Paintings used for games... Comments on these...

barefoot · Mon 04/04/2011 07:54:16

Hi

I have a friend who is a very good artist and has run up these paintings that i may use with permission. These are not the high res one's that i would use but are examples.

What are your thoughts on using paintings in games?

Naturally everything else (chars/objects) would need to blend in so they don't look out of place.

Your criticism is welcomed.

Thank you for your comments

barefoot

Mad · Mon 04/04/2011 08:49:59

You can tell your friend that they're quite beautiful!

In regard to your using them as game backgrounds, you might run into a few difficulties.
The second and third ones I can only see working in cutscenes, since the view point is very far away. The BGs with the see on the other hand will be very hard to animate. Overall I guess, the backgrounds will require quite a lot of work animation wise to breathe some life into them, because as they are now, they look as if the scenes are somehow frozen in time.

That said, I'd love to see those in a game. It's well worth a try. I hope we'll see some mockups or animating BGs in this thread!

WHAM · Mon 04/04/2011 08:58:35

I second what Mad said. I can see gazillion technical issues with getting characters to blend in properly with these backgrounds, but it is not impossible. In any case, all of them are fantastic, beautiful and detailed with care!

barefoot · Mon 04/04/2011 08:59:50

Hi

thanks Mad

Yes, it will take some skill to animate some scenes if required like the sea or branches/leaves.. but there would be no rush.. and i'm sure i would get a fairly good result in the end..

cheers

barefoot

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barefoot · Mon 04/04/2011 09:00:58

Thank you Wham

I'm sure she will be delighted

I have not as yet chosen the pics to use... but whichever i pick i will need to blend in well with shading of chars etc etc.. But, hey, that's the fun isn't it?

barefoot

TomatoesInTheHead · Mon 04/04/2011 09:57:09

Great paintings, they will surely make a nice atmosphere for a game. I also think blending characters and especially objects is the hard part, and animating, and maybe also walk-behinds if there are any.
But if you have the opportunity to use great art for a game (and get enough backgrounds with the same setting and atmosphere for every location in the game), it's worth the effort, I think.

Only tunnel-like backgrounds like this one:

are maybe not the best for adventure games, you end up with a lot of not-so-beautiful character scaling and only a small walkable area.

Anian · Mon 04/04/2011 10:15:32

...how about getting that friend to draw you background for the game...

barefoot · Mon 04/04/2011 17:03:36

Quote from: anian on Mon 04/04/2011 10:15:32
...how about getting that friend to draw you background for the game...

If you mean 'draw' only then that opens up a whole new can.... very daunting..

barefoot

Moresco · Mon 04/04/2011 19:15:44

They are nice paintings, but they may not be well-suited towards an adventure game. In one painting the scale for a character is really small, while in the other it's quite large when close to camera. That's not an absolute killer, but it's not going to be easy...and the results may not be what you were after.

As for in-game, one might wonder what the point of the sky is in the one with the bridge...is that the focal point? So much room is taken up for the sky in that particular painting. What about the waves of the ocean? Surely they can't stand still? Could you possibly animate that? Another likely difficult obstacle to over come.

However if your friend decided to paint new paintings with all of these things in mind, walkable areas, walk-behinds, scaling, user-experience, animation, etc...then maybe it could work very well and be a game I'd definitely want to play just for the painted experience.