Background Blitz: My new job at the factory (votting ended June 17th)

[Anian]

Theme:   FACTORY
Indoor (ie assembly line) or outdoor (like a factory yard, loading dock...). Any style fiction, reality, SF, fantasy, horror, cartoons and so on. Doesn't have
to be very cost or power efficient of course. The power source or combination of them can be anything from steam, water, fusion, coal, nuclear, magic,
kittens and small children, hamsters in a wheel... It can produce anything from dragons, dreams, babies, boxes, ACME components, pop songs, monsters
under the bed, adventure games or whatever your mind can think of.

Restrictions: None formal, but if it's AGS resolution friendly (or scrollable) all the better.

Categories (not too restricting I hope):
Atmosphere - feelings and moods evoked
Design - look of things like furniture, vehicles, architecture etc.
Composition - the art theory component, perspective, position and relation of elements, colours and how things work together in general.
Functionality - so that you don't make a poster or a painting, how well it would work when adding sprites, walking areas and solutions, a good angle for
character sprites, and exit or two etc.

End date: Midnight (GMT) June 14th

Hope the theme is fun enough to get your imagination going. Respond to the last blitz was poor, so come on people, activate your little grey cells and your move
your mouses/pens!  

[Misj']

Working on something...

Rough sketch (I guess it's not Santa's Workshop)


Working it out (far from finished)
 

I will update this post when I get further.

Working on the flats...


Unfortunately...I don't know whether I will have time to finish this piece.

Due to time-constraints this will is the final image:

-- click image for bigger version --

-- click here for additional information (interaction- and walkable-area-map) --

I played around a bit with textures and stuff (which is something I never use, so I was curious)...and well...I feel I was quite unsuccessful.  The way I used the textures just didn't fit the style over the overall image in my opinion. With the exception of the moon and the city the piece didn't turn out the way I envisioned, and I probably should have gone with some simple cell-shading, but I don't have the time to 'correct my mistake' (and what other way to learn?). I also made it to dark...but I'll pretend that is an artistic choice

In the final piece the skull-shape is lost a bit, but I think I managed to make the factory appear evil enough as it is. A minor detail: this is one of my few pieces that are done fully digital (in Painter and Photoshop) without pen-and-paper steps. Also, the smoke would should animate in-game.

[Anian]

Cool.

[Scarab]

http://scarab117.webs.com/photos/happy/lucky%20rabbits%20foot%20commit.bmp

Ever wondered how they made a Lucky Rabbits foot? Now you know

Not really good with backgrounds and shading... kinda new at this.
sorry about the no thumbnail

[Layabout]

Hah, I like the idea behind the rabbit foot one... although the rabbits would probably be sprites if they were moving along a conveyor belt.

Scarab117, you should always post background images as .gif or .png. Bitmaps are uncompressed and take ages to load, even if they are 320x2xx resolution. you can also use img tags to display them in your post. Jpgs aren't usually a good choice for pixels as they are a lossy compression format (lossy = loss of quality).

[Anian]

Hmm, come people, place your entries. I'll extend the deadline if someone needs an extra day or two to finish up.

[Buckethead]

I really like the theme but I'm too busy to enter. Such a shame. 

[loominous]

Noone makes clouds like Gatsby!



Still a bit rough.

Edit: With an npc present:

[Evil]

It's the Hot Brand Hot-Dog factory! Rendered in a quick isometric style. Who doesn't love a Hot Brand Hot-Dog?

[Anian]

I knew that letting it run until next morning would get more entries. I'm happy it did. (Hope the others don't mind, it's more fun with more entires I think).

Unless there's no objections, I suggest we vote. Voting will last 26 hours. (Still if somebody has some WIP, would be nice to see it anyway).

[Shane 'ProgZmax' Stevens]

Atmosphere - Misj.  It doesn't really need the sign to tell me that there's something foreboding beyond the fence, and the colors and design do a good job of setting up a spooky atmosphere.

Evil:  It's really difficult to create 'atmosphere' with isometric art, and I think your approach worked against you here because by itself, your tile doesn't really constitute a 'background' as such but part of a whole.

Scarab117:  You definitely establish a dark humor atmosphere with your rabbit abattoir but it just seems like it's missing something.

Loominous:  I like the cheerful colors of the top half of the image but it didn't evoke a specific feeling for me.


Design - Loominous.  The creative use of light and dark and the shapes of the buildings really help to sell the background.

Misj: In spite of displaying walkable areas and such separately, I think the darkness of the background works against you here.  I can't really make out the crank that you can turn on and off in the completed image and the fence angle just seems a bit awkward to me, even for a close up.

