Messages

Hi Afflict,

I went to do a basic paintover but thought that what I wanted to explain would be too difficult to see, so I did a value study instead.

The character has changed somewhat in appearance, but I think the pose is similar enough that you'll be able to understand what I'm talking about.  I tried to stay as close to your drawing as I could.



One of the things that's difficult about this image specifically is that the brim of the hat should cast a shadow directly over the eyes, which in a portrait is usually where you want your detail.

For this image, I started with a basic sketch.  I then went directly over the sketch with what I thought would be my average value, or the color that's neither brightly lit nor in shadow.

I picked that color, went darker, and painted in the "shadow side" of the face, very roughly.  Then I picked the average value, went lighter, and painted in the light side.

I did this again with a "highlight" value and a "deep shadow" value.  The study took about an hour, but I'll admit that I started over during that time.

I don't recommend working from white and then adding color and shadow.  Instead, pick a color and fill the whole canvas with it, then bring up your highlights and push back your shadow areas.  You'll notice that there is no white (nor black) in this image anywhere; if I were to add it, it would seem incredibly bright/dark right away.  This is a useful tool, but wasn't necessary.

Starting with a "mid value" can be more difficult in color, but experiment!   

I wanted to point out a few more things.

Cast shadows are really important in an image, and you can see them here from the brim of the hat, the nose, and the upper lip, not to mention the eyelids.  The thing to remember about cast shadows is that the edge of them is usually hard/sharp.  Take a look at the cast shadow from the nose on the area above the lip -- it is very clear that the nose is casting a shadow onto the lip, which helps the nose "read."

Compare this with the cheek areas, the shading within the nose, and the shading around the ear.  There are softer transitions here, which suggest curvature, rather than one shape being in front of another.  Think of a sphere sitting on the ground -- on the sphere itself, the value changes are subtle, but the shadow that the sphere casts looks like a oval on the ground.  (This is exaggerated slightly, but you get the idea, I hope!)

Finally, in my other post I mentioned eyelids... this is because we see more of them than the eyes themsleves.  Eyelids are really difficult, and I didn't do them much justice here, though they are mostly in shadow.  However, the bottom eyelids catch a bit of light bouncing off of the cheek, as the top of the cheek angles upwards.  If you think of the eye as sitting in a socket, with eyelids wrapping around the eyeball, that might help in deciding where to draw them, and how to shade them.  On the viewer right eyelid, I hope you can see that it curves around the eyeball -- even though the eye itself is shaded flat, it should read as curved (somewhat).

Anyway, I hope this has helped you somewhat!     I have a LONG, LONG way to go myself, but if you have any questions, maybe I can answer them.

Good luck!   

Looks good so far.

Typically there are two colors not used in painting: 100% black, and 100% white.  Both of them appear in the eyes in this image, which is just not realistic.  Even in full light, the whites of the eyes are not white.

If you look again at the painting Stefano posted, the "whites" of the eyes are basically the same value as the skin.  More important than the whites are the eyelids, which catch the highlights and cast shadows upon the eyeball itsself.  Same painting: the lower eyelids are catching more light than the eyeballs themselves.

I'd expect to see more of a cast shadow from the brim of the hat across the face.

If you want to achieve any realism, I'd go back and work on the eyes.  I might be able to do a paintover if you're interested in that sort of thing.

Best idea - Nihilyst
Best design - Nihilyst/Sektor 13 (can't decide)
Best functionality - ProgZmax
Best technique - Fawfulhasfury

Congratulations!  It was a great tune; well done.   

In an attempt to not work this into the ground, I'm calling this done.

http://www.fawxie.com/epicspacebattle.mp3

Hope you enjoy it.   

Clearly, bringing up console games was the kiss of death.... lesson learned.   

Surely there are adventure games whose protagonist/player character is not well defined at all... being an Access fan, I'd contrast Jason (Amazon) to Tex Murphy (all of his games), where Jason has no personality at all, and Tex has it in spades.

