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You know, the boy who cried wolf thought he was funny too. But after a third time of making a fuss, the people from the village had enough of that little attention-whore and let him die.

I truely believe the male half of Ljubi for having problems in real life. He's acting too friggin cuddly for anyone in the real world to take him seriously. I mean talking about AGS forums being his 2nd home? Get real, toughen up and start battling the real problems you have, not getting depressed over the fact that you can't seem to make a perfect game in less than 4 months.

Seriously, i think you need to grow up.

The name is not one i would choose i think. I don't know if you already claimed that domain name or not, but try playing with more letters.

Ni-si doen't sound powerful enough, doesn't make me want to find out what's behind it.

After toying with the first 3 letters of your names i came to the following:
nik-sid
sik-nid
sink'd
skiddin'
disk in

I'm not saying these are any good (i don't really know what to think of them) but at least you may want to experiment a little more.

heh, great work here. Since you already did a lot of work on this one i'm not sure if more points of critisism are usefull here, but i have two.

It seems like the left and right halves of the bg are in different timezones. Look at the shadows on the trees, they indicate the sun is directly above (around noon). The shadow coming from the hide-out is long (no end can be seen) and thus indicates an earlier or later time.

Second is the little green bag the thug is holding (great character design by the way!). If it's empty, why is he holding it? Put some loot in there make mr. rat happy.

Uhm a little point for people worrying about there being enough oxygen to ignite the fuel.

Please don't tell me you want the fuel to ignite inside the gun. The fuel is supposed to ignite AFTER it leaves gun ie. outside where there is plenty of oxygen to help ignition.

That is all. You may continue.

The Three Muskateers is a good example. Noone liked D'Artagnon. Is it because he's a little pussy? No! It's because he ruins the three.

So right!
That is why 'Touché - the adventures of the fifth musketeer' is funny, because a fifth is added to balance out the annoying D'Artagnan.

On Topic:

It's funny how Terran begins with describing himself as an objective guy, while he now gets annoyed when other show the same trait.
Maybe he doesn't love himself enough?

I'm not sure wether you made this in a point perspective or a isometric one, but in every case, the doors are not the same size. Left is biggest and they get smaller as you move to the left. (Check with the bricklines)

This is of course due to the fact that you painted one door and then copied it two times. This would only work if the view of the door would be perpendicular to the wall.

* and if they're "ready", get yourself something you really like... MacGyver?

I'm sorry but..

WHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHA!!!
MUHA!!

that actually made me wake up the whole house because i couldn't hold in the laughter. Yu should hook up with Marge Simpsons sisters, Inc. I heard they're hardcore McGyver fans aswell

WHOA!!! not just a feature length movie, but 4 of them!!!

I really really hope they do a commentary track on all of them like with the dvd-box sets.

Yeah, this happy baby!

Anyways... Getting back on track. I figured that if I could do this, why not do it for Video games as well? Why not start a web page about it? So I figured, once I get things on track, my site will also be used to publish books and games. This is far down the line. Maybe like by Next year.

No offence Joseph, but with a huge project comes planning. Long term planning. And if your idea of long term planning is 'maybe doing something next year' then i don't think you've thought things through.
I don't think you realise the scale of the project or level of commitment that is required to follow through in the long term.
As CJ can tell you, developing a piece of software by one man is a HUGE task. And chances are that in a year you still won't have any usable software with wich you can actually make a game.

In addition to this, when introducing such a project and getting people to your site, make sure you have the site finished as far as possible and don't link to yet unwritten pages. Over half of the links in the main menu are dead. I didn't feel urged to read anything on the forums because i just went through about 5 pages that weren't available yet.

In my opinion you jumped the gun by publishing a project while it's still in its design stages.

Whatever my feelings are about this, though. I still wish you luck in your endeavours and hope you will persevere and create something beautiful. Anyone willing to provide a free service to the community should be praised!

That a nice animation for a first serious try!

First thing that struck me was the head size. Although it has nothing to do with the animation itself, it's way too small. It looks like there's a baby head on top of an adult body, so i suggest increasing the size.

