Need help with Graham's face

[Nightfable]

Thanks ProgZmax! I'll give your suggestions a try, today.

I have a question. How do you reinsert the pixelated feel after so much airbrushing?

Do you use the "add noise" filter? Do you play with the settings once you save the image?

I'd love to know since I don't want to mess up the KQ VGA feel.


EDIT: How's this?

x3


EDIT #2: I tried fixing his neck...

x3

[Stefano]

Hey, thats 100% better!
To give a pixelated feeling without too much trouble, I would recommend the "save for web", if you're using photoshop. It'll allow you to automatically reduce the amount of colours on your palette, thus making gradients less smooth (pick no dither option!) .
BUT: Since PS selects colours by predominance of use, less present colours tend to be thrown away and that includes darker tones (contrast), highlights, small details and so on. I would recommend doing it separately, by areas of chromatic predominance (skin, reds, yellows, etc) and then re-assembling the pic again.
A quick (lame) example:

PS. I think ProgZ actually pixelated (and thus reduced colours) by hand. That would be method 2. It produces much better results but consumes a lot of time.

[Corby]

Here's my quick way:


You can grab a selection or just grab an entire layer. Copy it, and drop it into a new file.

Go to Image - Mode - Indexed Color. Then just choose your settings.
Then drop it back into the original image.

I think Sierra used quite a bit of dithering back in the day, but it depends on your style! I'd recommend a low or no dither as well.

BTW, your Graham is looking quite nice!

[Shane 'ProgZmax' Stevens]

Yeah, I just did it by hand because I'm 'old school' like that (aka silly).  I think your edit gives him a much more intense look, just clean up those artifacts around him and I'd say you're good to go (unless you want to add some light/shadow to him as Ali suggested).  If you do decide to shade him, I highly recommend you go with a bluish-red for the darker areas around him and yellow for the highlights.  Something like this, for example:



This does a better job of illustrating it than just words.  Adding some highlights like this will really add another dimension to the result.

[Stefano]

@Corby: awesome! A lot easier indeed.
@ProgZ: I don't thing pixel art is silly at all!I didn't think she'll be whiling to learn it for this piece, though, so I've presented the not-so-great-but-a-lot-more-intuitive shortcut. heh.

[Nightfable]

Got rid of the artifacts, added some subtle highlights and did the "Save as web" dither trick... works really well, thanks!

Now here's the last version, I hope:

x3

[Matt Frith]

wow, that looks brilliant!

[loominous]

I think what the image needs as a whole is "punch".

How much depends on the style and atmosphere, but right now there's a quite strong blandness, due to limited contrast, where nothing stands out.

Here's a Gabriel Knightish edit where I have simply suppressed some light, and added some by the use of adjustment layers. It's a quite crude procedure, but hopefully illustrates the idea well enough, and is a great quick way of experimenting with these things.




(Animated)

Here's the photoshop file (cs5) with the adjustment layers, in case anyone is interested.

I can't recommend experimenting with those highly enough, since you'll gain the experience of countless repaints in the fraction of the time.

(Should point out that adjustment layers, as well as any other method, relies on the knowledge of shape volume, so there's are no magic tricks, just quicker n slower procedures of selectively altering data).

[Nightfable]

That's very nice Loominous!!Wow!!

The only problem is there isn't such a prominent lightsource where King Graham is standing.

Example:



I guess it's coming more from the top of the throne room right now.

But in this next background, your edit would fit perfectly:




I'm going to try something... thanks for the Photoshop file! Very handy for future reference!!

[loominous]

Ah, I see what you mean - that black portrait background threw me off.

The neat thing though with adjustment layers is that you can simply alter the settings at any time to fit new conditions such as this, so with a few adjustments he can fit more nicely into this rather well lit surrounding:




(Animated)

-

That background, while very charming, could use a bit of focus as well, as what makes backgrounds visually interesting is the same as portraits or anything else.

So, giving it a quick and rough similar treatment, I got:





Bit too gradienty and generally crappy, but the visual impact is more interesting, which you can check by zooming out real far, like this:



where the left one has some kind of general dynamics going on, while the right one looks stale and dull in comparison.

This also goes for the portrait, and is a nice device for keeping a fairly objective perspective of your work:



Oh, and here are the psds: new portrait - background

Btw, when doing shadows, it's good to avoid using black, as it kills the colour saturation, and makes them bleak and unrealistic, and you can spot the effect in your darkened bg version, where the corners get gloomy.

In a candle environment, brights become yellow, mids become orange, and darks become red, and if you "shade" yellows or oranges with black, you instead get muddy desaturated yellows or oranges as darks, instead of red, which basically look fake and crap.

