WIP~Tree-Water-Grass!!

[fucbillgates]

I can't get the water to look shiny!!

I tried adding some lighter colored lines to it but that
just makes it look like weird white crap is floating in the river.
So i tried blending the lines into the water's blue color but
it looked retarded.

This is only the first part of a larger picture that i am trying to make.
It includes this picture in the middle and above and below, one that blends this into a space scene
and one that blends this into a super up close scene."super up close as in you will see the bugs
and pebbles will look like boulders.

So in general it would look like this.


Any help would be great.

The pics are the same but i added more saturation to the
second one.

low-sat::OLD

high-sat::OLD



UPDATE!

[Gil]

Okay, I love the micro-macro space to detail idea.

So far, the biggest flaw is not in the water but the fact that you're texturing everything as squiggly lines. It sorta works for the tree, since bark essentially is a bunch of squiggly lines for certain kinds of trees.

It sorta works for the water too, since it portrays motion, but if you look at real water, you're talking about more contrast really. Water surfaces are very reflective, so moving water NEEDS to have lots of white noise in it.

For the hills, scrap the shading and start over. It just looks like you're lazily scribbling with the pen tool to avoid having to actually constract shaded landscape.

[pokoto]

Also, increasing the overall saturation isn't effective, and won't make your image "better." You need to take saturation into account for every color you choose. In this case, you have a really great opportunity to take advantage of something called atmospheric shading, which is shading based on distance. When things get further away from you, they lose saturation, because there is a ton of air between you and it. Also, they get more blue, because the blue wavelength of light penetrates earth's air the best. So the macro shot should have the most saturation, and it should fade to less saturation and more blue (and eventually black) as the picture approaches space.

[fucbillgates]

Alright I'm gonna re-shade the hills, any advice on how to make a
good looking grass texture??

[Sinistral Erim]

Start with a dark color and make large green cubes all over it with a big brush. Then pick a 1px brush and start making these squares fuzzy in one direction (generally up) and add random little green dots everywhere. Lastly add a lighter color on some of the fuzzy cubes of grass and if you need more depth, add a darker color in the grass' background.

[Gil]

Try studying how hills look from that distance. I'm guessing it's a patchwork of greens with less noise detail then expected.

Don't start placing random little green dots on fuzzy cubes though, that'll end in another faux texture.

Watch this reference:

http://www.pixeljoint.com/pixelart/15774.htm

[Sinistral Erim]

Don't start placing random little green dots on fuzzy cubes though, that'll end in another faux texture.

No, actually, it'll end in a tall grass texture rather than a front yard lawn. The random green dots can be used to accentuate the tallness and uneveness of the grass:



Though it'll probably work better in the grass that is closer to the viewer than in the hills.

[Gil]

Yeah, that's exactly what I expected it to look like, lots of noise and pixel artifacts. It looks like scribbles.

Automated AA can still kinda fix it. Warning: Purists might look the other way.

Photoshop:

Copy the texture onto a new non-indexed image
Apply 90° motion blur (2 pixels)
Copy Layer
Add intermediate green to color table of original
Paste the copied layer
Save for web




But really, just make a proper grass texture instead of scribbling with the pencil tool.

[fucbillgates]

Ok i did some more work on getting a good looking grass texture...
but i think i over dithered it.

High sat


Low sat


I think low-sat looks better.

[Dr D]

Great! That looks much better, despite taking a different route than suggested.

I prefer the low sat version, try to incorporate some yellower highlights in there, I think.

And don't worry about cluttering it up with 'dirt' like in the previous versions though, it seems unnecessary. Trees and flowers might work okay though. Now just do the rest of the hills like that.

[robotriot]

Yes, you're already showing some good progress. I have a suggestion for the sky: get rid of the squiggly lines there as well. Our sky is pretty uniform and doesn't have any noise in it. However, a gradient would be nice - the sky is usually a brighter blue towards the horizon and gets slighty darker and more saturated further up (you don't need a lot of colours for the gradient though). You should also make the hills in the background shift more towards blue so that there's a better sense of depth and perspective in the picture. That being said, the perspective of the river and the tree does look way off - the water looks like it is viewed from the top, while the tree seems to be more of a side-view. Also don't forget to make some kind of transition from the grassy hills to the river, there could be a river bed with sand or rocks, or plants hanging over the edge.

[Gil]

I love the direction you're taking this . Look at the reference I posted earlier again and try to incorporate patches of different soil there.

Robotriot: the perspective slowly warps to allow the scene to contain both space and micro life in the grass eventually.

[fucbillgates]

Ok,
I did the hills in the distance.

[Don risotto]

sexy blueness. are the hills supposed to be just grass though?

