Another unfinished piece here.
This time, the key point is the building on the left, which happens to be a gang hideout. Now, I made the building... but I don't know how to fill the rest of the bg. The gate should lead to another property and possibly some residental house in the garden far back.
But the lot at the foreground looks very empty and I need some ideas to fill that.
Point is - this definetly isn't the centre of the city, the hideout should be in less-populated residental area. A quiet place.
So drawing traffic lights, etc is pointless. What should I do?
My back-up plan is just to turn this asphalt into a parking lot, but maybe someone has better idea... And some additional suggestions? Like for fence, background and building itself?
And - of course - all kind of crits und comments are welcome too.
Thanks.
(http://www.2dadventure.com/ags/gangplace.png)
(http://www.2dadventure.com/ags/gangplace.png)
It's hard to suggest it because everything in place right now is so damned good. However, there isn't enough space to see that it's isolated. If the building were moved -X, with the fenceline ending either at the street or leading up to the building's edge, it'd look a bit more removed. I look at the building and see a place for utility maintenance or a storage area. It might look alright behind the fenceline (but for play purposes, that'd be difficult).
Another thought is to rotate (I know, redrawing.. ugh) the building so the door faces the bottom-left and have its entrance at the fenceline (which would be extended towards the -x).
Without moving/redrawing anything, I think it'd help also to have more wear-and-tear in the pic. If the area's isolated or seldom visited, I'd imagine the asphalt would be cracked, cracks and grass growing in the sidewalk, a sewage grate that's collected leaves and trash, the fence's gate askew - hanging awkwardly. The solitary tree makes it look more like a residential property as well, rather than something on the edge of town.
The parking lot idea would work but one has to imagine that a good many cars park there (or did at some point). Maybe parking slots with parking meters that're rusted or collapsed? That'd also give you some objects to break the scene up, along with a potentially fantastic foreground object as the entropic face of a parking meter.
Excellent work, sir. Looking forward to seeing the finished product.
I agree with Yak.
TRASH.
TRASH CANS.
More trash.
Broken down car parts.
A background! Buildings, trees, anything!
SKY. Even a cloudless sky is more than a simple gradient. But there is rarely a completely cloudless sky..
A ROOF! How does your house not have a roof? Even a simple industrial flat roof...but everything has a roof of some kind. Otherwise they get rained on (or maybe not since there are no clouds).
Also, usually "bricks" of that size are made of concrete rather than brick material
Looks great.
Add detail to the sky. That's the biggest thing that sticks out. How about some graffiti on the building? Also, garbage cans are quite good to create atmosphere and detail. Maybe you should add some garbage cans behind the corner of the building to emphasize that you can't go further from there. Or can you?
And if it's suburbia, you should have some buildings behind the fence with the vanishing point you have.
I gave it a shot. Made the sky more cloudy.
(http://img10.echo.cx/img10/9619/paintoverforsky9oh.gif)
Nice BG! - but to make it more complete, I'd definitely add some skyline behind the fence; warehouses, grimy looking factories, maybe some of those cranes you get in harbor areas ...
I don't know why, but that BG reminds me of Normality Inc. (the 3D adventure game).
Well, thanks for suggestions! After reading and staring at the picture again and again, I finally decided that tree has to go.
I added a factory... and bg looked alot more "full" already.
Now, a dumpster to the foreground and... I'm not sure anymore that it needs further "filling" - or what do you think?
(http://www.2dadventure.com/ags/gangplace_prefinal.png)
2x:
(http://www.2dadventure.com/ags/gangplace_prefinal.png)
Some little repairs here and there are still needed.
wow - great stuff!
Nice. Reminds me Chernobyl a little. Bah, don't have any suggestions. It's awesome enough already.
This is one of the best BGs I've seen lately! The newest additions are fantastic!
If I may make one suggestion ...
I would change the sky back to a gradient like you had it before. However, given the murky feel I would advise against making it the same blue gradient. Try a gray/dark gray gradient instead. Give it that smoggy overcast feeling.
I don't care of the photoshop 'clouds' filter looking sky that's there now, but it certainly doesn't take much away from a great background!
Good work!
Hm. I took your advice, Darth, and I like what happened. But I think that this can be improved...
Problem is, previously, I tried to match sky on this bg with my other city BG-s in game. That's why it was blue. But since I have always freedom to change time of day, this shouldn't be a problem. It's a comedy game too, so I can work around with this difference.
Pure gradient looks too empty, so I added microamount of noise and drew some dark clouds to simulate polluted air of this industrial scene. Maybe I went overboard with this...
Is that any better now?
(http://www.2dadventure.com/ags/gangplace3dark.png)
2x:
(http://www.2dadventure.com/ags/gangplace3dark.png)
Some good improvements.
I think the sky should be lightened a bit. The ammount of light on the front of the brick building, the fence, and the windows of the factory make it feel more 'day-time' but the sky emits a feeling of night (or close to night).
Also, I would dirty up the tops of the smoke stacks. Even if they're old and unused (as the breaks in the factory window might suggest) the smoke stains from years of use would still be there!
Also, there's a bright green color under the gate in the fence. I'm sure it wasn't intentional but, in case it was, it really caught my eye. Bright green and the rest of the image don't mix well ;)
Great work man! I'm totally diggin' this BG!
I think it looks awesome now. It doesn't look too much like suburbia, but for a background like that even the story should be changed to fit it. The atmosphere is perfect. Looks like it's gonna start to rain soon. Marvelous work.
Only critique: Make the text on the sign readable. Also, make the old shadows of the tree on the fence look like stains. If you wanna be picky, change the grass color under the gate a bit darker.
Text readable...
Can't. The game will be sequel to my Henri series which were in Estonian language.
This time, I'll try to leave inside jokes and other too deep national stuff out, so I could share the game with AGS community (thus putting my foot finally onto ground and showing my own game!) and whole world so they could understand everything in game.
In other words, there *will* be an English translation.
The happenings in game happen in Estonia - capital city of Tallinn too, mostly because it's traditional trhoughout the series and much reality-based.
And it's my hometown ;)
That's also why I didn't draw parking meters as they are extremely rare here.
I think I'll change the sign to something else, like "wear helmet" sign or something. In 320x240 it's impossible to draw so little text anyway.
I feel a bit shame because of littering 2dadventure.com so much, but I'm still going to post final, fully detailed version here aswell.
EDIT:
Ready.
(http://www.2dadventure.com/ags/gangplaceready.png)
Magnificient. Leave it like that. Don't ruin it by overdoing. And start doing another one. I really want to play your game soon. Btw, I live in Helsinki, Finland, my brethren.
Looks way better.
The only thing that stands out to me now is the large contrast in shadow between the corner base of the building and the sidewalk. Also, the sidewalk has lines separating the blocks on the edges, but on the top it's all one piece -- I thinkit needs to be cut up following the lines you started.
Man, the final work looks just G-R-E-A-T! I haven't seen so good bg for a very long time!
By the way, you've perfectly added the spirit of communist, PRL's suburbs ;)
Dunno if you've decided to call it complete, but I just thought it was such a shame to have suchy a blurry, slightly undetailed sky background when you've got such a great foreground. :P
(http://virtual.metapathy.com/~frits/hideout.gif)
I added some highlights to the clouds, did some slight posterizing, less saturation, a bit brown tinting. I thought the brownishness fit a bit better with the industrial theme.
That sky is a lot nicer
That Trylle's sky is more realistic now and like Ildu said, overdoing would only ruin that cool background. ;)
Mindblowing!