GR#134 - Dark Interior Achitecture Background - Sideview

[Gizmonicgamer]

background for a game. wip. any comments/criticism would be greatly appreciated

[Candy Man Criminal]

the pillars are a bit too light and read as the same depth as the stairs

other then that *drools*

[PypeBros]

the pillars are a bit too light and read as the same depth as the stairs

Which you could fix without affecting the lightness of the pillars, btw.

[Ryumaru]

When you gonna make this game man? You've been making these backgrounds for years! Really solid stuff as always. all I can suggest is more change in the variation tiles to make things less mechanical. Of course you're often doing architectural stuff it seems, where it's easier to fall into that.

[Gizmonicgamer]

Candyman & Pypebros:

I opted to adjust the brightness and shading a little bit rather than add a detail like a railing; that adds more of a divide in depth than i want to have, as ideally the stairs should be only directly in front of the pillars behind it. I may still make the pillars darker but that's something I'm going to worry about when I've made some more progress. Similarly, I might edit the bottom part entirely to make some stronger shadows under the second floor and behind the two rows of pillars.

Ryumaru: Long time no see, haha. I've rebooted it a couple times since then and I've been working on getting my art abilities where I want them to be first. By mechanical, do you refer to tiling repetition, or do you mean the nature of the shapes?

In any case, I've got an update here.

I might be making the part above the "hole" something else entirely. Maybe something framed by columns with a sort of enclave in between them.

[Candy Man Criminal]

the bit just below the empty space is a bit too repetitive
and uh... *drools again*

[Anarkhya]

I also do think that there is not enough foreground/background contrast, I'm throwing in a bit of Castlevania to illustrate:

[Gizmonicgamer]

I essentially finished it. I should note, this background is also a mine for tiles so it doesn't exactly represent a completed set-piece.

+++++++++different versions++++++++++++


It's been a while since I touched a lot of it, and I think I've kind of gotten used to some of the areas, so I'm not sure how the foreground/background contrast is working out right now. I might go back and alter that and give it some stronger shadows on the bottom half and maybe darken the pillars slightly. I don't want this to be quite as stark as Symphony of the Night in its contrast (although that's certainly a big influence and I appreciate the screenshots to illustrate your point) but I think I can probably work a little bit more towards that kind of level of things?

I appreciate the C+C from everyone, and would definitely appreciate some more as well. 

[PypeBros]

I note varied hues in those castlevania screenshot, with purple-but-still-dark areas and copper details.
I note also strong value difference between positive and negative space to guide the gameplay. (you got something alike with your light line, but it could imho be safely extended to one light brick)
Imho, this is lacking in your mockup, and gives it an "all black and white" feeling.

[Anarkhya]

I admit that the positive/negative contrast in these SOTN shots are a bit extreme, with this in mind, I tried to modify your BG while keeping your FG  unchanged in my edit (but I made a rough FG selection so watch out for unwanted colors). I used color curves but basically I changed saturation/contrast/color shift in some places.



And keep in mind that the forum's actual colors renders everything dark duller than it is, this is critical in this dark interior situation where dark shades are close to each other in value.

[Perihelion]

The pixels are lovely, but I agree that you need more color in there. I like the red in Anarkhya's edit. Instead of making everything the same shade of gray, perhaps you could have different grayish colors and throw a few darks of other hues in there for more variety?

[ptoing]

Very nice pixeltech and atmosphere, but I agree there could be a bit more colour. It could also be a bit lighter too. I guess that your monitor is set to be pretty bright, or you use a higher gamma/are on a Mac.

Also I think you are using too many colours. Using less colours, esp when you wont be able to see the difference, will always be more managable if you want to do colour edits.

[Helm]

I don't think that's drastic enough. Here's an edit that makes the foreground warm, the background cold.

[ptoing]

If you mean mine is not drastic enough, it was just colourreduction.
Your edit reads really well though. Makes everything very readable at a glance.

[Mathias]

Until Helm's background/foreground separating edit, and if playing this game, I might have mistaken that horizontal background ledge where the double pillars terminate and tried to jump on it. Especially with how it's upper edge is lit up, like it's walkable ground.

Very distracting and annoying when in a game, you can't tell what's what, causing you to have to second-guess where you can jump and where you can't. Bad design.

[ptoing]

For some really bad design check out Pac-Man World 2 on the GBA (I worked on that, whee).

It has a weird orthogonal perspective where you can walk back up and down as well as left and right. And in some later levels you can not tell whether a platform is higher up or further back. Total arse.

[Helm]

If you mean mine is not drastic enough, it was just colourreduction.
Your edit reads really well though. Makes everything very readable at a glance.

