First background for Narnia game, outside house

[Minimi]

I've been busy this day, to make the large house of the professor, and I finally finished it. I'm pretty happy with the result, though it's a bit to wacky colours  I'm going to make the game a bit like Norman Cooks, with these 3D backgrounds and a character on the foreground. I haven't yet made any of the characters, but here is the first background 640x400.

[Ginny]

Nice, I like it!

The roof is a little flat. Thetop left part seems disconnected from the house because of the black lines.

Other than these tow, I see nothing wrong with it, it's a great style IMO!

[n3tgraph]

looks very nice...

but as said before the left top isn't correct, if it's sticking out, you'd suspect some pillars where it can lean on

[Minimi]

to Netgraph : no, it's not sticking actually out... it's kinda only sticking out on the roof. In the picture below you see that it does not need any pilar

I have fixed the blackoutline, and the rooftexture, maybee this looks better to you :

[MonkeySpank]

This is very nice, good job.

[Ali]

The house is well modelled and the models for the trees look excellent, though they might look better smaller - if you compare the size of a leaf to a single pane of glass in the window, it looks a a bit large.

This scene looks very sunny. It'd be great to see it with less saturated colour, dim light dark clouds and diffused shadows - because the impetus to explore the house (and find the wardrobe) comes from a wet day preventing the children from exploring the grounds. A yellow glow from the porch light would then look extra warm and inviting.

I'm not sure if this is any use, it might be too far from your style, but here's a rough example of what I mean:



I hope you don't mind me playing with the image, the rain is just drawn on as an example.

[Minimi]

Yes, I know, This was just to show the house-model I was already planning on making some dark clouds, and using the rain plugin, to make it wet

I am also going to resize the leaves! Thanks for the comments! I'm right now busy making the first character Lucy...

[Minimi]

Here is an update on the picture, I hope it looks better now, that its abit darker, and less saturation. It only needs the rain plugin...

[Pessi]

I think the overall look is really good. However, the colors aren't quite right.

In the first version they're too MSPaint'ish and in the last version they're pretty much the same, just darker. One can instantly see that the scene is not really nighttime because of the saturated variety of colors nor is it daytime because it's so dark. In addition, if it was daytime and it was raining, the shadows wouldn't be as definite because the sun isn't shining.

I would go with something like Ali's example. It's bright enough for a day scene and it's very unsaturated, which is very typical for a rainy day. When I think of a sunny day, I think of the vibrant, glowing, warm colors. When I think of a rainy day, I think of a pretty dull grey, cold colors. You should keep that kind of impressions in mind from the very beginning. Try to reflect the mood in the colors of the background. It is VERY effective. If you have no clue of what kind of colors you should go with, look for reference images. Google has a great image search. Many professionals refer on pictures to get inspiration and correct color themes.

If you want to have just a neutral rainy weather scene you shouldn't go as far reducing the saturation as Ali did and add just a bit of blue perhaps. With pre-rendered graphics that (at least the fine tuning) is best done in Photoshop. You can have a better control of the subtle changes in colors.

In short, it is very important to remember taht colors are more important than shapes when it comes to atmosphere. Ie. The rain plugin wouldn't make the essential difference you're looking for, I'm afraid.