Another game with an uncharacterized protagonist could be Deja Vu, and a lot of the old text adventures (Deadline?).  I think I mentioned Prodigal from the get-go, whose player character is a blank canvas.

I'm wondering how you think these character decisions affect the narrative, not in a sense of "good story" or "bad story," because that's a matter of opinion, but in terms of how the games play out, exposition, the kinds of things that the player can be expected to do, etc.   

There's a school of thought which suggests that interactivity and compelling stories are inverse relationships: the more freedom a player has to act within a game, the more difficult it is to keep the player in the realm of a dramatic narrative.  (The exception would be writing dramatic narratives for all contingencies, but there are some things that simply can't be made dramatic, so you'd have to limit the player's exploration that way.)

This got me thinking about main characters.  I've read over and over that for the player to truly assume the role of the main character in a game, the main character needs to be as "ambiguous" as possible to allow the player to project his or her personality onto the character.  This was true with Cloud (Final Fantasy VII) and Crono (Chrono Trigger), neither of whom spoke in their games.

But that runs counter to a lot of adventure titles.  Take Tex Murphy, for example, whose dialog is often wittier and more interesting than anything the player could have come up with.  Many adventure game developers go to great lengths to give their main characters personalities that "we will want to spend time with."  It's almost as though the adventure game's goal is not to bring the player into the game, but to allow the player to be someone more interesting than himself/herself for a while.

My question is this: how defined are your main characters?  Do you go to great lengths to make them very specific and detailed, or do you try to keep them as similar to the player as possible?

How do you think this affects your narrative?  Your interactivity?

For me, my main character is pretty well fleshed out, but not quite so much as the surrounding characters.  I do expect the players to assume his role, though, rather than project themselves into the game.  Having the character really fleshed out has given me a lot of dramatic possibilities for the story, but the game is becoming a "trail of bread crumbs" without a lot of freedom.  Perhaps this is inherent in the adventure game genre, and is requisite to telling a story.

I've seen AGS games go both ways.  My opinion is that Prodigal's main character is pretty amorphous; it's easy to assume he's "like me," and the game story has him act in ways that I would choose to act (trying to seek out my brother even after he's stiffed our family).  Cedric and the Revolution has a main character with a very distinct personality, and I realize that we are very different.  That keeps me removed from the game, in a sense, but it's entertaining enough that I don't mind.

Any thoughts on this?

Sorry for the long post.   

I took scale to mean size, depth, space, expansiveness, rather than a collection of notes... could be wrong.

Anyway, I might enter this one too.  Sounds like fun.   

Looks cool!

I too think shadows are very important, and I'd like to see an obvious cast shadow from the table top -- the table sits directly under the light, so the area beneath it should be pretty dark.  The edge of the shadow would be pretty crisp, too, at that distance.

The one thing that bugs me is the picture (or flat-panel TV) with the car on it.  I'm guessing you used a photograph and transformed it using a perspective tool, but it really sticks out to me.  I'd recommend re-drawing the car in your own style, or tracing over it.

(Is it a nice TV?  I don't understand why someone with such a conservative and tasteful decorating style would put a poster of a car on his/her wall; seems tacky.)

Anyway, it's a great background.  Looking forward to more!   

The best thing about under a killing moon was when he fumbled his gun in the beginning.

On a similar note, one of the outtakes at the end...

"So YOU'RE Tex Murphy..."  *pulls a gun, points at camera, reels, cackling maniacally*
"That was great, but, uh, you don't shoot him."
"Oh!"

I liked Martian Memorandum, too, but it had a few puzzles that could trap you and make the game unwinnable... which always strikes me as bad design.  (I'm thinking in particular of digging up the one spot in the jungle -- if you don't get that item before getting to Mars, you can't backtrack and get it again.  Bleh.)  I think Overseer is supposed to be a remake of Mean Streets or Martian Memorandum, but in the style of UAKM?  I wish I could run it...!

