How To Progress?

[ScottDoom]

I feel really bad posting this here in its current state... But I'm really stuck on how to progress with it.

I decided to get back into game making with AGS and hopefully finish a game, and I started to draw something from an idea in my head. From that idea I spawned an entire game storyline and some puzzles and I think it'll be great.

Unfortunately I'm no artist and I can think of and program many different stories and puzzles but I rarely finish a game due to the huge amounts of pixel artwork involved.

Anyways, here's a background I started on:


Basically what I wanted to do was to have a house underground in a huge hole... But I'm having trouble deciding how it should be resting underground and how it is connected to the ground. First I tried a wooden bridge with rope sidings but it just didn't look right because I couldn't figure out the perspective. I was thinking stairs too possibly but I don't know how the perspective would look on that either.

Bleh... Also I was trying to draw a tree on the ground, but I'm just horrible at drawing trees. I wanted to have the roots hanging down underground and stuff to complete the split-view scene, but it wasn't working out. I wasn't sure how to texture/shade the tree trunk.

So what I'm asking is some suggestions, and perhaps quick black-line sketches over my drawing that I can follow in with and color/improve.

[Shane 'ProgZmax' Stevens]

I originally was just going to do a sketchy paintover of what I thought might work for your idea but it got a bit out of hand and I had to stop myself (I really shouldn't listen to Amiga game music while doing paintovers :o).

Basically, the problem I see is you've got too much empty space.  I moved the mountains down a bit but it could still do with more empty space reduction, maybe by drawing it in 320x200 instead (cutting out the mountains).  The reason I made the cabin and tree so small is due to where you've drawn your line for the ground.  With the size of the mountains the character would be quite small.  I also wondered what sort of setting you were working with and went with fantasy, making a rope platform in the tree that descends to an old thatched house lit by bio-luminescent shrooms.  I'm not sure if this will be of use or not, but I do like the concept!

[DonB]

Very nice, as always, ninjaboy, but how can people enter it?

EDIT; sorry, i see now thats a dumb question, i got such a dark monitor, coudn't see the tree

[AlbinoPanther]

From the tree.

[ScottDoom]

Thanks for the great... uhh... paint-over ProgZmax. I've seen your edits in other threads too and it's great stuff.

However, I think I gave out the wrong idea when I said I wanted it underground... What I meant to say is that I wanted it hanging down in a hole in the ground, suspended by some sort of beams on one side, with a way to get down to it on the other side.

After trying for a while yesterday and then trying to draw a character for the scene, I realized that the scene and the horizon were indeed to far back, making everything seem small.

I always have trouble determining where my horizon and vanishing points should be. I've read several tutorials on perspective drawing but even after all that I'm still not very good at it. It's such a simple thing too.

Anyways, after looking at your drawing up close... I wonder and have always wondered for such detailed shading... How do you do it? How do you separate texture from shading?

I mean I look at all those pixels and I wonder, do you place each one individually? Or do you somehow incorporate the use of other devices like gradients or dissolve techniques in layers?

[Shane 'ProgZmax' Stevens]

I drew it 'freehand' with my mouse and shaded it manually, which is the method I personally prefer.  To do the stone I just selected a few shades of gray that I thought worked well together and drew a pattern of rocks in the darkest shade and then went back and added highlights and shading to it.  If I was doing this for something other than a paintover I would've put more work into the actual definition of each object (using darker shades for the outlines so they stand out more).  I DID use a gradient for the sky but I normally wouldn't do so.  I'm not a big fan of gradients or noise filters in finished projects since it's readily apparent where they are and how it was done.  I typically do all my shading by hand either by dithering or by scatter-shading (a term I use for a messy form of dithering I use to make surfaces look rough).  Ultimately, if you like the effect gradients and noise filters give, go with it.  I've seen Darth Mandarb employ them with extremely impressive results.  If you want to do things manually, it just takes knowing what you want the end result to look like and patience until the image matches that concept (a working knowledge of shading helps too).  I would suggest looking at screenshots from the Amiga version of Settlers or Albion if you need some inspiration on this.

[milkanannan]

i just gotta say that that is a cool fucking paintover