"Old background - How should I make the Backgrounds better?"

[Dr Fred Rubacant Edison]

This is one of the old Backgrouds i made.





In game it dosent look to bad




 

[Candall]

The lighting.  That's going to be your main concern here.  Think about where your light source is and see to it that every single item in the room is lit from the same angle.  The chair on the wall facing the window is obviously the same as the one under the window.

The shelves.  Empty shelves just make a room look incomplete.  They shouldn't be there if they don't have anything to hold.

The glass.  Glass doesn't break that way.  You'll find that there's an impact site where the glass gave way and that all of the cracks will radiate from that point.

[Dr Fred Rubacant Edison]

Updated





I fixed the crack in the tv and the white frame above the chair was a mirror but i made it a Pitcher. Added stuff to the shelves and i added a light to the room. Still need to work on more lighting. anything else need's to be fixed?

Oh and if your wondering about a door heres the other side of the room.

[Ghost]

Just drawing a lamp is NOT adding light, but actually I think that the lighting is not too bad. When seeing the room as a whole, there's some overall lighting, and that should suffice.
It looks good, and I still like the idea of having the different sides of a room. The crack in the telly looks quite natural now, so I'd say you can consider this a good, solid background.

If anything, I think the angle on the telly table should be a bit lower. You can achieve this by moving the upper border a few pixels down.

[Dr Fred Rubacant Edison]

Undated 

[Dr Fred Rubacant Edison]

This is the back hall both sides tell me what i can do to make them better.

[Illustrious]

hi, well i look at your background and i can see so many things that can do with improvement.


Im no backgroubnd expert by any means but...
1. There are so many clashes in technique, some pictures on the wall are pixelled and then the other is anti-alaised, eg; the pic of the castle to our left compared to the skeleton or mummy to our right. The cracks look unconvincing.

2. there are so many colours in this background that are usless, why dont you try and begin with, say, 15 colours, it would be easily achievable!
This would also discipline you to control the amount of colours you use and it won't give you the chance to clash in terms of anti-alais.

3. The colours you have chosen are far from the most effective, i can see that your palette is all over the place in terms of saturations and hues, try and choose your colours wih more thought for the overall background. for example; the cabinet the tv is resting on is distinctly a different colour to what seems like a wardrobe(?in a living room) if the colours of the cabinets have more relation it would be more pleasing to the eye.

4. The sense of depth in this scene is scattered too precariously, you have perspective all messed up, for example; look at the wardrobe to our right and the book cabinet on the floor to our left, one has depth the other lacks any whatsoever.

5. Lighting is none existant, you should really ditch the poor gradients on the walls if you want to achieve convincing lighting. The gradients clash on both left and right of the walls.

6.  I would suggest starting from scratch. Begin with lineart first of all and then progress from there, instead of cutting corners with cutting and pasting, really spend time on correcting all perspecting and layout before you colour it in.

There are alot of things in this bg that i could nitpick about but i will refrain fom doing so as i feel i have given most of the advice you would need to improve this background.

Good Luck!

[Illustrious]

although my criticism was a bit full on, i only intend on motivating or pushing you to try harder and end up with better results.

In the long run, you will learn far more by doing everything from scratch, it is the only way to improve, learn the basics and build on the solid foundation.

Anyway...
I put a bit of work in to help you, feel free to do how you wish with this image.




I have basically started the Background with a center reference point, i am learning from this myself as I have never tried to make rooms like this, all i go on is theory (and even in theory I'm not well read...yet)
There is the minimum amount of colours to start with and if you wanted a smoother transition between the shades, simply add more colours or dither.

What i will say though is that I feel the point should have been higher.
It's a basic example for you that's all.

If this has helped you at all, im happy.

Goodluck!

[Dr Fred Rubacant Edison]

Thank you for all the help people.

Here is a repaint




Illustrous I'm going to use that sample to help me make new back grounds.


In game shots 

[Dr Fred Rubacant Edison]

I dont know what to do.  The oil Barrel on the right looks like crap and the window dosent look right to.


Need some ideas to and what else could i add to this room.


New update minor. Still needs major work. 