I like the arm movement, it shows the cocky attitude you're going for, but it would we nice if the shoulders would go forward and backward along with it to really give him that self-confident look. I realise this is a bit against what ProgZmax said, and he's farmore experienced in animating than i am, but give it a shot and see how it turns out.

Okay, i did a little paintover of the shoulder suggestion:


Maybe it's a bit exaggerated, but i quite like the feel it gives.

Good luck!

They beat us? The almighty Netherlands?
Man! tell the socceroos we want our coach back! 


edited for some dumb mistakes and clarification.

Mr. Punk, i'd say that a pretty rude request of you.

Big Brother put some real effort in doing the paintover AND explaining what and why he did what he did. He's trying to teach you something that will make you a better artist. And in turn you don't even try to learn but instead you try making him do more work.

First you try to understand and WORK WITH what has been tought to you, then you can get cocky.

The size of the torches doesn't bother me at all. But i can't judge their actual size because i don't what size the buildings are compared to the player. Right now the buildings seem huge and thus the torches do too which is fine. If the player character was bigger the buildings and the torches would seem relatively smaller. so torch-wise i think you're ok either way.

What DID freak me out was the plants near the beach location. Leaves that seemed almost twice as high the player character is bit too much for me.
If this is what you are going for in the story, then make sure it gets explained. Otherwise it looks really akward which is again partly because of the camera angles.

I'm afraid i can't help you much on the walkcycle. The back view does indeed look like she's 'stomping' rather than walking. But on the whole it just doesn't seem smooth enough compared to the great backgrounds.

hehe, i can imagine you think this is a weird looking background now. It is. That's because it's rather empty and clean. But that's something for later worries.

You absolutely did follow my advice the way i intended it to, but the lighting is still.. uhm.. off. It looks like you've placed a light fairly close to the wall. This looks funny because there is no visible lightsource (like a lamp or fire) in the background, but we still the effects of one being there.

Make no mistake about this. Lighting is a VERY difficult subject to control, both in 3d and in 2d.
See if you can improve by doing the following:
- turn your original light on again (if you turned it off)
- place the newly placed light a bit further away from walls and floors
- turn down the intensity of those new lights so that they aren't as apparently visible but more just soften the hard shadows thrown by your main light and make the lights throw a more whiter color light. The color it has now is more suitable for candles and indoor lighting.

I'm not saying that this is THE way to go if you want to make some cartoonish bg's, but it is what i would do. Whatever you choose to do in the end, EXPERIMENT.. A LOT. Try to visit a forum specifically for computer generated graphics and look at techniques used there. (Not that we don't want you here ).

Good luck.

Holy cow! that was great!!

I very much like the atmosphere you've created. I got into it right away. Infact, so much that the lightning strike made me jump from my chair (well, almost).

The fire animations look very nice, except maybe on the bridge to the castle where they seem a bit sharp and sprite-like.

Indeed the character size was one of my few gripes. In most of the backgrounds it looks like she's walking in some giant world. This also has to do with some unusual camera positions you've chosen. Also, there is something not right about her walkcycles, but i haven't got a clue what it is. I never made one myself so i don't know what to be looking for.
However, the character itself works perfectly well in the setting. Just remeber: If you're going to change the player size, you may need to rerender the chracter sprites in a somewhat higher resolution.

I thouroughly enjoyed my brief stay in your world and am hoping the story and puzzles will be as great as the setting you've created.

Well done!

I think using a 3d tool is a great tool for making backgrounds.
However if you want to make them more cartoon-like making the scene in a 3d program is just a first step.

For a cartoony look you'll need outlines. Depending on the software you're using there may be renderers that do this for you. Otherwise you'll have to do them by hand.

Also, the use of textures will have to be reduced or even removed!
I did a quick paintover where i added the lines manually and filled all areas with a solid color. The textures are still visible so you can see how destructive the use of textures can be for a cartoony feel.



Also, try honing your lighting skills. It looks like you're using one big lightsource in this scene wich give hard and sharp shadows. If you have global lighting (or global illumination) available in your 3d program, turn it on. If not, place some more, less powerfull, lights that can help fake this effect.

