Shading rocks are a pain - An EB0 mockup wip

[Destiny]

Still a Heavy wip.



I want to start doing backgrounds, since I've never done them before. I figured I would start with rocks. I seem to be having a bit of trouble shading it :/. The stuff in red are rocks I think could use fixing, but don't know how to. Ive sure everything else needs to.

The low colored stuff to the side of my WIP mock up, is a screen shot I'm using as reference for the scene. The screen shot if from Eb0.
Lucas is from mother 3, I needed him as height/width reference for the conch shell.

Any c+c/examples someone could point me to for help on this :X?

[tocky]

I think you should keep closer to the style used for the earthbound rocks, because they use some handy tricks to indicate depth - specifically, the dark vertical breaks between tiles, and the way they fade to shadow as they run. With more colours, more area, you can take it further, but the same rendering tricks are still useful for the same reasons. Your rocks seem to run flat, parallel to the sandy plane they're attached to, which isn't wrong exactly, just that it doesn't give you the same effect.

[Destiny]

Oh damn, those are alot better than mine . Thanks for the example, I was having a lot of trouble. Ill try to keep it closer to the way Earthbound shades rocks
This better?

[Destiny]

I hope I can double post after waiting a day.

[Froli]

I think both sides of the cliff doesn't match up

I did some edit yesterday, but I'm having some second thoughts if this is the correct way

[Destiny]

I'm pretty sure theirs lots of different ways to do the same thing, yours is just, different.

When you say both sides dont match up, do you mean the way the rocks are placed in the second half, or shading?

[Froli]

Ah, I mean there are too many cluster of small stone huddled together on the right side. You can probably just add a few more larger stones in between to have a nice variety

[Destiny]

Update
Better?

[tocky]

something that I tried to say before that I'm not sure I got across clearly:

The point of the dark vertical sections (in purple) is to help the illusion of depth of field. That is, they emphasise the idea that the horizontal planes of the walkable section(in red) are futher away, the higher they are onscreen. The nes screenshot uses that to great effect, so I think you should do something similar.

[Destiny]

Thanks for the crit. I really don't want to reshade it yet again, Id be much more interested in another piece, then trying to apply these depth techniques/trying to mimic something more similar to the NES. But, it also has been a long time since I finished something. I might as well continue until I complete this.



Any better?
EDIT: Messed with it some more
EDIT: played with them some more