please criticise my background, friends

[ApeTheDog]

I'm limited in what I can do, but am capable of consistantly making background like these. Is there a simple way (by which I mean a way that doesn't require accurate mouse-wielding) in which I can improve my backgrounds?

Thank you for your help.



I realise my shading is a bit off around the poster

[PyroMonkey]

Somewhat strange style. Are you using alpha channels?

[Minimi]

What is this? If you were making blockland, yeah sure awesome.

But a background need detaild, and as you go for 320x200, why not trying to pixel by pixel it? You get a way better result. Just put some effort in it. Everyone that becomes good in something, has put alot of time or effort into it. This is a 10min work. Im sure that if you spend 60min on it, itll be alot better

and... no there is no easy way to create superb backgrounds!

[Nacho]

Who has told you he has spent just 10 minutes? Sincerelly, your crit is based in "work more" and "put more effort", but I don't see any clue for assuming he is not putting as much as effort as he can. That he can make a lot of them is irrelevant, IMO, and not related with the effort.

What would I do? Remove the black outlines for darker (darker lines than the object you are painting, for example, a dark brown for a brown cupboard) and please, stop using that weird colouring effects, flashes, gradients... For getting an appealing effect with less "weird" colours, you must fill the scene with lots of objects, the work with tracing becomes important, even with 2 colours a nice composed BG can result nice, hope I am not assuming too much if I show you an example made by me:



Some tutorials about perspective would help, even "feeling" that you have some notions, maybe natural born ones, and that you seem to like "goofy" style.

Hope it helps.

P.S: Google for Mr.Colossal's tutorials as well. You can find his web in his profile in "members".

[IM NOT TEH SPAM]

It looks like you're using the dodge tool alot to try and show the room's light sources, it gives many of the objects in there a bleached look.  Also it looks like you overused the burn tool on the cabinet, and you outlined all of the walls like that as well, which like farlander said is a very weird coloring effect and generally not too appealing to the eye.

Your shading on the poster is unneccecary, since a piece of paper wouldn't emit a shadow anyway.  However, most of the time your shading looks like a circle, one side light one side dark and touching in the middle.  Once again, that's a weird effect to use on your work. 

Anyway, keep working and you'll get better.  And listen to what farlander said, because those tutorials can be useful.

[Privateer Puddin']

If you get a fairly solid start as Farl posted, even with fill and a darker higlight, the background will look pretty good.. then add more stuff as you become more confident with your work

http://custardsclutter.com/yacht2.png onto http://custardsclutter.com/yacht.png

that's mainly a lot of fill and then a multiplay layer for other stuff, a little noise and some gradients used also

[ApeTheDog]

Thanks people. That looks great, Farlander. Very hard to draw, though. Still, you're all right in thinking this background took me very little time.

I'm going to check out some tutorials.

[Phemar]

P.S: Google for Mr.Colossal's tutorials as well. You can find his web in his profile in "members".

Mr Colossal's site seem's to be down, along with Squinky Productions and all those other ones hosted on Sylpher.com.

EDIT: Aha, he seems to be here now: http://www.kafkaskoffee.com/