Sierra style background. Needs C&C.

[Secret Fawful]

Yo, I have a background here, and I need to know if I've nailed the Sierra style or if I've just barely grazed it yet or what. C&C is much appreciated, thanks. The background is of the inside of a ship.

[SpacePirateCaine]

The composition isn't bad - you've got plenty in the room to keep the player interested and looking around - it reminds me vaguely of certain parts of Quest for Glory, which I assume is the look we are going for. I'm a fan of foreground elements, which you have in abundance, and the colors are mixed well as to not disorient the player or make it in any way difficult to look at.

One of the major issues I can see is in how a lot of the image is very grainy. I'm not sure if that's just a problem with compression, or if it's intentional (in which case, disregard that), but it's somewhat noticeable, which means that as a viewer, I find myself staring at empty space looking at speckles that don't seem like they should be there. If you're working in a limited pallette, like 256 colors (granted, many Sierra titles of the day did so as well), this is less of an issue, as it's hard to avoid.

Now, as many are likely to point out, another issue with the picture is perspective. A lot of stuff doesn't really follow linear perspective, so I would suggest first making sure that all parallel lines (like that of your rugs) merge at a common vanishing point. The biggest issue that the perspective brings up in this case is it confuses the eye as to what sort of angle to expect. I see the purple and blue rug in the back, and it suggests a somewhat subtle incline, whereas the top of the barrel, being wide top-to-bottom, or the blue and greenish rug in the lower right tip up, suggesting a more top-down visual angle.

As a purely aesthetic thing, I would say that you should probably leave the candle flames as animated sprites in-game, as opposed to being rendered as part of the background. You can keep the shading of the room itself the same, but if you have existing fire and spheres of 'glow', then it takes away the opportunity for some nice 'living' background elements when you implement them in-game. Also, on the subject of lighting, you might want to play with shading things using your two candles and (to a lesser extent) your stove as light sources. It would make the room seem a lot more dynamic.

Overall, it's a great effort. I hope that some of this advice helps make it even better.

[Andail]

It's not a bad picture, but it's hardly Sierra, sorry. It's neither old pixely lowres Sierra nor semi-old handpainted hi-res Sierra.

The style is not really suitable for adventuregames, in that it's too grainy and inprecise, and rather inconsistent. Furthermore, there is no real depth, neither perspective-wise nor colour/contrast-wise. After just a quick glance I couldn't even make out it was a 3-dimensional room I was looking at.

I think you need to use references on this one, to get the basic compositions right. Build up the room geometrically and with proper perspective.

While foreground objects is commonly used in backgrounds, this one would benefit from having at least some "opening", to let the viewer into the picture.

[zabnat]

I've had the same problem as Andail:

After just a quick glance I couldn't even make out it was a 3-dimensional room I was looking at.

Somehow I feel that foreground blends in too easily. Using shading would help on this and it would define shapes better.

Also dithering makes the image look very grainy and hard to read. In Photoshop (maybe in other) you can set the level of dithering when reducing colors. Less or no dithering would work better in my opinion.

Glow effect on candle flames (or that other one a lantern) look strange. They have quite hard edges.

You have a great start and if you take account the problems everybody mentioned it can evolve in to a very nice background.

[Secret Fawful]

All right. But honestly, what I did was pencil this then scan and color over the penciling. That is part of the graininess. The other part is that I intentionally added even more graininess, because in my eyesight, (dunno about others) Sierra games have always looked EXTREMELY grainy to me, and no its not the way the games ran, its because of my eyesight. In all the 15 years of artistry that I've had, I've never tried to or have worked with perspective, because frankly I've found those little details bland and boring, and I'm lazy. My hands shake like the dickens, and when I try to use a ruler to straighten things my hands knock it around, or I can't figure out how to guide my pencil along the rulers edge. I'm self taught, and I don't have much patience for learning books, so I don't know anything about geometric stuff and blah. Basically, I'm an ill-equipped, lazy, short attention spanned idjit who just doesn't have the patience to continue trying to master the Sierra style. So I'll go on to something else. Thanks for your comments. But I will try to continue perfecting this image, I just won't do any more like it.

