Hello Critic's Loungers,
I've been working on some backgrounds for a game I've had in mind for some time and wanted to get some feedback before continuing on. The first is a basement office:
(http://img844.imageshack.us/img844/5010/nkap.png)
(http://img844.imageshack.us/img844/5010/nkap.png)
The second is a kitchen with character example (he's a fox, hands in pockets):
(http://imageshack.us/a/img96/2899/5e3w.png)
(http://imageshack.us/a/img96/2899/5e3w.png)
As you can see I've thrown out perspective by adopting something like a platform game style. I was thinking that character motion would be almost exclusively left and right (added benefit of reducing walkcycles) and that I would use very thin walkable areas. I haven't experimented yet but will that cause any problems? These two, of course, still lack some details and finishing but I'd really like some feedback on how anyone thinks a game in this style might work. Thanks.
The upper style looks like it would work well with a more realistic motion capture type sprite while the lime gradient in the second really throws off the rest of it because of the high contrast difference between it and the objects.
This looks really good and interesting, but the lime wallpaper also puts me off.
You don't need walkable areas at all when you fix the y coordinate of the player and only have him walk left and right according to mouseclicks (see ktx-1 for example).
I'm not aritst, just an average adventure gamer but I think your backgrounds look very good. On the other hand, I'm supposedly colorblind, so you never know.... :D
It looks good. Consider subduing (reduce intensity) some of the colors. And generally kitchens/eating rooms shouldn't be painted green, because it makes the food look bad. In real life, anyways.
On the first picture I made the lamp wire greyer to make it look thinner and used the curves tool on the poster to make it a little less bright and blue.
On the second I reduced chose a new color for the wall, most importantly with reduced saturation and not greenish. Then I made the tiles greyer and applied a gradient to them. The gradient didn't really fit in, but I think the rest turned out well.
(http://i.imgur.com/U8Fiw0b.png)
Thanks for the feedback gentlemen. Looks like the green wall I used on the kitchen was universally reviled. I should have known better than to use a gradient. I appreciate taking the time to do a paintover Limony. Yours is definitely an improvement. I think I'll try some other things using your paintover as a guide. A wallpaper pattern perhaps?
what you could do is adding the cast shadow of the furniture (fridge, etc.) appearing on the wall, on one side of it. This will give depth to the scene.
As an example: look at the cast shadow on the right-hand-side of the fridge here. It takes 2 seconds to add.
(http://obsoletegamer.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/09/1273512413-06ATARI.png)
Also overall I'd recommend reducing the dithering everywhere (for example on the desk).
All you have to do is zooming on stuff (for comfort) and then hand-drawing a bit, to create larger areas of one single color (manually remove the noise). That doesn't take any skill at all either and you immediately get cool resulsts.