Background CnC

[Spike4072]

I am trying to make a small 4 room game but I am horrible at backgrounds. Here is my first background. It is supposed to be a little dungeon the player starts in. Only other thing I was thinking of adding was maybe a sheet over a pile of straw for a bed.




also made a simple title screen already.

[shinymans]

the textured background makes it incredibly difficult to see anything on screen, other then that the background looks alright but its sort of hard to see

[Spike4072]

Was trying to get a stone look but your right it is a bit much I guess

[TerranRich]

Thing is, the texture doesn't get smaller the further back you go. It just looks like black lines drawn over a flat stone pattern.

[Spike4072]

Ok I tried a different approach to the stone look and used the perspective toon in PS on the wall celing and floor to help with what  TerranRich was talking about. Look any better?




Also any tips on a better way to do the candle light? It doesn't look good to me but I am not sure how to make it better.

[Monk]

for the candle light i think you can try the 4 or 5 pixel gradient... make it more invisible outwards the light..

[Spike4072]

Thanks Monk. The gradient thing makes it look much better. After playing around in PhotoShop I think I am starting to get the hang of this a bit.

That thing in the bottom right corner is supposed to be a bed of straw. Not sure if it is recognizable or not.

[TerranRich]

MUCH, much better! Excellent work. The room has improved drastically and in such a short amount of time.

The ladder bothers me. Is it supposed to be leaning against the wall, with the bottom of it further out than the top? If so, it should be slanted to the left, to show it leaning. Like make it slightly diagonal, from top-left to bottom-right. Know what I mean?

And the textures on the wall look MUCH better.

[Spike4072]

Ah yes good point about the ladder thanks. It is leaning on the wall so I need to shift its perceptive a little like you said. it was bothering me a bit but I didn't know what it was until now

[Spike4072]

I popped it back in PS and added some lean to the ladder. Look better or to much/less lean?




Good thing I saved my backgrounds as layerd PS files. Makes editing much faster.

[TerranRich]

Excellent work. Now, that carpet. The left side is just as skewed as the right side is. The left side should be almost straight, as it's near the middle of the room, where perspective should be straighter the further toward the middle you go.

This is why I suggest to everybody now that they dabble in 3D, just placing objects around and paying attention to perspective and the edges of objects.

But great work so far.

[ThreeOhFour]

Just some... well, thinking aloud, I guess.

This feels like a very empty room that you've tried to "fill up" (composition wise) by adding in textures and lighting.

The first thing that I noticed was the perspective looking like a photo taken from the inside of a shoebox. A couple of notes about this (obviously not so bad as it is quite popular) style of room:

(before I start, let me say this is all opinion, not sourced from any art authority that makes it more accurate or effective)

-The ceiling is rarely important in a game. Or in a real life room. Rarely do I walk into a house and immediately search the ceiling. Same goes for walls and floors, really. Walls, floors and ceilings are rarely important. What they are is a boundary to contain the items within. Therefore we can speculate that tiles do not make a bathroom - hygiene related fixtures do. Heck, I once lived in a little old house with carpet on the bathroom floor. When I draw a background (these days) I try to focus less on the walls/floor/ceiling and more on the items within and exits. The trapdoor could render the ceiling important enough to show, but it still seems to take up more space than the existance of a trapdoor would justify. Drawing a ladder alone should indicate to the player where the exit is quite clearly in this situation. Seeing as there are no other exits, we can surmise that the side walls are hardly important either. A quick "sketch" on how I'd plan this manner of room:



- The lighting doesn't seem like candle light. Small suggestion: give lighting a skip for now. We can still get the idea of lighting from the colours you use within the background without you having to go out of your way to draw actual lighting. Use colours with an browny hue and we're sure to get the idea of gloomy, candle-lit-ness.

- Try using more solid brushes. Blurriness of texture at low resolution can look very odd. Use some more opacity, and don't be afraid to let us see actual brushstrokes in there!

- Keep your style unified. If you're going to use antialiasing on edges, use it on all edges. Nothing says amateur like a mix & match style! Don't be afraid of using hard edges on things that normally wouldn't have the hard edge (such as straw) - at low resolution, 1 pixel of blur can really take the definition away from an object.

I hope I've not dawdled through these thoughts at too slow a pace. Have fun making your game

Edit: I also think a lantern on the wall would look kinda cool; quick example:

[Spike4072]

Thanks Ben. Those are all good points. As this is my first try I am kind of learning as i go so every part is a little different and I have no set style yet. I can see how that makes things look mixed.

I had already started on some other backgrounds but now I am kind of wanting to start over from scratch. Yours looks much better than mine lol.

[Makeout Patrol]

I'd work on the straw bed. It's too bright for my taste; it's in a dark corner of the room, but it looks like it's got a spotlight shining on it. It's also much blurrier than the rest of the room.

[ThreeOhFour]

As this is my first try I am kind of learning as i go so every part is a little different and I have no set style yet. I can see how that makes things look mixed.

I think this is a pretty common thing - I know I dealt with the same thing when I started trying to draw backgrounds. Keeping things small and simple is a good way to get along nicely until you settle with a style you're really comfortable with.

Again, have fun making your game

[None]

What do you think of this? I did a paintover, (selfishly because I've always wanted to render a dungeon).
Feel free to use, paintover, use for reference, whatever you like.
Peace.

[Spike4072]

Wow that looks pretty nice Shonen

Would be nice if I could find someone to do my backgrounds so they look nice but I am sure not many people would want to do that for someone that hasn't made any games yet. So back to Photoshop to see if i can use everyone's advice to make improvements.

[TerranRich]

If you release at least one game, you'll get enough credibility to ask for help in the future. Or if you have a lot to show already. I managed to get help for a game I was working on, which happened to me my first game... one I'm still working on, 5 years later.

[Monk]

hey spike,

Would be nice if I could find someone to do my backgrounds so they look nice but I am sure not many people would want to do that for someone that hasn't made any games yet. So back to Photoshop to see if i can use everyone's advice to make improvements.

well you got me there, been there in that situation, all i can do is back to photoshop and asks away..

but hey, more power to you!
i will gladly help you with your photoshop thingies! as i to myself im not an expert and still learning, might as well we learn tohgether and help each other yes?

comment for the graphic :

- Stacks of hay should be more fluffier... (cept you want it thin of course...) and more scaattered.. you know, medieval prison-style beds..

- door above share the shadows...

thats about all i think..

good luck bro..