[WIP] Cave Background

[adman32]

Hi there!
I'm currently working on a background for a game, and thought I'd post it up here for some C+C. Keep in mind this is heavily WIP, and is subject to change. I've blocked out the shading and forms on the front layer, and will start adding pixel level detail in a second and third pass. There will be 3 separate layers with parallax scrolling. What do you think?

[Nmb910]

Oh my gosh that is awesome! It will be great to see this when it is scrolling, when you're ready. Since it's WIP, not really much to say that I think you won't take care of in your next iterations.

[Chaos680]

I really like this. (I'll be honest here, I actually just saved it to my reference folder, heh)

It's hard to tell without seeing the foreground layer where the player will be on but I might go as far as saying the closest background layer is almost TOO detailed. It might just be me though. Is the closest layer the one the player will be on or is it the first tier of background? If no, do you have an example with the game level tiles in place?

[Akira]

Hey, this is looking pretty good! One thing I'd suggest is to kick up the contrast in the foreground layer, specifically you need some darker shadows.

It's looking good so far, it's pretty big, I hope you have the motivation to finish it!

[PypeBros]

There's much promise in this one. There are however two things that imho are not going in the right direction:
# additional highlights on stalactits in the top-right corner bring contrast that imho doesn't fit with a background scene. Moreover, they do not work that well to improve the volume and imho rather flatten the shape.
# the river, although bringing interesting diversity, also enforce a perspective that do not work well with the rest of the scene -- esp. if you intend to see it scrolling. All of sudden, we wonder why those stalatctits/mits line up that perfectly, and why we don't see the water flowing in the river.

Both could be kept, for sure, but they'd require an significant level of polish to get on par with the rest of the piece.

[adman32]

I really like this. (I'll be honest here, I actually just saved it to my reference folder, heh)

It's hard to tell without seeing the foreground layer where the player will be on but I might go as far as saying the closest background layer is almost TOO detailed. It might just be me though. Is the closest layer the one the player will be on or is it the first tier of background? If no, do you have an example with the game level tiles in place?

Thanks for the replies everyone! I'm glad you like it. Just to clear up a few things, There will be tiles in front of this background that the player actually runs on, and you wont see the whole background in the frame at once, just part of it. For reference, here's a shot (very outdated) of another level showing some tiles with the background (same dimensions) behind it. 

http://redknightgames.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/GKv0.1.6.4_0041.png

@Pypebros: Thanks for the feedback! I'll probably work some more on those highlights at some point, but I do think the front layer needs another colour for some edge lighting/highlights. With the river, i'll widen the point where it comes in and make it clearer where it's coming from. I'd also like to have a couple of frames of animation on the river to show it's flowing as well.

Also, here's an update on the image, I've done some work on the middle layer, so please comment on that:

[Decroded]

I think you're off to a great start here.
I haven't read all this but at first impression I actually liked the first version how it gave the impression that the cavern has deep dark areas too, which would read better if you have alot of vertical scrolling.

[Elk]

according to the purpose of this piece, it has way too much unneccessary detail... as mentioned above, you need to work with priority oriented focus, logically the focus would lie at the front, dont know about the psychological mechanics about your game but it seems more reasonable that way ^^... in terms of efficiency, and by saying that i probably assume that youre the only one working on this, you shouldnt spend your energy and time into other things that require more details

possibly post the tiles/player sprite too so we can give some cc on the contrast of the whole thing

[adman32]

Update:
Worked on the very back layer some more and fixed some of the issues with the ceiling on the frontmost layer.




@ Elk: The backgrounds I'm working on are quite large and require a fair amount of detail, as that's the style I've chosen for them. As I said earlier, you won't see the entire background in frame, this screencap should give you an idea of how much you see with the character/tiles/background in frame at once:

Please note that the tiles are just place holders for now, they're actually just colour shifted tiles from another level that I worked on.

[Decroded]

Are you working on these as separate layers so you can have parallax scrolling?
Are you planning to have alot of vertical scrolling?