Spent a heavy amount of time on particles, spooky things and gameplay. Here's an updated video of the first few minutes of Old Town.
Getting excited about things here again. Planned out how this first environment transitions to dank sewers, a dark cave, and finally out into a spooky forest. Check out the video, I'm having tons of fun with kismet & matinee.
Here's a quick video showing off a couple sequences. Everything is still placeholder assets.
First scene shows where the player wakes up trapped in a room. The building is on fire and quickly spreads through the room. You have to escape or die. I'm currently using a giant glowing skeleton key as placeholder, but will come up with something fancy once the room is detailed.
Second is the car chase scene. It's a lot of fun. Right now it helps transition the player to the next area.
Here's a quick breakdown of some of the current Old Town stuffs:
The first level, which will be the demo, takes place in an apartment. The building is on fire, and starting to collapse when you awake. This level is a fairly straightforward escape where the player much make there way out without being killed.
Here's a new video of the intro cinematic. Still plenty of placeholder assets and the lighting is nowhere.
The next area is the sewers, where things take place on a grander scale. This level has more elaborate puzzles and stealth gameplay. Still a long way to go here, so there's not much to say... and currently two textures or so it appears.
Here's a few aesthetic shots of ideas that may happen after the sewers. Atmosphere doodles in udks.
Cool, although the whole scene looks a bit busy, unified, and at the moment, I suggest you break the floor into a more significant difference of value / color just to cover up the obvious line of real and / wall / ceiling was...
Things are screaming forward with Old Town. I've begun packaging and testing the demo to great success. All the major bugs have been hammered out, and now it's all polish to the finish. With that in mind, here's some new screen shots.
Throughout the level are pieces of paper that the main character collects thoughts on. Due to the minimalistic interface approach, this was originally avoided. After testing, this standardized method of storytelling was implemented to add an additional layer of storytelling. It also gives more opportunities for replay value, as well as adding hints and secrets in the messages themselves.
The Old Town Demo is coming together fast! Here's a quick video of a few more sections. The video is a dark, but the flashlight helps a lot at this point.
It reminded me that I used to draw. I followed the it and this was my result.
2nd, I felt I should google real pictures and paint them. Image searching "landscape" and my result was one of my worse, I'm sure I limited myself to 30 minutes. http://chrisholden.net/idg_landscape_002.jpg
That was all goofing around. Next is when I decided to sketch a day.
3rd (JAN22): Again, hit the google, but came up with some better results because it picked up one of my g+ members from the Seattle area
4th (JAN23): searched "beautiful cave" and painted what I saw.
I used Makkon's brushes on this piece because I wanted to work with them.
I would love to see some steps or hear some thoughts on how you approach these. I'm curious about how you come at an issue like a painting with so much 3d experience.
Max, site I found it on said it was the rocky mountains, but I'm not sure where.
I used a stopwatch when drawing the last one, and it took right around two hours. Again, kinda went long, but at this stage I'm more concerned with getting my technique up to speed.
I'll probably release steps as I get better at this. I don't want to be that jerk that makes a tutorial on something the first time they do it.
Generally, I tackle the subject the same way I paint textures. Find my main shapes/silhouettes/colors. Start from the farthest background and start painting forward. Really, I'm just figuring it out as I go. I've painted a lot in the past (before the whole computers thing). I used to love airbrush, watercolor, pencil on newsprint.
Anyways, starting to really enjoy this. Hope I can keep it up long enough to do something narcissistic like release an art gallery UDK level.
REPOST OF LAST NIGHT'S SKETCH (since it was the last post on the last page
hmm, those mountains feel kinda transparent.
they probably should have a stronger light on them, unless another mountain off screen put them in shade.
but i guess if ref photo actually had them this way then that's how it should be.
those brighter blue shapes on mountain to the right look cool, they could use more contrast though.
if that's snow then it should be easily distinguishable from rocks.
the fact that level of sharpness differs greatly from place to place creates a weird impression, especially considering that furthest mountains seem to have sharpest edges.
also, smudging made the snow look quite dynamic, like in the middle of an avalanche. was that deliberate?
color palette feels a bit bland, but it's hard to judge this without ref pic.
