My 2nd Tablet Background

[Mordalles]

okay, here is my 2nd attempt at a background:

EDIT:

again, same, comments and crit welcome. it's the basement. (don't worry, the vampire is only a minor character.)

Newest version:


this is my 1st try at a background with a tablet. as you can see, its pretty rough in most areas, since I'm still struggling to get control over the pen  . i tried the process of starting with basic colours and composition like loominous suggested. i'm probably going to use it in a game (but already busy with other games) involving a spooky house/mansion. any suggestions, especially on making it look smoother (mash, help), (ground, wooden beams). please don't comment on the actual drawing, since i can't draw backgrounds to begin with.  I'm more interesting in improving painting and ligthing.

Previous background:

[raddicks]

I think its exceptional

PROS: supporting colours (purple and yellow) and the lantern superb aswell as the tree and building exterior, you have successfully drawn attention to the front of the building (positioning with regards to '4th wall' and focus.

CONS: Stones - Although aesthetically pleasing, would be somewhat of a hinderance when it comes to sprite path walking (Either the character has to jerkily walk in between stones). - But i don't know if you have made a playable character yet, but it should be a consideration to otherwise prevent awkward footing with regards to feet position and stones.
- the yellow pool shadow underneath the lantern needs to be a little more oval.

EBI: (Even better if) - Possible wisps of white or whatever colour in the sky background, maybe animated if you want a 'wispy wind' kind of feel with bits of dead leaves flying by. or if you want to be really creative, have an animated 'witch' or 'E.T bicycle flying by the moon') :-) look forward to playing your game. I'm guessing your using an Intuos 3?
+ the horizon line of the dark purple shade in the background looks incomplete, maybe silhouettes of distant things like gravestones or churches or whatever it is. but this is optional

[Mordalles]

thanks, raddicks  . yeah, your right about those stones. hmm. i'll try to make them flatter, or add more in there, or remove them? hmm.
hehe, there is a planned witch character in the game. hehe.

edit: there isn't anything on the sign above the door yet, since i'm still not sure what it should say.

edit2: there are actually silhouette's of gravestones. 

edit3: you're right about the light. i just realised the light on the wall and ground don't match up.   

[ManicMatt]

First of all, ecstasy for the eyes.

Okay, you know me and my skill levels, so...

That moon don't look right to me. Not only is it a weird shape, no? But I dunno, it doesn't look like its in the sky to me, it's too sharp around the edges maybe? Or maybe the moon is too big?

and the welcome sign looks like I just drew over your painting. Sorry. and the 'W' looks like a "H".

yeah you said not to crit your drawing, but the painting.. well whatever, do you agree with me or not though at all?

Otherwise fantastic man!

[MashPotato]

That looks gorgeous, Mordalles ^_^.  Your statement that you cannot draw backgrounds makes me cry...
Anyway, you seem to have a better grasp on lighting than I do, so I'm not sure how much I can comment on that ^_^.  There are a few things I will bring up, but please take these with a grain of salt because I'm not really knowledgeable on this:
-there is a bright, saturated purple that you are using as a highlight on the areas around the door, windows, and posts.  There is no purple light source, so the saturated purple doesn't really make sense
-the lighting on the edges around the door on the left should be mostly in shadow (or, at least not as bright), since the only light source on it is coming from the window on the door
-since the moon is behind the tree, there should perhaps be less blue highlighting on the front of the tree
-the highlights on the rightmost fence posts might be a tad strong, considering that the lantern looks fairly far away.  Perhaps there should be more blue moonlight on them as well, particularly on the left (ie on the right of the tree) where the lantern would hardly hit at all

I really don't see any problems with the smoothness of the painting at this size, especially since the ground and beams are nicely textured and wouldn't be smooth.  Maybe the house is a little blotchy, but I get the impression that you wanted a somewhat dirty-looking house, so I think it looks fine.

Really, a terrific job.  I am jealous ^_^

[deadsuperhero]

I looked at that and litterally yelled "Holy shit!"
It looks professional. Good work. 

