Background for some C&C, please

[mouthuvmine]

This is a BG I recently "finished" for a friend's game. I like the layout and overall feel, but I'm a bit of a stickler, so anything ya don't like, let me have it.



This is the first peice I've done in this style, but I like the style alot, and want to see about refining it before moving on in the game.

[MashPotato]

Lookin' nice--clean and bright, and I like the clouds
As a general suggestion, pay some attention to overlap so the things are less flat (unless you're aiming for a collage-y feel).  For example, the leaves on the palm trees and the dirt that has been heaved upward--these have shapes, but there's little overlap within those shapes, so there's a bit of a cutout look to them.
Good work so far

[skitzo]

Looks pretty good. Reminds me of some of the older AdventGames, such as Flight of the Amazon Queen or something in that field.
Might if I ask what program you used?


Thanks

[miguel]

Hi, I think it looks cool and I like the jungle-fell it brings, (like you're playing an adventure game )
I would pay atention at the leaves on the palm tree to the right, they look like an octopus (the left palm tree looks good);
Also, the dirt trail and the bright green grass look flat, you can easily change that by adding some leaf-like edges and mix up some browns and greens.
Everything else looks cool and professional , specialy the sky/clouds and the left palm tree and ship/plane
What res did you use and what program?

[JoelMayer]

looks cool so far! only critizism i would mention is, that i had a little trouble reckognizing the spaceship. maybe a little bit more detail would help?

[mouthuvmine]

I don't have time yet to update the picture, but I just wanted to says thanks for the responses. I agree about the sort of cutout look of some of the background, and I noticed it, but I couldn't really place what the problem was. That's one thing I'm fixing today. Also, to Miguel, I knew the leaves were a problem, but I wanted to see if the left one was okay, or if they were both a wreck. Now I have more of a goal, to bring the right one up to par with the other. And thanks for putting some bottoms on your avatar.  :o

I'm not going to mess too much with the ship, because it's already prominent in the game before this crash.

Aslo, I used photoshop, and paint a tinnny bit. I meant to draw the image up at 1280 x 800 and shrink to try to get a nice AA look, but I forgot  : So I just did it at 640 and added some aa myself. I'm not too good at it though, so I tried to keep it minute.

I dunno if it makes a difference to anyone, but I drew it in pncile first, then added color blobs, then outlines, ect.

[miguel]

 

[mouthuvmine]

Okay. I pruned the right tree a bit, and tried to add more variety to the grass. What I had a hard time with was getting the dirt mound that was pushed up in front of the space ship to have real depth. I'm pretty sure all I did was make a mess of it, but knocking out a lot of that poorly used gradient seemed to help shap[ing in my eyes.

Is there, to anyone's knowlage, a way in photoshop to change all color A to color B?

[Stine]

Is there, to anyone's knowlage, a way in photoshop to change all color A to color B?

In Cs2

Images
Adjustments
Replace Color....

hope that helps you out

[mouthuvmine]

Thanks so much. I have ps7, but it was the same. Doing a search and the help file AND visually scanning throung the menus, and I couldn't find it. How smart am I. Thans though, it helped me greatly. I'll upload the new image to this post soon.

[Ryan Timothy B]

Do you not use layers with paint shop?  I find it will help you considerably.  I try to make just about everything on it's own separate layer.  Especially the front bushes and the palm trees.  That way you can make the palm trees layer invisible, draw the ground and trail without having the ground on either side of the tree Noticeably different. It also helps for instances like right now, where you are correcting the leaves on the tree, you don't have to worry about redrawing the mountain every time you erase a leaf.

http://www.bryvis.com/images/ClichePirate.png

For instance look at the image above.  On this particular image I didn't go to the extreme of having most of the stuff on their own layers because it was for the background challenge.  For example, the anchor.  In the backgrounds for my game, I would make a layer for the anchor's black outline.  A seperate layer for the one tone of gray--underneath the black line layer.  That way if I decided I didn't like where the anchor was, I can move it around a few pixels.  I also have the yellow lighting from the lantern on it's own layer.  The shadows are on their own layer.  The blue light from outside is on it's own layer.  I find there is Much more control this way.  I could if I want add detail to the bones, anytime even though the lighting is there.  I can add cracks or scratches, mold, whatever, and the lighting and shading will not be affected.  It's very efficient.  Just use the brush on a low opacity when you are adding lighting or shading.


The front bush outline on the dirt mound, has too much light green like the bush was copied poorly with the lasso tool and pasted in there.

Also I have no idea if that left tree is leaning over the path or not.  A shadow would be nice.

And dragontoad was probably referring to how the lower wing on the spaceship is hard to even notice.  Darken the shadow underneath the wing or something.

I like the style of your clouds and the pink sky.  From my take on this single background, I'm assuming the ship landed on a prehistoric/cretaceous world?  Should be interesting, I enjoy this type of scenario.

EDIT: I forgot one thing.  Keep your shadows consistent.  The shadow on the top wing (also very hard to even see, but don't go changing it and making it too dark) is aiming off to the left a little, suggesting that the sun is at the right (about 2 o'clock).  But the dark shadow under the ship is suggesting that the sun is at the left (about 11ish o'clock).  And the left tree shows the light is off to the left, and maybe behind the camera a little.  And the right tree shows that the sun is very low and off to the left.

EDIT AGAIN:  I may as well show you what you could do to help show where the sun is.  It's a quick edit, and I am obviously not a professional, but here it is.



That tree is a perfect example of light direction (since I'm assuming it's leaning towards the path).
Assuming the sun is off to the left and behind the camera.  The left tree is an example of how the lighting would look if the sun was a little lower, and the right tree is if the sun is high.  Little differences like this will help you a lot with the over all look of your backgrounds.

[Snarky]

Yep, this background really suffers from not (apparently) having been drawn with layers. Especially the halos around almost all objects that comes from not having been able to color all the way up to the edge (the left edge of the palm tree against the grass, for instance, or the bushes against the dirt). Or is that the antialiasing you talked about? If so, stop doing it. It looks terrible.

The other main problem is that the range of levels is way too compressed, so everything looks washed out and flat, and some details are very hard to make out (the space ship in particular). Use much more contrast between light and dark values, and use them to define the shapes. The trunk of the left palm tree is a good example (though it could use more contrast still), but the space ship is as flat as cardboard cutout. You could also use contrast and saturation as a cue to distance, with more washed-out tones (like the ones you're using currently) in the background and more vivid values on the foreground objects that you want to draw focus to.

Otherwise, I think the composition, the forms and the drawing technique are all very good. I like the way you've drawn the bushes, the mountain and the tree trunks. Fix up the things mentioned, and this would absolutely be a great background for a game in this style.