[fucbillgates]

Yes it's supposed to be just grass.

And here is a update::



or

[Dr D]

Nice progress! Love what you've done so far.

I really like the contrast in the bottom version, and the fact that you threw in some yellow there, makes it look much more appealing. I really think you should get rid of the dark outlines on the hills, though.

[fucbillgates]

How should i draw in the grass that is at the base of the tree??

[fucbillgates]

Ok,
I removed the dark outlines and added some smoothing/aa to the edge of the hills and to the
clouds.



....
I almost forgot that i fixed one of the flowers too.

OLD to NEW



I still need help drawing the grass in the foreground,
It's supposed to be getting closer to the camera so the grass in the foreground would be larger then
the grass in the background.

[saimo]

Ok,
I removed the dark outlines and added some smoothing/aa to the edge of the hills and to the
clouds.

I'd say the smoothing lacks of consistency: in some places it's overdone, in some others it's unexistent, in some others it just doesn't work. Have you used (also) an automated tool?
But, that aside, do you really want to keep the outlines? Maybe your piece would look better without.

I also second Gil's suggestion of adding bright reflections to the water.

[fucbillgates]

I just removed the outlines...
Are you talking about the clouds??

The next thing I'm gonna do is mess with the aa so I
can make it look better, and I will also try adding
brighter reflections to the water.

[Larwick]

There's something about the scaling in this piece that seems odd to me. It's clear in my opinion that the hills are quite large, and yet the detail in the grass becomes apparent with only minimal distance, and then we get the rocks which seem smaller still, and the tree. If those hills are the size i would imagine, a tree on them would look about 2-5 pixels high - comparing that to the tree close to the screen which must be about 600 pixels high you can see why i find this odd.

Moving the land on the closest side of the river upwards, making it seem like raised ground, will help this a lot - as well as taking the blades of the grass and flowers out of the detail of the far side of the river.

[saimo]

I just removed the outlines...
Are you talking about the clouds??

No, I was referring to hills and the tree as well. What you did was smoothing the outlines, not removing them - here's a quick example of outlines removal:


BTW: doing the edit revealed that there are 55 colours in the picture, but that's too much for a piece that basically has just blue, green and brown ramps. If you optimize that (say, bring it to 16 or less colors), working on the picture would become easier and the result would look more beautiful

[fucbillgates]

Larwick::
How can i get perspective to look right??
Keep in mind the overall three section idea that I'm working towards.
So i would be standing next to a ant looking into the distance out pass the
sky into space.

saimo::
I'm only working on the hills "One chunk
at a time" So I only did aa on the clouds and
some of the hills.

[fucbillgates]

Ok,
I gave removing the outlines another try and i reduced the
picture to 19 colors for everything.

[Atnas]

  you still have outlines if all of the cloud is wrapped in a color. this time it's a weak gray. I rather liked the colors before the reduction, if lowering them will make destroy the fuzzy hills in the distance I'd wait. I haven't really found working with a larger palette hinders me, if it's organized well in a palette window there's no need for a reduction that will hurt the art.

I thought your previous outlines were very good. Like, it's farther away so therefore the lines are fuzzier and less concise...

[Larwick]

Larwick::
How can i get perspective to look right??

Moving the land on the closest side of the river upwards, making it seem like raised ground, will help this a lot - as well as taking the blades of the grass and flowers out of the detail of the far side of the river.

At the moment, to me (although possibly only me, if no one else has suggested it, you may want another opinion) the river is about a mile wide and the flowers on the other side are the size of trees.

Keep in mind the overall three section idea that I'm working towards.
So i would be standing next to a ant looking into the distance out pass the
sky into space.

I don't quite understand.

[Gil]

Try rereading his posts larwick, the intention is that the scene zooms in as you go lower, so the artistic freedom takes preference over actual perspective imo. I don't see how a perfect perspective would be able to achieve the micro macro thing he is going for.

[Larwick]

Oh right okay. Well i guess i'll just have to wait and see.

If i was to do something as experimental as that i would probably stretch it all the way. Make the closest side of the river become the edges of a puddle, the tree forming out of a grass stem etc. It just all seems so confusing at the moment to me. 

Oh wait i apologise, i didn't follow this thread so completely missed the point of the piece and the fact there was going to be 3. Ignore me.

[Tsukasa]

Thought I'd point some stuff out...also, sorry for the Oekaki-ness but it's just basic fixes to show the reflection and other stuff (horizon definition)
I didn't even see the that there are flowers on the other side they are so tiny
This pic has quite some potential, I know I didn't fix everything, as water is very very hard to do but I did my best (even though it's late here)

Hope I helped a bit

[fucbillgates]

Thanks, that helps a lot.

I'm gonna post a update later on.