[Mordalles]

thanks for the great crit!

manicmatt: thanks man! well, i tried to make the bg stylized in a sort of weird kind of way (i like things stylized, eg neverhood, comi, corpse bride), eg, the door and the window's perspectives are exactly oposite of each other (this way i can get away with very little knowledge of things like perspective. hehe) therefore i made the moon the way it is. in fact, the moon is single thing on the background I'm unwilling to change. 
and yup, it should be a "H" and not a "w". 
but i agree that the welcome sign looks a bit painted on top. i think it's because its too red. i'll have to change the colour. and fade it a bit, i guess?

mashpotato:
- the purple. yeah, i agree. i tried to imagine what colour would fit, since its kind of a mix between the lightsource from inside and outside. I'm not sure what to replace it with though. 
- door, yup, ill add shadow!
- the light of the moon on the tree: do you mean the light blue light (rim light, and again, trying weird perspective) on the left side, or just the middle of the tree where its mostly dark blue or black?
- highlights on fence: yeah, they are too far away. hmm, maybe i can use the excuse that there is a window on that side of the house which is causing that light.  i see that the top of the part of the fence should be lit by the moon and not by the lantern! thanks!
- thanks, but you don't have anything to be jealous of here.

alliance: thanks!  its not really even close to professional. but i'll take the compliment. frank frazetta once said in an interview that cg doesn't take that much skill, and i'm beginning to agree with him. 

i have decided to make a game from this. i already have the whole story, and locations worked out. just need to create puzzles and start. 

[jasonjkay]

Just a thought for ingame. What would be cool is a glowing pair of eyes inside the hole in the tree which when you interact with, a bat or something flys out.

The main crit I have for this background is that I think the grave silhouette's should stand out a little more and you should have more of them fading back to where you can hardly see them (like they are now). Oh and change the far hill with the graves on to a slightly darker colour. Other than this, really great background.

[MadReizka]

Quick post, didnt read what others had said:
That door is something I dont like much, I think its the window (the actual window next to the door seems to be missing a perspective. The tree looks really nice. Some stars to the sky mayby?

[ThreeOhFour]

As per your usual work, very nice. I think that perhaps the tree's branches may bit a tad funnily shaped, but I may be wrong. No matter, is very very nice.

[Mordalles]

thanks guys for the crit.

jasonjkay. yeah, thanks for the eyes suggestion. i'll definitely put that in the game as an animated object. and i'll darken the silhouette.

madreizka: the door and the window's perspectives are exact oposite of each other deliberately. yes, the sky needs stars!

ben: thanks.  funnily shaped is what im going for. 

[loominous]

Pretty rough edit to illustrate some points:



To begin with, I think it's a nice first attempt, composition n colour wise.

A couple of pointers:

Planes

To make the background appear to have depth, it's generally adviced to have as many planes as possible. At the moment, the pic is pretty much limited to one, if you overlook the very subtle gravestones.

I added a fence n some kind of a bush as a foreground plane. Making foregrounds look natural is quite tricky, n I always have trouble finding proper objects that don't just look like a dark sillhouette pasted on. Using focal depth will make foregrounds appear more natural, but it clashes with many styles.

I added more clearly defined gravestones as another plane, just behind the house, and a couple of hill planes, n lastly a mountain plane.

Making defined planes in night time enviroments is tricky, due to limited value range the darkness imposes, and looking at the edit, it doesn't look convincing, but it should get the point across.

-

Perspective

I'm not a stickler for exact perspective, but the current one is strange enough to warrant some adjustment, imo. I just edited the upper window, which, looking at the angles of the house lines, is above the horizon, meaning we should see the upper inner part, not the lower.

-

Composition

At the moment, while there are some clear points of contrast, the windows, lamp n tree, the image lacks a kind of focus. Apart from these objects, everything in the image calls for about as much attention.

By making the lamp ground area n wall brighter, n the rest darker, the image has a clearly defined focal area, apart from the moon, which acts as a secondary.

