Please help me improve these caves

[Mouth for war]

You who played Jimmy the troublemaker will probably recognize this



I was never really satisfied with those cave screens. You might even say I hated them and I'd like to improve them if i decide to have a cave area in JTT2. The problem is...I have no idea what I should do...The ground area looks ok I guess...but the walls...I never liked them but I couldn't do anything better either. (I know the color is a little wrong maybe)

So...If someone would like to show me an example what to do with the walls I'd be most grateful. I guess that the style I'm using doesn't leave much room for detailed stuff. I like it simple and clean and if the stonewalls suddenly had lots of details it would not fit the rest of the graphics. Oh well. All help will be most appreciated

[Babar]

The problem currently is that they look REALLY flat. As if the whole thing is just a stage, with the walls as fake-prop walls that are actually only paper thin, and this feeling is only being further strengthened by the shading.

Try mixing it up a bit so that it isn't just 3 parallel "layers" of wall, and then pick a direction from which the light comes, and stay consistent with the shading using that direction. Also, add shadows on the floor as well (where necessary)!

[Mouth for war]

Tried working on this piece of crap again...and still very not satisfied...If I draw rocks like these all over the background it feels like it's going to look really messy...I guess it takes care of the flatness the old caves suffered from...at least a little. What should I do? I'd really like to add some caves in this game too but not if they're gonna end up looking like s**t. Feel free to draw some examples on the flat walls just to get me started

[NickyNyce]

When I get home later I'll fiddle with this a bit, see if I can help out on some rock  patterns, nothing must stop Jimmy the Troublemaker from continuing development...NOTHING..

[Mouth for war]

Thanks I'll be looking forward to see what you can do about it

[mode7]

The main problem is that there's no clear light source.
Also the rock shapes on the right look like cardboard box, mainly because the highlights are so thin and dont have volume shading.
You're on the right track on the more detailed rock on the left.

Since I like painting rock I made an edit and saved the steps so you can see what I did. Of course my style is quite different but some of the principles are universally true:



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Here are some explanations tio the steps:

1. Established a light source, also desaturated the picture so you can see its missing dynamic, meaning there should be more contrast
2. Added contrast
3. Began with the shading, added highlight blobs everywhere the light hits the rock (the rock has a convex shape, its not flat)
4. Added shadows, where the rocks overlap there's hardly any light, also used the dark colors to define the rock shapes (also did some foreground shading, maybe a lit overdone here but generally a good idea to add just a little light)
5. Added another layer of shadow (darker) and another layer of highlight (brighter) with a smaler brush
6. Added some color, just something I'm currently experimenting with, but what's to keep in mind is that dark colors are cold colors and lights are warm colors.

EDIT: Sorry for my English, re-reading this post, it seems more retarded than usual.

[Mouth for war]

Mode7 that looks very nice indeed!!! But the problem is that the final versions looks "too good" hehe...I don't think it matches the rest of the art featured in the game, but you made some good points and I'll see what I can come up with Thanks a lot!