My first background - wip

[freshrich]

This is a background I did in Photoshop CS.Ã,  The wagon is a 3d object rendered in Maya with a toon shader outline applied.Ã,  I had to tweak it some in PS - it's far from finished.Ã,  The lanterns were drawn in PS.



The wagon steps are temporary - I wanted instant gratification, so the picture was thrown together rather quickly.

Excluding the 3D aspect, time invested was about 45 minutes.

The treeline behind the wagon is temporary... I just needed something to fill in the space.

The grass is experimental - there are two stock "grass" brushes in PS that I used.Ã,  I've never really done any landscape art before (mainly 3D and comic book style art), so I know that it needs a lot of work.

I need to add more shadows and highlights, I think.
The trees need work, too.

I spent some time looking at the CMI3 art and was inspired by that style.Ã,  I'm trying to develop something that looks similar, but not exactly like it.

Anyway... this was just a test to see what I might be able to create.Ã,  I'm sure an actual background used in my game would take much longer to create than this one.
Let me know what you think.

Rich

[Khris]

It's quite nice so far, a few things bother me, though:

-the sloppy black outlines on the wagon really ruin the wagon's 3D look, IMO
-the cliff to the left looks like it would crumble away if somebody stepped on it, yet it supports the weight of the dead tree
-mentioned tree has no roots
-the rock to the right looks very flat
-the sky around the moon wouldn't be illuminated like that. Instead, the water would reflect the moonlight, check this pic for reference: h**p://www.southskyline.org/Skylines/2003-04/NightSeaMoon.gif (copy & paste to a new browser window)

[esper]

I really like it! Except the tree thing (the cliff would totally not support that!), and the moon refelection, and all those other things that were already mentioned. Although I have to say, I kind of LIKE the black outlines... If you had a 3D rendered object in the middle of the scene it wouldn't fit. In my last game, I went with my crappy 2d art for backgrounds rather than some really nice 3D backgrounds I made with TrueSpace for the sole reason that a 2D character in a 3D world would look horrible. I really think the outlines on the wagon make it loo "part" of the scene. VERY nice. I just wish the free version of TrueSpace had toon shaders.
   Photoshop CS, huh? so you used a tablet? I just got mine in the mail yesterday, and I've never been happier!

[loominous]

Some pretty sloppy mods:



I think the valuerange is good but the some values are confusingly distributed. The trees on the right seems lit up from the camera and the wagon lacks a casthadow from the moonlight.

The colors are pretty incoherent, the probable reason is that you've based it only to an extent on sampled cmi palette colors. The tree close to us is pretty much green whereas the one to the left is red, which goes for the wagon as well. The cmi look is pretty much monochromatically green, and reds being the opposite of green shouldn t really exist in these conditions. To get them to fit in they need to neutralized, which you do easiest by applying a green filter on those areas if your program permits. A greyish/neutral area next to a green will look red, and that's about as far red as you can go (unless the area is lit up by an artificial light).

The moon is pretty messed up saturationwise, with those white dabs sticking out, and even if you'd like a fairly white moon the saturation needs to be quite even or it'll look odd.

To increase the color contrast I'd go with quite high saturation on the moon and the lanters, as well as brightening up the lanternarea.

In any case a nice first attempt.

Btw, regarding the the moon reflection, it wouldn't really be visable from this angle as far as I know. A simple way to determine a reflection is to have it at an equal vertical distance from the horizon, which would put it roughly at the centerleft of the landmasse, hence, not visable in the water.

Edit: some spelling

[freshrich]

OK... I did some more work on the image...



I cleaned up the wagon, removed the cliff, added more grass, tweaked the big rock, added a few little rocks - now I'm done for the night.

Thanks for the feedback.

Rich

[freshrich]

loominous:

comments taken to heart.  I'll get to work on the lighting portion of the image some time tonight.  thanks for the quick thumbnail corrections.

rich

[ildu]

The loominous modification looks great. True CMI-style.

[stuh505]

Very atmospheric, I like it.

Some things you changed in the new pic are worse.

1) The water is gone

2) The light is overlapping the lantern oddly

3) There are too many lines on the wagon wall

Some thigns are better

1) The rendering of the wheels and complex stuff