BETA

[Steel Drummer]

Looks like you just copied and pasted from screenshots of Maniac Mansion. For one, you could try using a graphics program to actually draw your own artwork. As well as that, you shouldn't be making 3 threads in C&C, asking for help with your backgrounds. If you have more than one background that you need help on, put them all in one thread, and if you have pre-existing threads with backgrounds for C&C in them, post your new ones in those threads. I've seen your posts before, and you turned one C&C thread into a warzone. Please follow my suggestions!

[Shane 'ProgZmax' Stevens]

I've merged your posts since these backgrounds are all for the same project and all posted within a short space of time.  Please do not clutter up the forum, use some good judgement and lump your artwork together so people can help you in one place.  Also, I think you need to start actually listening to the help offered here if you want to make some headway, such as drawing the rooms yourself without pasting objects in. 

Another thing, are you loading these images into AGS as jpegs?  If so you are impeding your own progress with these backgrounds since this format is artifacting and smoothing out your images.

Example:




Don't do your art in lossy jpeg formats, go with png or gif.  Don't post jpegs of low-resolution art here, use png or gif.  I hope you read what I'm writing very carefully because I've been patient with you in the past and you don't seem to be listening.  Most importantly, stop moving to new bgs for critique before you have a chance to finish even one!

[Dr Fred Rubacant Edison]

There Bitmap image i think photo bucket makes them jpegs

[Shane 'ProgZmax' Stevens]

I uploaded a gif to photobucket and it left it as a gif, so unless it specifically converts bmp to jpeg to decrease filesize I don't know what the issue is.  What you can do is download a program that converts formats like irfanview (it's also an image viewer).  Convert your bmp to a gif (or png if it has more than 256 colors) and upload it to photobucket, that way we can see how the background will appear in your game instead of an artifact-filled blurry mess .  Also, this isn't a tech thread so if you have problems converting don't post them here, just pm me instead.

[Dr Fred Rubacant Edison]

Back ground in gif format



Still cant see it to well

I will do a in game shot

[Illustrious]

Rubacant, I am finding it hard to put any effort into helping you if all you do is simply disregard the most important things that are fundamentally wrong with your backgrounds.
Why don't you actually try to improve the backgrounds rather than mash them up with cut and paste items, which in the end results in something that lacks any real substance. It is clear to see that you don't intend on taking peoples advice.
1. Search for old threads where people have taken C+C that actually improves their backgrounds.
2. Recognise that if you continue to disregard good crit and insist on ripping all the objects and things to create your room, you will not only lose respect of fellow forum members but you will actually lose out on valuable tips to aid your progression.

My last suggestion- scrap all backgrounds that you have ripped and use them more as a reference, there are so many errors in all the backgrounds you have posted that I wouldnt waste my time pointing them out to you (And many already have been), only for them to be disregarded.

I will have no further part in commenting on these backgrounds.

[Dr Fred Rubacant Edison]

My backgrounds are like this cuz im trying to keep the style of Maniac mansion. I know my back grounds still need lots of work and thank you for all the help so far.


Heres some Backgrounds form Maniac mansion.

[Khris]

Rubacant, are you really completely unable to see the differences between the MM Deluxe shots and your own?

Look at the original backgrounds and aks yourself the following:

Do they contain
-harsh gradients?
-ugly, asymmetric objects that don't fit the perspective?
-grainy, resized, obviously items ripped from elsewhere?
-eye-hurting inconsistency of lighting?
-angled picture frames containing non-angled pictures?
-ugly, eye-hurting bevel filters?

I don't think so.

[Steel Drummer]

I don't think he wants to improve his art because he thinks that when we say negative things about his art, or even give him constructive criticism to him, that we're attacking him personally. I've seen his posts in Beginner's Tech/Technical Forum and he ignores what people say in there too. Another thing Rubacant: If you're making a MM sequel/remake or whatever, why don't you use your own sprites instead of ripping them from MM deluxe?

[Dr Fred Rubacant Edison]

I don't think he wants to improve his art. Where did you get that from?


And what about maniac mansion mania.  There not 100% all that good and need a lot of fixs to.