Hallway: perspective woes

[abstauber]

Dear critics lounge,
I know, I can hardly do anything on my own

I'd like to draw a hallway and want to make it a little more interesting. That's why I'd like have vertical scrolling (funny, that the current backgroundblitz covers the same topic) in it, but I'm totally lost with doing this perspective wise...
Here's my try. Unfortunately it looks distorted to me. Do you have any ideas?

edit - removed pic, since ProgZmax' version is more demonstrative

I'll never learn persepective, that's for sure

[Shane 'ProgZmax' Stevens]

As far as perspective goes, I went back over this with what seemed to be the best perspective point in your drawing.



I used the lines at the bottom of the walls as a reference for setting up the perspective point.  You'll notice that the rugs are off, as is the door at the bottom right.  The stairs as you have them now look more like a slide, so using the perspective lines I added vertical and horizontal cuts to give the steps depth, though because of the position of the staircase it will make doing all of the steps quite a challenge for you.  It might be easier to have the stairs do a 90 left turn instead of a gradual bend, though this is up to you.  The leaning on the right side of the image isn't really bad if you have a solid grasp of perspective, but since you said you were lost I thought I'd point out some of the more obvious flaws.

I think this area might be better served with two separate rooms rather than having such a long view of an area, partly because of scaling and partly because you're sacrificing some character this area could have in a closer view.  If you were to break it up into two backgrounds (the three doors at the top and the rug and stairs would be one, the hall with the entrance and the two doors another) you'd have an easier time designing it overall and could focus more on the details.  This way you could make each background larger, and in the case of the area with the stairs, eliminate the entrance section completely.

[abstauber]

oh.. I totally forgot about scaling. You're right, splitting it in two screens makes more sense. I'm glad that I've posted this early enough

But here's a another image I don't understand perspective wise.
Edit
I guess Mobygames isn't too keen on hotlinking, so here's the link to the image:
http://www.mobygames.com/game/dos/lost-files-of-sherlock-holmes-the-case-of-the-serrated-scalpel/screenshots/gameShotId,13745/

Lost Files of Sherlock Holmes - image courtesy of mobygames

It seeems like the vanishing point is on the left, outside of the picture. Z-axes are parallel, so there's only one VP. But what's with the upper part of the image? The railing doesn't seem to hit the VP at all, still it looks alright - am I missing something?

edit:
I sort of solved the mystery myself
It seems like this screen is the bottom part of an vertical scroller and the upper part simply has its own vanishing point.
Btw. I should better  have posted my problem in the "Technical art questions and discussions"-Thread.
Look, I'm moderating myself

Anyway, still thanks for the tip of splitting the image!

[LGM]

well there are different types of perspective. I think you just discovered the two-point perspective.

[abstauber]

I still assume, that this is one point 
(on the left outside)

Too bad, that the bigger screenshot is gone at the moment, so I had to use the thumbnail. Anway, the upper part of the image has to have it's own VPs, otherwise the 1st floor wouldn't be visible.

[LGM]

All two-point means is that there are two vanishing points, which is what you said.

[Makeout Patrol]

All right, saving this in paint screwed it up a bit, but here you go:



As you can see, there are two separate vanishing points. (By putting a third vanishing point far above or below the image, we would have a three-point perspective, but since the vertical lines in this picture are all pretty much parallel, this is just a two-point perspective.) These are good ways to make more interesting scenes.

[abstauber]

Thanks for making this clear.
I assumed, the blue line were parallel. So this is two point, done right (and not as I did in my motel room, posted some time ago)