Background Art for Adventure Games
 

Up until now I have been creating 2 kinds of pre-rendered background art - LucasArts "DOTT" style, and 3D. Now the problem here is that 3D backgrounds I've been making look too "plastic" i.e. they look more suited for an architectual model than a game; and the 2d art seems too "clownish" i.e. you can't be expected to make a serious dark-gritty game with Sam & Max style art. So what I am looking for is the balance between the two so I can make something with more serious themes.

Now, Benoit Sokal does this well in Syberia, so I am wondering if anybody knows the techniques involved in making such art. Is it a combination of 3D and 2D, is it 3d with 2.5d i.e. ZBrush painting software. Or is it all 2D but done with some "Benoit magic". I know the man is a legend and his art will always be dazzling but I just want to go in the right direction with my next project.

Also, I think BS1 and BS2 artwork is quite nice but I believe that it was all done in 2D painting.

41 views, no replied. Hmmm, I'm baffled as you are lol.

OK, ja cu se smilovati ;)

Syberia is, I think, entirely 3d prerendered. Benoit's involvement as an artist must have been 2d concept sketches, not the 3d itself.

As far as making a dark and gritty game... If you can faithfully imitate the style of Lucas Arts comic adventures it takes some talent to do that. I'm sure you can apply that knowledge, and make 2D art (like BS1 &2) that is not as light, but fits whatever atmosphere you want to create.

In the old days backgrounds were mostly hand drawn, then scanned into computer. Bill Tiller, man behind the background art for Curse of Monkey Island, explained his way of work. He drew some sketches with pencil, then scanned them into computer, where he painted them using photoshop.
Backgrounds in games like Grim Fandango and Escape from Monkey Islands are basiclly 3D models rendered in high resolution, but end results are still 2D pictures.

Yeah, I use a similar method. Basically, starting with a sketch, scanning, then outlining or sometimes resetting contrast than painting with solid colours and adding shadows and highlights.

I tried doing BS style background by using variations of paint brush and air brush tools in PSP with different opacity, density, step size etc. but I can't get the right look.

The thing is, the technique doesn't matter. You can make it work with crayons or in ink wash or in 3DMax. The problem with the 3d program is that you have to spend a lot if time tweaking your color correction and textures and lighting to make it not look stiff, the problem with crayons is that it will look flat, and you have to be very skilled to push ink wash around the paper.

I prefer drawing the shit out in pencil, scanning it and Photoshopping it.

http://timisgod.mixnmojo.com/Misc/venusflytrap.jpg

stop teasing us with those wonderful images Kingz! You've obviously got some talent. I'd say "LucasArts" quality too. Show us more of your game!!! Or at least me in private. You have my email. Show me some of yours and I'll show you some of my game. ;)

It is nowhere near the showing phase...

But Kingz is definitely in the teasing phase. http://instagiber.net/smiliesdotcom/...ny/naughty.gif

ha! Yea, what is that little "venus flytrap" ? hmm... it must be something you have to pick up and use in a puzzle in order to get that glowing jewel.

oooh, innovative. I like that! I've never seen a venus flytrap used in a game before as an item!

edit: wait... there was a big ass venus flytrap in Maniac Mansion.

Dammit, I was gonna credit Kingz for being highly innovative. Ah well, maybe if he makes his flytrap bigger and badder than MM I can credit him for that.

Back on topic,

I personally scan in a concept sketch and then I digitally paint it in Painter and Photoshop. I've never been a big fan of Painter but I'm trying to learn it because it really is quite a powerful tool once you've mastered it. The learning curve is just ridiculous. Photoshop is my tool of choice.

Developing the scene digitally is much easier than just painting it all by hand like the older Sierra and LucasArts games. I like to colour the scene fully with solids and when I'm satisfied with the lighting, I go back and add all the detail. During this process, more often than not, I tweak a lot of what's going on in a scene. For instance, a big rock might just turn into a tree if it suits the scene better. It's all about the mood!

Here is an example of how a sketch was eventually transformed into a scene. You can see I originally wanted the scene to have a "jungle" atmosphere. It really became something else after about the fourth step. A big change in the colour palette gave the scene a whole new look.

Wow, eriq--that looks awesome. It reminds me of the more serious Lucas Arts games, like Indy and Dig. I also like the purplish mood you went for there, good call. ;)

Yea, I thought so too. Thanks!

Do you do backgrounds? There are so many talented people on these boards. You'd be surprised the stuff that some of these guys crank out. I, myself, am a pretty slow (but meticulous!) artist.

I've tried myself out at doing backgrounds. You can see some of my practice work at my game-art album. Hopefully the link works. The pics aren't nearly as refined as your stuff. I have some talent, but am too lazy to invest much time in developing it.

But anyway:
-the "dasa" (ignore the Serbian pic names) picture was done entirely on the computer in 340x200 res (nostalgia + convenience). I played around with the lighting effects, a bit too much. It's my earliest effort.

-"garazafin" is my first (edit: change that to latest) attempt at coming up with a reproducible technique--pencil, ink, scan, color, light shade & texture. It took me about 4 hours out of one day. If I ever actually put myself down to working on a game, this amount of time almost sounds bearable, and the results are acceptable as well.

Is there a game you're developing in which that wonderful background will be featured?

I must say eriq that is brilliant. That's exactly the sort of art I am looking for. It is beautiful, moody, and yet it's not too cartoonish either. Well done! I must applaud your talent there.

It always surprises me that people are so taken by background graphics. When you're drawing all night, you just forget that because you've been working on the illustration for so long. Thanks! That's great to hear. Gives me that extra kick in the booty to work on more.

