flooded meadow background test

[Anian]

All this talk about sierra style backgrounds made me wanna try things out, not much to see in here as is. There would probably be a dying mystical aquatic creature in the middle of the screen that got beached after the damn was broken and the lake spilled, but I just didn't have the time to draw it. Also a stab at small resolutions and again I stand amazed at how many deatils can actually be cramed in.

[Snarky]

That looks really quite nice, though I'm not sure what you're doing with the mountains in the middle. Mind talking about your method?

BTW, in the larger version, you've scaled it up to 480x360, instead of 640x480.

[Anian]

Heh, yeah, I put mixed up width and height.   Glad you like it. It looks like a mix between styles, but I think it can be polished into a uniform look.
Mountains in the middle is just me being oblivious when detailing and zooming that I put too much peaks in one place, is that what you mean?

There's no specific style, I tried that meadow tutorial from Corby (which looks awesome). But his ground looked kind of too "gradienty" (considering the characters and other details look more pixelated). I tried dithering filter and layer combinations, but in the end I think the best result was given by doing like in the tutorial (lines that you smudge) but then to sharpen the image with a filter and then smudge in places where some rough rough pixels appear.

Trees and rocks are dark brown as a silouhette, then lighter shade (maybe a bit more staurated) for textures and then another lighter shade (less saturated) for determening the light source, I think it gives a cool result even though I hardly know what I'm doing. Then smudge a bit and then sharpen. Thing is to keep all things the same tone (I didn't keep a palette so not all things match, but mistakes give the best lessons, right?).
This tehnique I think is brilliant since with little practice you can seem like you know what you're doing.  

What bugged me in Corby's tutorial was that the meadow looked flat and it was hard to put many things in there since it's hard to get a perspective. And I later got the effect you might get to make things look more interesting - use areas to actually make the ground look a bit hilly and thus you can kind of regulate the space you use - the lower areas (like some in the picture, though not perefectly exectured) can hint at exits from the screen. Not to mention that by changing their heights you can get a perspective going and sort of put more things (which I didn't, but I could've).
Now I realised that effect a bit too late, so I put the water in the lowered spaces and made it a flooded meadow.  

[InCreator]

* I don't like sky color. It looks like morning fog after rainfall, but there's no fog nor rain.
* Water should reflect sky .... that means, be really, really similar to sky. So, fix the sky with healthier color and make water similar.
* High detail on trees doesn't match up with blurry ground

You have something like this going here (judging by colors):


But you can see what's wrong or different from the image.

If it's a midday scene, make strong shadows everywhere and brighter treetops/etc

[Corby]

That's great! I think a better sky would work really well since there's a lot visible. Even a classic blue sky like this might look nice:


Tutorial Link


For the grass, you could always try whipping out the pencil tool at 15-20 opacity and making some vertical strokes:



A quick attempt, but it might make the ground less blurry. I don't think any visible grass is needed way off towards the horizon.

[Mad]

The main problem I see here is that the horizon is a bit too low. As it is now, there seems to be a sheer drop behind the meadow.

Something like this could be a quick fix:

[Wafflle Bombs]

Very nice! I do agree with the above poster who mentioned the sky looking like it just rained, which makes me think the water in the meadow is just puddles.

Looks very nice, though! Keep it up.

[Monsieur OUXX]

The water shouldn't be plain blue, especially not this tone of blue.
It should be a reflection of the sky, just like in the link InCreator posted.