Double post updated First BG

Started by AlbinoPanther, Mon 01/08/2005 11:29:59

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AlbinoPanther

This is our first BG done in art gem and some effects in ACDsee.
WHAT SHOULD I CHANGE.
The game is called Spear of destiny and it's about new messiah...But story takes place in 1999 and this traler is his home.



Really little change(thank you increator)



The green stuff is acctually a smoke from a near UFO crash

Chicky

#1
It's actaully not a bad background, the tree looks a little out of place though, oh and i like the rendered look but i think that's why the tree stands out.

InCreator

#2


okay.
First, use [ img ]http://www.server.com/yourfile.jpg[ /img ] tags to make your picture visible. (don't use empty spaces as i did). TeH superior BBCode and smileys reference may be helpful here.

Now, about the picture...
It looks very professional for a starter in AG, but there's also some extremely n00b mistakes (numbered on picture too).
I bolded the keywords so you could understand easier what was wrong.

1. What is that green fluid in the sky? I get your idea, but it should be blue, or even purple and not so dense.

2. It may be a problem caused by JPG compression, but-!
The edges of the smoke-thing must not be separatable from sky area. They should either blend very nicely into sky, or  it would be even more realistic, if the smoke was visible only in the cone of the light. Also, smoke is way too dense.

3. Do not use blur. As simple as that. The tree is very nicely drawn, but you totally ruined it by blurring it. Where's the shadows? Texture? Beauty?

4. The star sticks out from sky too much. Make it smaller, and if you know-how-to, more transparent.

5. What? The tree is behind trailer. The light is in front of trailer. The trailer blocks light from bottom part of tree. Why does the tree glow like that? You get the idea: Trailer should block light from tree.

6. Erase this post. It does not fit here at all. It's too glowing, flat and unrealistic. Try a simple wooden post instead.

I love the rest of the picture, the trailer looks very good and overall atmosphere is cozy and interesting enough for a good adventure game.

Also, never post JPGs if it's pixel art. Save as PNG or GIF instead.

EDIT: Well, er... since I like ArtGem and I wasn't lying about this background's potential, I made a lazy edit.
Note that I also used ArtGem.



I had no patience to erase all your wrong-doings and there may be some unneeded crap on picture (too sleepy to notice myself) but mayor points are fixed or at least a bit improved.

For tech side, both the lamp post and tree was made by spraying custom brushes and variating them using brighten/darken processor later (same way you drew this lovely grass).

lamp post brush is here:


and tree-leaf/thorns brush is here:


Be creative.

AlbinoPanther

#3
Can anybody tell use what should we do with buildings.They are a bit less detailed, we are looking for real picture of some city at night panorama that can fit there.
Thank you for helping us

And does anybody know how to improve tree
thanks...thanks...thanks

scotch Edit: trimmed triple post and some flames.

loominous

Some value/color mods



I think the values and colors are keeping the image back mostly.

The tree and pole both look like they're lit up from our viewpoint with a strong light, which could be feasible but spoils the mood imo.

The pitch dark value of the sky doesn't look convincing and robs it of some potential depth and horizon. There's usually some noteable gradient in the sky, at least towards the horizon.

The pure blacks in shadow areas robs it of a lot of detail and gives a fake impression. The human eye is very good at noticing value differences in dark areas (as opposed to brighter) and since all areas in the image are exposed to light from the sky and bouncelight from the moon (perhaps not beneath the wagon) we expect them to have some minor value variety (very little though, medium to high contrast in shadow areas completely ruins the impression).

-

The colors suffer from a very common mistake, in that they disregard the enviroment. A common approach, when picking colors is to pick pure colors, that is, if you wish to color something green, such as grass, you simply pick a green color. This seems logical, which is why it's so common, but is usually inaccurate to how it would look in real life.

Any object lit by a tinted/colored lightsource will adopt it's hue to a degree. In the image the strongest lightsource is the lamp which has a slight yellow hue. This means that the surfaces lit up by it will have slight yellow hue, but mostly pretty neutral/pure colors since white light doesn't tint.

The sky and moon provides the remaining light. The sky, being bluish will tint everything it hits (which is pretty all surfaces) in a bluish hue, and the moon provides some yellowish light (though not much in this case, it hardly being visable).

The blue light from the sky and yellow light of the moon pretty much neutralizes eachother being almost opposite of eachother (blending to opposite colors (such as red/green will render grey), so the saturation in areas they both hit will be low, as in all lowlight areas (which is partly why the grass doesn't look right in the original, the saturation being much too high).

-

All in all, I liked the lighting on the trashcan, the van construction, the pole and the treeshape. It seems like you did some heavy contrast alteration quite late in the process. This will mess up the values and colors pretty much and I wouldn't recommend it. I'd suggest spending a lot of time, after doing the initial sketch, on laying down values that looks convincing before moving on to coloring and doing any detail work. Working in a small format in this stage helps you to focus on the big picture instead of obsessing about details looking crap. If it looks good in a small format, it'll look good zoomed in, provided the neccessery details are added later on.

About the distant buildings, to push things back in a picture, simply blend them with the sky. If you're using a program with layers, just lower the opacity, or just pick the sky color and paint ontop of it with low opacity.

Btw, I liked the first version better with the moodsetting smoke and unusual pole.
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