My pimpingly awesome pics

[deadsuperhero]

Hey, I've gotten a lot better at making backgrounds, and would like people to make suggestions about it and stuff like that. Right now I've done 1 pic in about 10 minutes, and I'll be making more soon.
Okay, first pic:

Sorry, It's a bit big, but that's the resolution I draw in. I tried shrinking it, but that made some of it screw up.
Oh yeah, just to let you know, it's a grassy field. For those of you unaware of that, well, now you know.

[LGM]

It's certainly your own style.. But there's not much substance. The grass needs more details.. Maybe some clouds? A tree?

It looks like a watercolor painting.. Neat

[deadsuperhero]

Thanks. I'm working on some more pics now. As for trees, well, They're sort of hard, but I'll try.

Hey, I just finished another picture. It's a picture of an altar in front of a mountain cave in hell. Creative, huh?

[deadsuperhero]

I know I shouldn't double post, but I'm really bored and want to attract attention. Any suggestions on the pics?
Ah, Pic # 3. It's the earth. I don't have any decent space univers programs, so there are no stars.

[big brother]

You know you could just draw stars manually instead of relying on some fancy plugin to do the work for you.

Not to burst your bubble, but your pics look very blurry. Try breaking your drawings down and look at each element as an object in 3d space. Where are your light sources? How do these light sources affect the shading across your surfaces? What about shadows?

Bill Tiller (artist for CMI, etc) has some good tips on drawing backgrounds that are both aesthetically pleasing and functional in an adventure game environment. You could try googling it to find that article, which I highly recommend.

[Erwin_Br]

No Googling required: http://www.adventuredevelopers.com/features.php

Look for 'Tiller Techniques'

--Erwin

[deadsuperhero]

Well, I used to have a really good program for drawing stars and planets (called Universe Creator) but my computer crashed, and so I couldn't draw any decent stars.

[DragonRose]

Or you could just draw white pixels. Those make really good stars. If you want twinkly stars, make a "+" shape of white pixels.

Your drawings are very blurry. Looking at them makes me feel like I'm wearing glasses with the wrong perscription. There should me more definition between objects. For example on pic #2, the altar blurs into the pool of magma.  This really makes no sense.  The altar is above the magma, but it looks like it's in the magma as well. More defined lines between objects are good.

For the earth, I would add some swirly clouds. From space, most of the earth is covered by clouds.  Use an airbrush tool or a semi-transparent layer so that you can sort of see the land beneath the cloud cover, but it's still obscured.

Spend some more time on your backgrounds. Being able to churn them out in ten minutes is great, but it's better to have a few really high quality ones that you put a lot of time and effort into than a lot of "good enough" ones that you made quickly.

[anasazi]

Besides what other people have said (blurriness especially), here's a few other things to think about:

Pic 1:  Your grass is wisping up into your sky.  Not a good thing.  Also, the sky color should be a little more even . . . and the grass should have a little more shape to it. 

Perspective.  Pic 2, with the pretty red lava (?) is really skewed.  The stairs don't look quite right. . . and unless the pentagram was drawn by someone in a hurry, that should be put in perspective, too, so it doesn't look so uneven.  It's also very obvious where the floor and wall meet; which is fine, if you weren't looking for continuity.  If the stone is supposed to go up from the floor to the wall, then that line should be blended in, and in should be clear from shadows, rock textures, etc.

Pic 3.  The Earth.  Is that our Earth?  If so, the continents have done some major drifting.  The ice caps are also too small.  Also, land isn't universally green from space, and there are usually some cloud formations floating around. 

I like your color choices, and the overall watercolorey feel is fine, but a little more dileneation and time will really make a big difference.

[Keebo]

You could just make one square with detailed grass and duplicate it for the grass. And make the north and south pole less... um.... make them like the green bits, not too round. 

[Sam.]

thoght id post a mini tutorial. queue:
STARS the twinkly light in our skies. Where do they come from? [/b]

first a step by step.

place a single white pixel.

then surround this with pixels of a light grey coulour

then surround this with a darker grey colour


and presto, twinkly star!

just a bit of finished sky. if you want you can change the colour of the twinkle, blue and orange work well, i have ncluded some blue examples for show. Also, it's a good idea to add some single pixel stars of varying degrees of your twinkly coulours to add depth to your sky, this can be seen below.

[deadsuperhero]

Hmm... interesting idea, but the stars still aren't quite the look I'm going for.
Any suggestions on how to do better looking grass and skies?

[Andail]

I know I shouldn't double post, but I'm really bored and want to attract attention.

That's not how we do things here. Take your time and work on your creations until you have run out of ideas on how to improve them.

I understand you have just recently found a new technique - to emulate some sort of water colours - and to fully acquire a new technique takes ages of hard work.
There are virtually no details in your pictures whatsoever. There's one thing to start with.

[Stryke]

Here's a lighter background for your first background. Also added sunlight, try to add details to the background if you want. I'm not so good at at making backgrounds.Ã,  I have the one without the sunlight if you want it.

pic removed

[[Cameron]]

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*DrDuke hides from the L3nZ FL4R3!!!1!!!!111!

[Sam.]

filters and lens flare burn my eyes. it is for my own good tht I command you to remove them. when have you ever, ever seen a landscape that really looked like that? Have you ever seen documentary footage of a landscape with that much lens flare? I think not.

Anyhoo, web, your images need crisping up,if they're in a watercolour style they still need to be more defined, atm, there are bits that sort of drift into the sky and it seems some of the planets water is leaking into space.