Another background, light study

[Andail]

First I thought I should cram this into my previous thread, but then again it's not exactly a speedpainting (far from it) so I'll spam this board with another bg-thread...

This is based on a rough sketch I did some time ago for a competition (you can prolly dig it up if you search a bit, although I recommend against that, as it was a jumble mess of a background...), now spent several hours trying to get the right light conditions and colours. It's rather schematic; the yellow light in the foreground, the steel blue in the background and some sort of mix halfway through (the tree to the side).



Need serious c&c before I go on. Do you find the colours/lighting fitting? I think I've stared myself blind on this one so I need opinions.

[Oliwerko]

OK I do not know if I am experienced enough to give critics to such a BG, but I will try to explain how I feel about it.

First, I love it, it is beautiful, good work.
But, I have some strange mixed feeling because there is some warm atmosphere in the foreground and a cold one in the background. I do not know why I feel so mixed, but I just feel like that when I look on it.
I would love to see it like a night BG. I mean, everything barely visible, but there. Hidden in the dark. And that nice warm atmosphere ( which you expressed really well ) in front. I hope you understand what I mean 

I guess it is well done, partly because I havent had such s strong feeling from a BG so far, keep it up.

[Dualnames]

It sucks. Whatever Andail. Are you blind or something? It's perfect , you don't need to fix anything. Reminds me a little bit of Dagobah... hehehe. Carry on , you;re a natural.

[Erwin_Br]

There's always room for improvement. Personally, I think it looks awesome (and certainly good enough to use in a game), but I miss a bit of depth. It's also hard to find a place to rest my eye on, which is probably due to the amount of detail everywhere. Just my 2 cents.

--Erwin

[TheJBurger]

I like the lighting scheme, however I thought the boat looked out of place with the rest of the scene due to the values of the shadows around the door frame. Based on those, it seems like this would be a night scene, but the rest of the environment suggests more of a late-afternoon feel. I tried to darken the rest of the picture (I hope you don't mind) and see what it would look like.



Now it's pretty dark on the whole, so that might make it more flat, but I thought it might help to show a different perspective on the picture.

[Erwin_Br]

I decided to edit the image to illustrate what I mean:



The darkness also adds to the atmosphere, by emphasizing the light coming from the cabin.

Edit: What I did here was keeping the foreground objects intact (i.e. the cabin, the tree on the left) and adding two layers of "darkness". Two shades of dark purple, one covering the swamp and the tree on the right, and another one for the trees in the back. These are basically just 2 layers set to muliply at certain opacity percentages. I also did some hightlighting on the right tree and the closest bridge, but it is barely noticeable.

--Erwin

[auriond]

In your original picture, it struck me that the water didn't really look like water. Later when I came back to this thread, I stared at Erwin's edit, thinking it was yours, and I thought "Why did I think the water didn't look like water?" ... I guess it simply wasn't dark enough in some spots. The whole surface of the water was bright like a shiny floor. The darker edit gave the water more depth, but it could do with even more. Hope you get what I'm saying

[InCreator]

* Water is a bit too red/purple. In a swamp, I'd imagine brown or green.
* The branch at the center... make some loose leaves, it looks like green cotton ball right now
* A medium between Erwin_br's and original image would be good. In all cases, rightmost tree should be darker, like on these edits.
* Mandolin(?) thingy really distracts with thin pixelly look, while everything else looks much more smudged and rough. I'd do something about this.
* tip: water would look much more realistic if some of the light from door would reflect on tiny waves. Also, reflection of background trees would do good.

Apart from this, it looks superb. Three blossoms and road vanishing into horizon are giving it extraordinarily cool effect.

[Sparky]

Nice work, it's really not possible to offer any suggestions without devolving into nitpicking.

Other people have already commented on lighting, so I'll focus on workflow. If you're just looking for feedback on the lighting and colors, the rest of this post isn't relevant.

It's kind of funny looking at this, because you seem to make some of the same mistakes I do! I'll sketch something out, and it will look slightly stiff and flat. Then without improving it substantially I will dive in and start investing hours of work in it. Sound familiar?  The problem is, of course, that no matter how good the colors, lighting, and rendering are the picture will still have many of the flaws the sketch had.

Now it's obviously not helpful to suggest starting the background over. So my suggestion is to follow up on other people's suggestions for now. It's a nice background, and I'm sure it will come out nicely without an overhaul. But the next time you start a background, try and refine overall shapes and add more dimensionality to things before getting too detailed, otherwise all your backgrounds will end up looking awkward like mine. If I were looking at a sketch of this background, before you had started to paint, here are some suggestions I might have offered:
(1) Loosen up tree shapes a bit, tilt trunks slightly.
(2) Refine geometric shapes (barrel, boat front, door) a bit more before starting to paint.
(3) Have tree shapes flow more into ground, instead of sitting on it.


I hope that was helpful- I have a lot of the same habits as you, and my sketch isn't really much of an improvement. I wasn't able to offer much advice on overall composition either. Maybe someone with a better drawing ability can improve on my suggestions.

[Andail]

Lots of love to you all! Great advice.
New attempt:

Various minor changes, mostly colour/light conditions.
A step in the right direction?

[InCreator]

Sure. New, aggressive shading on water makes it look much more real.
Em.. there isn't much else to crit, to my eye, it's perfect.

[Oliwerko]

Yeah, no more to crit, the light is waaay better.

P.S. - It is great and there is nothing to crit, but somehow I like the Erwin's idea more, the night is great in this BG. But that is just my opinion, just to share. Anyway, it is wonderful, thumbs up 

[Ali]

I like the composition and the atmoosphere a lot. I think you could make the boat's surroundings a hazier colder blue, in the palce of the existing cyan/green tones. That would starnken the contrast in the scene and would accentuate the welcoming warmth of the boat.

On a technical note, I think there is a problem where the gangplank meets the barrel and the small island. On its left side it appears top be just above the waterline, but on its right it's clearly higher.

Other than that its very likeable.