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Definitely add lyrics, especially if you wanna charm a girl. Playing some scales on a guitar is at best somewhat impressive (albeit still very ordinary), but you should aim to be personal and unique.
You don't want to show off with your instrumental skills, you want to deliver a message.

Good luck on that surgery.

As for the latest screenshot, ahem....sorry to say that it's definitely a decline in quality compared to many of the superb backgrounds you have so far.
This isn't the critics lounge, but that pic could be improved a lot.

First of all you need to ditch the ps effects and do the lighting and shading manually. If you must use filters and effects, set them extremely subtly and with low contrast. For instance, the pitch black corner (bottom right) is an eyesore and has to go!

Secondly, just take a look on a real office and see what's in it. Prolly lots of stuff and furniture, right? Your painting is more like a symbol of an office, the idea of an office.

First I thought I should cram this into my previous thread, but then again it's not exactly a speedpainting (far from it) so I'll spam this board with another bg-thread...

This is based on a rough sketch I did some time ago for a competition (you can prolly dig it up if you search a bit, although I recommend against that, as it was a jumble mess of a background...), now spent several hours trying to get the right light conditions and colours. It's rather schematic; the yellow light in the foreground, the steel blue in the background and some sort of mix halfway through (the tree to the side).



Need serious c&c before I go on. Do you find the colours/lighting fitting? I think I've stared myself blind on this one so I need opinions.

Thanks everyone. I think I'll have to upload more pictures into this thread just to make it worthwile...looking back, the initial picture almost seems undeserving of an entire thread...

Anyhow, good points. Evil, well spotted, this bg shares several elements with backgrounds I've already made. This is because I have some visions in my head I need to put in a real game before I can leave them behind...

Scotch, very nice edit, it certainly makes the bg more dynamic, and adds a feeling of summer and nice weather to it. Also like what you did to that tree.

Ah well, back to the drawing board.

RickJ, in your quest to hand out advice to me, in a manner of unsurpassed patronage, you seem to miss my points. I'm gonna make a numbered list to clarify myself.
1. I'm not dissatisfied with my own lot, nor do I yearn for more money. I was happy when I was working for less money and I'm happy now. It seems alien to you that I can detach my personal wellbeing from this discussion.
2. I'm running this case because I think teachers over all are badly paid, and I do think this fact affects the situation in the schools. I think if people feel overlooked and wronged they'll lose confidence and comittment, in the end perform worse. This notion is also completely beyond you.
3. It's cynical to say that a person is paid fairly just because that person and his/her peers still do their job. For instance, I think care workers should be paid more, because I think they do a very important job - nursing the really old and weak, and I think even a small raise could help improving the standards. I'm happy that in your country there seem to be no debates regarding health care (and the cases of maltreatment therein) or childrens' ability to read, write etc.

Rick, try to elevate yourself above the coorporate mechanisms and look at society at large. And please review your posts in the future and tone down the condescending approach. You're not speaking to your son here.

As some of the others explained, my boss's comment was meant to illustrate that teacher salaries are obviously not too low because there has never been a lack of people willing to do the work for the amount of money offered

That's a rather cynical and arrogant statement. You can not measure how much people are worth simply by how prone they are to go on strike. There can be various reasons for why you'd want to give people the money they deserve.
At least in Sweden, the declining quality of the (at least on elementory level) schools has been a hot topic for well over a decade. Kids don't learn to read or write, nor do maths, properly.
Raising standards in schools should be a priority to everyone, and one way is to stop cutting their budgets. People are less inclined to do a good job if they feel they're overlooked or too badly paid.

I don't think teachers are worst off, far from it, women (or the few men in that sector) caring for the elderly, sick or young have been consistently under-paid forever (and consequently, you'll often hear about how bad state the health care's in, etc). It's all connected, and it has to do with which kind of society you want to live in.

Regardless of their agenda, this research will be very popular among narrowminded racists everywhere...

Partly because this research lacks the tedious parts about credibility, methods, background info and control studies that other reports tend to bore their readers with. All it has is a simple graph showing Blacks VS Whites, easy enough, the proofs right there.

Thanks for the feedback so far!

Also, if you just whip up your graphics to this standard now and find they're not what you want at a later date, you can always go back and polish them up once everything is 'finished'. If you get the ball rolling, it'll be easier to commit later! Hell, you could ask somebody else to get involved and polish them up for you, if need be

Good idea, I might employ an assistant artist later on, when I've made some progress.

I really want to start production for an AGS-game, but I realize I'll have severe problems finding the time, with both work and studies and girlfriend. So in order to increase the chances of actually getting anything done, I need to keep a really quick pace, and not get stuck in details.
If I can paint a background under an hour, I could always whip 'em up during coffee breaks and before bedtime.
Example:


So what'ya think? Too sketchy? Too few details to rest your eyes upon? C&C please.

I returned a wallet I found once.
I also lost my wallet once and nobody returned it.
Double bummer!

Don't wanna be discouraging (in case the artist himself even watches this thread) but that background was rather ugly and I hope he decides to try 2D instead. I'd never play anything looking like that...

Nice interview. Don't have much more to say:)

I really don't want to give you a hard time or make you feel worse than you already are but I am sincerely curious and would like to ask an honest question.  When you first started studying to become a teacher did you not know how much salary a teacher typically earns or did you know and think it would be enough to support your desired lifestyle?   

I'm not dumb, I knew exactly what I was getting myself into, and could have chosen a much different route if I wanted to simply become loaded. I had the grades to enter lawschool or become a dentist, and I believe I have the brains necessary for economics.
Trust me, I'm not that kind of person who whines about his poor lot and yearns for riches. With this thread I just wanted to address an issue; why a certain profession (highly academic and with a key function in society) is considered so little worth. I don't know what good the argument "it has always been like this" does, or what your boss's comment was meant to achieve.
People would still be doctors even if they're wages were cut in half. People would still practice law and economy even if lawyers and economists were paid the same as teachers.

A rather straight-forward thread. I'm just curious as of how much money you make, what you do, how much you work and what kind of area you live in.

I'm a teacher myself, which is pretty much the worst paid job in Sweden if you look at years of education. I've done 4.5 years in university and my (and most other new teacher's) entrance salary weighed in at 20.000 SEK per month, roughly 2000 euros or 3000 dollars. I pay about 30% in taxes. My current rent is about 3000/300/450.

I think that's quite horrible myself, considering that people around me who've studied economics or engineering are paid at least 50% more in average.
(The good thing is that teachers typically don't teach all their hours, but can take some time off for preparations and correcting tests and whatnot (the bad thing is that all the extra-work exceeds that time in the beginning, when you haven't got the experience and routine)).

Lol, happened to me too. The last posts come in some sort of sickly greenish colour. Weird.

Cool, what kind of job is it?

Guitars can be great investments

Investment as in, you buy something and can sell it for the same amount - or even more - years and years later? I didn't know that. I thought that the sound quality of guitars, contrary to instruments such as violins etc, deteriorated through the years (unless you keep restoring them for high costs). But then again I've got no insight in electric guitars. They probably age differently than acoustic ones.

Yeah guitars aren't great investments. Had it been a violin or something...but guitars, tough luck!

I'd also say try raising the money in any possible way, even pawn the guitar, but don't sell your most precious belongings.