Tips on water fountain + Ben's mini tutorial

[Icey]

Maybe it's just me but I keep think it looks plastic-E. Does anyone else have any tips on it or ideas on what I should fix?

[Anian]

It looks pale, maybe add a bit more saturations to your colours. If this is inspired by Ben's designs (and your othergames kind of are, and it's not a bad thing), you have to be aware that your chracter will stand out a lot with these pale colors and lack of lines on the edges of objects. It also lacks details, details make the world alive, posters, garbage, statues etc.

Plus, is this supposed to be on a cliff or something? Is it supposed to be like a regular fountain or connected to a wall?

You can see on your own screenshot, how a bit more saturation and stronger lines would make the character blend in a bit more:

[Khris]

Is it intentional that it says "Pup" instead of "Pub"?

[Icey]

OOps, How did I forget the bottom loop? It's really supposed to be "B". I tried so many things to put the put their until I finally decided to PUB.

I can try and add more saturation. I usually play through a lot of Ben's game to get an idea on Characters coloring, Object blending, And background designing. If you look here at row 2 box 3,  I got the idea to use that as a character example.

Also it is apart of a wall. I just wanted to finish the water fountain first.

[Matti]

The fountain is totally out of perspective and looks flat like a fence at the side of the walkway. The water and the lines on the pavement are off too.

I don't have time right now, but I might do a paintover or illustration of the perspective problem tomorrow.

[Icey]

Ok, It would help to see what you mean.

[FamousAdventurer77]

The water jets need more...body to them. Like there should be a slightly darker fall behind them, with the jets in front lighter but they're bigger.

[Icey]

I think I am gonna do the fountain over to look moree like this

[FamousAdventurer77]

I like the second one, though the first might be easier to draw and animate.

[Icey]

I tried something different.

[Anian]

Oh, man, you actually forgot to write B  I was giving you the benefit of the doubt on that one and all.

You need to move that water part back now so it doesn't cross the actual path, nobody would build it like that in real or unreal life, it's just highly impractical.

[ThreeOhFour]

I've been meaning to reply to your PM about background painting for a while now Icey, but I've been a little busy (what with MAGS and all ), so here's a bit of quick advice.

I hope ProgZ will allow me to go slightly offtopic here. I think you're trying to do what I tried to do when I first started painting my backdrops - that is, going for a style that lets you paint scenery that looks nice without needing to spend months studying boring theory and techniques, and without taking hours to complete each backdrop, and I think that's a reasonable trait to pursue in a style, especially when first starting out.

I think you're getting quite a good handle on doing backdrops, but I can see you falling into some of the pitfalls that I fall into as well, and so here's some of the stuff I have learned that you may find useful!

I've taken your colour palette and tried painting an example scene with it, breaking it down step by step to show you exactly how I worked through it, and with a few notes for each step.



Step one involves having the sky backdrop and then painting over top with the solid colour. I quite like painting like this because you can see the silhouette and work with it to make it stylish and eye catching. Here I chose something really simple, not too straight but not ridiculously warped either, and with lots of room for players to walk around on (how much you want will always depend on the things you want people to do in your scenes). I find this ~1/3 ground ~2/3 sky combination is a pretty good ratio.

Step two involves a layer behind the first, with layer opacity set down a little - I'm pretty sure you know how I do this bit. It adds what I feel your scenes are lacking a bit, and that is some depth. It's a really simple, fast trick - I'm still painting as simply as possible, just focusing on adding detail and interesting shapes, and not having so much sky in the scene. You're painting a city now, and cities are full of human structures!

Step three is another layer, under the one we just did, with an even lower again opacity. It is really important to avoid tangents with these two layers - which is something I can't explain well, but I'll link you to a good explanation of it at the end. In any case, three simple shapes here really fill the sky up and add some lovely clutter to our city.

Step four is adding the highlights, you seem to have figured this stage out pretty well though! I'd say this is currently the step you need to be the least worried about, and instead focus on your shapes and compositions

Step five is adding some detail, some sign of humans being here, which is something that some of your scenes have and others lack. Graffiti literally takes half a minute to scribble on the wall, and it shows that someone lives here and wanted to make their mark. Litter shows that people here eat and read and some of them are careless, it helps to stop your city looking like you just built the whole thing yesterday, and the same goes for wear and tear on buildings.

Step six is a bit of an adjustment of contrast. I always fall into the trap of not painting with enough contrast, but you can use an adjustment layer on top of all the other layers to boost it a little once you finish painting, which is a quick solution, although it is a good idea to teach yourself to paint with more contrast in the first place to try and prevent this from happening.

Step seven is a handy little trick to add to your arsenal - I get a biiiiig soft brush, put a layer on top of everything (except the contrast adjustment layer) and with a really warm yellow I paint a spot of light in the area I'd like to focus on. Then I erase the yellow where the shadows should be, and am left with a nice warm glow.

The article that explains tangents is here. It's quite a good guide, I refer to it fairly often.

If you'd like the .psd for this (not sure why, but just in case) it is here

Hope that helps, sorry for taking so long to reply to your pm, sorry for the long and offtopic post, and I wish you intelligence with your games (because luck runs out).

[Icey]

OMG, did you just make that? That looks awesome.

Thanks for the long tips, I really needed that.

Also it's ok, I thought you were kinda busy. I don't think that was off topic because you did explain to me how to fix the img including my other ones. And thanks for the last part.

I think I might just do the bg over. I have to see if I can fix anything.

[ThreeOhFour]

OMG, did you just make that? That looks awesome.

Perhaps so, but as I've laid out for your, the process to make such a scene is really quite simple. A scene like that doesn't need much time to paint - the hardest part is getting a composition you like.

[Icey]

the hardest part is getting a composition you like.

Yeah I guess so, I tend to think most of my BG's out then start drawing them. However the picture tends to change a lot from the way I first thought of it.

[ThreeOhFour]

Pretty sure that's just how it goes. It's hard to get pictures exactly from your brain to your screen or page, I think. I don't think I've ever managed it fully. That's why we do different sketches, try a couple of different versions to see which works best. Sometimes I work on 5 different versions of a scene before I find a layout that i like - that's just how it goes.

[Icey]

Sounds like a good idea, time to grab a pen and paper.

[straydogstrut]

That's an incredibly useful mini-tutorial Ben! :o

Thank you very much for taking the time to break it down like this - There's lots of very useful tips in the there (I always wondered how to get the 'warm glow look' i've seen in other games).

One to bookmark;-)

[ThreeOhFour]

There's a whole bunch of ways to give warmth to a scene after painting it, I just focused on the simplest method here, because simple is good!

[Matti]

These illustrations are lousy but maybe I get my earlier point across

The pavement plates look off, the water too and the whole fountain looks like a mockup or some sort of decoration because it's totally out of perspective.