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Acrylic Backgrounds - Canvas? Cardboard? Heavy Paper?

Posted: Mon Sep 20, 2010 4:47 am
by Sleeper
Hi All,

I am new to these forums and have looked around to find an answer to this question to no avail - if a topic like this already exists please point me in the right direction. That said . . .

I have been messing around with AGS to see if I would be able to actually put together a full on game, preferably something with similar gameplay to QFG. I am trying to go for the look of the early 90's Sierra games as far as the background and character art. I know that those backgrounds were hand painted and then scanned, and I have been trying to replicate that look. Right now I am using 13x9 premade canvas boards, and am using a lot of glazing to slowly build up layers. I am finding that its just not looking right.

I was wondering from anyone that has more experience, what sorts of techniques are you using? Are you painting opaquely? Should I not be using canvas? It seems like the texture of the canvas is showing through to much, but I don't know if that is because I should be doing something different, or merely spending more time with the paintbrush. I am attaching a couple of the backgrounds, these weren't scanned into the computer, I just took a picture of them with a digital camera (could that also be causing problems?).

Thanks in advance!

Image

Image

Re: Acrylic Backgrounds - Canvas? Cardboard? Heavy Paper?

Posted: Mon Sep 20, 2010 6:35 pm
by Blackthorne519
I might just use simple paperboard. The canvass shines through a lot on these. I mean, you could edit them after the fact in Photoshop and come up with something like this...

Image

I mean, that's a quick five minute jobby, but you can do it pixel by pixel too.


Bt

Re: Acrylic Backgrounds - Canvas? Cardboard? Heavy Paper?

Posted: Mon Sep 20, 2010 8:51 pm
by Sleeper
Looks like simply taking the photo at a much higher resolution then scaling it down to 320x200 fixes the canvas problem - unless I have been looking at this for too long. Thoughts?

Image

Re: Acrylic Backgrounds - Canvas? Cardboard? Heavy Paper?

Posted: Fri Oct 29, 2010 2:35 pm
by KKuhlman
Well, yeah, you can't see the canvas texture anymore but thats mainly because the image is now really blurry, muddy and looks like a low quality jpg.
Blackthorne519 wrote:I might just use simple paperboard.
What he said. Sure, you can edit the canvas texture out later but its easier just to avoid the extra work and use something less textured to paint on. It will save you a lot of time in the end.

Re: Acrylic Backgrounds - Canvas? Cardboard? Heavy Paper?

Posted: Fri Nov 11, 2011 8:17 pm
by Paladinlover
I'm not much of a painter, but I've been thinking of using digital paintings as opposed to traditional, largely because I don't have the money or the space in my home to set up painting for games, and because I have a very nice tablet with a lot of good software. I was thinking of using corel painter instead of photoshop, though.

What do you guys think of using that approach?

Till next time stay cool 8))

Re: Acrylic Backgrounds - Canvas? Cardboard? Heavy Paper?

Posted: Sat Nov 19, 2011 1:40 am
by moonlit
Hi,

Yes, a tablet is much easier. You never have to wait for paint to dry or anything. I use Gimp and gimp paint studio(brushes and the likes).
No need for scanning you can paint any color over any color have any brush you like, only limited by your imagination. Still for something on the wall you probably still want to user acrylics or oil :-)

Besides that blender/cycles is also great to create some stuff.