Just under 90 minutes of terrible slowness. Googled something like "Oakland, CA". Found a smoggy sunset over the city and went with it.
ooo, good post Blaisoid. The snow thing, no idea. It just happened. You bring up a lot of other good points. I'm going to quick put together some steps on how I did this current piece to better expose my process for feedback.
To contradict a previous post about not posting step till I'm awesome, here's my steps! I don't suggest following these too much for learning.
Ref photo, again, searched for a cityscape in Oakland, California. The result was simple enough that at my current level I felt confident in.
1. I start with the most background of thing, the sky.
2. Each getting their own layer, added background mountains with a bubbly brush and buildings with a horizontal or vertical brush (shift clicking for straight lines). Colors sampled from blurred photograph.
3. big soft brush with color brighter than surface to add atmospheric fog to separate distances. Horizontal brush paint water and bridge.
4. Foreground trees with a dark, spatter burhs, buildings with quick horizontal brush taps, and overall big soft brush atmosphere to blend scene together.
Note: avoided that weird antenna thing and took a lot of liberties with building placement
Some fav PS shortcuts
[ ] increase/decrease brush size
B switches to Brush mode, real useful switching back to painting
E eraser mode
Ctrl L adjust levels
Ctrl U hue/saturation
Ctrl Shift I invert selection
Ctrl S save
Love the sketch of Oakland CA. Try and add a glow and abit of colour burn to the piece though. Sunshine usually has that REALLY HGH ORANGE CONTRAST when you look at it. 90 minutes with that is great though
Cholden, thanks for sharing your steps! That shit is helpful no matter what the artist's kill level is! Are you sampling colors in all of these? if so, it's something I would try to get away from if i were you -- (subtly) exaggerating colors will add a ton of life to your paintings, and struggling with picking your colors will broaden you as an artist tremendously.
I'm normally loathe to give this advice, but i think you should experiment more with textured brushes! You have the understanding to not overdo them, it's really night and day faster and more efficient to lay in surfaces and masses with a rougher, flow-only brush when you're painting foliage and that kind of thing.
Replies
Getting excited about things here again. Planned out how this first environment transitions to dank sewers, a dark cave, and finally out into a spooky forest. Check out the video, I'm having tons of fun with kismet & matinee.
[ame]
Very interesting.
[ame]
First scene shows where the player wakes up trapped in a room. The building is on fire and quickly spreads through the room. You have to escape or die. I'm currently using a giant glowing skeleton key as placeholder, but will come up with something fancy once the room is detailed.
Second is the car chase scene. It's a lot of fun. Right now it helps transition the player to the next area.
[ame]
http://chrisholden.net/ot_startprops1.jpg
A little glance at that action:
[ame]
The first level, which will be the demo, takes place in an apartment. The building is on fire, and starting to collapse when you awake. This level is a fairly straightforward escape where the player much make there way out without being killed.
Here's a new video of the intro cinematic. Still plenty of placeholder assets and the lighting is nowhere.
[ame]
The next area is the sewers, where things take place on a grander scale. This level has more elaborate puzzles and stealth gameplay. Still a long way to go here, so there's not much to say... and currently two textures or so it appears.
Here's a few aesthetic shots of ideas that may happen after the sewers. Atmosphere doodles in udks.
[ame]
Throughout the level are pieces of paper that the main character collects thoughts on. Due to the minimalistic interface approach, this was originally avoided. After testing, this standardized method of storytelling was implemented to add an additional layer of storytelling. It also gives more opportunities for replay value, as well as adding hints and secrets in the messages themselves.
[ame]
I haven't drawn regularly in years. It's time to get back in action!
Here's what inspired me:
A while back, idrawgirls.com posted this lesson
http://idrawgirls.com/tutorials/2011/10/20/how-to-paint-landscape-mountain-river/
It reminded me that I used to draw. I followed the it and this was my result.
