Improving my circus

[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.