Awww, you ruined my fantasy!   

It seems that when I read threads about favorite adventure games, I never see Access Software mentioned -- just Monkey Island over and over.

This disappoints me, because my favorite adventure games were produced by Access Software, namely Amazon: Guardians of Eden, and Under a Killing Moon.  (Although I own a copy of Tex Murphy: Overseer, I can't get it to run on my system.   )

I personally loved the story in Amazon, especially.  Even though the narrative and presentation was reminiscent of a B-movie serial, replete with powerful and sexy warrior women, the quest to find Allen was very interesting.  I also liked the sense of helplessness, or of being stranded, that the game conjured up once Jason reaches the jungle.  I'll never forget the airplane scene... "Step to the door, pardner.  You're gonna be divin' like a condor to a corpse."

Oh yeah, and the lovely adventure gaming jab: "The ladder fits snugly into your back pocket."   

I also liked the story and atmosphere in Countdown, though the premise is now cliche.  That game was really difficult, though; I need to go back to it someday.   

(As an aside, Amazon was how I found and settled on AGS... I wanted to make an adventure game, and started searching for engines.  A lot of them were out there... but I saw AGS, and saw that Chris Jones was developing it.  Where had I seen that name before...?  Access Software.  I didn't have to look at anything else.  One of the developers of my favorite adventure games had built and released a freeware engine -- what else needed to be considered?)

So, to try and get to "what makes adventure games great," what did you like or not like about the Access Software titles?

I saw this and thought of your project... maybe it will inspire you:



(It does have a bit of grey, but it's definitely not "greyscale.")

Downloading them now, thanks for the new links.   

It's downloading pretty slowly, but as soon as I get them I'll upload and post new links for everyone.... it should be later this evening.   

EDIT:

Here are the mirrors:

http://www.fawxie.com/ags/backgroundpart1.avi
http://www.fawxie.com/ags/backgroundpart2.avi

Hope this helps.

The link seems broken... I'll gladly host the tutorials (with permission from their creator), but someone will have to send them to me so I can upload them.   

Hey txarly,

These tutorials look great... if you'd like, I can host them for you temporarily so that everyone can get them.  Send me a PM if you don't have any luck finding another host.

Looks awesome; thanks for the step-by-step as well.   

I think the confusion about the waterfall comes from the perspective... the waterfall and the lines on the side of the cliff/rock face are all running vertically up and down, which suggests a rather low angle.  If we were looking at a large chasm in the earth, then the near grassy field would be "higher up" to be on the same plane as the far field... right now it looks like there's a shelf, which is where the confusion comes in.  (I think the shelf is visible in the undetailed image most easily.)

Even if the ravine were really wide, I doubt we'd get a shot like that unless we were standing *really close* to the edge, or looking into it somewhat.  If we're looking in, or even looking anywhere other than directly at the horizon, having those lines on the rock face come to a vanishing point somewhere waaaay down in the ravine would help.

But the coloring is unbelievable, as usual.   

I think the floor color is okay, but needs some variation/texturing... it could easily be a really glossy hardwood floor if there were some reflections on it from the bookcase and walls.

Is the counter supposed to be a glass display case?  If it is, brown is probably not the color you're looking for... 

Regarding help with shadows, I believe you have two options:

1)  Find excellent reference material and draw from that, or:

2)  Get a simple 3D package (such as the free Blender software), set up a basic scene using primitives and a simple light, and render the results.  With the right contrast settings, you should be able to get the effect that you're looking for, and can then re-draw the image to your liking.  (Here, you're simply making your own reference material.)

Otherwise, in many cases you can probably paint in your light areas, rather than your shadows.  Think of your image as complete darkness and imagine where the light is reaching, rather than imagining your image as completely lit and then figuring out where light is not reaching -- if that makes sense.

Good luck!