seek advice for background-style

[Bensch]

ahoy cats.
since i'd heard of this AGS i was sniffing around here and now its time to get down to buisiness. I will set up my first adventure game projekt and naturally it wont be a manageable small game which helps me to learn the basic technics as it would be smart to do, no it has to be something big  .
And as its in the nature of "big projects" its graphic should be more then "..well the story is kinda nice after all.."
So it would be adorable if you can give me advice about:

1.Wich Sample do you like more? With or without Shadows?
2.What should be improved in general to make the backgrounds more apealing?
3.Is this a grafic you would feel comfortable while playing the appendent game?





beside the fact that i rather randomly blop shadows where i want em to be than really to understand how lightsources and shadows work, they (the shadows) might seem imprecise. This is because i worked very sketchy since this isnt a background for my game but a picture i just painted to check out how my style would look like. So imagine them at the same spot they are but more precise.


Thanks for your help

Bensch

[Captain Lexington]

The shaded one is indescribably better. It's a huge improvement over the first one, and I'm sure a little more "informed" shading would only be the icing on the cake.

I think the only necessary addition would be thicker outlines.

EDIT: I know ordinal numbers...¬_¬

[SpacePaw]

I agree with lex Shaded version looks better but you need to un-messy the outlines

[nihilyst]

I like the shaded one better and agree with the previous posts.

But there's some issue with the sky going on. In both versions (but worse in the second) it looks like a paper cutout attached atthe corner of the house, kind of like a backdrop in a theatre. Don't know what's causing it, though, maybe a lack of depth.

[Bensch]

thanks a lot for the hints.
I edited the background, is there more depth now? (i didnt like the sun anyway)

I tried to make the outlines both: thicker and smoother but i guess i dont know the most effective tool (using PS CS4). Its hard because in the original sketch (pen) there are lines which are thicker then others although theyre supposed to be thinner (dunno how to express that..) and some lines just didnt made there way through the scanner.
the result:


Im really bothered by the trail btw - it is, besides the unlogical but nice looking shadow, such monochrome. I miss a natural looking surface, would you agree?

[Snarky]

The sky is better now, but still not quite right, I think. Try to get a cleaner blue (with less green), make sure the darker part is on top, not towards the horizon, and don't use "burn" or a black brush to darken the sky: "dodge" or white brush to lighten works better.

[bog]

yeah, make the sky darker at the top and lighter(almost gray) at the bottom.

that forest in the background should be lighter and more desaturated to suggest depth

also the shadows would be a lot stronger in a bright sunny day

[cpage]

Hey,
Excellent style I really dig it.

Like most my only real comment would be about the lack of depth. Right now it looks nice and flat. I did a quick paint over to hopefully give you some ideas.


1- The sky should actually get lighter as it gets closer to the horizon.
2- Added a little blue tint to the trees to show the distance.
3- Added some mountains to the back to push the view further back.

The shading is looking pretty good, but personal preference is I try to steer away from shading with black.


That being said it looks great! I can't wait to see what you do with it.

Edit: And about the path. Yeah it is pretty empty. What I might suggest is adding maybe some stones as a simple texture might clash with the style.

[Bensch]

thx folks, and espacielly cpage, your picture helped me a lot to understand what i did wrong.
so i fixed the sky and made the shadows stronger as bog suggested. Therefor i used darker colors instead of just black ( i hope that is what cpage ment with "..try to steer away from shading with black"



now im afraid the picture went got to dark. Well for a painting it would be ok but i dont know how it would look with a character and objects in it.

oh, and do you see? i tried out some effects with the trail and the nearer gras since they were such unichrome, how do you like that?

Bensch

[cpage]

Very nice! That made it look awesome. I don't think it's too dark. Too many people are afraid to have a good dark shadow.
It looks great!

[Abisso]

The sky is fixed now, but I'd go with something like what cpage tried (adding mountains or hills, and the sun). I don't think the bg is too dark now, it looks ok to me.
Anyway, the things that I dislike most, ore the dark outlines. They're a bit messy, sometimes are there and sometimes not: the best example is the tree which has this trembling border along the trunk, and some evident outlines just near the start of the branch, and on the knot. In the trail the line is also trembling and sometimes not continuous.

Apart from that, a quite fine background.

[Matti]

Anyway, the things that I dislike most, ore the dark outlines. They're a bit messy, sometimes are there and sometimes not: the best example is the tree which has this trembling border along the trunk, and some evident outlines just near the start of the branch, and on the knot. In the trail the line is also trembling and sometimes not continuous.

Yeah, same goes for me. You shoud really fix that.

[Bensch]

thx for your comments abisso and matti, youre right, the outlines still look terrible =( this is a problem caused by the carelessness with which i create the first sketch (with pencil). Since im very new to Photoshop i dont know any elegant solution to solve this problem.. i filled big gaps with vectors now and small gaps with the brush but still am not satisfied:

as you can see, the tree, the trail, and the stone are reworked but look somehow inappropriate. The reason why i anyhow post this picture is to clarify my next concern:

The picture i edit is about 1330Pixel / 860Pixel big, so i am allowed to use every possible resolution for my game but still  im taken with the idea of a 320/200 or 320/240 resolution. This may be 'cause with good adventures i associate those old amiga-adventures and infact im sad about not being that good in pixel my backgrounds. Anyway, to scale down the bg will stash away most of the outline mistakes.

here an example:


so and as i said i loved that pixely stile of for example monkey island 2, i tryed just another thing. I simulate a lower quality, that would look like this:


1. does it look better?
2. is it "ethical correct" to lower the quality of my bg or are there better ways?
3. of course there are better ways, but which are they.

PS: oh, i didnt ignore the hint with the hills and the sun, it looks great but since this background will most likely never appear in my game since its just a picture i designed to point out how my style is going to be and to ask you how i can improve it, i was to lazy to put em in.

Bensch

[SpacePaw]

You can "hide" the messy-ness of outlines by coloring them. I think it looks better
Mine recolor isnt too accurate cuz it's hard to do it when you dont have outlines on separate layer So take it as an example

[Layabout]

If you are going to use noise, make sure you tick the monochrome box. Coloured noise is lose.

[Shane 'ProgZmax' Stevens]

You're not really lowering the quality in that example so much as drawing a noise filter over everything.

What you should play with are the image mode settings for indexed color and then adjust the number of colors as well as the dithering style until you find something pleasing.  A few minutes with dither mode set to 'pattern' and around 160 colors gave me this:




The dithering methods photoshop employs are less than perfect, as you can see in parts near the horizon with the darker dithering dots and the shadow of the cabin on the wall with the green artifact pixels, but it's not difficult to go back and touch up the abnormal dithering.

[Bensch]

thank you all for your marvelous help, you guys are awesome!
I just began working on my first game now (i now overdraw the sketches with a fineliner for non-messy outlines)  and am able to use all the helpful hints i learned.

I'm still struggling about the solution so i will just create it in two versions, a big and a small one. That shouldn't take much extra time.


this is a community im really looking forward to nestle down in.
hats off.