I just found out about AGS on monday and thought about starting my own game. I needed a background to test AGS with and tried some new techniques with this one, trying to get that classic "slightly antialiased but not too blurry" look. Haven't done anything quite like this before so I was surprised when it wasn't too difficult.
I don't quite like the water but I'm not exactly sure what to do with it. The scene is supposed to be high up on a cliff, but i'm not so sure if it looks that way.
Oh and the pillars are totally out of place, but I wasn't quite thinking and they're in the same layer with the floor and I can't bother moving them elsewhere. :)
so, any comments?
(http://www.students.tut.fi/~gratsefr/kuvia/adv_testi1final2.gif)
EDIT:
and yes I indeed had THAT scene from FoA on mind when i started :)
It's a dang good background!
But if you want to make it look like it's high on a cliff, you'll have to (sorry) blur the water a bit, and lower the contrast. Objects in the distance tend to be less contrasted, less focused and more bluey (that's not a problem actually).
And the postion of the pillars doesn't bother me at all, it even fills up the compostion (Rocks on the right, pillars on the left... No problem there).
Great work!
El Drey.
Inspired by FoA's Crete, I assume?
Quote from: raimo on Fri 02/06/2006 00:05:14
Haven't done anything quite like this before so I was surprised when it wasn't too difficult.
Yes, and please keep showing us more not-to-difficult backgrounds. Either team up with someone who is far into a game development with a high grasp of what they are doing with their game, although in need of a bg artist, or take the time yourself to plan out a game with the intensity of these backgrounds.
Lovely background ^_^ The only things things I suggest are to make the waves in the water less distinct to make it appear farther away (like El_Drey said), and perhaps make the leaves on the vines around the pillars and pit a bit smaller (they seem a little too large to me, assuming that the doorway and pillars are tall).
Keep up the good work! ^_^
Wonderful! :o How did you do the water ripples? I have tried many techniques, but this is way better than any I've come up with.
Can you do bg's for my game and/or make a tutorial about how you can get such quality bg's? Please? :o
Serious, I like this bg and El_Dery is right. The pillars aren't out of order.
I'm looking forward to seeing more work of you!
~Yurina
Hello, and welcome to the forums from me too. I see the representation from my city is growing all the time :)
About the background, I'd like to see a more purposeful drawing... Especially with the tiles on the left. but your style is great, and it look sawesome, I'll tell more when I have time.
Quote from: Tuomas on Fri 02/06/2006 15:02:38
About the background, I'd like to see a more purposeful drawing... Especially with the tiles on the left.
I agree - it looks like you've started with a very rough sketch, and finished it beautifully without tidying it up first.
The tiles on the left could be smaller and in perspective.
The sky looks more like the bottom of a waterfall - you should hand paint it to match the rest of the background.
It looks like the upper stone arch overlaps the lower.
The water is great, except for the really obvious zigzags in the front. I think if you used a more sinusoidal pattern to distort it, it would work better.
Your technique is great. It reminds me a lot of Sektor 13's (another forum member) work.
Now that's easily the best "first background" I've ever seen, gorgeous!
By the prickling of my thumbs, a great artist this way comes...
Thanks for the comments!
Quote from: fovmester on Fri 02/06/2006 10:26:21
Wonderful! :o How did you do the water ripples? I have tried many techniques, but this is way better than any I've come up with.
I'm not exactly sure what you mean, but the water is a just mirrored and darkened copy of the sky (which is nothing but a couple of random white smudges on a blue bg) with horizontal wave distort (wave length 4px) and some white noise.
Quote from: Yurina-chan on Fri 02/06/2006 11:23:13
Can you do bg's for my game and/or make a tutorial about how you can get such quality bg's? Please? :o
I'm planning on doing my own game so I doubt I'll have time for other projects. I don't think I'll make a tutorial either because I'm not much of an expert and I don't have much to tell.
I use Paint Shop Pro and a couple of features i found really handy were lighten/darken and smooth brushes. If you set the size to 1px the lighten/darken brush is excellent for making small details and shadows. (That's how I made all the tiles and stuff) Smooth brush is THE anti-aliasing magic wand, if you ask me. To get the best results in low-res, always draw the shapes and lines without anti-aliasing and then do the anti-aliasing by hand. I used the 1px smooth brush for that. For example all the vines are first drawn with a single color, then shaded with lighten/darken and finally anti-aliased with the smooth brush.
I'd guess similar features can be found in other graphics programs such as photoshop.
And about the tiles... The idea wasn't to make them uniform so they got to look a bit funky. Maybe if I split up some of them it would be more clear...
hey
mouse or tablet??
if mouse, how long?
and the background looks very nice
bye
this looks awesome, but I'm going to be an arse and ask - wouldn't it look better withouth that path on left, just without the whole thing, pillars etc. are not bad but somehow look unnatural (too perfect and new, the place is crawiling with plants so it wasn't built yesterday am I correct?)) and the path is a bit twisted in perspective, that part kind stings me in the eye, but the rest is great :)
please feel free to ignore any of the above, most people seem to :P
Quote from: fertoff on Fri 02/06/2006 17:08:42
hey
mouse or tablet??
if mouse, how long?
mouse, about 4 hours
now got a tablet tho...
