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:
(http://img19.imageshack.us/img19/7089/)
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. ;D I'm more interesting in improving painting and ligthing.
Previous background:
(http://img167.imageshack.us/img167/1738g)
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
thanks, raddicks ;D. 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. ;D
edit3: you're right about the light. i just realised the light on the wall and ground don't match up. :-\ :-[
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!
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 ^_^
I looked at that and litterally yelled "Holy shit!"
It looks professional. Good work. ;)
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. ;D
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. ;D 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! ;D its not really even close to professional. but i'll take the compliment. ;D 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. :D
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.
Quick post, didnt read what others had said: :P
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?
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.
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. ;D funnily shaped is what im going for. ;D
Pretty rough edit to illustrate some points:
(http://marcus.krupa.se/AGS/m_gy.gif)
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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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) ;D so i'll update once i have my new version, but it will take some time. ;D
OK...WTF is that edit!
loominous...are you working in your own game?, cause that would be amazing. :'(
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!
Looks awesome, Mordalles.
Damn, this makes me want a tablet.
thanks, alliance. ;D
Update: bumped to add a 2nd background.
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!.
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.
Wow, I think that's really great! What program are you using to do this?
Those bgs are awesome mordalles! Can't wait to see the next game you bring out of nowhere, all your games are of such great quality.
*adds mordalles to buloght's jealous-off list*
Loominous :o If you make a game, bill tiller will be jealous, and blizzard will stop making all of their games for the fact that their graphics won't be revolutionary anymore ;D
* add loominous to buloght's jealous-off list*
thanks everyone. ;D
the floor and stairs perspective are intentional, but i know little to none about perspective, so not sure if it works. ;D it might be too late to change it. since that would mean redrawing the background.
oh, i use photoshop.
I think the second background, albeit using a more innovative perspective, is a lesser piece than your first. The main issue is that it lacks sharp edges. It's all very blurry and tiresome for the eye. It is ofcourse hard to explain, or even point towards what good balance of sharp and blurry edges mean, but a combination of those gives wondrous results. The other is the lightning. Sure, it's all set to work with moonlight, but I can't help wonder what it would be like with somewarm hues, maybe from candlelight in the actual basement and not only in the top of the stairs. The design is good, but could be better. Also, it seems like a WIP, I don't know what those top left thingies are and that strange light coming from above.
The entrance into the basement is a little...tiny.
Other than that after seing the 2nd BG I have decided that you're going through your purple period and it's ok... ;D ;D
2ma2: thanks for the crits. ;D i actually like the rough brushes a bit more than sharp edges. i just like the feel of it. too much detail and sharp edges can be just as tiresome. though, I'm still experimenting with how to get brushes sharper and nice smooth and clean, like mashpatota gets it (this is only my 2nd try :P). :P, ;D.
of course any design could be better (i can't really draw and i dont have natural talent, so there isn't much i can do about that).
wip, yes, thats why its in here. :P
i didn't want to add any candles and other "warm hues" in here, since there will be plenty of them in the rest of the house, and therefore i decided to use only moonlight.
strange light from above: thats suppose to be moonrays, though, as you can see, i have no idea what i'm doing. how can I improve the rays to not make it look "strange" anymore? :-\ thanks for the crits! it really helps.
nikolas: hehe, the door is actually much larger, but blocked by the wooden beam. it will be more apparent once you walk there with your character. hehe.
yes, purple period, haha. ;) ;D
Some lighting ideas:
(http://marcus.krupa.se/AGS/m_bm.gif)
First off, I think the composition has improved a lot in this one. You got an assymetrical division, a foreground, diagonal lines (the foreground wooden bars), and a nice angle.
The design has already been touched on, and I think it's the biggest thing holding this pic back.
If you paint "just a staircase", or "just an ordinary coffin", then the viewer will skip these objects, since we've all seen these things plenty of times before, and will be done watching your image within a sec.
I suggest you google for some references of these things, to get an idea of how they can look. Skip through the ordinary designs, and save the interesting ones. Open these images in photoshop, and surround your workarea with them.
Using existing designs isn't as fun as creating your own, so I suggest you just look for ideas, and try to come up with something that you think fits the mood and general style of the image.
Our first idea of how something looks is often very generic, and thus boring, so watching these references will allow you to get a new perspective on them, and after a while you get a feeling of the different traditions with their respective trademarks, and can just mix n create something you like.
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Colours
A good thing with both these images is the colour consistency, though lacking a bit in this one (the reds). That said, varying hues is as much part of creating an interesting image as the design.
A tinted lightsource will rarely totally change the hue of an object, so when I've said that, for instance, the colour of the sky should tint the objects, it doesn't mean that they should all take on the same hue, just towards that hue.
Using a colour layer in photoshop is really great in doing this, since you can, if you like, paint the image in the local colours, that is, what they would look like in a white room, with a white lightsource (a red box having pure red sides), and then tint them using other layers, which makes it extremely flexible.
(http://marcus.krupa.se/AGS/m_bm_t.jpg)
So, first we have the local colours (the first row).
Then I ve added a layer, n set it on 'color' (as marked with green). This means whatever you paint in there will only affect the colours of the layers below, so if you make it totally green, regardless of dark or light, it'll only affect the colours of the underlying layers.
You can fill it with the colour of your choice, and use the opacity setting to adjust how much you think it should affect the layers below, which is similar to the photofilter.