The moon placement isn't really ideal in its placement, since it drags the eye towards the edge of the image, which means the chance that it'll jump off the image is greater, and won't lead to another desireable part of the image.

Placing it on the right of the tree wouldn't probably work any better, perhaps behind it, but I think it's a problem with the basic composition, and is one of the things that should be worked out very early on in the sketch stages.

The general composition is kind of dull, in that you have a symmetrical vertical split. In composition, there's a preference towards dividing in threes rather than twos, and while it's not a rule that you must follow, it usually helps to land around those parts. Too obvious balance is boring, and doing asymmetrical divisions forces you to compensate in interesting fashions.

-

Values

Highlights are tricky since they suggest the material of the object, and if not careful, they'll misinform the viewer.

The tree in the original has a shiny look to it, for this reason. Matte objects, such as most trees, will have no clear speculars, unlike shiny objects, and the lit up parts will have even values. The value range in the original is simply too wide, that is, the parts hit by the lamp's light should be more similar in value.

This is also true for the parts not hit by the lamp, which should have a limited range n be low in contrast, due to the relatively weak lightsource (the sky).

-

Colors

As Mash pointed out, there's no realistic justification of the blue tone of the tree n house, unless the sky behind us is very blue, but this appears not to be the case.

So, all objects hit by the sky will be tinted towards magenta rather than blue. This will make the objects in the image look like they're part of the same world, n not copy n pasted in.

I decreased the saturation for most parts, especially the very saturated magentas in the door n window frames. Especially in night time enviroments, it's very tricky to maintain high saturation without it looking wrong or straining, because of the low light level.

On the other hand, you can contrast this saturated artificial light sources, such as the lamp n windows.

I made the lamp light less pure yellow, since lightsources of this kind are more orange, which also looks nicer, that is, imo. I also varied and increased the values in the bright areas, to make them brighter n less flat. In dark enviroments, lightsources will look much brighter than during daytime.

-

Additional pointers

The rotation of the tree is boring, and makes it look flat. I moved the hole a bit to the left, but didn't have the energy to repaint the branches to point more towards or away from us.

The branches are very strange in themselves, though it may be a style decision.

I made the lamp a bit more interesting design wise, though it was a rather strange design to work with.

-

Hope you don't get discouraged by all the pointers, though the praise of the other posts ought to compensate well enough.

Looking forward to your next one.

[Mordalles]

WOW!  :o

thats just simply amazing, loominous!

i was holding off to change anything, because i was waiting and hoping you would enter this thread!

your paintover is just unbelievable! i just love the way you changed the colours and the lights! and that hedge in the foreground! and the mountains! its all perfect.

I'm going to save this thread now and study it! this will help me immensily! thanks loominous! don't worry, i won't steal your paintover (even though the little voice in my head says i should, haha. i)  so i'll update once i have my new version, but it will take some time. 

[i k a r i]

OK...WTF is that edit!

loominous...are you working in your own game?, cause that would be amazing.  :'(

[Mordalles]

okay, so after careful studying and taking all comments into consideration,a tried editing mine:


i tried to make keep changes within my own ability, but tried doing everything loominous said, knowing that i will have to keep a style consistent. i kept mostly the original colour, but the tree fits in better with the background now (i think), and the background now sort of fades from blue on the right to magenta on the left. i think.

so, hopefully it looks better now. thanks everyone and loominous for awesome advice!

[deadsuperhero]

Looks awesome, Mordalles.
Damn, this makes me want a tablet.

[Mordalles]

thanks, alliance. 

Update: bumped to add a 2nd background.

[i k a r i]

Another amazing BG, the only thing I don't like is the beam up there.

And I thinks theres something weird with the floor perspective, maybe is intentional?

You BGs are starting to look professional, keep it up!.

[Rincewind]

Great bg's, Mordalles. And I have to say that I love the doll on the shelf.
However, I do think that the angle of the staircase looks a bit odd, though. Other than that, it looks great, methinks.

[Janik]

Wow, I think that's really great! What program are you using to do this?