point them out?

There are several lines that deviate slightly from your vanishing point. This is not a big problem unless there are large differences in a small area. Here's a ten second doodle to point out a couple of the bigger offenders (in yellow) with one problem area circled in red: (I hope this is not too messy, I'm in a hurry)



Feel free to ignore this as nitpickery. I seem to be the only one bothered by this, so maybe it's not such a problem after all. Take a look at what cobra did with the second layer of buildings instead.

[Mancomb]

Yes that archway looks much better like that thanks cobra. The pavement was an inspiration from my home town - I quite like it how it is but once I'm somewhere near finishing I'll do a little demo in AGS and see how it feels. And that lighter shading on the right of the left building intrigues me - and thinking about it should be like that as I was thinking light from upper right.

I can see what you are saying with the midground buildings but they don't seem to quite fit somehow. When I get a bit more time I'll play around with it.

The trouble with this size bg is it is hard to get the angles correct. I shall definately have a go at those yellow lines tube - especially that bottom one.

Thanks for all the help so far. Maybe once I've got the hang of this I'll be able to make an AGS game without using ripped MI graphics.  :