Hansel and Gretel cottage

[Dart]

Well, I haven't visited the Critic's Lounge in quite a while.... the reason being that I haven't been working on my farming game. Anyway for now, as a break, I'm working on a new game that I hope to finish in a couple of months: a Hansel and Gretel AGS remake. I need help with drawing their cottage:



In particular, I need help with the shading and perspective. I want the cottage to cast off a shadow from the sun, yet I don't know how I could successfully accomplish this. Also, I've been told that the door's perspective is off, and the flowers look flat, but I don't know how to fix those problems either.

Thanks in advance for your help.

[[Cameron]]

Huzzah. Picture = Teh win. Very nice indeed. I have no crits, bu then I'm not vrey artistic.

[Krazy]

Looks very nice and stylish!

[Dart]

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v284/ragingmonkey/cottagededit.png

Yay, Dazzy provided me with a shaded version of the cottage.

Do any of you have any last comments on what I should do with the background? Any lighting/shading/perspective issues that still need to be fixed?

Otherwise, I'll just work on the next Hansel and Gretel background now.

[Albino-I]

Nope.

It's looks pretty finished to me 

[stuh505]

It looks like a modern suburban home to me.  I can't picture them having brass doorknobs, mulched tulip gardens, clean gravel paths, gable windows, complex rooflines and vynil siding...wasn't the cottage supposed to be made of candy?

[Chicky]

First off, its a lovely background Darty; very little wrong with it. But i noticed a few flaws in shading and the door.

Well, the perspective on the door was slightly off, as was the shading. And it seemed that some of the shading was coming from two different light sources

Anyway, edit: (sorry if i used too much AA)



yes well, i look forward to your game

[loominous]

Some quick inaccurate lighting modifications:

Requires flash 7 player (about 40kb)

Some notes:

(I) Since it s daytime, the omnilight (not directional) coming from the sky wouldn t leave the image so dark, so I d brighten the whole thing leaving dark areas in the lower parts of bushes etc where the omnilight n the directional light (the sun) don t t hit.

(II) Including the sun in the image makes it seem like a childdrawing (not at all saying that the rest of the image looks childlike). Also, if the sun would actually be visable, the whole image would pretty much be a large white blur because of the immense strength of the light.

(III) A tip is to let the areas in shadow have a blue hue, due to the blue tone of the light from the sky, and a yellowish hue in the areas that the sunlight hits.

(IV) Make sure that you make flat surfaces appear flat by keeping them in a single tone/shade. The housewalls in the image are shaded as if the light would hit the center of the walls more than the edges. This would make sense if they were bulging, but not if they re flat.

(IV) Picture the bushes etc as simplified geometrical objects and shade them accordingly. The bushes n treecrown is rather like spheres and can be shaded in a similar fashion.

If you don t know how spheres etc should be shaded, you can see what areas are lit/in shadow when holding a spherical object at a lightsource.

Nice, cozy picture all in all, which could be greatly enhanced by some lighting alterations.

[Dart]

Stuh: Hmm, aye, you do bring up a good point. I'll have a go at trying to worsen the condition of H & G's property. Oh, and this background isn't of the candy house which the witch owned; it's the house where Hansel and Gretel lived.

chicken: That edit is simply excellent. I'll try to recreate your modifications with my own techniques, using less AA.

loominous: Whoa, your edit made my background look like a pretty painting. ^_^  I'll keep your shading/lighting/perspective tips in mind for future backgrounds.

Thanks for all of your comments.

[Andail]

Also, if the sun would actually be visable, the whole image would pretty much be a large white blur because of the immense strength of the light.

Hmm....only if some sort of optic lense was involved, right? As much as I agree that including the sun makes it look like a childish drawing, it can hardly be technically impossible.

My main concern would be the architecture - I don't believe for a second that Hans's and Gretel's cottage looked like some modern, middle-class villa. You need to make it much more medieval.

[jrl2222]

Their is one other problem with including the sun in the background. If your going to have time progress the sun will have to move to show different times of the day.

[stuh505]

The reason you cannot draw the sun is because pure white would not be relatively bright enough.  You would need to make the sun pure white and everything else black...which is why it's best to avoid putting the sun in.