Messages

Khris: Thanks for taking the time to do this! It seems my instincts weren't as wrong as I thought they were. Did you really draw the 3D version using the lines shown, or did you use some transform tool?

Anyway, Sketchup it is

Awesome little game. Unlike some games that try to shove a forced joke into every sentence, the humour here felt genuine and effortless.

I just can't get over the childishness of the first version... I may try to pass it as a style, but it just looks inept to me compared to the newer version. Then again, the second one took about ten times as much time.

Well, since I'm at it, I might as well post two other early versions of backgrounds, both to be redone completely.

Judging from all the comments saying the perspective is irreparably wrong in my background, gut feeling didn't work out for me . So I need to understand where exactly I went wrong. People are trying to help by demonstrating the theory, for which I'm grateful, but I'm still not able to apply it to the specifics of my image. I see some details that seem a bit wrong, but it doesn't look off to me as a whole.

Just to be sure, this is how I imagine the room in a top view (not that I planned it this way, but it's what I see in the picture as it came out):

pharlap, tamatic: I've just noticed the sentence "The above represents a great de3al of work" in pharlap's post. I missed that before, and I'm sorry for judging it as a quick job.

This often happens to me (as can be seen in this thread ) - instead of trying to learn something from others, I resort to endless trial and error with little progress. It takes far more time than if I actually tried to learn something, but it's much, much easier mentally - I don't have to struggle to wrap my head around how others do what I can't do, I just enjoy the "freedom of creating". If this is your case, my advice would be to use other images as examples and watch tutorials. I've spent countless hours doing things the hard way, only to find some obscure video on youtube showing that they take a few minutes if you take the right approach and use the correct tools.

xrg: Hello and thanks! I'm afraid I still can't grasp the basic concepts of perspective. Let me show you the picture my spatially challenged imagination paints for me . Let's say I draw a simple cube using two-point perspective, like this:



As I imagine it, from a bird's perspective it would look like this:



Now I can move the cube around using auxiliary lines from the vanishing points, but as I see it, the cube is still facing the same, convenient direction. Like this:



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My question is, what do I do if I want to rotate the cube into a less standard angle?



Applied to your tutorial and my background, I understand how to draw stairs facing the same angle as numbers 1 and 2 in the picture below. But what if my staircase looks like 3? How do I work with auxiliary lines then?




I assume there is something very fundamental I'm not getting, but I can't figure out what.

By the way, this is an earlier version of the castle/cave background:



While the current version isn't great, I think you'll agree there has been some progress .

tamatic: Come on, let's be honest here... that image communicates an almost complete artistic lack . But then, how long did it take to create? 15 minutes? An hour? And how much thought, planning and attention to detail was invested in it?

Why so many people think they can't draw is that they assume it shouldn't require any effort. Especially no mental effort. "I don't know how to draw a tree right away, thus I'm no good at drawing". While all it takes is to type "a tree" into google, study how a tree looks like and slowly learn to copy what you see.

What really makes an artist, in my opinion, is vision. Once you can see in your head what the result should be, there are various ways to achieve it. Talent is just one of them.

pharlap: A lot can be improved by hard work. Just look at art you like and try to break it down into small tasks - rough sketch, outlines, colors, shading, etc. Then take a pencil and an eraser and redo your image ad nausea until it comes close to what you like in other artists. If you really have no talent at all, it probably still won't be breathtaking, but you could get well above average.

Alternatively, make a deal with an artist. If your games are short, I, for example, would probably like to help you out in the art department

Good call with the steps, I imagine it really would look better - will give it a try. I completely agree with you and Crimson about the sunbeams, they're more or less a placeholder and I'm about to work on them.

It's really good to have feedback, makes me want to continue working on this .

If you have the lines in a separate layer, can't you just reduce their opacity?

Or maybe something can be done by playing with masks. If you post the lines layer without colors, I'd like to give it a try

Glad to hear you like the graphics! I'm sorry you don't believe in Kathy as a character, my intention is certainly not for her to be a one dimensional or shallow. I hope you'll give her the benefit of the doubt in the end.

miguel - Thanks!

Perhaps I was a bit too harsh. I believe Kathy herself could be likeable as a game character, it's just that in reality, people with her characteristics are often unbearable .