2nd, I felt I should google real pictures and paint them. Image searching "landscape" and my result was one of my worse, I'm sure I limited myself to 30 minutes.
http://chrisholden.net/idg_landscape_002.jpg
That was all goofing around. Next is when I decided to sketch a day.
3rd (JAN22): Again, hit the google, but came up with some better results because it picked up one of my g+ members from the Seattle area
4th (JAN23): searched "beautiful cave" and painted what I saw.
I used Makkon's brushes on this piece because I wanted to work with them.
Rock Brushes by Makkon
http://www.polycount.com/forum/showthread.php?t=91941
Korrax if you've got pix I'll draw them.
http://www.sankakucomplex.com/2011/05/07/backalleys-of-japan/
http://apedogs.com/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=149
I dicked around, and spent a lot of extra time working on cleaner technique. Today's sketch:
I used a stopwatch when drawing the last one, and it took right around two hours. Again, kinda went long, but at this stage I'm more concerned with getting my technique up to speed.
I'll probably release steps as I get better at this. I don't want to be that jerk that makes a tutorial on something the first time they do it.
Generally, I tackle the subject the same way I paint textures. Find my main shapes/silhouettes/colors. Start from the farthest background and start painting forward. Really, I'm just figuring it out as I go. I've painted a lot in the past (before the whole computers thing). I used to love airbrush, watercolor, pencil on newsprint.
Anyways, starting to really enjoy this. Hope I can keep it up long enough to do something narcissistic like release an art gallery UDK level.
REPOST OF LAST NIGHT'S SKETCH (since it was the last post on the last page
they probably should have a stronger light on them, unless another mountain off screen put them in shade.
but i guess if ref photo actually had them this way then that's how it should be.
those brighter blue shapes on mountain to the right look cool, they could use more contrast though.
if that's snow then it should be easily distinguishable from rocks.
the fact that level of sharpness differs greatly from place to place creates a weird impression, especially considering that furthest mountains seem to have sharpest edges.
also, smudging made the snow look quite dynamic, like in the middle of an avalanche. was that deliberate?
color palette feels a bit bland, but it's hard to judge this without ref pic.
hope this helps.
Just under 90 minutes of terrible slowness. Googled something like "Oakland, CA". Found a smoggy sunset over the city and went with it.
ooo, good post Blaisoid. The snow thing, no idea. It just happened. You bring up a lot of other good points. I'm going to quick put together some steps on how I did this current piece to better expose my process for feedback.
Ref photo, again, searched for a cityscape in Oakland, California. The result was simple enough that at my current level I felt confident in.
1. I start with the most background of thing, the sky.
2. Each getting their own layer, added background mountains with a bubbly brush and buildings with a horizontal or vertical brush (shift clicking for straight lines). Colors sampled from blurred photograph.
3. big soft brush with color brighter than surface to add atmospheric fog to separate distances. Horizontal brush paint water and bridge.
4. Foreground trees with a dark, spatter burhs, buildings with quick horizontal brush taps, and overall big soft brush atmosphere to blend scene together.
Note: avoided that weird antenna thing and took a lot of liberties with building placement
Some fav PS shortcuts
[ ] increase/decrease brush size
B switches to Brush mode, real useful switching back to painting
E eraser mode
Ctrl L adjust levels
Ctrl U hue/saturation
Ctrl Shift I invert selection
Ctrl S save
I'm normally loathe to give this advice, but i think you should experiment more with textured brushes! You have the understanding to not overdo them, it's really night and day faster and more efficient to lay in surfaces and masses with a rougher, flow-only brush when you're painting foliage and that kind of thing.
today:
a diff style, wasted a lot of time
[ame="
req: turn off all your lights, full settings, full screen. shhh....
gameplay test of this dungeon level. PM if you can UDK and test the full level.
you can beta test, PM me if you got the UDK installed.
Get back to drawing!
Tested on another PC, here's some known bugs:
just using the package/map files, the default jump, etc. sounds are active.
Most sounds leveled too low. Noticeable when compared with the default sound
Play through seems fine. Will rerelease tonight with audio fix.