That's a very good background. I really like it. The two pillars look out of place, though. But other than that I say :o
cheers
nihilyst
I agree, it's also one of the best first backgrounds I've seen - good job! Did you make some backups along the way, they would be really helpful to look at while reading about your method? Like the vines - did you paint them in just one color, or more tones before anti-aliasing?
I didn't save any steps that would be any use here so I made new ones. I hope these help someone.
(http://www.students.tut.fi/~gratsefr/kuvia/vine_steps.gif)
1. Painted in one color.
2. Added some basic highlights with 1px lighten brush.
3. Added shadows with 1px darken brush and shaded the flower. (which is in a separate layer)
4. Softened the edges with 1px smooth brush.
And next I would add some shadows to the background to make it fit into the scene...
Thanks for the tutorial. I also have PSP10 but I don't use it much. I like GGale better. But PSP is great for FoA-like bgs.
I really love your art. Keep it up! :)
Hey, great tutorial - thanks alot :)
:o Seriously, Raimo, that's impressive - my jaw literally dropped open when I first saw it!
I think you're lucky that you find that level of accuracy and detail "not too difficult" ... or perhaps you're just naturally very meticulous!
Anyway, I can't fault the overall very high quality of the artwork, so a few specific comments:
1) I agree with Steve McCrea and Tuomos - the layout looks a little hurried. In particular, the foreground is mostly nicely realised but the background looks ill-planned, and there's a *very* strange jar in perspective. At this angle, we appear to be looking down on the atoll from the above, so we shouldn't even be able to see the horizon (Like Steve, I thought it was the edge of a waterfall) so it would probably look better to leave it as water.
2) Yes, the obvious zig-zags look very unnatural. At this angle, ripples in water tend to look more like a series of interacting, wavery diamond shapes - the operative word being 'wavery' as opposed to strict zig-zags. Perhaps you could create a tile pattern to clone and then add detail to. Failing that, and if you don't mind using templates, some versions of PSP have a 'wave' spray-paint option.
3) The tiles on the left-hand path look out of perspective - they should be more regular and in line with one another.
That's it, really. The only other thing I can say is that I wish I could draw bgs as luscious and detailed as that! But perhaps I just don't have the patience ...
I said it before and I say it again, that's a fine background.
The only thing I can give advice on is make your first game a SHORT game. A maximum of 10 bg's (including close ups and cut scenes). There are so many game that look great but will never be released because they are too big to make.
Please start small, and save big ideas for later games.
please don't use lighten/darken brushes, add highlights and shadows using colors you pick yourself.
Quote from: Helm on Sun 04/06/2006 13:31:43
please don't use lighten/darken brushes, add highlights and shadows using colors you pick yourself.
You know, lighten/darken isn't always bad... Only if you work on an 8-bit game.
it gives you absolutely no control over colours. don't use it.
Or do it using two separate layers, one with white, one with black pixels. Then adjust the opacity to a value around 20-30 and you're done.
I tend to use lighten/darken myself, I'm not sure why it would be so wrong, with 16-bit it doesn't really matter, does it?
Helm, hajo, perhaps you'd like to explain why?
This is one of the better looking backgrounds I've seen around here, so I don't see what's so wrong with using the lighten and darken brushes.
Choosing your own colours may be better if you know what colours to choose - but therein lies the problem: it's slower, and requires more skill.
Anyway, much the same technique could be used with 1-pixel colored brushes with low opacity - in case the shadows and highlights should be say, darkblue and yellowish-white respectively, instead of pure black and white. But yes, that would be harder and require that one keeps track of the colors used for highlighting/shadowing, or consistency in the picture would be hard to achieve.
I think choosing colors by hand makes the background much more pleasant to look at. Sure, it takes more knowledge and effort to do it, but this is the CL after all so there isn't much use in saying everything's perfect.
Example:
(http://www.cepolina.com/freephoto/f/nature.mountains/i/i_Cervinia.snow.blue.jpg)
Now, imagine if there were no blue tones or orange highlights, just monochromatic shadowing. It wouldn't be as half as interesting as it is now.
The orange highlights are directly lit by the setting sun and the blue color from the sky gets reflected on the unlit parts of the snow. Ofcourse, if the sky was cloudy, then the shadows wouldn't be that blue and sharp, and the highlights would be a bit more dull, too. Someone correct me if I'm wrong.
steve: because an object's highlight shade isn't the same color as the thing's color, neither is it's shadow. If someone wants to better their art, I'd urge them to check out color theory just enough so they have a grasp on the basics, nothing fancy, how a lightsource for example, tints various materials, and go with coloring stuff in themselves.
The process doesn't have to be much different anyway. Just make a new layer, set it to OVERLAY for highlights or MULTIPLY for shadows, paint with a color you find appropriate using basic color theory, vary the opacity of the layer until you're happy, repeat as needed.