LBCBR Artwork C&C

[powerhouse]

Any suggestions?  The aspect ratio is different for the game so it looks about 10% too wide.  Thanks
EDIT: Adjust your monitor so the moon is a perfect sphere to see the 'game dimensions'.

(The story behind this picture: The Colonel just bought the plantation.  The Colonel plans to build a fence that goes to the edge of the island, but for now this is how it looks.)

EDIT: (Also this was designed waiting for clouds in the sky and a fence.  On one side of the fence it is pristine and mowed grass, on the other side it is overgrown and menacing.  There will be an opening if you want to go where it's not safe.  Be careful of crocodiles.  So if it looks kind of boxed in, that's why -- even that background tree is bending away from the water.  The moon will change to match the clouds which are being worked over.  There should be a moon reflection down the water showing texture from the algae.  The final image might have a blueish or 5% darkness layer so it looks like nighttime.  Also the tree silhouettes in front are so you know where to walk -- on the path, on the grass, into the weeds, into the swamp, or back into the next screen closer to the gazebo.  Thanks for your feedback!)

EDIT: Based on your feedback, here's Image #2 to look at.  Lots of differences.

[Layabout]

It looks very obviously 3d.

The foreground black border trees look very bogan. as in out of place. they dont look right.

There are a lot of wacky lighting effects that would make it sort of difficult to place a character in this scene properly too.

oh and this: If this is supposed to be a plantation, i hope the colonal didnt pay much for it! Looks more like a swamp!!!

[Gilbert]

Well I don't have much problems with obviously 3D backgrounds if it's supposed to look like that, the only thing that bothers me much is the moon (...or a floating ball you may called), that can REALLY be regarded as "too obviously 3D", if you know what I mean...

[powerhouse]

To compare 3D and not-3D, the water is 3D but the grass is painted.  Started with a tiny 'tube' brush for the grass and increased the size of the brush closer to the foreground.  You can tell because the plane of grass is off a bit from the 'plane' of water.  Also the pebbles are painted.

Along with the grass the bush with red things is painted, the other trees are not.  The foreground trees are sillouettes (which probably need some work so they fit the design).  The image was created at 1280x760 and then resized to 640*380 for the game.

Thank you

[Blackthorne]

It's okay - looks nice for a 3-D BKG, except the moon looks kinda like a golf ball.

Bt

[powerhouse]

Thank you.  Worked on it for 6 hours.  Started Saturday, finished Sunday.  Made with 30+ layers in PSP7.  3D ocean and gazebo created in Cinema 4D XL.  Anyone want the source file?  It's here for a short time:
http://www.2dadventure.com/ags/wttswamp640-r1.zip  (PSP7 works with PSP8 too)

(this is the resized image with layers.  The original 1280 pixel PSP file is 3.1MB by request)

[Hollister Man]

I would ad a bit of "fog" around the moon.  Perhaps a "halo," to use the meteorological term.  Besides it being too small.  And add a brighter reflection on the water from it.  Great work so far.

[powerhouse]

You're right!  A nice moon reflection that comes straight down from the moon (on the water showing texture)... halo is tricky but understood.

[MrColossal]

couple things i think should be rethought:





the moon shouldn't have a shadow like that cause then it just turns into a sphere in the sky

also it looks like i could swap out the night sky for a day sky and it would look better. it doesn't look like it's night time at all cause everything is lit up so well with a white light. in the barn image i posted above you can see a lot of detail but you can still very well see that it's night time because the light is a dark blue.

also there are a lot of weird shadow fragments in the lower left of the image

it doesn't seem like there's anything there to cast that X shaped shadow in the middle lower left between the two shadows.

the trouble with using those images of trees again comes from the lighting, those are daytime trees and need to be lit according to nighttime, shouldn't be too hard just use the internet and search for images of night time and see what trees look like, in my experience you wouldn't be able to see all those leaves because there just isn't that much light to throw around

the image is really unbalanced also, the right side is so open and free while the right is totally conjested and not composed well. the trees form a box and are really really cluttered together so i can't tell where one tree starts and the other begins.

you're off to a good start but i think the best you can do is look at some real images to get you all the way

and yes definetly reflect that moon off that water it'll look a lot better indeed!

good luck,
eric

[powerhouse]

We want this to look like it does when you are actually there.  In real life, you would be able to see the detail on the moon.  In your photo it's washed out and yellow reflection from the sun.

We use filters on our cameras and can reproduce the filter here for your image.  This way you can see the white snow, the green grass or crops underneath, and the actual colors of the building.  Compare your image and this one to see the effect:




Here's with gamma correction:

[TheYak]

That's a lovely conversion of a night scene to a dawn/dusk one.  I think the shadowed/blue shade comment is valid.  You don't have to cast everything in a dark shade if it's lit with an external source.  Maybe a lantern or something in the middle area?

[powerhouse]

If you use a simple Light Meter and filters (infra-red is fun), you can get some interesting effects.  In real life your brain usually filters out the color.  It's only inside the house that you notice you have been filtering blue through your eyes (there's a red tint when I go inside after a cold night).

How does this one look?  I think I'm understanding now:

[Khaveen not at home]

It looks too plastic. More details, please.  The grass looks like a carpet.

[powerhouse]

We'll play around with the grass.  Maybe 3D all the way.  If you are judging by the aspect ratio you will see, it might look more like carpet.  Reduce your monitor's horizontal <-> width about 10-20% and you'll see how the image looks in the game.  Now the grass blades are longer and thinner (less thick like carpet).

Thanks again

[MrColossal]

say what you will but i've been outside many times in complete darkness with just a full moon and i didn't really see green grass and red flowers.

maybe my eyes are broken

as for the new image there really isn't much changed at all. the moon was moved and the shadows are different and it's a little darker but the trees are still the same, one even has a blue halo from the image it was pulled from.

there's also no shadow being cast from the small tree with the red flowers and i really think you need a reflection on that water

i think the moon was better where it was cause it was framed by the clouds better

and i think what he means by looks like carpet isn't that the grass is thick, it's that it's flat like a carpeted room

my opinions:

[powerhouse]

Excellent!  I'll print this out for reference.

Thank you