[WIP] A Scary Situation

[lollige]

I am creating a mockup for a dA challenge. The contest gives me a max of 20 colors, max 250x250 px and it has to be as spooky as possible.

Its far from finished, and all your idea's/critiques/edits/whatever can still be changed in the image .
Please tell me what you think of it

[Rosse]

Good start lollige. Currently I'm not sure why he's scared. Is it because of the, uhm, monster in the background? Or the unstable looking bridge? Or the black cube?

I think first I would change the player to a rear view, heading against the monster. This would be good because you don't have to show his emotion in the small character sprite and you can focus on the portrait in the textbox. Further the monster in the background doesn't look scary at all currently. A few suggestion to make it look more scary: Give it twisted horns, less wide head (less round), more bony, bigger nose (boar nose?), sharp teeth, ears. The mimic is unclear right now too. Maybe you find a reference from a movie or something alike.

A small other issue. The perspective of the boards of the hanging bridge are wrong. Currently it looks like the bridge makes a curve which is impossible with that kind of bridge. Look out that all boards are aligned to one single vanishing point (maybe somwhere outside the right border).

The last thing. The perspective / viewpoint doesn't really support a scary mood. Helm made a good post about this in Arachne's Trioculi Thread. Maybe you want to lower the horizon after reading it. Give it a try.

[lollige]

Thank you for your reply Rosse!
The character is supposed to be scared of the monster in the background. It is some sort of mix between a bull and the devil who suddenly rises up from the depths. The character was heading to this spooky castle (which is now only a cube) but suddenly get stopped by the monster. That is the story :p

Changing the characters direction is a good idea, and I will do that. Also I will try my best on the bridge, but that will most likely be quite hard. It has to have some sort of a hanging shape too right?
Well I wanted to redo it anyway, I did this without any helping lines nor an idea of where the horizon would be.
Lowering the horizon looks great in helms edit. Ill guess I will do that too. seems I have some work on that.
The monster will get the curly horns and the bigger nose (thanks for the suggestions )

Again, thanks for the useful comments you made, I will try to use your ideas as good as I can

EDIT:

I don't really know what to do with the demon any more...

[lollige]

Again an update:


Changed colors + some other things. I don't really know what to do with the body of the 'devil', and the small portrait .
When I was changing colors I noticed I had only 6 o.O, thats quite good and less than I expected! 

[Rosse]

Did you ever played Monkey Island 1? If not, please don't mind the text

I really have no idea what I'm doing here. I just doodled around randomly. I'm not sure if it goes in the direction you want but I hope you find some inspiration to continue this image.

[rabidbaboy]

Dunno. Looks too much like my character.

You really should start with roughs rather than detailing (aa and dithering) before you're done conceptualizing.

[lollige]

Whoa rosse, thats awesome!

However, knowing that I can never do it as cool as you did without copying the idea exactly is impossible, I will indeed not go into this direction, but it sure inspires me! I think I can find something to do with the body now, and I will enlarge the face (I was very proud of the face detail before.. :|.. Compare face version 1 and version 2. I felt like it was ok on version 1, but thanks to you I modified the horns, and later the whole face and I never made something so good out of it.)

The bridge looks really cool this way. Ill see if I can do it that way too
Thanks a lot for your great edit!

@rabidaboy: Thank you for your edit. I indeed have had to redo some aa and dithering before, but I felt I was done conceptualizing before too. And I did not do that much right? except for the horizon, which is easy to create and the stones, which will most likely not get modified too much anymore.
The pig looks nice, but its not really what I am going for I think.


Again, thanks for both of your edits, ill see what I can do with it
Lollige

PS: I don't know the game (except for its name) but I do know the text (of course).. Too famous


EDIT:

While I was showing this to someone else on her pc, we decided that this would solve all the problems:



 

[JJ Naas]

There's a bit of a style clash there I think. The demon is sort of realistic, the ghosts are mario/pacman style and the avatar is like middle ground anime-ish. The avatar in itself is the scariest looking element. Also, I think you should concentrate on a single element and making it the focal point of the horror, rather than going for more ghosts = more scary -approach.

[lollige]

I think you are right. I do have an idea where I am focussing on (the big monster), the last lots of ghosts image is just a joke of course
However, working with the monster as most important is quite hard, because its a dark monster on a dark background. One of the things I like in Rosses version is that your eyes are immediately directed to the monster, but this is not what I was aiming on.

About the style thing: The bridge will be redone in rosses style, wich will make it a bit more realistic. But do you have any suggestions on how to get the avatar and the ghosts more realistic with the colors that are currently in use? I think I do have some ideas on how I can modify the castle, but for the rest.....


I could also remove all of the ghosts, but than you will have even more empty space..

Thank you for your reply JJ Naas


EDIT:

I have not had much time to work on it, and I also can not work on it in the weekend . Luckily I have vacation next week, so it WILL be finished soon

[lollige]

I believe its finished  , do you do so too?



and just for fun: