New Henri background to C&C

[InCreator]

The room is supposed to be a room in my country house, and it's supposed to be nighttime.
I decided to post it here for some C&C before detailing whole thing up.

I haven't drawn BG-s for a long time, so I might be a bit rusty...
Details to be added: Foodstuff on table, light switch, some stuff on the fireplace, live fire, ceiling lamp, wires on wall, stuff on the cabinet, maybe something to line area between walls and ceiling, it looks weird right now.
But I want to be sure in basic geometry and layout first.


The black cylindrical thingy in the middle is the fireplace, alot of Soviet era buildings had one of those. I will animate it fired up in the game.

So... what do you think? Anything hurting the eye and to be changed?


2x:

[Evil]

The table height sits right along the floor line of the back wall so there's a lot of depth lost. The right corner isn't very noticable. A bit more contrast on the parts of the floor that are in the shadows will keep it from looking so objectish. Angles of the bed are weird as is the seat of the left chair. Textures look really good.

[InCreator]

Thanks. Since I made bare geometry 3d model first to ensure myself believable perspective, the angles should be mathematically okay...



* Added details here and there
* Fixed right corner
* Darkened this and that
* Added wall borders
* Fixed table shadows
* Fixed table texture in some places
* Smoothed some edges
* Fixed left door
* Lightened and smoothed shadows


2x:


I did not understand floor shadow-contrast thing, Evil. Could you dumb it down a little? Or did I fix it by lightening shadows?

[bicilotti]

This is slightly OT but

I am no fan or expert in 3d backgrounds (I am no expert in backgrounds overall, but I expecially suck in 3d bg) so I am not able to give useful comments on this one, but I really like tha character staing in the modified version you posted! He is very on the pixel art side AND his drawing is crisp and clean. Very nice job!

[InCreator]

This is not 3d background, I simply make 3D version first to get shading and perspective right, and repaint it later in pure 2D.

[zabnat]

The table height sits right along the floor line of the back wall so there's a lot of depth lost. The right corner isn't very noticable.

Because of these things, at first look the doors look very strange. It looked to me as if they had about 30 cm high doorstep. In the latest version and with the character helping this is not as big of a problem.

[Dualnames]

I'm reallyimpressed....

[Khris]

You really, really need to change the viewing angle or make the table taller.
The edge of the table and the bottom of the back wall aligning like that is a big no-no.

Also, the background is really dark on my monitor and the pic's histogram confirms that.

Apart from those, it's very nice and stylish.

The only other thing is the room's perspective. It's 100% correct, and that's exactly the problem. Compare the character to the chair; as long as the character is going to stay in the back, it's fine, but you'd have to scale him up to at least twice the size otherwise.
And he seems a bit small compared to the door height.

[ManicMatt]

Hmm, the background looks so amazing.. but it's a very serious style and the cartoon character doesn't suit it at all. I expect George Stobbart to be there or something! He's also very short, intentional?

EDIT: Ah, KhrisMUC beat me to it, but at least he seems to know exactly what he's talking about..

[InCreator]

Oh no!

Redoing the table now will be a hellishly difficult task, I'm afraid. I can move it tad bit down and right, but this would mess up angle, whole new table is needed to be drawn... huh.

The edge of the table and the bottom of the back wall aligning like that is a big no-no.

I don't quite understand this. Image is quite small and everything will have black border to fill 320x240 screen anyway...

The room's whole purpose is a quite short cutscene, so scaling will not be needed and character stays at the right door, other characters in this room will be custom-drawn according to room scale anyway.

but it's a very serious style and the cartoon character doesn't suit it at all

This is first time I hear something like this in 2-year long Henri making progress. I picked quite simple style because I like animating things and wanted to include as much animation as possible. Too late to give it more serious thought now, though.

Yes, doors were a bit too high.
* Fixed, also shortened closet.
* Replaced this here and there, adjusted positions

This is ingame screenshot (second character still needs some work) to maybe give clearer picture of what I'm aiming for.


I'm kind of clueless now. Table...? I didn't realize that it was that bad.

