Alley Scene

imaginaryrobot

Hey all, long time lurker first time poster (etc etc, lol)

Recently completed an art test, 1 week from concept to completion, with the general guideline of 'make an alley'. I was hesitant to post it here while I was working on it, cause I know some of the artists from the studio in question are regular members and I didn't want to cause any weirdness or jeopardize myself at all, but now that it's over, I'd love it if I could get some feedback.

Sorry for HUEG



Would love to hear what you guys think, thanks a bunch!

Ott

Lighting looks good. Mood looks good.

The textures almost completely lack any additional love and attention. Most of them look like direct rips from the intarwebs, with little additional care given to them. Even when using repeating / tiling textures you have to give them a little extra to accentuate the surfaces so that they don't look so flat.

A lot of it is also really symmetrical, with the exception of the concrete poles jutting out of the ground. (The connection point for these objects needs more attention as well, so it blends better with the ground below it.) Try to vary up the angles of objects here and there to make it feel more believable.

The giant pink sign looks good, but almost too perfect for the dingy building it is attached to. If you are going for a dingy, dirty alley then it needs about a hundred more trash and debris cards all over the place.

A couple puddles of questionable liquids or super dark stains along the road would have popped the road a bit more.

The width and height of the door seems a little out of scale.

Overall looks pretty good though!

whats_true

That neon sign is floating with ZERO power source. Its not really noticeable with the legs cause its a head on view, but its noticeable with the words on the side.

It looks like you have a road in the middle. I see no indication of that road being separated by the sidewalk or buildings. It just kinda fades away.

Personaly, I think your spc needs to be increased, just to give it that extra bling.

Textures need more love as Don stated.

jocose

Your lighting looks good in general but I would be interested to see what it would look like if you added in a blue ambient light instead of just having everything fade off to black. It might go well with the pink.

Also it might be interesting to see something more going on with the sky. You might be missing an opportunity to really enhance the sense of atmosphere by just having it black like that.

That's all the comes to mind right now. There is lots to like, think a little more tweaking could make it even better. Good Job!

Pope Adam

Nice Mr. Robot.

imaginaryrobot

Thanks all for your responses-

The lines down the road were meant as parking spaces, but I don't really think they work and I should either fix it or ditch them in favor of more ground details that do work (puddles, cracks, etc). Shouldn't take too much work to polish this up and have a good piece for ye olde folio. A lot of the other stuff (power + mounting for the neon sign, as well as some sort of aging or damage to it come to mind) were just things that didn't get done in the week alotted.

Thanks so much for the crits, I'll give this another pass (especially the texturing) and come back with the results

OBlastradiusO

The lighting could be been pushed a bit further. I do like the idea of having a blue contrast to the pink. The blue could be light come from a full moon in the sky somewhere. For atmosphere I would have some background mist mixed in with the blue light. Ott also made a good point about the trash also. The area should be more dirty and sleazy. For some reason this scene reminds of the ending in 48hrs. The ending of that movie had a lot of great mood and atmosphere complete with lit fog and neon lights.

Ryan Smith

I usually don't critique other people's work because I don't feel i'm qualified to be making such suggestions considering i'm not a professional yet. However, I do think that this scene could use a bit more interesting lighting.

You have some great models and some great texture work, but your lighting is really leaving it lacking. It feels like it needs much more contrast in terms of lighting, and a lot more grit and grime.

Are you rendering this in a game engine?

Where are the shadows?

all of this can go a really long way.

Here is a paintover with higher contrast and brighter hotspots. I also included some shadowing, a bit of desaturations in your textures, and also i added a tad bit of pinkish volume fog.

If you can recreate this in a game engine you'd be golden.

whats_true

^^
THATS the bling Im talking about!

crazyfingers

I think you guys might be getting a little carried away with the color. I guess it depends on the intent of the scene. As a game environement the original reads much better and looks much more believable as a "real world" environment.

But if you were doing a level for the "speed racer" video game based on the movie, sure, bump up the contrast and saturation. I agree that it does look cooler in a way, but so does every night scene if you put these filters on it. It also makes playing in that world really confusing, it's a trade off.

One thing you could do though is switch up the hue on the city light sources, right now everything is either purple, or that light yellow. The light yellow looks to be exactly the same on every light source. It would make sense that different buildings would have different lights, even if just slightly different.

Overall great lookin' scene. I think a bit more work on the lighting and it could be even better and a shiny street that looks like it's just been rained on always adds that "pop" that people want to see in digital media. Overdone but it works!