Moho Forum

Following the users advices, I made some new Background tests.
What do you think about it?





Both are made with Artweaver 0.5, chalk and airbrush Burushes and some CS3 imported brushes.

All in all, Artweaver is a pretty neat freeware program (although there a lots of freeware paint programs now...remember when buying Photoshop was only game in town?).

To give a little context, this topic is a continuation of this thread: Colour tables. A lot of those comments are valid here I think.

Depending on your intent with these backgrounds, my quick impression is: the first, with the colors and fuzziness, evokes a blazing hot alien planet.

In the second one, the fuzzy tree in foreground and sharp shrubbery behind it imply a narrow depth of field. Something interesting about to happen there? Also, the composition is rather static and regular. To add visual interest, I'd make the shrubs not so uniform, the road not so straight, etc.

As Paul Mesken commented before, showing the backgrounds with the characters would help evaluate them.

Keep at it, friend!

Yes, artweaver are great, but soon I have to buy Photoshop or CorelDraw...
Some functions lacks on artweaver!

About the drawings:
In the first my intention was to give to the image something like "untouchable" mountains.
How can I do it?

In the second I attempted to give a field depth...
The image is composed by many separated layers, in AS I will use some paralasse tecnique with it. Soon I will post some test with it.

I never tought use colors can be SO hard!

Here's a photo that should make things a bit more clear :



There are several ways to create depth in a picture. The obvious ones are using perspective and parallax scrolling (if we have a panning shot). There is also atmospheric perspective for things that are really far away (there are more ways to create depth but these 3 will do).

Notice in the foreground how highly contrasted and well defined the shapes are. The lightest and darkest values appear here next to each other, sharp edged.

The further away we go, the lesser this contrast gets. We don't have deep blacks and bright whites the further we go off in the distance. It all becomes middle tones. There's no sharp focus anymore because of the light being scattered more. This is not the same as using a simple blur. Notice how the line of the mountains in the distance is not a blurry line. It's a well defined line but all the colors have gone greyish (blueish, actually).

The scattering of light is quite technical (search for "Rayleigh Scattering" on wikipedia if you want to know all about it). In general, colors get duller and somewhat blueish towards the horizon but the important part is that the contrast gets lowered. If you would have a black and white chess board the size of a desert then the squares would be sharply defined black and whites near where you are standing but they would get duller the further away you look and in the distance you don't see the squares at all anymore, just a grey. The color might actually get lighter the further away you look. Just think of morning mist. Near you, things will look still pretty clear but the further away, the less you see of the environment and the more mist you see until it gets an opaque grey or white. If you really want high realism then you need to know about how the atmospheric conditions influence colors in the distance (a summer day or a winter day will look different in the way colors get influenced in the distance).

But the gist is :

Stuff that is close by will have high tonal contrast (showing everything between the darkest and lightest tones) and will have the strongest colors.

Stuff that is far away will have low contrast (a bunch of middle tones) and will have duller colors which will tend towards blue (colors get cooler).

Edit : looking at the Rayleigh Scattering page on wikipedia, I've found this one http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aerial_perspective. It's called aerial perspective here and describes everything I've written before. Looks like I read this page before posting this but I didn't learn it from wikipedia but from a book

In case you haven't found them already, a couple of good websites for examples are:

http://www.animation-backgrounds.com/home.html
http://animationbackgrounds.blogspot.com/

Erik

Thanks!
Now I will study all the stuff you suggested me!

This chart also shows what Paul Mesken is saying about atmosphere affecting contrast and tonal value. The book Directing the Story provides rough guidelines for the tonal range of the foreground, midground, and background for multiplane camera. The range is supposed to represent what your lightest value (white) up to your darkest value (black) would look like at different distances. However, I don't think this includes the sky or any light sources.

Because your sky is pink, I think far away objects should appear slightly pinkish rather than slightly bluish (as in a blue sky).

Imago, try ArtRage Studio Pro 3 - It's available as a free download or $80 for the full license. I bought it recently for background work and I have been totally knocked out by what it can do. Certainly for background work, I find it way ahead of the more expensive PhotoShop. It's a real media simulator, so the brushes, palette knives etc function much more like the real thing. You can even take the tube of oil-paint and squeeze it out on the canvas, then mix it with a palette knife - that leaves a relief trail of paint in the same way a brush does.

One feature available in the full license version is you can output multi-layered PhotoShop files - this way, you can have a clean sky, with the clouds on a separate layer - this gives you the opportunity to have one background which can be used for the bright sunny day no clouds, or with clouds.

Rhoel

Another attempt!
This time I applied all your tips... I think the result will be good.
How it look?

http://www.youtube.com/user/ImagoPictures

http://vimeo.com/12209879

That looks beautiful, Imago! Nice work. :D

A new BG.
Now I need to make the building more "immersed" in the scene keeping it's strange look and position.
I tried with sand on the base or dead grass, but i don't like the result.
Suggestions?

You're right, the building doesn't appear to be sitting properly on the hill.

One reason is the shadow is falling on 3 sides of the building and doesn't match the counter of the hill.

With the bird's eye view, the vertical lines of the building should converge a bit at the bottom.

I'd move the horizon line down so it isn't just above the building.

The walkway to the door is too steep. Maybe flatten it near the entrance.

On the positive side, I like the color palette and hand-painted look.

Anyway, I hope that wasn't harsh. Good luck on this artwork.

Uhm... Shadows and prospetics... My weak points!
Thanks for the advices, Neeters_Guy!
Now I'll try to improve it!

Those changes would be improvements, but don't lose the feel. A lot of illustrations for childrens' books use non-realistic scale and perspective in ways that add to a sense of enchantment.

Steverino wrote:but don't lose the feel.

What do you mean?
My english is getting worse in this days...