So all in all my advice would be this:
- Lose all the textures and instead give your 3d objects one solid color.
- Enhance your lighting so that all your objects will get some lighting and thereby will visually be showing more colors than just the one solid color you made them. (by more colors i mean more shades of the same color).

If the last tip doesn't make sense for you, let me know and i'll try to illustrate with an example.

Good luck!

[against]

Oh man, yet another CL successtory! Congrats to Venus and all that helped her with their knowledge and encouragements!

DanClarke:
Your post makes total sense, but i had the impression that the snow was actually against the window, indication an even colder environment and making it even cozier and snug inside. (the perfect setting for storytelling).

As a final suggestion, Venus, i think the saturation on the books is pretty low. If you would up that it would contribute to the warm feeling of the interiour.

Whoa! Impressive improvement Squinky! well done.

I am a bit reluctant to still critic your work now as i am a total comic nitwit. But still, maybe you will recognise something of what i'm saying here and use it in your future work.

Your last two pieces are great, but seeing as you just started working on the variable width inking, i think you went a bit overboard on the detail (thinner) lines. Example of this is the jackets in both pieces and the pants in the last one.

Without any particular skill in inking or comics i may be wrong, but common sense tells me that maybe you went something like this while trying out your new pen: "Alright, this new technique is friggin awesome. I can use this pen to draw everything!".

If you look back at Helms six-step inking instructions, you'll see that even the thinner lines are used sparingly. Instead he uses shading to increase detail and lighting. And it's the last 3 steps that i still miss from your fast becoming awesome work. I image these steps being the hardest aswell, unfortunately.

But please, keep trying to improve. You've shown to be a fast learner and i'm curious to see where it'll end up.

Chicky: When rendering 3d images, the software doesn't use your graphics card. It's all done with the main CPU. Only when playing 3d games where rendering has to be realtime the 3d card gets used.

Traveler: I have used Rhino/Flamingo in the past myself. While i absolutely love rhino, the renderer, flamingo, on the other hand, is quite crappy to work with. Global illumination sucks, Depth of field looks akward (sp?) and there are a lot of lighting options missing that would ease your task of bringing some atmosphere into this scene.

There is a little trick to fake Global illumination:
- Make a spotlight, place it some distance away, but pointed at the scene.
- Select the spotlight, use the command ArrayPolar, select the center of the scene and about 15 copies or so.
- Select all of the created spotlights and lower their intensity and color.

Now create a main spotlight (or directional light) with normal intensity that will cast the shadows. Try this technique on a simple cube first to get a feel for it. (experimenting using this scene take up too much rendertime)

Now about the scene itself:
- The shooting holes in the guard tower aren't usually that wide and open. They should be just wide enough to shoot an arrow through:
http://carolien.ulyssis.org/fotodir2/Tunesie/ribat/Image-34.JPG (viewed from inside out)
- Extend the model to add a moat (as already suggested) and a drawbridge.
- Use an even bigger stone texture for the walls, as this one is still quite repetitive.
or better yet, open the current one up in paintshop pro, photoshop or whatever, enlarge the canvas and copy, mirror and modify the existing image so that it gets tiled. Then try some cloning where you copy little parts of the image (say a couple of bricks) and place them at random places in the image. This technique will give you a bigger texture, without a tiling effect that is as noticable as it is now.
- Make the camera shot even wider (set the camera further back, don't change the lens length.)
- Concider using a sky background from a sunset (purple, orange, pink) to make it more gloomy and adjust your lighting accordingly.
- With the light levels down, maybe a couple of torches and lit room interious would add to the scene aswell.

Okay, that's enough for now. Please understand that the model itself is solid and i think it has good potential of becoming a killer background!

good luck!

Let me introduce you to a band that will give you hours of listening.

The bands name is Savatage. And you can listen to a lot of clips and full songs of them right here. (All legal, it's their own off. site)

Scroll all the way down and listen to the clips for 'Dead winter dead' and 'The wake of Magellan'. I'm not going to tell you anything about it, to keep you as unbiased as possible.

Enjoy!