[ildu]

I guess it depends what you're shooting for, or what you expect to achieve with doing art. For example, I'm passionate about art and I'm looking to make a career out of it. So naturally I wanna learn all the techniques I get my hands on. On the other hand, if you're only doing art to for example to make a game, wherein you're more interested in other aspects of development other than art, it's probably a lot more difficult to get the motivation.

Nevertheless, I think you only need to know three things to already go very far in the field; perspective, depth and color theory. And for starters, it would take you no more than an hour to learn about perspective if you've got a tutorial handy. That'll already take you quite far.

[Secret Fawful]

Yeh, I'll keep trying to improve. In the meantime, here's another backgorund I made, which I need C&C on. This time I'm going for an LSL style.



x2:


_{Edit by Andail: Included magnified version. Always do this with resolutions around 320x200 pixels or less.}

[Andail]

Your new background is a bit hard to criticise, being very "specialised" kind of...

The style itself good, it's 100% more functional for an adventure game than your previous piece.

You have a good, simple composition, clean shapes and a nice colour scheme.

This kind of style requires very clear lines, near-vector quality, so take your time to clean up all your stray pixels and make all the shapes and edges as clean as possible.

Also try to include some distant objects near the horizon. At the moment the lack of backdrop creates a sort of desolate, almost agoraphobic feeling. A few distant trees or similar, even clouds, can counter-act this effect.

[Hudders]

What are those things on the right at the back? Some kind of posters?

I think you need to re-orientate the line that runs down the middle of the field. Presumably you are supposed to stand behind the line and throw things at the target. At the moment, the target would not be facing the person doing the throwing. Ahh... the age-old problem of vanishing points and perspective.

[Secret Fawful]

I've taken your thoughts into complete account. I'll update that background later, but right now I have a new background to show you. This one is well....completely updated to have a Larry feel. It's actually a VGA remake of a LSL 3 background. Here's the comparison. Let me know what you think! I added in Larry and a cursor for the sake of nistalgia.



x2


_{Edit by Andail: Added x2 version.}

[MrColossal]

Did you make that background at bigger than in game resolution and shrink it down?  If so there is some cleanup needed.

The lines are quite blurry. The guard rail blends right into the background and flattens the whole thing. The same with the foreground area blending in with the trees. The buildings behind the trees blend in with the water.

I recommend cleaning up the aliasing and getting rid of some of it. A harder edge will help sell the perspective.

[Andail]

Yep, too blurry.
Also, I tend to say this ten times a day, but...colour perspective.

The original background is contrasted, dark and sharp in the foreground, while it blends with the atmosphere in the distance.
Your background has nothing that indicates a depth, in terms of contrast and saturation.

I think you're definitely onto something, and you're improving drastically for every picture. So just keep working

[Secret Fawful]

I think somethings wrong with the sky now, but, is the foreground better? The sea and stuff?

[Khris]

Just a minor perspective issue: The platform's lines should meet at the horizon, not above. It makes the whole thing look tilted.

[Hudders]

The upper-right corner of the ummm... not entirely sure what, (never played lsl3), is a bit high, don't you think?

Not sure whether that's intentional or a perspective error. Looks off anyway.

[Secret Fawful]

It's grass. The gold part is just a surrounding...thingie. It's LSL5 style so it's intentional. I
suppose I'll keep trying to perfect myself in that style, but thank you so much for all of your help. I'll be sure to keep making background to improve myself.

[zabnat]

Everything else is good but the tiles on the platform. They have this noise texture and it doesn't seem to fit the style of the rest of the picture. Also you could go a bit further lowering the contrast on the background.

[Hudders]

It's grass. The gold part is just a surrounding...thingie. It's LSL5 style so it's intentional.

Intentionally not flat?