Backgrounds

Some time ago I've been painting backgrounds for the game I'm working on. It was quite a nice process in amount and painting is somehow relaxing. You don't have to think too much, just let it go and soon you have something on the screen. I'm of course talking about digital painting now, even though traditional painting would also work in a game background. This time I won't go there, though.

Backgound sketch, grayscale.

So this is what I started with; a grayscale sketch painting of the thing I wanted. Since the theme is about dragons I thought it would be a good idea to have volcanoes in the background. I had a couple of photos as reference for color schemes and shapes. I'm still not sure if the lava is actually necessary but let's have it here for now.

The idea for the background (why it's so long) is that it's going to scroll down as the game goes forward. That way you have a feel of the progress, like digging deeper as you score more points. 

The final background.

This image is so far the final image. There was really not too much iteration in this one, it just came out nicely so I didn't see a reason to change it too much. The attention in this whole picture goes to the top where you have a lot of light and light colors. On the other hand, the "front" of it, the bottom, looks like it's in shadows. This works as a whole image but let's see if it works in the game. Still to be tested.


Also the background needs to be as simple as possible so that it doesn't disturb the player while playing. This means I will probably blur the image just a bit. That will create a feel this image is even further away.

The menu background.

As we needed a background image for the menu as well, I thought to keep the mountain/volcano theme. After painting the in-game background this was a lot easier and quicker to paint since I already hat got used to the flow.
In this image there's not really a clear source of light and everything looks kind of dark. I don't think it's a problem, though. It won't catch the player's attention from the menu and the items on it (not ready to be shown yet).


This week I've been working with the user interface layout and other stuff that belongs to that, like buttons and icons. I've had quite a struggle and notice that my motivation isn't as high as it was when painting the backgrounds. But I'll pull it off anyway and discuss the results later in this blog.