Improving my circus

[PsylentKnight]

This is just a small part of the circus (the hub world of my game), but I want to get any palette issues etc worked out before I move on.
The rocks and the bricks on the path are a WIP.

Any suggestions as to how I can improve this?



Here's the .gal file (with all the layers and such) in case anyone wants to do an edit: https://www.dropbox.com/s/pmhrgdc7dzopb70/circusBgOverview.gal?dl=0

Thanks in advance.

[Joe]

The character blends in with the background on first glance, really hard to make out. Visually I think the stand garners too much attention, unless you wanted that. I'd remove the dithering and reduce it into tones with a few details. Then, the coaster track in the foreground is a nice touch of depth, but contradicts the platformer perspective. It makes an unpleasant clash of two different realities; I'd resolve that somehow.

Finally, the sun in the background is the light source. It can't be darker than the sky. As it is now, I only guess it's the sun by it's location. Maybe you were thinking of this kind of idea? It usually occurs in the early morning.

Hope that helps.

[PsylentKnight]

Hm, you mean the sun needs to be brighter in terms of saturation, or value?

I tried to make it a bit brighter in this edit. Also, I did a very minor edit that I think really helped the perspective of the coaster in the foreground... I can totally see that the perspective is off, but I don't really see how it clashes with the platformer perspective. Like, its supposed to look like the coaster is continuing to spiral towards and past the player?
 


The stand generally has the amount of detail I want to have for all the foreground elements, while the background will remain in silhouette form. So I think that it won't stand out as much when I finish fleshing out the foreground (which is what I'm trying to do with the path bricks, coaster in the foreground, etc). I agree on the dithering- I don't like dithering.

I really don't know how to make the player stand out more. :/ If I make him more saturated or add outlines, I'd have to change all his animations too. I could decrease the saturation of the background, but I really like how it looks now. I'll probably end up doing that. However, the player does stand out way more in action.

EDIT: A darker background does make the sun look better and is generally easier on the eyes. I'm experimenting with some colors now.

EDIT 2:
I needed a video for my weekly dev blog post, and I couldn't wait to see it in action so I went ahead and implemented it.  I'm pretty pleased with the results. I can always just replace the images later now.

[Facet]

Used more technically, brightness is value, as in HSB. or where was the sky’s light coming from before?

I think Joe’s talking about the orthographic sidescoller projection (no vanishing points, in pure profile) versus ’proper’ perspective which, realistically, would change as your viewpoint changed (moving around the level) and the inconsistencies between the two can sometimes sit uncomfortably. The usual alternative is to just to keep discrete layers of depth without obvious vanishing points.

In a similar vein, and while I’m warming up to talk too much: the large size of the sun is working against the sense of scale a bit; if you think about the appearance to the human eye it’s really rather small, coin-sized or so, and those massive dramatic sun/moon scenes you see in photography are achieved by zooming in from a distance to a tiny crop around the sun/moon so your sense of perspective disappears and figures etc. can look dwarfed. I actually don’t think that’s terribly apparent/important to adhere to but if you’re worried about scale/perspective it might be having some impact unbeknownst.
 
Since almost everything in-scene is was pretty bright you could pop out the (ace looking) purple dude by putting a nice dark layer behind him. I kinda like the stand as is, I assume you can interact with it though (save point or something?).

Red sky looks cool; slightly ominous/strange, probably that's desirable here.

[PsylentKnight]

Ah yes, I get what y'all are saying about perspective now. I am trying to bring the layers together with the roller coaster, when each layer should be independent from each other. I kind of hate throwing away the work I've done on it, and I really like how the coaster gives the piece more depth, but y'all are definitely right about the perspective being off. I think that might just be a sacrifice I'm willing to make here though.

I agree on the size of the sun. I was going for an ominous and foreign look. Perhaps it would be more clear to the viewer that this is not our sun if I made two suns (and thus the scale reference doesn't apply here). Or maybe I'll just make it smaller.

