Looking for C&C on some first attempts at drawing backgrounds

[netdroid9]

!Hola! I've been playing around with perspective drawing, and think I have something... Well, better than when I started:



I think the perspective's a bit out, I don't know about the shadows and the light itself probably needs some work. Should the bars affect the light somehow? I don't really want to make the room much darker. I'm using uniform circles to show the light, but in retrospect this isn't very good-looking, is there a particular technique in deciding the light's dimensions? Also, the way the light hits the ground doesn't fit right with me, but I don't know how to fix it. I'm also confused about the mirror (The blue window on the right), I've got no idea how to actually make it look mirror-like. I have this feeling I should use highlights both on it and the terminal screen (The black thing under the light), but every time I do it, it looks wrong.

I'm learning mostly from the screenshots from the Darksiders thread (http://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/yabb/index.php?topic=33882.0), which look awesome, and the Trilby games, mostly because they both seem to use the same sort of perspective I like. Any other games or screenshots like that which would be of use to a beginner?

PS: Here's another background that I havn't gotten around to doing the lighting on yet, I'm not sure if the dents in the circular door look like dents at all, and the tears on the walls don't look right (for that matter, neither does the big wire on the left-most tear, which is supposed to look partially severed).

[None]

  for starting off not bad at all! You've totally got potential, your bg's are already good enough to be used in games by most's standards!
I've gotta get them into paint or something so I can zoom, I'll edit with further ACTUAL criticisms.
Ciao! And Awesome!

P.S. for some reason your img's show up as downloadable links on my page... are you sure you included the proper img tags?

Code: ags

[img]sourceaddresshere[/img]

[Makeout Patrol]

Actually, these pictures are already looking very good! I'm also getting the "downloadable" thing, though, so I'm not sure what's going on but it's certainly something.

For your first shot, I would make the transitions between levels of light less obvious - maybe add more circles, or make the differences between them contrast less. Also, keep in mind that the light is going to fall on surfaces at different points depending on how far from the light source they are - the curve of the circle closest to the light follows the same line on the wall and on the chair, for instance, while I think it would probably fall a pixel or two further from the light on the chair.

Mirrors are tough; you could go all-out and program a working mirror, but that would be incredibly difficult, especially in a 2d game. I'd decide what colour defines this room - some sort of slightly bluish gray, I'd say - and make that the background colour of the mirror, with lighter highlights on it at different points. I'd also experiment with slight, occasional animations of the highlights.

For the second shot, no, they don't particularly look like dents, though that will probably improve when you add shadow. For the wires, I'd make them contrast a bit more with the wall, and again, experiment with an occasional sparking animation. I'm not sure what the yellow thing between the two doors is supposed to be - is it another scratch? I'd probably put outline the tears with a dark-ish colour, just to make them stand out a bit more.

[Gilbert]

Actually, these pictures are already looking very good! I'm also getting the "downloadable" thing, though, so I'm not sure what's going on but it's certainly something.

He used the img tags already. It is because the img tag won't work as his images are in BMP format (we discourage the use of BMP for viewing online). It wouldn't hurt (is better) changing them to PNG first.

Like other people say, it's coming nicely already, I think it's time to see some characters so people may give you more definite pointers on what to improve (e.g. so that the styles of the characters and the backgrounds match ).

[netdroid9]

Thanks for the response, glad to see people like them . It's odd that the images didn't show up properly when I submitted the post but worked fine when I previewed it; they should work now. I did some more work on the lighting for the first image, I'm not sure if it's much better though:

[Trent R]

I liked the first version better, at least with the radiating light coming out from the center.

~Trent R
~Sirus Squire