I meant none of the edits so far were drastic enough, I just worked with your version because it had a smaller palette. I made two layers, did photoshop color correction on them, then refiddled with the palette in index on promotion etc etc

[Gizmonicgamer]

I think in the future I should probably avoid making everything blue and reusing colors in so many spots, haha. In the process of making this I somehow forgot about the "value/hue" aspect of distinguishing between layers. 

http://imgur.com/tmrI6dv (direct link so you can see it on a dark background)
I'm working on an edit here and I took cues from both Anarkhya and Helm's edit, although somewhat subdued cues. The amount of colors has stayed the same although ptoing definitely proved the point that I could stand to shed a handful of them. I'm still working on separating them some more, though, so I don't think the process of reducing unnecessary colors will come until after then.

I'm happier with where it stands now but still working on it and tweaking it a lot. The things concerning me the most right now are:
  *Something feels off about the separated floor on the upper part, still, and I can't quite place it. Does it need more     separation on the bottom layer, or should I make it fade into black more?

  *I'm not sure how I feel about the tone, now; sometimes I get the impression that the colors are clashing in ways I don't want them to? But other times I don't.

  *It might be too dark still and I also don't know how I feel about the shadowing on the lower half. The pillars might be too light comparatively, as well.

Very distracting and annoying when in a game, you can't tell what's what, causing you to have to second-
guess where you can jump and where you can't. Bad design.

That was part of the original plan -- that you could jump on it -- but It's not set in stone. I've opted to remove it for the moment .

Imho, this is lacking in your mockup, and gives it an "all black and white" feeling.

Incidentally, the game started off as being black and white and more and more color has slowly been introduced. That hesitation is probably part of why I forgot to consider hue when thinking about the different layers and the result was something that was more of a flat range of blue shades. This is also partially why i'm keeping the colors less saturated.

I sincerely appreciate everyone's help here and I've gotten further with this and with my understanding of how I should tackle this kind of thing in the future than I would have otherwise! 

[Sunjammer]

The colors here are beautiful! I was wondering what the logic is behind the lighter purple on the pillars. The ramp's prevailing direction seems to be a descent from teal through blues down into purple shadows, giving the effect of a grey-blueish stone being illuminated by direct moonlight. But the jump into purple around the highlight defies that logic. Here's what I mean: http://i.imgur.com/uEWKD0L.png

Is there a color theory reason that explains the divergence or was it just an artistic choice? I seem to recall seeing ramps veer off into purple momentarily in some Castlevania tiles and was wondering what rules, if any, dictate this phenomena.

I apologize if this is the wrong place to ask a theoretical question like this!

[Decroded]

Is there a color theory reason that explains the divergence or was it just an artistic choice? I seem to recall seeing ramps veer off into purple momentarily in some Castlevania tiles and was wondering what rules, if any, dictate this phenomena.

I also am very curious how I can make choices such as these.
Not only with purple but those lovely ramps I've seen Helm (and others) do with stuff like dark shades of muddy green mixed in.
It reminds me of this - http://wayofthepixel.net/index.php?topic=13186.msg133574#msg133574
Is there any logic to getting such different colours to blend together so well?
I've been messing around with that off and on for a while but can't seem to grasp it 
How to blend without colour separation??

I think this information would also benefit the OP...

[Ai]

I'd say the only real artistic justification there is perhaps the cheap suggestion of secondary patterns of color, and the increased 'contrast'/'pop' that can be obtained by varying hue.

There's not really much to it (the process of building/using hue variation) in my experience -- you just try to match the perceptual intensity of the 'inbetween' brightness that you would have if you were using monochrome ramping, and avoid significantly increasing the perceived saturation (don't bother with the HSL/HSV 'saturation' value, it's not reliable enough for this). You could consider laying down a reasonable amount of the 'monochrome' intermediate color before then altering that color. A decent palette editor doesn't hurt, but you can definitely also just tweak RGB values, especially if you are using a proper paletted paint program so that you get immediate visual feedback on color changes.

[Phlakes]

I also am very curious how I can make choices such as these.
Not only with purple but those lovely ramps I've seen Helm (and others) do with stuff like dark shades of muddy green mixed in.
It reminds me of this - http://wayofthepixel.net/index.php?topic=13186.msg133574#msg133574
Is there any logic to getting such different colours to blend together so well?
I've been messing around with that off and on for a while but can't seem to grasp it 
How to blend without colour separation??

I think this information would also benefit the OP...

This is something I've always wanted to know too, sometimes you even see it in (stylized) portraits and things and I have no idea what the theory is behind it.

[Decroded]

This is something I've always wanted to know too, sometimes you even see it in (stylized) portraits and things and I have no idea what the theory is behind it.

Agreed, yes stylized portraits is an excellent example I had forgotten about.
For the OP's sake I've started a separate discussion here so jump in if your interested - http://wayofthepixel.net/index.php?topic=15735.msg143767#msg143767