As for the popping the character out... duh, I don't know why I didn't think of that. I think my original intent for the black layer of plants (on the same plane as the ticket stand) was to do just that. I just need to make them taller and less sparse, in that case.

[PsylentKnight]

Hey guys, sorry its been so long. I haven't been able to work on my project for the past week because of tests. Should be good to go for the next month or so.

Here I made the sun smaller and tried to bring the character out more. The character was mainly blending in when standing in front of the roller coaster in the top layer of the background, so I just popped in a dark backdrop there.



Suggestions for the path/rocks in the foreground? Is the sky too empty? General complaints?

EDIT: Don't know if I mentioned it, but the game is viewed at 3x zoom.

[astraldata]

You could use a large grassy bush in the black background area or something of the like to take up some horizontal space. I would suggest it being somewhere near the size of the rock to keep the pattern consistency, letting only the foreground/middleground areas break that pattern up.

Also, just FYI, the old Beetlejuice cartoons seem to have a lot of the style that you appear to be going for. I would definitely consider referencing them as well as the Mario Bros cartoons from the early 90's for interesting background concepts. Here's an example of some abstract-looking clouds you might think about dotting in the sky there:

Spoiler

[Decroded]

i dont like the scene tbh, especially the spiral rollercoaster.
i think u could have alot more fun building layers of lights, tents and show-rides, ferris wheels, etc.
dont think so much about distant mountains and such since there would be too much light in the carnival to see that far in the distance.

and throughout all that you could continue the theme of the rollercoaster weaving in and out of the chaos if u wished to make a point of it.
then u could even animate it, have it shaking periodically as the carriage comes past...

[PsylentKnight]

@astraldata: I'm planning to add more stuff to the black layer further to the right. I'm mainly just focusing on the area between the stand and the coaster in the foreground right now. In my next edit I'll make a sky gradient and add some wispy clouds as in that Beetlejuice pic.

@Decroded: Its very empty and very much a wip at this point. I know it doesn't even really look like a circus right now. XD
I'll definitely add more lights and tents and such. Personally I like the spiral rollercoaster... what is it you don't like about it? Is it the clash in perspective the other two guys mentioned?

I think you're right about the mountains... I made the sky darker just because its easier on the eyes, but now that you mention it its really weird that the mountains are lighter than the sky, and still so blue despite the sky being red. Landscapes are really not my thing lol

The roller coaster will weave in and out and such, that's part my plan. As for animating it, I've definitely considered that too because it would really bring the scene together. But lets be realistic here, working in 2D it would be nearly impossible to do right.

[HezaKey]

Kind of messed around with values some.  Made the coaster darker.  The fading into the distance just wasn't reading much at all, so I redrew that.  I love that spiral, so I don't really want to see it go away.

Something about having a purple character on a purple background is still not working too great, but I couldn't decide on a good solution that wouldn't be a drastic recoloring of everything.  And then it wouldn't really be a reflection of the vision that your trying to make.  But it's already got complimentary (Purple vs yellow) and all that red, so I think you can get away with adding another color to your palette as well.  Maybe green.  A lot of ways to do it, but I think keeping to a defined color scheme will help keep you organized.  Especially when adding in new pieces to it.

[astraldata]

I think the way Milokey's edit looks with reusing the black of the character area on the distant mountains really works well here. You can use this effect to make the MG/BG areas more ambiguous, which is a look that works really well with your style imo. After all, your strength is your characterizations, and you want the BG to get out of the way of that and do its job -- which is adding mood and subtext to the adventure at hand. Even really ambiguously-colored BGs can do this with the right color schemes, so be mindful about how you select your palette -- Milokey's advice was right about keeping a defined color scheme -- all your levels should have a predefined scheme before you hash out the form of your levels, so take care to define this scheme carefully before you begin to define your levels.

That said, apparently the dirt on the character layer BG was competing with the character a bit too much value-and-saturation-wise. Milokey's edit really helps to illustrate this. Just my two cents.

[PsylentKnight]

Nice edit, milokey. Thank you. I'll definitely be using your edit as a reference for my next edit.