You can observe this colour temperature phenomenon in other places such as in skies, where they go from violet darks to cyan brights, and where, again, you get washed out crappy colours if you simply shade with black, for the same reason, and is another area when experimenting with adjustment layers will let you easily play around with these things. And yes, I'm quite obsessed with adjustment layers.

[Nightfable]

That's fantastic Loominous! I really see how interesting my backgrounds and portraits could be.

I had no idea I could make adjustment layers in Photoshop - gasp! - it's great to know!

I'll be having so much fun with them!   Thanks for your helpful advice and honesty!

[Nightfable]

How is this Loominous?

I tried following your lead with the layer adjustments. You've mastered a level I've not reached, so I did most of the painting by hand with my tablet.

Here, Rosella is sitting on the throne, and is looking up; surprised from hearing her name.

x3

x3

I will have to take the same steps with the background and will probably have to play around with the hue since the Rosella sprite doesn't match the background colors well.

[loominous]

Adjustment layers are simply tools to modify existing graphics, so in ideal cases they aren't needed, as things would be perfectly painted already, so they're more like training wheels than a mark of skill. (I tend to rely on them mostly for colours, as I work in greyscale, or rather, a tinted orangish greyscale, and apply colours afterwards).

Anyway, she looks nice and dramatic, though those pixelated areas pop out quite a bit, but I'm guessing they'll be cleaned up.

As you mention, the background doesn't fit her light setup very well, and could do with some excitement, either by more interesting lighting, or by adding some interesting elements, or perhaps both.

You seem to be mixing pixelated and regular brushes quite heavily, would you mind sharing your approach? Are you using some underlying reference material? (the lower part of the background wall looks like something from a treated photo for instance.)

In any case, there's certainly a lot more punch!

[Nightfable]

For the throne room, I'm using an existing screen capture of the KQ6 intro with Alexander. I had to move things around and I'm still in the middle of cleaning the image, that's why there's both lots of pixelated and airbrushed areas.  For Rosella, I just paintover an existing stock image of my liking until it fits the character.

I'm really greatly awed by your art! *_* ~bows to Loominous~

[Nightfable]

I LOVE this technique! Thank you so much, Loominous!! 

[Nightfable]

Should I do the same with the portraits?? 

[loominous]

If it's from the same scene then that would seem like a good idea for consistency.

One point I forgot to make, which I think is very overlooked generally, is that when you're designing a location, you're also designing a light setup.

Atm that throne room is pretty much an ambiently lit gold coloured box. You can break it up by introducing cast shadows from objects within or outside the scene, but those are still rather limited options.

So when you sketch down your location, ideally you'd be considering where the light will be coming from, whether it will create focus on the right spots, and if there will be differently coloured light coming from opposing directions, such as warm light from the sun through an opening, and cool light from a window.

This adds a level of complexity to designing these things, but will ideally yield handsome returns, through image "impact".

Zyndikate's latest background blitz entry is a prime example, where you have a clear division from the cool greenish light from the right, and the warm light on the left, creating focus on the relevant areas, and a nice diagonal division.



So the idea is to have interesting light for portraits or whatnot derive naturally from the scene design, rather than having to force it.

[Shane 'ProgZmax' Stevens]

Another thing you might do is that since you have the closeup for the throne room, use a moody/darker version of it for graham as well.
As far as the background goes, I actually prefer your more subtle approach with the light around the torches to Loominous' giant beams of light on the throne, which looks strange and distracting to me.

[Snarky]

Very nice job revising the image of Graham, Nightfab. Particularly the facial expression is much better now, and I really like the way you adapted loominous' lighting advice (his fingers look a bit messed up, though; I expect you'll work on that). I want to mention that I wouldn't worry too much about keeping the lighting consistent between the regular background and this image. It's no problem saying that the lighting is for dramatic effect, not based on a particular lightsource or matched to the room illumination.

[Nightfable]

@ Loominous: Very good advice, I'll keep that in mind when coloring backgrounds.  I keep forgetting to take into account the lightsource. Already, my main throne room is looking better with your help:





@ ProgZmax: What's happening is that when King Graham throws his hat, it's drawing towards the end of the afternoon and into the evening. The torches aren't lit yet because it's still light outside, but once king Graham is lying in bed close to death and Rosella leaves the room, it's already the evening; the torches are lit and the attention is being drawn to the magic mirror.

I'll try and make the beams of light less distracting.   Btw, I find that they attract the attention to Graham's hat on the little table.  

@ Snarky: Thanks! I agree with you, I'll keep the other style of shading as a dramatic effect. I don't want to lose the King's Quest feel.