I took the blue from the blue box n just filled the area of the second row with the colour, at about 50% opacity (layer 9 in the pic).
In the last row, I did the same thing, but with yellow, and only on the lighter sides of the cube.
As you see, the colours are quite different from the originals, but there's still a lot of difference, and it's important to preserve these differences, even in images that have a very heavy influence of one or more hues.
About the reds in your image, they look pretty fake, especially the doll, because they're too local, and don't look affected enough.
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Brushes
I use the chalk brush quite a lot, which is just a squarish brush, nothing fancy, with hard corners. You can achieve anything with any brush if you have enough patience, but choosing the right one will make it quicker, so pretty much, hard brushes for anything that has hard edges, smooth ones for large smooth areas.
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Lighting
I made the roof lightsource more blue, partly because it's more of a moon light colour, and more importantly, to create contrast to the warm door light. I also increased the brightness of the light spot, for extra punch, n to create a focal point, and darkned everything that wouldn't recieve much light, and were boring to look at anyway.
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Looking forward to your next piece.
Loominous, you're killing me with those amazing edits.
Tell me where I can find some tutorials for that.
After seeing Loominous 2nd edit I do have some comments, on both Mordalles and Loominous. Though, as I understand it Loomy is still writting his post... Anyway here goes:
Of course, loominous' edits are great. And as art it is amazing, and everything else and glorious! But I have a feeling that he is striving away from Mordalles original concept: purple!
I did say it in a funny way in my previous post, but still it is true that Mordy has choosen to go the purple way. For me the non graphic guy, it is a matter of choice, and not of right or wrong. Loominous posts are lacking the purple colour at all. No matter how great they are they are not what Mordy intended, cause let's face it purple is there for a reason.
The second chance Mordy did for the 1st BG is great and really took on on Loominous' advice, and this is what proves that when loominous enters the C&C, it is for a reason, it is for people who deserve it (and the so many posts here prove it), and it is that he has something to say that will help the person asking for critics.
Still the point of my post is to illumate the danger of Loomious edits, which are further away from what Mordy intended initially (I believe). Mordys' BGs had a fairy tale feeling on them, a magical feeling on them, whereas loominous' ones do not, are more realistic, definately closer to the 'correct' point of view. But the 'correct' point of view shouldn't be an issue, to great artists such as Mordalles, Loominous (and buloght btw, let's not forget him, since his BG in the other thread is a smashing example of pixel art!)
Anyway under no circumstance should my post be considered as hostile to loominous, or mordy or anyone mentioned. Just an observation that the edits are very far apart. Nothing else... :)
WOW! :o again, loominous, that is amazing. i wish i had a loominous-edit button in photoshop.
again, study time!
nikolas. yes, i see what you mean. i am trying to have a certain theme and atmosphere in the game which leans more to a spooky semi-cartoonlike fairy tale feeling like you say. but i am learning huge amounts with each of loominous edits. showing me the correct lighting, contrast, better colours and some technical aspects really helps huge amounts in improving my own version of it. ;D
Nikolas:
I understand perfectly where you're coming from. I tend to exhaggerate certain aspects to get the points across more clearly, which has a tendency to make my edits loose the original feel.
In this one it was mostly the variation of hues, which makes the image a lot cooler, and along with the saturation decrease n brighter/darker parts, makes it a lot less friendly.
On the other hand, there's always a problem of objectivity, when looking at shifting images like these. If the original image is very saturated for instance, an edit with ordinary saturation will look desaturated in comparison. So if the original is extreme in some aspect, a "correct" version won't look right either, if flipped back and forth.
Also, you never know when something's intentional or not. There's a definate purple pattern in Mordellas pics, but that doesn't mean it's neccesserily a concious decision that he's happy with. And since what we're doing here is providing ideas, for the creator to dismiss or use, almost any suggestion is of help in some way.
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There's actually a plus to the style breaches when you think about it, since it means that people won't just copy the pointers they like, but will have to incorperate the pointers in the style themselves, which is really the only way you really learn.
i had to take in account functionality, since this is still a background that should be usuble in a game, so certain areas do need a bit of light (for the puzzles i have in mind), even though the moonlight don't suggest it. eg, the hourglasses is items you can pick up, and so shouldn't be too dark that no one sees it. also, the moon itself is purple (as seen in 1st screenie) so, therefore moonlight in my world ( ;D) is not blue. i changed the contrast mostly, and lights.
(http://img19.imageshack.us/img19/7089/bang)
and my own changing edit. ;D
(http://img164.imageshack.us/img164if)
thanks for the brilliant advice once again. i realise that i'm always too shy with contrast. and the suggestion about searching for reference images is something i didn't even think of! thanks! i'll definitely look reference more to get more interesting shapes.
Marcus:
Of course you're right. And that's why I said that your edits always have high values.
The reason for my above post, is for some to avoid the danger of actually just 'copying' your edits, more or less, which is always a danger when teaching someone and actually showing him the 'correct' way. It's something I learned while being taugh composition, where no matter what my teacher would never tell me what 'he would do at this or that part'. He was right.
Anyway Mordalles, with his edit has proved the value of your posts and your eidts, by taking your advice and puting in at his own BG, accimulating (sp???:S) your edit correctly.
So well done both of you :) And thanks, loominous, for taking the time to answer me :)
Very nice backgrounds! Really!
I want to buy a tablet too, and I have a question for you Mordalles:
what tablet do you have (dimesion, brand,...)?
Thanks...