Changing it into a night/twilight scene was kind of a last minute thing that happened because I darkened the sky so that it would be easier on the eyes. Therefore all the mid/upper bg stuff in my current version doesn't really account for that.

I was hesitant to make the mountains in far bg so dark since things appear lighter in the distance in real life. However, that looks better so what the hell ever lol.

The coaster in the far bg reads a lot better now, but unfortunately, that ultimately that won't work because of how the layers/parallax scrolling operates (there's three bg layers). I'll see what I can do to improve readability on that. Perhaps I'll change it to two bg layers with the sky on one and everything else on the other.

The darker dirt in the foreground looks a lot better. Definitely will change that.

I've really been slacking on this project lately, but I just haven't been feeling very motivated. :L I'm going to try to get the colors fixed on this asap and then come back to adding more stuff later. I really need to be focusing more on prototyping than pretty art right now.

EDIT:


Personally I think this looks vastly better. I loved in Milokey's edit how everything in the foreground was so much lighter than everything else giving it the appearance of being artificially lit. So I tried to apply this to the coaster. However there is still no reason for it to be blue... I'm going to change to be more red. I just ran out of time for tonight. I'm also going to make a gradient for the sky.

[Mr. Fahrenheit]

The main thing about atmospheric perspective (which is what you are using on the roller coaster and the mountains) is that the farther away something is, the more air there is between you and it. Meaning the color of whatever you are drawing is closer to the color of the sky the farther it is away.

[PsylentKnight]

Don't know if this is an improvement... thinking about changing the coaster to yellow so the change to red as it receedes into the atmosphere is more evident.
Also thinking about ditching the artificially lit coaster and just go with a darker coaster like in milokey's edit.

Getting closer the mood I want, at least.

EDIT:

Tried blue... think it works pretty nicely, going from blue to purple to light red (pink). Oops, forgot to hide the palette layer when I was saving the png.


What do you guys think?

[astraldata]

I think the problem is that the center is the focus of the roller coaster and it doesn't make sense that it's lighter than the rest of the (closer) portion of the coaster and that this is throwing it off. Additionally, I think that, even with a 'blue' coaster, your blue is too cool in the FG and really steals focus away from everything else. That being said, having the entire coaster all a single 'color' does help unify the image. It's just that the FG coaster needs a bit more warm to it.

Loving the mood though -- reminds me of a warm summer evening walking through a carnival. String some lights up here and there, add some obnoxious signs and cotton-candy, and you've just about nailed it.

Don't give up on this though man. I know it's rough to go at it alone, but this project totally deserves to see the light of day dude! Anything I can do to help, hit me up!

[PixelPiledriver]

I feel like you could make a lot more with a lot less.
The current image is visually complex and yet doesn't really describe much.

Here's a bunch of somewhat plainly drawn thoughts.
They don't match the twisted nature of the roller coaster and booth.
But they help to further push the circus theme and define some visual organization.
Try taking some of your other nice colors and interpolating them to the sky color.

[PsylentKnight]

Awesome edit, PPD, thank you. 

I think that's convinced me to drop the mountains in the far bg... I realize now that I've working really hard against them this whole time, trying to get everything to work with them looming in the background. I don't need them and it doesn't even make sense for them to be there. Your edit has a very different mood than mine, but I still like, its still creepy. All foggy looking and such.

Also your edit of the roller coaster in the fg helps me with the lighting. I was having trouble with that lol.

But yea, I'll get an edit up soon.

[PsylentKnight]

Used some of PPD's colors and pretty much copied what he did on the coaster in the fg. Am I headed in the right direction?

[Decroded]

the empty sparseness of the scene and thin wiry lines gives a cheap and boring kind of look.
i think u need to consider more interesting elements of varying sizes to fill the scene such as PPD did.
get some layers going to give it some depth and make it interesting....

[Mr. Fahrenheit]

The roller coaster shouldnt get lighter as it goes into the distance, it should get closer to the background color.