Day of the Sam and Maxtacle Style Backdrops...

[Technocrat]

As you've probably guessed from the title, and if you've played Nancy, that I'm trying to get closer to emulating Steve Purcell's venerable style, with mixed levels of success. I've been trying to apply various techniques - limited colour palettes, composition of scenes to maximise utility, making the purpose of rooms extremely clear, making sure there's something happening everywhere that's possible. However, it still feels to me like it's a bit...well, sterile, I guess. Especially the outside scene - perhaps a little artificial, I think. I also think that one of my computers has a different opinion on colours to my other machines, making things look washed-out on one that aren't on the other.

[imgzoom]http://i116.photobucket.com/albums/o33/Nedraed/outside.png[/imgzoom]

[imgzoom]http://i116.photobucket.com/albums/o33/Nedraed/hangar.png[/imgzoom]

[imgzoom]http://i116.photobucket.com/albums/o33/Nedraed/controltowerinside.png[/imgzoom]

[imgzoom]http://i116.photobucket.com/albums/o33/Nedraed/cafeDEMO.png[/imgzoom]

So, hopefully I can get your objective opinion on the matter - anything to improve it will help! Personally, I think I'm the most satisfied with the control tower, and the bar.

[Anian]

Very cool, just 3 things:
- 1st pic - in the back, the part around the aeroplane's engine (the grey pixels) looks kind of messy
- 2nd pic - the line that makes the top of the door of the lockers (on the right) is maybe a bit too bended/distorted
- the clouds look cool but are maybe a bit too "solid" for my taste.

Style reminds of Purcell, but it is different, so nice job on that too.

[Khris]

Wow, those are great, I also like the inside of the control tower best.

The only problem I can see is in the first one; especially with the back hangar. With a classic one point perspective such as this, it's really important to get the depth of things right. The back hangar is about three to four times wider than it should be.

Here's how you can construct the actual depth:
[imgzoom]http://i.imgur.com/uQ8QY.png[/imgzoom]

Draw the horizon, then choose a secondary vanishing point close to the object you want to draw.
The rightmost three angled lines are reference lines, just connect the corners to the new VP.
Now transfer the width of the first hangar to the left to get the leftmost point on the bottom line. Connect it to the VP and bam, there's the depth of the 2nd object.

Using this perspective for outdoor scenes is quite tricky because close to the vanishing point, things get really small really fast. Take the plane for example, it is way too big, given its position. This becomes really noticeable if you look at the width of the part of the landing strip that's as far away.

The other backgrounds are top notch though. The mountains and the forest are a tad too flat maybe, but other than that, amazing work all around!

[selmiak]

yep, 3+4 look a lot more purcellish, to make 1+2 look like from steve purcell you need more detail, add some weird posters to the walls, ads for technobabylon, godzilla in stockings, suncream for penguin, this stuff, same for the inside, if it were by steve purcell there would be more out of place stuff, more posters on the doors, at least one locker would be open and there would be stuff falling out from it like body parts, fake teeth and dead fishes, stuff you wouldn't expect on an airport.

[Monsieur OUXX]

That's really good, and the contrast is good! (as opposed to your older backgrounds)

Maybe you could make sure that the upper part of the trees (in the volcanic backgrounds) is lighter than the lower part (instead of having a black outline, even at the top). Because the light comes from the sun, above.

[Technocrat]

It's a relief for them to be so well received! I shall keep working on this approach, then.

I've had a go at altering the hangar on the runway, which gave some room to make a bit more interesting background detail, plus a couple more things in the foreground. I've also tried using shading to give the mountains and trees a bit more volume.

[imgzoom]http://i116.photobucket.com/albums/o33/Nedraed/Airport2.png[/imgzoom]


In the hangar, I've put up a few posters on the door - there are going to be more objects later on, animated and puzzle-related.

[imgzoom]http://i116.photobucket.com/albums/o33/Nedraed/hangar-1.png[/imgzoom]

[Shane 'ProgZmax' Stevens]

It looks pretty good, though I honestly can't say they resemble Sam and Max as much to me as they do a style of your own.  As far as colors go, bear in mind that distant objects like mountains and trees will appear washed out and 'greyer' the farther they are away due to low cloud cover, smog, and the fading of details as they get farther away.  Right now the mountains and trees bother me precisely for that reason; they are too dark and too strongly detailed, so try mixing their colors with the blues in the sky and the clouds to get something more washed out and 'distant' looking.  Also, you might try purplish-grey for the rocks and mountains to help them blend a bit better with the background.  Other than that and maybe lightening a few colors here and there I think they look really solid.

Here, I made an edit mainly of the clouds to show you what I'm talking about, though I also tweaked the mountains and treeline a bit as well as a few other colors here and there.  I wasn't really trying for a convincing cloud cover but more to show you how you could do some different shapes like you find in Sam and Max.

[imgzoom]http://i485.photobucket.com/albums/rr218/ProgZmax/airportedit.png[/imgzoom]

[subspark]

Lovely work, Technocrat. These scenes of yours certainly brings back a few fond memories!

While I agree with Progz, I might also add that a little light and shade goes a long way to making your scene look authentic and deep.



Steve Purcell played a lot with light when developing the background art for Hit The Road.


The scene might also look more natural with some foliage in areas where elements meet such as the seat outside Port Regis and between the two hangars where one might be too lazy to mow there.
There was always something humorous in each of the Sam & Max scenes and so I dropped an extreme example into your scene to inspire your creativity some more.

Anyway, I hope some of us were helpful. Have fun with it!

[Ilyich]

First of all - these are indeed really nice and fun to look at, nice going!

Now, what instantly jumps at me is the general lack of contrast value-wise, especially on the interior shots. A good way to keep track of this is turning your image grayscale from time to time and see if it reads well enough in black and white. It should. Also, in reality, interiors are dark. And although our eyes adapt to the difference in lighting between outdoors and indoors quite quickly, it's still a good idea to make the difference noticeable in the artwork. In your case, since the insides of the hangar are almost as bright as the outside, it sort of feels like this hangar doesn't have a roof. Lighting the important parts of the image and putting the uninteresting ones in the dark shadows is a trick that's about 4 centuries old, but still as effective as ever.

Another related thing is the use of blacks. Steve Purcell, coming from a comic book background and being a good friend of Mike Mignola (Creator of Hellboy and an amazing artist. Refer to his work for examples of spectacular use of high-contrast b/w lighting) uses blacks quite extensively, and I think you should try it as well. Silhouette foregrounds is another important part of the DoTT and S&M style, so that too might be worth a shot.

Here's an edit that, hopefully, illustrates some of these points: