Erm.. My Haunted background

[Derek]

I know its kinda bad but.. im trying to make it a little better and i wanted your guys thoughts

[monkey0506]

Well it's very basic and while that's not strictly a bad thing, it's somewhat difficult to tell exactly what everything is. It looks like that tall thing is a street lamp and then you have a run-down building with caution-tape over the door and boards over the windows, right?

One thing you may want to consider is that although you're not really working on "realistic" art, you should still think about the perspective of things. The doorknob there is nearly as big as the top-left window. The door is 2/3 the height of the entire building. Judging by this the street lamp then stands about 10-12 feet tall? Somehow I might expect it to be a bit taller given the height of the door, and I would definitely expect the building to be larger.

Something else is that there appears to be a lot of artifacting in your image. I see you're using PNG though. Was this image converted from JPEG? If not are you using Photoshop (or a similar program) with anti-aliasing turned on? If so I would recommend making sure that anti-aliasing is turned off and try using the pencil tool instead of the pen. That would give you cleaner edges without the "colouring outside the lines" look (unless you're actually intentionally going for that).

Beyond that you say this is a haunted background...I don't see anything that to me would seem even remotely creepy or strange. There's an old run-down building. Sure run-down buildings can be a great set-up for "you know why it's like that don't you..." stories. However the building itself doesn't seem like it would be that odd without the caution tape and boards up. Maybe part of the wall should be missing or the boards or doorknob hanging loose as if it were broken off...or something. Just the way it is right now doesn't seem "haunted" to me.

[Derek]

Thanks I fixed the building abit yeah i wanted to have the outline effect here is the newest pic






As you can see i made the building into a more taller size fixed the doors to look like a elevator door and took your advice and added a bloody hole into the building,and lastly added a new street lamp  hope you like it

[Lufia]

This is seriously lacking depth.

It can be a style, but coupled with the problems in proportions... Your street lamp is four floors tall and incredibly fat, judging from the building's size. That doesn't look like a hole but like a black and orange stain. (Lack of depth, again.)

No offense, but that's closer to "programmer's art" than to a background usable in a game.

[monkey0506]

that's closer to "programmer's art" than to a background usable in a game.

For some reason I'm reminded of a file hidden on The Curse of Monkey Island CD authored by Jonathon Ackley. It's one of the best MS Paints EVAR!! :

I agree pretty much with what Lufia said now. You should take a look at some tutorials and see about something called "shading". Appropriate shading would give your image depth, which means everything won't look so flat.

For example the "hole" just looks like someone dumped a can of paint. We should be able to see the edges of the wall, there should be color variations, etc. indicating the depth of the hole.

As far as the lamp, I also agree it's too tall now. Maybe search Google for some reference pictures. Again we know this isn't "Hyper-Realism 101", but it's important to take perspective into account, at least somewhat. For example the light on your lamp is nearly as wide as the building. I would estimate (based again on the size of the doors) that would make the light itself at least 15-20 feet across! That should definitely be shorter.

Don't get discouraged though. You're trying which is the important bit. And you're making progress. That's good as well.

[Derek]

I'm going to attempt to make another one of them only with a bit of shading and such thanks for your help guys