Looks great! I like the old-school precision and attention to detail with which the backgrounds are drawn.

My problem is that just looking at the title character makes me want to slap her. I guess I'm done with the goth-biker-rebel archetype - I find it extremely shallow and annoying. And reading that Kathy is supposed to be "sassy" doesn't give me much reassurance... it screams "self-important immature bitch" at me . But that's just me, I'm sure she will be well-liked by most players. Good luck with the game, it really does look awesome!

I like it, the style is clean and pleasing, looks professional. It's also the kind of style with which you can pass a certain amount of sloppiness as a gimmick , so I wouldn't mind the perspective too much - but I'm not one to judge perspective, I suck at it myself.

The signs on the last picture don't look right to me. I think the right side of the sign on the left shouldn't be visible, and the top and bottom of the sign on the right should be skewed according to it's sides.

I would also add a lights layer (a yellow fill layer in overlay mode) in the same way you've added shadows, and play with curves/brightness/saturation layers a bit to lighten the image and give it a more coherent feel. A little like this:



(just a quick example of what I mean, I'm sure you can do much better)

dactylopus, pharlap: Wow, thanks for the compliments! As much as I value the honest and constructive critique others are submitting, my ego is most grateful for those two short posts

Lewis: Yes, it helps, thanks for taking the time to explain thoroughly. As I said, it seems I don't have much of a spatial imagination, so while I understand the theory, I don't notice mistakes others see right away. The table actually looked ok to me until I compared the texture of the table to the texture of the floor. Now I recognize it's slightly off, but it still doesn't bother me as much as it probably should. If you could point out where and why exactly is the perspective wrong in my picture, I would appreciate it a lot, but of course I don't expect you to... your feedback is helpful as it is.

In keeping with my tendency to do things in the most complicated way possible, I've decided to first make a rough sketch of my background in Google Sketchup, then choose a camera angle, redraw it by hand, scan it and color it in Photoshop. Here's the first draft that came out of this process:




I was rushing to try it out, so I didn't model everything in 3D, and now the parts I've added by hand are still off. But I'm making progress

Crimson Wizard: Thanks for the feedback, I'm planning to work on the light beams, make them more irregular and maybe lower their opacity. I'll think about the shadow of the table.

Andail: Well, I'm definitely not going to start completely over . Could you please be more specific about what you think is wrong? What you say about lighting is correct, but I don't see how I neglected it. If you're talking about the blue color behind the door, that's not finished of course, there will be something painted inside it. Colors and lighting can be corrected quite easily without repainting the image, it's all separate layers.

I understand that the perspective is off at some places (mainly the staircase), but I don't think it's so botched up as to redo the whole image. Or is it? Again, specific tips would be more helpful. But thanks anyway .

Oh and I actually have tried it with a character and it seems to work. Only I can't let him go all the way up the stairs or too far into the foreground

Well, it's been small steps every day, I'm not talking about three weeks of full-time work. Plus I draw everything with my mouse, which isn't the fastest technique .

Anyway, thanks for the input! I've only recently gotten into the whole setting up a perspective thing, been reading some tutorials on vanishing points, but only after I've already gotten most of the objects placed. Apparently I don't have much of a spatial imagination, but I think I have a rough idea what you're talking about - I'll see what can be done with the stairs for example. As I imagine it when I look at the picture, the stairs getting smaller is not only indication of perspective, the top ones are actually smaller than the bottom ones... but I realize now that doesn't make much sense .

I'm not sure what's wrong with the table though. If somebody placed it on the floor like this, the perspective would be more or less similar, wouldn't it? Or is this just an aesthetical thing - that it should be facing another direction so that the lines are in tune with the rest of the objects? The texture on the table is hand-painted by the way, no copy & paste... but I agree it does have that flat, tiled look, I should work on that.

I guess next time I'll sketch the basics in google sketchup first to get the 3D elements right. Thanks again!

I've been slowly working on this background for almost three weeks now. It's still not finished, but I'm getting impatient and hungry for some sort of feedback to stay motivated. So I thought I'd just post it here to get some thoughts on it. I know it's hard to criticize when it's still work in progress, so some parts are obviously sloppy because they're not finished... just give me your general impression if possible. Thank you!