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Khylov In reply to Zippper4 [2010-01-28 19:55:01 +0000 UTC]

Thanks much. I seem to revert to the vintage game karma these past few years when making enviroment sketches. I think level designers back then had to really tool around to achieve the look/feel of the scenery, as opposed to relying on light effects/filters to create the atmosphere.

Then again, I'm leaning heavily on those same lighting/filters here. Oh well.

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Khylov In reply to blackzer0 [2009-08-18 21:52:56 +0000 UTC]

Ah, thanks much. I actually ended up lightening the levels on this when it came time to do quick prints.

Shading - there isn't much to the secret (at least in how I do it), just a variety of blues and violets at different opacities. I think the trick is to adjust how saturated (or faded) the violets or blues are, depending on what you're shading. "Is the tone of the thing shaded warmer in tone, or colder?"; this is the key question to remember.

There's alot to be said for saturation, as well as how far away the object is from the viewer (atmospheric perspective). Given that, how far the object is from the lightsource - and how intense that lightsource is - are critical. It'll determine if you're dealing with hard or soft shadows.

I think the only other thing is to work the color wheel when shading anything, doing subtle workups in shading from the basetone. In other words, if the base is brown, then depending on the lightsource it'd be a case of working up highlights in subtle variations, working up further through the color wheel (light red tinges, or orange or yellow) and eventually getting something like caramel brown for subtle highlights. Anything other than just getting a whiter version of the basetone - something I used to do alot of.

...Anyhow, going down from that to shadows, it'd be the same thing, but less so in intensity and (most times) color variation. So, probably just working towards a darker brick red or even just a more saturated, dark brown.

In the end, you may not have to work any darker tones of brown at all. The blue and violet - if the opacity's set right - will do most of the walking for shadows. Using either at 30% or much higher, on a quick pass over a basetone, will give you a rough feel for how many viable color variations there are for the kind of shadows you're looking for. After that, you can just capture the tone via the waterdropper and use that at 80% to 100% for working up color variation or shadows without a lot of low opacity blotchiness or uneveness (if those are even words).

You can even use both the violet and blue together at low opacity, generally working from violet as the core shadow to blue as the shadow furthest away from the main lightsource (since blue is generally acceptable as both a shadow and a secondary light source).

Anyhow, hope that's clear and helps. Cheers.

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Khylov In reply to jumpingelf [2009-01-20 17:08:28 +0000 UTC]

Interesting that you bring up the WoW parallel - I was just at a game party where that was the entertainment of choice. And for the life of me, I couldn't understand a bit of their conversation whenever they started in on the lingo. ("Oh wow! AP and DPS increase! Two daggers at the same time with my debuff, and my dark elf can bind a staff of chode while casting spells and peeing at the same time! Wicked!")...

For the first time in my life, I understood how a parent feels when listening to their kids.

(BTW, dig on the Totoro icon.)

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jumpingelf In reply to Khylov [2009-01-21 20:57:22 +0000 UTC]

yer i have been to a few game partys and some people have been talking in there wow slag and not even i have understood so i toterly know what u mean
and thanks about the totoro icon dig lol

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