My First Background (orthogonal view)

lostbuthappy · Thu 07/05/2009 15:49:34

Hi guys,
I like to draw but sadly I'm not good at it, so I decided to try out an orthogonal projection for my first game, which allows me to rapidly fire out backgrounds and focus on other aspects of adventure crafting. Apart of that I think it's not too much of a crime against art as it complements the dystopian setting (at least I hope so).
I guess I messed up some angles and I can't get rid of the feeling that something's really wrong with the picture, so any suggestions are most welcome!

Thanks in advance.

Hudders · Thu 07/05/2009 16:33:35

lol @ "Only a working citizen is a happy citizen"

It looks a bit odd to me, but that might just be because I'm not used to looking at backgrounds with this kind of perspective.

Have you considered moving the door to one of the other walls, and then removing the right-hand wall completely? Might make it look less like a shoebox.

Babar · Thu 07/05/2009 16:34:13

I've not measured the angles or anything, so I can't really tell, but one thing I notice is that your walls are only 1 pixel thick (seems odd, especially for the door side).

Khris · Thu 07/05/2009 18:09:33

And you should avoid touching lines. The carpet touches the locker and is right next to the sofa's top.
Make the shapes overlap each other or give them some distance.

lostbuthappy · Thu 07/05/2009 18:49:42

Thank you guys. I thickened the walls, put the right wall in an extra layer, moved the rug a bit to the right (it still touches the couch's outline firmly) and added some stuff and textures:

Right wall not visible:

Right wall not visible:

Sephiroth · Thu 07/05/2009 20:08:47

Well maybe I'm the only one but the left wall is bothering me somehow... I think thats the cause of the perspective problem.
Parallel lines won't work for a real depth effect, maybe the strange perspective was intended but I thought i'd give my point of view.

Sorry for the rushed edit it's just to illustrate what I'm saying:

You added some nice details and the wall/floor texture looks really good, keep that level of detail on the other furnitures like the sofa for example? It looks a bit too square and flat but this is not a major issue

Regards

lostbuthappy · Thu 07/05/2009 20:47:05

Thanks for your input Sephiroth. The orthogonal (aka no 3d-ish) perspective is intended, although I'm starting to wonder if that was a good idea. It surely makes pushing around furniture etc. quite easy since there's no vanishing point I have to consider. The sofa... yeah the sofa

I'm not sure wheter I should leave everything edgy as it is and call it ART or make it look more natural (which will propably take much longer for an amateur like me).
The furniture will definitely become more detailed, right now the whole process is simply trial and error, also known as darn slow.

Sephiroth · Thu 07/05/2009 21:34:13

I see what you mean with the perspective and how it makes it easier but you *may* be wrong about this, it kinda shrinks the foreground. Once you have a vanishing point, you can still draw the sofa and worry about perspective later, adjusting angles according to the VPoint.

You seem to know about layers, be it gimp or photoshop you could draw a whole layer with the perspective lines and vanishing points and switch it on off to see if you got off perspective somewhere in the process. As long as you haven't added too much details it shouldn't be that hard to correct these, I guess...

Again it's easy for me to criticize when I can't even produce something looking right, but I think the sofa looks too edgy like you said because of its shading, straight lines, if you could just round it up a bit it would add a nice effect.

Wow I'm talking a lot :p Even if I don't like the slogan because it makes me think of some propaganda and mind control society like in Korea for example, I do feel this kind of intriguing atmosphere and this is actually nice in a game if this is what you wanted of course :p Edit: I guess Dystopian is the opposite of Utopian and would explain the slogan.

lostbuthappy · Thu 07/05/2009 22:31:09

Hey that's an awesome idea (adding a layer with vanishing point and stuff)! I understand that the viewport I've chosen is quite strange and does not feel "right" for many (including me), but I kinda like it not only for it's convenience, but also just because it's strange. I'm not an artist so I don't understand the consequences of the shrinked foreground (apart from the fact that it looks strange), could you please explain that?

Have a look at this screenshot:

As you can see, this game uses the orthogonal perspective (aka isometric view) aswell and get's away with it. There are many, many games that use this particular view (The Sims, Fallout, er... Fallout 2

) and I just thought: If they can, why can't I? I mean that's at least better than Goonies 2 (NES) rooms

However, I think I'll follow your advice and create a "real" background for comparison so that I know what I'm talking about.

PS: The slogan, of course, is meant to be "not liked"

There are many dystopian films and books out there, like Brave New World, 1984, Soilant Green etc.

Anian · Thu 07/05/2009 23:01:22

Camera in Fallout might be isometric, but it's more "above" the room than what you're drawing, I think that's the main problem and you can correct this by placing the actual horizontal lines of the floor at an angle (ie 30 degrees) - just like that screenshot and in Fallout.

Some examples: pic1 or pic2

Plus it would help if the walls dissappear when a character goes behind them or is inside the room (link)
Just a page with some more screenshots: link

And that might actually be a fun, interesting and cool way of drawing "backgrounds."

P.S. Might I suggest that you change the phrase to just "A working citizen is a happy citizen", seems more formal and as message/saying.

Sephiroth · Thu 07/05/2009 23:04:17

Ahh! Fallout, you said the holy word! This is isometric (pseudo 3d) view, these are my favorites aside from final fantasy

Well to me it doesn't look strange it's just bothering me a lil bit. Like I said it shrinks the foreground and it feels like the perspective is somehow inverted: The background is bigger than the foreground.

Nice screenshot, I wonder why you're not going for the isometric view with interiors as well.

Are you going for a GTA like game? I see the beretta has 8 bullets, recent berettas can have up to 15 without an upgrade, just so we get to kill more evilpeople

Edit: Anian's idea about walls or roofs disappearing when needed could be achieved by drawing the parts that will disappear as objects in the room and then set their transparency when the player stands on hotspots you define, for example.

lostbuthappy · Thu 07/05/2009 23:09:00

Quote from: Sephiroth on Thu 07/05/2009 23:04:17
Are you going for a GTA like game? I see the beretta has 8 bullets, recent berettas can have up to 15 without an upgrade, just so we get to kill more evilpeople

No, not at all. It's just a screenshot I randomly picked from google image to demonstrate my point.
@anian: The "camera" in Fallout was indeed higher above the ground. I simply used that term to trigger some synapses (seemed to work

). And puno ti hvala for your refined version of the slogan, I'll definetely use that.

PPS: I'm not sure if hiding/showing walls won't simply annoy people but I'll check it out. I simply posted two versions of my background to take Hudders advice into account (and get some feedback about it), but doing both at the same time is in fact tempting... Thanks once more.
PPPS: The funny thing with orthogonal perspective is that fore- and background have the same size, so if you feel than one is bigger than another this could indeed indicate that the angles are wrong (well, as a metter of fact they are, they are all +/-2Â° of 57Â° (grammar lessons are always welcome)