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Looks good, you've captured the style well. One thing that caught my eye on a second look-over though is that the top dial doesn't look quite right because of the way the (nnnngh...) thin triangular bit goes across the shading of the bit underneath (hope that makes sense--if not I'll fire up paint).

This is the background finished (the only thing needing adding is the view of the grounds outside the window). The curtains are probably a bit distracting, and I agree with the comment that it's a bit washed out--it's sort of what I was going for, but maybe more contrast across the entire thing would be good. I also tried outlining stuff as suggested.

I'm not gonna work any more on this one, but suggestions for improvement are obviously welcome (so I can improve my technique and that).

Okay, it might be a matter of taste as to whether the sprite and the background blend okay. Thanks for the feedback Snarky. And yes, it does need cleaning up--I wasn't using separate layers at first which is partly why things are a bit messy around edges. I'll post the end result and see what people think.

Cheers, I think I understood you. I was really asking whether more intricately defining areas of finer detail better would help (it sounds like we're on the same page--I take it this is what you mean by tightening it). One thing that might work better for me is using the pencil tool rather than the paintbrush, since the pencil will not go over the 1px thickness unlike the paintbrush (some gimp trivia for the readers).

I respect you saying that it's about the quality rather than the speed, but I don't think I would want to spend years on a single game (unless it was shaping up to be really rad). I was reading a post-mortem of Gemini Rue by its creator (Josh Nuernburger? You know who he is anyway), and he said that (I'm paraphrasing) to produce all the backgrounds he needed to produce, he had to use a style that was less pixel-perfect than he usually used. I thought Gemini Rue looked great, and I suppose I'm looking for that sweet-spot where I can paint up a background in reasonable time, not spending too much time at the pixel level, and have it look decent, or preferably good. Maybe what is possible for a grimy, dark future noir setting is not feasible for a more colourful period setting, though. But this is why feedback is helpful.

Thanks for the link to that thread too--I've read it before, and am a fan of Ben304's stuff. I saw another thread too with Ben304 and loominous firing drawings back and forth, and some of that was stunning. One thing might be, however, that his settings (as in, the worlds his games are set in) are more stylised and colour saturated than what I'm going for, but maybe I'll give it another read.

Anyway, whoa, I've written too much. Thanks very much for taking the time to crit--it's appreciated. I will try to finish this background off and sharpen it, and will post the result.

Hey, thanks for the feedback.

I'll certainly try edges round stuff in the background.

Also, as in your example, it looks almost like the backgrounds is in a different resolution which doesn't indicate any style choice but bad quality (as in as if you can't match it, instead of you not wanting it to match).

Do you mean the background looks lower quality? Is this due to things like the folds in the curtains and the fuzziness of the globe and could this be improved by picking out these details more? Or have I misunderstood?

I suppose the thing is striking the balance between detail/refinement and speed. I've spent a little while on this background because it's my first go and I'm happy to experiment and get a feel for things, but if I'm to make lots of backgrounds I need to find a style and way of working that looks decent without requiring me to work over the whole image at pixel granularity (I suppose everybody has this problem...). Maybe the way to go is redrawing the character on the tablet... but I suspect he'll look too blurry.

clear the surfaces a bit (so they use less colors and sharper textures)

Is there a good way to do this in gimp? (I'm using gimp... is that embarrassing? Should I be embarrassed?) Or is it a case of painting back over it in flatter colour?

This must be a common question, but does the character sprite (pixel art) look alright on a background with more of a painted look? Perhaps it's all a matter of opinion, but I get the sense from posts I've seen that some people really dislike a mismatch, or at least dislike it when sprites look especially like sprites rather than a part of the world. I don't know that I mind it so much, but am interested in thoughts. I'm aware there's no shadow beneath my guy, so that's probably one thing I could add (will have to search for how to do this).

Also up for tips and stuff. This background's unfinished, but not too far off, and I've noticed there are some rockstar artists around here, so any pointers are appreciated. The background was my first time using a tablet (my housemate's a design student and let me borrow hers), so I'm all for hearing ways to improve.


image upload software

Edit:

Sorry, here is the background and sprite in original res.


taking a screen shot



That's all for now. Tinkerty tonk,

-lavakiss

No problem. Thanks!

The link http://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/site/ags/plugins/engine/ brings me to a page with no content. Is it me (I'm using Chrome), or if not, where else can I find the info on creating plugins?