theater scene

[KaiserPixel]

Hi  everyone

I was creating a background to see how work with the characters I was doing lately.

I wanted to create a natural landscape that would serve as background for a theater stage.

any advice?
thanks!

[eishiya]

The characters are a bit hard to read against the background because the background has a pretty wide value range. Using a wide range of values as a stand-alone piece, but leads to clarity problems for pieces used as backgrounds, especially when the foreground (the characters) are mostly midtones.

Your scenery fades towards a dark colour the further away it goes, yet the sky is light. This causes the horizon to be the most high-contrast, attention-grabbing thing rather than anything in the foreground, and it looks a bit strange, since generally things fade towards the sky-colour in the distance.

[KaiserPixel]

Hi eishiya,

thanks for the advice

I made some edits


This is the same as the previous one but leaving the brightness in the foreground grass


a new edit:
I have increased the space of the sky a little

[YDVitamins]

Eishiya's points still apply here; you've not addressed them. Maybe you're misinterpreting.

The biggest issue here for readability is value and color. Your middleground (the front of your background in this case since your chars are the foreground) is standing out too much because of your wide range of values all across it, and your characters are blending into that value range because it's so busy. Like, if I squint my eyes, I can't distinguish your chars from the middleground. Revisit your background with colors that you can assign to a particular value on the scale, while keeping the idea of how atmospheric or aerial perspective affect this the closer your land gets to the horizon.

You have an idea of atmospheric/aerial perspective, but you can push it more and lower the contrast as you go into the distance. Here's an example photograph of this:

https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1600/0*rkGrwbvnjm1MSDWt.

As for understanding value in color, take a look at this image from this website that explains the steps. You can also read the next few pages on the site's lesson on color as it still relates to using color to create a value scale:

http://www.sovek.com/view/basics/color/01.htm

If you take a look at backgrounds for video game stages for example, you'll often be able to see how the background's colors and lighting allow for foreground characters to be emphasized and readable. You get a sense of uniformity, like in this Street Fighter example, this one from Mario Odessey and something awesome from fellow user darkfalzx.

[KaiserPixel]

Hi, YDVitamins,

Thanks for the help, I'll check those links

surely I have misinterpreted what Eishiya said (I am not familiar with some concepts of art) my knowledge is quite basic yet

Edit:
After reading a bit, I think I have mixed some concepts (hue, saturation) incorrectly. I see that the "value of color" refers to light and darkness. If I'm not wrong, I can combine it with the hue shifting

I have tried to make some changes, I will continue reading more and see what changes I could make. thanks again

sorry for my english

currently:

[Curly]

I'd do something like this


I just lowered the bg's saturation, increased the brightness and shifted the hue a bit towards blue. The same for the nearer rocks and grass but less.

[KaiserPixel]

Hi Curly, thanks for the suggestion
I have made some modifications I have also tried to change the color of the nearest grass