Scarab117:  It's a very simple but clear design but not very eye-catching.

Evil:  I think the building looks quite good, though I'd like to see some more details (and maybe some anti-aliasing).


Composition - Loominous.  The focal point is established and framed out between a tree and another building, which directs attention to the factory where it should be.

Misj:  My attention seems divided between the town (with a bright light source behind it) and the factory, making it difficult to focus.  Perhaps if the moon was behind the factory I would be drawn there instead?

Scarab117:  I'm clearly drawn to the conveyor belt where the blood is, but the rest of the room is so empty there isn't enough to hold my attention.

Evil:  The hotdog guy on the side really helps what is otherwise a pretty sterile iso building.  I'm also not sure where my focus should be, since the image of the hot dog guy kind of competes with the large hot dog on top for attention.  Maybe if you had him on top of the building instead of the hot dog it would 'spice' things up a bit?

Functionality - Evil.  Isometric design lends itself naturally to functional playable areas, I just wish you'd given us more area to look at.

Misj:  In spite of displaying the walkable areas, again, I think that parts of the image are too skewed and look too much like a cutscene to work very well.

Scarab117:  Your room is very functional, but you should work towards more than just a functional background.  The lack of details make it seem like there's nothing to actually do in the room other than look at the conveyor belt, so thinking about how you will make the room into something that is actually part of a game is important.

Loominous:  I have this issue with a lot of your backgrounds, and that is, while I find them quite brilliant, they just don't seem practical as actual, playable rooms because of the strong perspective and distances.  This background in particular seems better suited as an introductory cutscene of some sort rather than a room your character would wander about in and have things to do in.  I think the only exception here would be the bench at the bottom, but I'd see that getting more use as an introduction than a playable zone.

[loominous]

Atmosphere: Misj - I personally am not a fan of the colour combos, but it does the trick of creating a spooky scene.
Design: Misj - Evil's factory was really cool and charming though, so it was a close second.
Composition: Misj
Functionality: Evil - isometric art has some clear advantages, and I would usually favor a nice solution to a trickier problem, but I find that both Misj's n Scarab117 could've done a clearer job in limiting the player movement.

-

I have this issue with a lot of your backgrounds, they just don't seem practical as actual, playable rooms because of the strong perspective and distances.

This was the intended functionality (just added that character quickly):



So basically it would be an introductory scene to the factory where the old lady would provide some insights.

The reason I tend to do these kind of establishing shot backgrounds is that the topic often includes the design of a structure, so the problem arises: if you're to see the whole structure, and not just a slice of it, the camera most often have to be pulled back quite a bit. As I personally don't like small characters - I prefer to be pretty close to make it more personal - the solution ends up being these kind of pre-screens.

So it's a kind of compromise.

[Misj']

ProgZ pointed out many of the things that are wrong with my background (although I don't think it's 'too skewed' to be functional).

Atmosphere - Loominous...of the pieces it's the only one that had me linger.

Design - Scarab117...while from a technical point of view not the best piece, I do like the details presented in the different steps obtaining the rabbits foot. It were these little things that made me feel the background (though simple) was thought out (plus it's the only background where we see the inner-workings of the factory...and it still works, so I really like it).

Composition - Loominous...there's a lot of unity in this background, and even though there are many details in the image, none of them clutter things up.

Functionality - Looking at the different backgrounds I feel they are all functional as in-game backgrounds. I don't think Evil's factory stands as a separate background, I do think it would work well in a tile-based background, but more tiles are needed to make the background complete (if he had he would have have won this category). Scarab's factory is clean, but I feel it focusses a little bit too much on the inner-workings of the factory and a little too little on the player's goal for this background. In Loominous' background the exits feel a little forced (particularly the path down), making this feel like an playable-introductory-scene (not a cut-scene) similar to the the 'introduction of the circus-tent scene' in Monkey Island 1. But it wasn't until he added the NPC-sprite that I understood the scene. --- I decided not to vote in this category (because I couldn't choose).

[Anian]

Atmosphere - Misj'
Design - Loominous
Composition - Loominous
Functionality - Evil

Should've entered myself, but...I'm an ass.  
Scarab, though your style isn't my favourite, I still laughed at joke, so thanks.  

[Anian]

So, if I tallied correctly, it was  a close race for the first place:

WINNER - loominous (6 votes)

2nd place - Misj' (5 votes)
3rd place - Evil (3 votes)


Thank you all for participating, hope you had fun. 

[Misj']

Congratulations Loominous!

(I'm just glad I finally managed to create a piece that people felt to evoke a mood )