Background depth

[nihilyst]

C'mon, Misj', you're joking. Seeing a bunch of green pixels and talking about Swiss Pines? That's ludicrous. As far as we know, they could be 12 m tall. End of story.

Since there's some consensus here that they're too huge, I'll resize the trees.

[loominous]

Think you should keep them as is if you're happy with them. Perhaps they're really huge, perhaps the trees are really small.

One thing that bugs me, apart from the foreground, is that the trees don't feel like larger masses, but like separated individuals. Trees tend to form pretty much indistinguishable (at least at these distances) groups, and this is actually very handy when you paint them, as you can get away with scribbles.

Having them separated gives them a bit of the same feel as a kid drawing each individual hair on a character, making it feel sparse and odd, though of course at the same time nicely naive, so in the end it's a style choice.

Anyway, cool background!

[Hudders]

The wind turbines put me in mind of a giant flying island, with the propellers keeping it aloft.

I don't think they need to be smaller.

[poc301]

Yes, very nice background.  Enormous turbines and bansai trees

-Bill

[monkey0506]

I honestly don't think that turbines are so horrifically askew as what's been said. But it makes no difference at this point. It's a very good background, and it's evolved a lot from where you started.

It's definitely much better than anything I could ever pull off.

Whatever happened to the idea that art is interpretive anyway? It's always perspective this and that's too big and that's shaped oddly and blah blah blah. So what? Maybe the perspective is a bit off. Is it really that direly essential that it be corrected? People make it out to be a matter of life and death...just lighten up people. Can't you appreciate this awesome background for what it is?

I know this is the C&C board...but sometimes the way you position what you're saying just comes off as less "your image could be improved if you did..." and more "DO THIS NOW OR I WILL RAPE AND SLAY YOUR MOTHER!!11" I just think perhaps people could be a bit more conscientious about the way they critique the images here...IMO anyway...

[Uhfgood]

Note my suggestion was to add something to show a sense of scale, because it looks confusing to the viewer.  Something like a house or car or whatever that people have a good idea of the size of, so when they look at the wind generators they know it's supposed to be huge.

[Shane 'ProgZmax' Stevens]

I think the perceived size issues will be kept to a minimum as long as this is a non-interactive background.  If the character can walk around it (it doesn't seem suited to that purpose aside from the bridge) then you may need to make some adjustments, but if not, I think the depth and sense of scale look okay.  I would recommend doing something with the trees as Loominous suggested, though.  I thought they were those bramble-type bushes that grow next to beaches!

[subspark]

Heres an example of how you could use the trees to add depth to the scene in addition to correct scale ratios:


These are just repeated photoshopped trees from a range of photographs but if you paint them by hand the scene will look simply outstanding.

Cheers,
Sparky.

[nihilyst]

This looks outstanding, subspark. If I have a bit of spare time to do some art again, I'll think about what you've done here. Unfortunately, hand-painted trees always have been one of my weak parts

Anyway, thanks for the input.