Landscape with bridge, and troll character sketch

[Snarky]

OK, so it's going to be difficult to pretend that these aren't for the MAGS-inspired fairy tale mod that I mentioned I was working on. It's the background and player-character sketch for a one-room game.



Clearly this background isn't close to finished. The hills, the forest and two of the background mountains I consider pretty much done. I'm going to go over the rocks and waterfall again, though, and as for the rest it's just some quick brush strokes to give you an idea of where I'm going with it. Oh, and there's going to be a little birch tree along the river bank to the bottom right.

I'm mainly looking for comments on the composition, possibly the colors, and maybe some tips for how to complete it. I've been struggling quite a bit with the ground, doing the grass and stuff.



As for this guy (front and 3/4 side view), I like him quite a lot. Again, comments on the colors, shading, and also on the anatomy are welcomed (I know he's skinnier on the left than on the right). I also wanted to give him a bit of surface texture, like his skin is made of slimy rock, but not sure how to achieve that (it may wait until I do the sprite).

[ThreeOhFour]

Its coming along very nicely. I particularly like the forest - its great.

For me, the colours and composition look fine. I'm not good at backgrounds so I have no advice, other than perhaps put a bit more yellow in the grass when the sunlight hits it.

The character looks good as well. I think he looks better skinny with a round belly because it emphasises the belly more. Drop the shoulders a little in the front view, I think, or at least make the arms look more like they're hanging loosely. It'll probably be easier to crit when it is a sprite.

Looking good so far, anyway.

[Andail]

Nice to see a thread by you here, Snarky

You're still a bit early in the process, but I can still share some thoughts.
The background has a good, slightly dramatic composition (the rapids coming towards the viewer and all).
From the colours and techniques used, I suspect (quite strongly!) that you're using a photo reference. Basically you're trying to find methods to render realistic textures.
The problem with this method is that, at best, you're going to end up with a fairly realistic but almost mechanical and very generic landscape. This is the exact opposite of "fairy-tale" style. You're not really painting the background, you're emulating textures piece by piece like the clone-tool in photoshop. It's not going to be personal.

I'm going to wait with c&c on the character, since I think we should try to sort out the background first.

[cobra79]

The mountains and hills are very convincing. At a first glance I thought it was a messy photo paint-over. Composition-wise you could bring the bridge a little to the foreground.

[Snarky]

Nice to see a thread by you here, Snarky

You're still a bit early in the process, but I can still share some thoughts.

You don't want to know how many hours I've spent on this so far.  And I don't want to think about how many more hours it will take to complete at this rate.

The background has a good, slightly dramatic composition (the rapids coming towards the viewer and all).
From the colours and techniques used, I suspect (quite strongly!) that you're using a photo reference. Basically you're trying to find methods to render realistic textures.

You're quite right, Andail. I'm not really an artist, and I've been experimenting with different techniques to produce passable game art. I haven't really been able to get results I'm happy with, however. For this background, I started with a sketch to come up with the landscape and composition, then I made a rough photo-collage using landscape photos from Google Images, and then I'm painting on top of that. Some bits are pretty much photo paintovers (the cliff behind the rapids and the snowy side of the mountain), while other bits were free-painted, looking at the photos for color and texture reference (the hills, the forest, the non-snowy side of the mountain, and the waterfall itself). I think the painting-over is useful excercise; for instance, that's how I started doing the mountains, then moved on to photo reference (you may be able to tell that it's a little bit rougher and doesn't define the volume and texture as well), and the third one (which is just sketched in for now) I'll do from imagination, using the same brush techniques.

The problem with this method is that, at best, you're going to end up with a fairly realistic but almost mechanical and very generic landscape. This is the exact opposite of "fairy-tale" style. You're not really painting the background, you're emulating textures piece by piece like the clone-tool in photoshop. It's not going to be personal.

I agree, it does have its drawbacks. On the other hand, there's no way I could achieve anything close to this level of realism without using references. I would be grateful if you could recommend ways to add a more personal touch using essentially the same techniques. I'm not really going for a "fairy-tale style" (more like Sierra-style--or even more realistic), but I wouldn't mind the "cinematic" look of national-romanticism. I was hoping the landscape was quite dramatic, but so far I've stuck to muted colors (partly because I'll have to create a couple of different versions of the background for the game). I will probably end up increasing the saturation, adding splashes of highlights, deepening the shadows and generally brightening things up a bit, though.

I'm going to wait with c&c on the character, since I think we should try to sort out the background first.

Right. I started working on the sprite, and after a couple of hours of frustration I'm leaning towards rescaling the background to 320x240 so I can do a smaller sprite. The pixel work in 640x480 is just too much, and I don't think I can pull off a paintbrush-painted sprite.

The mountains and hills are very convincing. At a first glance I thought it was a messy photo paint-over. Composition-wise you could bring the bridge a little to the foreground.

You're right, parts of the mountains are paint-overs, while I looked at photo references for the other stuff. The river in front of the bridge is the walkable/playable area (the troll never leaves the stream, the bridge and path is for NPCs), so I'm concerned that moving the bridge forward would cramp the freedom of movement too much. Thanks for the suggestion, though. Would it help if the bridge was a little bigger?