Sierra Forest Tutorial

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Corby
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Sierra Forest Tutorial

#1 Post by Corby » Sun Nov 28, 2004 10:52 pm

I've been meaning to do this for ages.

Check it out here:
www.corbydesigns.com/forest

Enjoy!

dreammaster
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#2 Post by dreammaster » Sun Nov 28, 2004 11:05 pm

Nice tutorial. For graphics neophytes like myself, it holds out the hope that I may be able to draw decent backgrounds despite my abysmal graphics skills.

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#3 Post by Alias » Sun Nov 28, 2004 11:12 pm

Please continue your great tutorials, they help me sooo much. ;)

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#4 Post by Klytos » Mon Nov 29, 2004 3:18 am

That's pretty good Corby, I shall endevour to now draw a picture of a forest that doesn't suck. ;)

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#5 Post by Alias » Mon Nov 29, 2004 4:06 pm

I think somone should sticky threads like these, they are so usefull. :D

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#6 Post by Sadistyk » Fri Jan 21, 2005 5:15 pm

It's a really great tutorial, It helped me a lot.

Image

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#7 Post by Alias » Fri Jan 21, 2005 6:46 pm

That picture does not work. Upload it to www.imageshack.us  ;)

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#8 Post by Sadistyk » Fri Jan 21, 2005 7:48 pm

What you mean it doesn't work? I'm seeing it with my own eyes.

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#9 Post by Blackthorne519 » Fri Jan 21, 2005 9:05 pm

I see it too.  Nice job for your first attempt!

Bt

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#10 Post by Alias » Fri Jan 21, 2005 11:45 pm

Sadistyk wrote:What you mean it doesn't work? I'm seeing it with my own eyes.
It was not working a few hours ago, oh well.

Its a nice atempt but you need to use less blur, notice the leaves are nice and crisp and the rest of the background is blurier (sp?)  :lol  ;)

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#11 Post by MuzlakOofmay » Sat Jan 22, 2005 1:48 am

you have a good grasp of using colors to affect the mood.

Corby
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#12 Post by Corby » Sat Jan 22, 2005 7:38 pm

Looks very nice! Some rocks could spice things up a bit though. Here's a neat trick: In photoshop, go to: Image - Mode - Indexed Color, then set the number of colors to 256. This is if anyone wanted to use the same palatte that sierra used. I just started doing this, and I think it really adds to the sierra like atmosphere. You can really notice the differences when viewing in full screen.
BTW, the red mountain looks pretty cool!

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#13 Post by Sadistyk » Wed Jan 26, 2005 11:08 pm

Thanks for the tips, and the critics.

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#14 Post by Uhanimar » Mon Jan 31, 2005 1:52 am

*bows in honor* Thank you! I have wanted to learn how to do this for such a long time!!!! :D

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#15 Post by Uhanimar » Mon Jan 31, 2005 8:21 pm

Image

*bouncy* this works! :D

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#16 Post by Khalon » Mon Feb 28, 2005 7:25 am

Corby... you officially 0wn my z0ckz.
I logged in for the first time in months just to say that.

I'm very happy with this forest scene, from someone who in real life can't even draw a tree. Having given up on AGS games because I can't draw graphics, I now have new hope. My life is changed forever. And so on and so forth.


Image


Edit: In my initial enthusiasm I forgot to ask, can you give advice for drawing a cave? With my new-found leet photoshop skillz I can probably work out something that looks vaguely okay, but a tutorial or anything would be nice ^.^

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#17 Post by Alias » Mon Feb 28, 2005 8:17 am

Wow, I love those bushes man! You just need to make the trees more detailed and less blurry like the bushes. Overall great work!  ;)

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#18 Post by Khalon » Mon Feb 28, 2005 8:50 am

Thanks for the feedback...
I had a lot of fun tweaking the colour balance with the bushes, I highly recommend that colour balance tool...
I was kind of going for a blurry effect on the trees, sort of a 'things are spooky and indistinct at night' feel, but maybe that's just me pulling a typical "OMG IM ESPRESIN MYSLEF PLS DUN CRITISIZE ITS GOOD K THX BYE"

Anyway, thanks for the reply =)

You wouldn't happen to know where I could find a cave tutorial would you? =P


Edit: Touched up the foreground foliage a bit... I think the background foliage is already ok, but you can't really see it. As for the blurry mess of green where I didn't paint anything... that's supposed to be that way. So there.

Image


Edit 2: I seem to be taking over this thread... uh... just take these as examples from someone with no artistic talent of how awesome the tutorial is. If I make anything else remotely worth posting, I'll make my own thread and take up unnecessary forum space that way instead.

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#19 Post by Corby » Tue Mar 01, 2005 3:20 am

Looks pretty sweet! Glad you enjoyed the tutorial. Maybe I'll make a quick cave drawing tutorial tomorrow night. Add some rocks, some more details to your tree, set it at 256 colors, and reduce down to 320x240 and you got a very sierra looking background. :)
Image

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#20 Post by Khalon » Wed Mar 02, 2005 2:51 am

Thanks, forgot to texture my tree...
You're too slow on the cave tutorial, I got bored and tried a pic without it =P
Here it is:

Image

Meh... I guess I should scale it down if I want classic sierra style.. but it's so much more prettiful this way...

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#21 Post by Corby » Wed Mar 02, 2005 3:18 am

I think you'll be fine on your own  :)
Very excellent cave. You're certainly good with colors!

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#22 Post by Khalon » Wed Mar 02, 2005 7:02 am

Corby wrote:I think you'll be fine on your own  :)
Very excellent cave. You're certainly good with colors!
Thanks... took me a lot longer than the forest though, which turned out better anyway... tutorials are cool. I think I've got the hang of it now...

As for the colours, they actually looked really messy for a while, but I tidied them up by realising that they're a reflection of the fire, albeit a skewed one... so I copied, transparencisified and skewed the fire, and... viola. Or possibly violin, I think it's smaller than that...
Graphics are fun... I need to learn to do indoors now, and characters... hmmm...

Edit: Oh, and water... my water is stupid.
Don't take these as requests or anything, I'm just rambling. I do that on occasion. Did you notice already? I thought you might have...

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#23 Post by Wolf » Sat Mar 26, 2005 9:01 am

this tutorial is definatlely really helpful, i managed to do my first honest looking vga background =D

640x480:
Image

and the 320x240:
Image

i gotta check out the other tutorials as well and maybe once i've practiced enough i might throw in an image or 2 on that Space Quest project

EDIT: i just realized i should have saved it as 256 color format >w<

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#24 Post by Alias » Sat Mar 26, 2005 12:20 pm

It looks great, the only thing that bugs me is that one of the branches are bigger than the trunk.  ;)

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#25 Post by Wolf » Sat Mar 26, 2005 2:03 pm

yes now that you mention it i notice but i need to practice more, i'm also thinking it might be a good idea to take photos of a scene and transform it into a vga background

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