Promanade

[Arboris]

I've been busy with this background lately.
It's supposed to be a promande deck from some rathole spacestation.

I was deciding how to implement some shading to make the picture less flat.
I tried a few things but none seemed to look right. Any Suggestions ?

[Babar]

Perhaps you can colour some of the buildings. I am sure that shopkeepers would add colour to the buildings to attract more customers. Blue and grey only seems a little bland

[jetxl]

Call me nutty, but I think they are just test colors. Coloring will happen when the drawing is FINISHED.
(did you know that most artists sketch first and add colors later?)

[Babar]

(did you know that most artists sketch first and add colors later?)

Arrr...I do so myself, but never used test colours before actual colouring. The idea has its merits. If that is what you are doing ArboriS, then great. Once the colours are added, it will probably be less flat. Perhaps some shading on the right of the walkway (where I assume there will be no light falling).
Other than that, IMHO I don't think your BG is all that flat. It looks like it is right out of a 3D FPS (graphical-wise, I am not insulting your artwork )

[Arboris]

...It looks like it is right out of a 3D FPS...

I get that comment quite often actually . This is because not all of the house are drawn in yet. What you see are simply guidelines.
The upper deck is almost finished now, only the last right bit is missing. And then the walls on the lower deck need to be filled in.

[Pod]

Odd question: but how is the station lighted?

One giant light in the middle? Small point lights all over the roof? Lights on the beams only?
No lights at all except for the shop keeper's signs and along the edge of the drop (what's that for, by the way?) and so on

edit: Are the blue sections the lights?

[Arboris]

lightning like normal daytime lightning eminating from the center (left of the picture)

Its supposed to mimic a normal daytime on earth,so no heavy shadows that will drop etc. Just a pleasant light to work in. Altho its an old space station the lights will be dimmer.

aand then there is the occasional lightning from the houses.

Are the blue sections the lights?

no theyre not, most of the are windows or simply part of plating (like the things the girders are attached to)

[big brother]

I would give it more depth by making the foreground objects more detailed than those in the background. Also, I would make the foreground darker.

[Oz]

I love the layout and the point of view. Really nice layout.

[Bombadil]

I like it the way it is.
Maybe finishing the houses that lack and changing a few blue things to other colors...

[Pod]

lightning like normal daytime lightning eminating from the center (left of the picture)

Its supposed to mimic a normal daytime on earth,so no heavy shadows that will drop etc. Just a pleasant light to work in. Altho its an old space station the lights will be dimmer.

How does the station do that? It'd be very hard for the station to have one light big enough to appear as daylight to every single part of the station at once........ It'd have to be done by a series of smaller lights dotted around or something.

[Darth Mandarb]

Like Babar, for me, the uniformity of color on the houses/buildings makes it all run together. Ã, It's difficult to distinguish the buildings. Ã, I think there's an oportunity for an INCREDIBLY detailed bg here!

Here is a small sample of what I was thinking ...



On the blue house on the left; I did some detailing/shading to demonstrate how I envision it.
- added rivets/bolts
- added panelling
- added hi and low lights

Some concerns I have looking at the image:

- Given the size of the doors the drop-off in the middle looks to be about 40-50 feet and there doesn't appear to be a 'railing' of any kind. Ã, Unless the blue areas are force fields or something like that?

- The open areas by the drop-offs (look bottom of my image above). Ã, I think what would look neat is if those were living quarters down there. Ã, You could add in some apartment doors, windows, elevators to the different levels.

- Down in the bottom (all gray now) you could add basketball and/or tennis courts, a swimming pool, more shops, etc.

I'm sure you weren't planning on leaving it empty! Ã, I just wanted to drop my opinion in there!

Hope it helps!

[Xadhoom]

Wonderful design. I'm looking forward to seeing the finished version.
As for shading I'd suggest setting up a lighting scheme to emphasize the enormity of the place and the general rat-hole-ness. The lighting needs to be sparse, perhaps only a slight ambient tone coming through the viewports and some smaller lights here and there, making little islands of brightness.

[Arboris]

Thanks for the comments guys.

Darth mandarb I really like what you did with the plating on the house, it does look rather good on it. Thanks for the drawover .
There wont be any tenniscourts or swimmingpools in there tho   Just some messy junk, broken speeders and such. And here and there what used to be visitors centres. Or maybe some leftover construction platform.

The central lightning idea is kinda out of order indeed. I'm thinking of taking Xadooms advice and making it quite dark with some small lights here and there to give it a more of a rathole feeling.

[Cluey]

Simple two tone shading.  Looks OK I think.

But this Background, in terms of complexety is pretty impressive.  The Perspective is awesome. Really interesting angle and distance is handled well.

Alternatively, if you want to cheat in photoshop:

Accented edges