Sunset backround- Ugly rocks!

[ThreeOhFour]

Hey everyone.

I've been trying my hand at some different backround styles, and came up with this one which I kinda like, but I think the rock collumns look kinda ugly.



Advice would be nice, because they're bugging me a little.

Thanks everyone!

[Tuomas]

I'm in a hurry, but I can tell you they have outlines which makes them stand out from the restof the picture, try without them.

[cat]

I'm not sure about the shadows on the rocks. I think they are too detailed compared with the rest of the background. And where is the lightsource? One shadow is left and one is right. However, I really like the sky. It looks nice!

[ThreeOhFour]

Tuomas: I wasn't sure about the outlines, but I thought I'd try them. Guess I was wrong.

Cat: I thought that the lightsource would be coming over the mountains in the middle of the screen, so that the shadow would sorta hit the collumns on opposite sides. I simplified the shading, but left it like that. Let me know if I'm just being stubborn.



Thanks guys!

[cat]

Looks much better now!

[ThreeOhFour]

Cool!

I was looking at it a bit harder though, and noticed that the 2 mountains didn't appear to be very different in colour, so I had a shot at changing that:



I still think the rocks look ugly. Like a 3 year old's drawing or something.

[Ashen]

To me, they look too flat...
It might be against the 'simple' style you're going for, but what about something like:


No new colours used and it's still simple lines for the shading, but they look less like cutouts to me, this way.

[ThreeOhFour]

  Ashen, that is fantastic! I love it! It is great how they stand out from the backround! Thanks!

EDIT: Murdered Ashen's paintover:



What do you think?

[CodeJunkie]

I like the shading, it reminds me a lot of Another World, or a Flash game.  The simple style works very well as long as you can keep it consistent, my only suggestion would be to add something on the mountainsides - a town, river, chasm, something.  Otherwise the picture is focused on a blurry seam between two mountains.

[Sparky]

That's looking nice. Like SimB, I was immediately reminded of Another World. The solid color fill and sharp, sometimes polygonal edges are neat, I'd love to see someone do a project in that style. Here's a screenshot:
That's perhaps not the most representative image, most of the game was lower detail and looked more like your image.

[markbilly]

The high res version of Another World looks incredible.

I like the background, the shading on the rocks is now very good. I have to agree though, you need a different focus for the picture. Not sure what though, not a village, it wouldn't suit it. A lava flow would look great, but I'm not sure that's what you want to achieve, a river might work?

[Kreator]

I decided to quickly edit your background. I added the light source, added some minor distortion, and smoothed the sky out a little bit. Let us know what you think.Ã, 



maybe you could also add some shadow to the mountain.

[Tuomas]

A good idea. However the textures are too much. Especially on the rocks. They look like they're made of cardboard. If one really wants to use textures, I'd recommend making their own, better ones.

[Medical Waste]

The mountains definately need to be shadowed in a similar way to the coloumns if you don't want them looking so flat in my opinion. I might paintover it later to show you want I mean, but I can't right now.

[ThreeOhFour]

Ok, I risk announcing a project that may never be finished, but here are some backrounds I've tried to do up in a similar style....






I'm sorry if this is counted as going off topic... but I'd like to know whether they'll work as backrounds. I've enlarged them - the game resolution is 320x240.

Please let me know your thoughts.

Also - AmongtheFallen - thanks for doing a paintover man. I considered doing a textured version, however I did up the untextured version, and dropped the resolution and am happy with the result. But your suggestion is definately appreciated dude.

[Tuomas]

Well they do yeah, fit the spirit. But you can only walk around in one of them. I could see them iin a cutscene though.

[ThreeOhFour]

That's what the 2nd and 3rd ones are intended for - I've used them in a little mock-up introduction for a little mock up game. The 4th one is intended so that the player can walk around as per the usual adventure game style and the 1st is intended for a sort of puzzle with the player's character on one pillar and a non player character on the other. I was quite pleased with the large space backround - by making the ego character have a transparent image as a view and then walking him I could pan the camera in the cutscene - this pleased me!

[CodeJunkie]

These are very nice, you obviously are consistent in your style.  Keep it up, it'd be great to see a game with these backgrounds.

[Sparky]

I second that, I'd be happy to see a game with art like this. What sort of character art style would you choose to go with backgrounds like this?

I particularly like the picture of the earth and moon. They're all very pleasing though. While they look nice. in terms of walkable area both the first picture you showed us (rock pillars) and the fourth (building in open plain) might not work very well. Great work regardless, I look forward to seeing future work from you.

[ThreeOhFour]

What sort of character art style would you choose to go with backgrounds like this?

I've been mucking around with a few different style lately - I thought I might go with something like this, which I made today:



Obviously they still need a bit of work, but I'm planning on using this as the graphic for my main character. My main concern is what with happen to those fine lines when I scale him, but I'll deal with that in time I guess.