[Neil Dnuma]

Okay, first I see you've updated the BG while I made this...

Anyway, I thought the parts with high contrast could use some manual anti-aliasing, such as the bottom of the door. I just picked the opposing colors, and decorated with a value in between. Used carefully, I think this can make it more pleasing to look at.

Now, you just remade the door yourself, but this applies to other parts too.

Apart from that, and what others have mentioned, I am glad to see you're drawing again, and this piece really has a great atmosphere to it. Will be great with the lit fire!

[InCreator]

That's a great idea, thanks! I had forgotten how much wonders manual AA could do.

* Antialiased and transaliased  (reduced opacity enough to alias with background) almost all rough corners and border pixels. Change is cosmetical, but very noticeable in game.
* Fixed left ceiling and floor border
* Fixed dresser on left
* Fixed bed to match one of the edits I made earlier, added wrinkles
* Some extra smoothing shading on table and chairs



2X


---
This is first screen of final (quarter) portion of Henri game. With all the ambitious technological solutions I've used, such as animated fire plus animated alpha glow in this room, a nightclub with background music-synchronized disco lights etc, I don't want to drop this project, never. I think that with all the help I got here I will finish the game soon.

[Evil]

What I meant by the floor is that the shadowed areas (next to bed, by back door) are so dark that it looks like some other material other than wood. It looks like the wood area is a "rug" on a dark floor. If you boost the contrast and show some of the cracks and grain better the floor will stand out less.

Does that make more sense?

[InCreator]

Yes it does.
Thanks for advice, I will use it.

[JimmyShelter]

I really like the background and the two characters, but there seems to be a bit of a style clash.

Your main character looks more cartoony, while the other character and the background look more realistic.


I guess the difference between the main character and the background wouldn't be so noticable if the other character also looked a bit  more cartoony.

[Erwin_Br]

I love the background, but I guess I'll never understand why people scale down an image when already utilizing a low resolution. Not that there's anything wrong with low resolutions, but why the black bars left and right?

Other than that, great work. Using a 3D mock-up of the scene as a guide works really well.

--Erwin

[ManicMatt]

You said nobody has ever said about a style clash before, yet today two people have. So
I looked at your Wip for Henri and the screenshots there show more fitting backgrounds? Maybe you got TOO good! 

Ah well, it's not a big deal in any case, and I still look foward to this much-loved game.

[InCreator]

Your main character looks more cartoony, while the other character and the background look more realistic.

This is true and intentional. In the game, other characters are either realistic or something in-between, much depending how humorous is the character and his role. Since Henri is the main character in all happenings, cartoony look makes him and his character somewhat easier to recognize. I think that style balance between various characters isn't that bad if they all are compared together... there's about half of character cast used in game on image below...

I love the background, but I guess I'll never understand why people scale down an image when already utilizing a low resolution. Not that there's anything wrong with low resolutions, but why the black bars left and right?

More screen area = more work! 
Actually, I try to keep all backgrounds so I won't be needing character scaling much. And compared to character, every room must be hall-sized-large then! So it's choice of either realism or eye candy. Otherwise, the effect where character is about the size of the house when outside, and enters weirdly huge room inside! -  happens, as it's with many old commercial games. I don't like it much.

[Khris]

The edge of the table and the bottom of the back wall aligning like that is a big no-no.

I don't quite understand this. Image is quite small and everything will have black border to fill 320x240 screen anyway...

This has nothing to do with size but with composition.



Look at the red line: it's the edge of the table and at the same time the bottom of the back wall. In a wireframe model the lines would be practically indistinguishable from one another.
Now in RL there are of course situations where this is exactly what happens from a particular point of view, but when designing a scene, this should be avoided at all costs.

You've ignored my remark about the overall darkness of the screen, so I've edited the levels to a degree that enables me to actually see what's going on.
My guess is that you're using an LCD screen or your monitor's brightness is cranked up all the way (or both).

[OneDollar]

There seems to be a line continuing up from the right hand side of the door - did someone go a bit overboard when cutting the door frame out of the wall?

(Insert critical red pen here)


Otherwise it's looking really good