I shall preface this by saying that these comments are meant as sincere feedback with an aim to helping you to improve the game, so please do bear that in mind.

On an initial viewing, I wouldn't buy a game with illustrations like that. I'm not sure what the game is about, but I would go "Huh, art that is very influence by A Bugs Life and Antz, but nowhere near as good. Huh." The lack of texturing on the figure is a real problem: it's boring, dull, a fact not helped by the figure simply not being very animated, very static and lifeless.

Bluntly, it's the kind of not-so-great CG work that seems to inhabit more than a few games these days, to their detriment. Contrast that with the texturing, shading, light, shadow and detail in this piece by Paul. Admittedly, Paul has worked for many years perfecting his art, his skills and his ability to use not only his great artistic talent, but also the tools at his disposal.

I'm not in any way saying you have to reach Pauls level of skill before you publish art, not by a long chalk. But in the case of this figure, I don't think the game would be enhanced by it being there. Texture, light, shade and the feeling that it is a character, an individual who is interesting in some way, could all be worked on to make it a more effective piece.

I'm sure Paul, Jonny, Gregor or our other resident artists would probably be able to give more concrete hints and tips to enable you to learn and improve.

To finish, as I said at the start, all the stuff in this posting is said with a genuine desire to give you feedback and help you take your art o the places you want it to go.

Cheers
Malc

Contested Ground Studios

Well, thanks for the comments, but in one respect I think you are rather missing the point. I'm using this style of artwork because I *want* to emulate 'A Bug's Life' and similar movies. I don't want it to look realistic or creepy or anything, this is more the kind of game you'd be happy to play with your kids. As such, a graphical effect such as the one you link to would be entirely unsuitable. There's no colour in it, which is just right for horror, but entirely wrong for the whole Disney/Pixar kind of atmosphere that I'm aiming for.

Don't worry about the lack of action though; this isn't meant to be a cover image, it's a test render for one of the character models. I may use it or something slightly different to illustrate the 'ants' section of the manual, but only in a similar way to, for example, the character class illustrations used in games like D&D.

Regarding texture; I think I may have to fiddle with the contrast settings a little, I quite like the subtle gradiant texturing as it appears on my screen, and the bump-map light scatter seems to be doing a decent enough job to me. The print-off was maybe a little darker, but I don't think it was all that bad.

Ash

Firstly, I think this looks OK. I can see what you are going for with this, but the problem, for me, is the lighting. You could try using multiple light sources instead of just the one. A single light source with no ambience is fine for scenes with dark backgrounds as there is no ambient light refection, but with a light background the back of the figure needs to be illuminated. Try putting a couple of high-up radial lights to the rear left and rear right of the figure. Make them about 20-30% of the main light illumination and you should start to see a difference.

Better still, if you can globally illuminate the scene with an outdoor daylight HDRI image it should look pretty cool. If you are going to try this, you may want to reduce the specular values on the figure texture though.

Also, if you increase the ambience in your shader/texture nodes for the character he should start to look a bit 'fuller'.

Hope this helps

Paul

Yes, you are probably right about the lighting being off. I'm only using one light at the moment just to get a feel for the model, and it's definately something I want to fiddle around with before going to print. Lighting always gives me trouble due in part (most likely) to my being colourblind. Thanks for the tips.

Ash

As a non-pro, I'd say that 1) nice model - you've obviously spent a lot of time trying to make it look properly buggy as well as giving it an expressive face, and 2) I may or may not buy a game with this on/in it, but I'd be pretty certain what it was I was or wasn't buying. I'd take from this that its a light-hearted game about anthropomorphised insects with basic day-to-day stuff that they have interests in. I would presume that more art and words would explain to us why they can't do their stuff and what part of that makes for a fun game.

Now, if those things aren't true, then you've got more of a problem. But in general if a picture can convey the sense of the game and/or the characters in it, and it doesn't look like it was done at 5 am by a drunk cretin who's just hoping for a little internet recognition (I've seen a lot of that), then its doing its job. Of course a picture often does that better when its showing something happening, so as above I'd suggest some sort of action posing or context (like if this were a file photo, you'd be fine with more background and minor tweaks, but surrounding the pic itself with commentary about Scarlet Joe the Gardener, hero of One-Leaf Crossing).

What did you use for this, if I may ask? I'm minorly interested in the 3D stuff myself, though mostly as a framework to hang 2D stuff on.

Shevaun

Tim Gray
Silver Branch Games
www.silverbranch.co.uk

Not going to happen, and I site: Antz, the Ant Bully, Bee Movie, plus numerous cheap knock-offs that nevertheless made it onto the screen. If they want to sue me, they'll have to explain why they haven't sued anyone else using CGI to make insects. It's become de rigeur for movies about insects to use this kind of graphics, and I'm pretty sure my models are distinct enough from all of the ones I'm aware of to avoid any legal actions. For one thing they're the right colour (Blue ants???) hehehe. So long as I don't call my ant Flik or anything daft like that, I reckon I'll be fine. Besides, I've no money for them to sue me out of *jk*

Shevaun, the program I'm using is Lightwave 9.2, and I'm amazed it runs at all on this PC. Really need a new computer. I've been finding it very effective for the money, and it provides most of the things I need.

Ash

Oh, I think it's quite cutesy! Bugs Life meets weedkiller advert. Awesome!

I'd go with Paul's advice about lighting -- I bow to his 3D skillz.

The only thing I have to say is can you try converting the image to grey-scale and see how that looks?

When colour images convert to grey-scale they sometimes throw up bits of the imaghe where the contrast isn't as good as you'd like. Since your book is likely to be printed in grey0-scale (well, the interior anyway) it's always useful to see what that does to an image.

That might help you with the lighting that you need.

Yeah, absolutely check it in greyscale. I can't count the number of times I've had to tweak something because it doesn't quite 'work' in b&w.

Paul

Sure, good idea, although I am also looking at several options to have the book printed in full colour. Nothing may come of it though, so I will definately be looking at alternatives. I'm also experimenting with alternative filters, such as rendering to a cel-shaded effect. Fortunately Lightwave has a number of useful extras that I can use to render directly to greyscale, cel and newsprint style black and white shading. I'm sure one of them will work if I can't get colour.

So far the lighting problem isn't working out too well. I tried the advice given but it's not had much effect on the finished picture. Think I need to do some more fiddling with the position. I've not had much time to experiment so far though, been very busy with other things this week, so hopefully it will all come together.

Ash

Ahhh this brings back fond memories, all the games I used to run were to do with insect characters in oversized worlds. Of course they were oversized fantasy worlds full of dragons, but that is beside the point :)

I made 3D models too ... out of FIMO (no computer at the time) and I've been searching to see if I have any photos online, but I can't find even one

http://www.solipsist-rpg.com/ - http://cubicle-7.com/starblazer/

Aw, that's a pity, they sound cute!

Ash