This is a background concept for my adventure game. It's actually been refined since I drew it back in 2002. The screens now are much more refined. You can't see all the brush "strokes" in the image. If you look at the steps you can see what I mean. In the new images, they're all much smoother. The game is a sci-fi "Day of the Tentacle" type adventure.

It will be ready to show this fall.

Yeah, I've noticed the brush strokes. Any chance of putting up the more refined version?

In the wordz of Kingz,

"It is nowhere near the showing phase..."

;)

Hehe, you *are* slow! I remember seeing this a very long time ago. I'm again impressed, though. Very moody image and fantastic use of colors and light. Top notch!

--Erwin

http://timisgod.mixnmojo.com/Misc/pu...screenshot.jpg

Might as well show you this much. I gave up on the 3d cell-shaded look for our trepid hero because I hooked the skeleton up badly and it turned out to be more trouble than it's worth. I spent more time trying to get the thing to work and thinking of ways to go around the shitty hook-upping of the skeleton than I would've spent on drawing all the animation by hand from scratch.

On a related note, I need a tablet.

On a tangentual related note, why doesn't AGS show spoken text in screenshots? I tried to screen capture while the guy is speaking, but apparently, talking is a blocking function...

That looks great! What was he saying?

edit: So you were initially gonna motion cap a 3d model, or were you gonna use an engine which allows for the character to be real-time redered? (Is there an adventure game production program which allows for 2.5D?)

This hand-drawn guy looks very much like the cell-shaded picture you posted earlier, I thought it was still a 3d model...

edit2: BTW I have a tablet, and I don't like it much.

I was gonna render it and then import every individual frame as an AGS sprite.

That guy is not entirely hand drawn is he?

There are TWO really really good fan games I'm looking forward to with excellent graphics. One is the game by Erwin and the other is now this game. What a unique look this game has. It's so organic the way it's drawn. It's definetely got that special something. Look at those roots! Makes me wonder what's above ground....

What will the interface look like?

You do know what the term FAN game impies, don't you? I guess these games are by fans of the Adventure game genre, but fan game usually means that it's an unofficial chapter to an established franchise. Names Amateur, underground or indie apply much better, imo.

Ah.. is that what fan game means? In that case, I mean indie developers! There are two games I'm especially looking forward to by "indie developers". Well there's a handful really. But these two look especially good. I'm really into the visuals.

I don't mean to nit-picky or anything, but considering the crappy quality of most "fan" games, I thought these two excellent indie developers might be insulted... :P

It will be verbcoin a la CMI, your cursor atm is a blue-green star. The look of the interface is bothering me quite a lot atm, it will definitely change many times before I am happy. Also fucking fonts! There are no decent fonts in the universe! There is two SCI fonts and both are sierra fantasy crap lettersets and those TTF that translate well to the relatively low pixel height look like shit, or lack important characters such as punctuation, or - if everything else is perfect - just fucking don't fit well with the game... and I don't feel like a) making true type fonts, b) making SCI fonts....

... I was choking on a cornflake, he said have some toast instead...

That shot of him is actually translated "verbatim", so to speak, from a sketch and then cleaned out in Flash. The other frames are much sketchier considering that a) you only see them for a fraction second and b) I keep my left hand constantly on B and E, switching between the brush and the eraser all the time, I pretty much use the eraser as a tool rather than an undo alternative and hence get something that is more akin in spirit to the backgrounds than that sprite you see there.

You know what is really annoying? I got the hang of a sketchy, fluid animation style after I had completed the basic walking cycles...

erm...is that what your character is saying in the picture? :shifty:

No, it is a song I was listening to while I was flipping out over the lack of fonts...

And then lo and behold, the French come to my aid. I found this French font site with several good fonts, most promising one of which is aptly called "Jester"...

Last time I was looking for fonts I found the perfect thing on a Japanese site, of all places. I think the Anglophone font sites are doomed.

So how about you put that font in, and do a screen capture apart from what the AGS allows? Just curious, is all...

Anyway, it's fun reading about your project, the way you work etc. Keep up the good job! (intentionaly awkward immigrant English)

BTW, That sucks about the new animation style you came up with...

Just to satisfy your curiosity, PrintScreen works, but it also skips the line of dialogue after it takes a picture of it.

Weird. :eek:

Wow guys... those look great. I really wish I could draw good enough to make backgrounds like that :( I might try to make an isometric pixel art adventure game, because it doesn't require much drawing talent. Do you guys think something like this would be annoying for an adventure game, or that it would work?

Small (100%)
http://www.dujodu.com/TEMP/myroom.gif

Large (200%)
http://www.dujodu.com/TEMP/pixel-drawing-large.gif

These are just of my room & me, so the real adventure would probably have a darker feel to it. I would probably kick up the detail a notch too.

Thanks for that progression shot eriq, very interesting and awesome!

I actually like it. It is has a retro feel.

I think your style could work rather well. I think it'd be a nice change, playing an adventure game like this. But then again it depends on how these graphics will relate to the story and to the atmosphere you're trying to go w/...

BTW, will you use an isometric engine which allows you to compose rooms out of textures, preset walls, etc. or are you doing this manually? Also, are you gonna draw something for the floor, or is it gonna remain a generic green?

Dujodu,

Actually, in my opinion, your style of artwork is extremely difficult to execute compared to hand-painted or digital artwork that's "hand-drawn". I don't have the patience to draw every small pixel perfect corner. That's some impressive stuff. Sites like Habbo Hotel have always amazed me. I believe the Coke site also uses pixels graphics as well. They're so cute! But they look so time-consuming. I can't even imagine.

Wasn't there an online adventure game recently mentioned using pixel graphics?

In any case, that's some pretty cool stuff. I would definetely play a game with graphics like that. How would you do the interface? Would the game be run in a window? full-screen?