My Search for BG reference and...

[mugenjohncel]

A few days ago I was asking for images/pictures of Urban/everyday scenes that has this anime/hand painted feel to it since I'm going to try and Hand Paint my BG's in Photoshop using Cintiq (Before it was Poser 6, then Textures and Post Process in Photoshop... and resulted in 3D looking images)

The reason why I'm collecting such images?... I am going to study their techniques and will apply them in my own work (like how they simulate corrosion, sunlight hitting different kinds of surface and so on...)

During my search I happen to stumble on this...

http://www.wa.commufa.jp/~swallow/photo.gallery.html

Most images were of low quality and might not be of much use (in my case anyway) but the amazing thing about this site is that it actually contains BG's used in VN's, Games and Anime and their real life counterparts (See Air... the second one on the lower part of the page and be amazed).

I personally think that something this good is meant to be shared to everyone.

I'll behave for now

[DaFool]

I thought everyone knew already that Japanese BGs are almost always based on real-life locations...

but hey, this is awesome reference. Thanks.

[mikey]

I thought everyone knew already that Japanese BGs are almost always based on real-life locations...

Me too. No imagination.

jk, and btw I'm surprised that the fate series also has photos for BGs. So actually the photographs as BGs aren't quite so dead.

[absinthe]

I, for one, had no idea that they were. Makes sense, I guess -- a lot of book covers are the same way, even fantasy ones.

Thanks for the link!

(Maybe I should convert all those pictures of our trip to Seaworld into a game... nah.)

[mikey]

This also made me thinking (again) whether that's also for practical reasons. If you have a team that needs to make a game, you just shoot photos and tell the graphics guys to draw that photo. It doesn't require so much fiddling around with concept sketches and so on. It does have its pros and cons regarding the artsy aspect, but production-wise, it seems to me like a clear advantage.

[Jake]

I'm surprised that the fate series also has photos for BGs. So actually the photographs as BGs aren't quite so dead.

I don't know... the majority of those, I'm absolutely certain aren't photos - some of them are very well-rendered, but there's little things wrong with them, sometimes only when comparing them to the actual photo, that give the game away. The only one that I'm not entirely convinced about is this one, but given the rest of them I'd still expect it to look more fake if we could see a larger version. And even in that tiny version, the reflections look wrong on the glass panels immediately to the right of the escalator, the recessed ceiling lights on the lower-floor arcade look a little too bright and the banner hanging from the upper floor about two-fifths of the way along the top is missing.

[mikey]

Hmmm, you're right, the lamps look different on the bridge. Well, maybe if they were bigger, I'd have spotted that they aren't photos...

[monele]

Well, they're never using the photos as is... nor even filtering them, that's for sure ô_o;.. But still, I'm amazed at how much... uuh... non-inspiration there is, since they just draw actual locations. It's still amazing because well... it's hard to paint an existing location ô_o... but it does make things seem a little less magical ^^;...
Aaah, when you realize there really are no gods among humans ^^;

[Jake]

It's still amazing because well... it's hard to paint an existing location ô_o... but it doesn't make things seem a little less magical ^^;...

It has pros and cons, in my opinion; on one hand, yeah, it's harder to make a scene specifically look like another scene than it is to make a scene look good. On the other hand, you can look at the photo and get a good idea of how the shadows work.

Radiosity-type lighting/shading in particular is a hard thing to perform in your head, but happens all the time in the real world; that's how surfaces which aren't directly facing a light source get lit. It's hard to work out how much they should be lit if you're just imagining the scene, but if you have a photo to work from it's easy. Same goes for multiple shadows from different light sources and reflections and so on...