sierra style art

[Construed]

Looking for good tutorials on sierra style art, Mostly quest for glory style stuff.
I hear alot of it was done by scanning oil paintings and reducing the colors, but I'm intrested in all techniques.

I already know about graFX2 and D-Paint.

[deadsuperhero]

Some of the best advice I can give for Sierra VGA art can be summed up in the following:

-Try and change your colors to be similar to Sierra's own color palette. An easy way to do this is to take a screenshot of a Sierra game you're trying to look like, and pick out the colors that stand out the most.

-The average Sierra title is done at 320x200 resolution. But, sometimes it helps to do backgrounds at a higher res and scale it down. So, as a general rule of thumb, I always start a background at 640x400. You can of course go bigger or smaller, depending on your own preference.

-For backgrounds, I tend to draw them out by hand first (and try my very hardest not to shade them on paper), and then I scan it in and color it in several dozen layers in Gimp. It's a time-consuming process, but doing everything in layers is a great way to check yourself, and keep things from getting screwed up.

-When you're doing different layers, it helps to draw different lines here and there of similar shades at different light levels right next to one another. and use the equivalent of a smudge tool to blend it together. You can also play with the different layer styles and opacity settings to adjust things better to the contour of the drawing. Incidentally, that's how I: learned to make realistic smoke and clouds.

-Dodge and burn can be your friend, but don't overuse either of them.

-After you resize your background to 320x200, it helps to add some dithering to give it that old-timey "Sierra" effect. Just add a little bit of noise to the picture, and everything will have a bit of a grain to it.

Hopefully, some of that can give you a reference point. I'll try and see if I can find any old tutorials that helped me out back in the day. Corby (of Heroine's Quest) had a really helpful tutorial for backgrounds, as did Fizzii (from Infamous Adventures, I think. It's been a long time, hard to remember.)

I'll report back when I find anything relevant to what you're trying to do. Background and character art is really a trial-and-error type of process. Sometimes, the best thing you can do for yourself is study the existing artwork, and try to digitally recreate how they did it. It's a pretty interesting way to figure out a technique, and your own unique style eventually comes out of it.

[Construed]

Thanks bud, you sure seem to know your stuff when it comes to sierra style .
Would be nice to maby go in on a project with you someday ^^

[deadsuperhero]

Hey, so here's some tutorials I managed to dig up. Unfortunately, a lot of the good ones were on GeoCities or were lost in server moves over the years, so a lot of the ones I used to learn are gone now. But don't worry, I managed to grab a few for you as a starting point.

Rich's Tips to Sprite Animation (from Infamous Adventures): http://www.infamous-adventures.com/forum/index.php?topic=2140.0

Meadow Tutorial (Corby): http://www.corbydesigns.com/meadow/

On Drawing Backgrounds (Ben304): http://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/yabb/index.php?topic=40058.0 Not specifically Sierra, but useful nevertheless.

Background Tutorial (BigBrother): http://herculeaneffort.adventuredevelopers.com/tutorials/ian/background.html

Gimp Tutorials: http://gimp-tutorials.net/

Would be nice to maby go in on a project with you someday ^^

Haha, maybe if I ever get around to getting a game done!

[Construed]

Nice!, Greatly appreciated.

Haha, maybe if I ever get around to getting a game done!

I know the feeling 

[Nightfable]

This is a good one --> http://www.barnettcollege.com/tutorial1.htm

Good luck, Grim!

[Construed]

Thank you 

[Corby]

I wouldn't recommend some of the techniques in my tutorial posted above. The smudge tool is a bit unwieldy and I abandoned that method long ago for a lot of things. However, it works fine for getting a good color/shading base or drawing grass/skies/clouds, or some basic blending. If you're drawing fine details, like on trees/rocks/furniture use a brush afterwards.

Here's a really easy mini-tutorial that works for just about any object, whether it be a rock, bricks, tables, etc... All you need is a 1 px brush. This doesn't show anything about perspective, lighting, color selection or how to use photoshop. You can probably find a lot of that stuff around the net and in the other tutorials above.


Not a perfect tree, just a quick one.

The trick is to add finer and finer detail using a lower and lower opacity brush. (easy to find in Photoshop).


Here are some tutorials that I started with that are nowhere to be found on the net anymore. These are smudge-tool based where the author added in some nice details at the end using an unknown method!

One


Two


Three


Also, lot's of tutorials here:


Fizzii's Art Tutorials


Hope that helps. Also, add lots of knotholes in trees and logs if you're making a sierra like picture. Players love to click on those.

[Construed]

Thanks corb!
My first attempt:


I suck lol   :'(
[edit]
Your techniques are great though!
make even a pixel newb like me look like i have "some skill"

[Corby]

Not so bad for a first attempt! Looks like you learned several tools. Now you can bring that to the critics lounge for advice.

Also, don't be shy to try out the other tutorials like in DeadSuperHero's list.

[Construed]

Thanks bud
means alot coming from you, your art is splendid!

[Anian]

I think you kind of missed the style slightly. You should probably use less lines (the ones you blur) then it'll look less gradienty. The lines are supposed to just make it seem like surfaces have texture, just hint it by high contrast, but you added a bit too much.
And also don't get stingy when drawing a tree, big branches into smaller branches into smaller branches, not big branch, then a small one out of it. Try drawing out squares that represent branches, or just different thickness of brushes, then kind of merge them into one shape.
Also the tree looks a bit too like a cutout.

[Construed]

Thanks! 

I knew i had a problem with my limb making, just couldnt figure out exactley what.

[Construed]

What do you mean by cutout?

I think you kind of missed the style slightly. You should probably use less lines (the ones you blur) then it'll look less gradienty. The lines are supposed to just make it seem like surfaces have texture, just hint it by high contrast, but you added a bit too much.

The lines on the tree, or the lines in general?

Also the tree looks a bit too like a cutout.

What do you mean by cutout?

At first when i was doing the drawing i didn't understand layers, it wasn't till halfway through the sky i figured them out, so the tree kinda has a bad artifact around it if that's what you mean?

[Anian]

The lines in general, as in the lines you use for adding texture. I mean in itself it's not bad, but a pixelated character will look odd.

Tree doesn't really lok like it has voulme, might be the artifacts.

[Construed]

Ah, ok

Thanks