Backgrounds

[twilightguardian]

How do you get backgrounds into your visual novel? I tried to find pictures of backgrounds but it looks weird when you have a coloured hand-drawn image in front of a 3D photograph. Its my first game (not Novel game, as in not only is this my very first novel that I'm making but the very first game I've ever made) ever so not only do I want to learn a lot from it, but I want it to look good.

[Samu-kun]

Mmm... Have you tried running the photographs through filters? Some commercial games and many doujin games do this and it can make the character sprites fit in with the background better. The obvious alternative, however, would be just to draw the backgrounds yourself. But I can understand if you don't want to do this, since it takes a very, very long time. You could also try searching online for free hand drawn backgrounds. If you search hard enough, I'm sure you'll find some. :3

[twilightguardian]

Thanks. How exactly would you filter it?

[Mikan]

If all else fails, you could take your favorite photograph and trace it with the pen tool, and then remove the photograph and color it yourself. That's enough creative input to merit ownership of the resulting trace, since it'll be an interpretation of the original photograph.

[twilightguardian]

True. Though what program would I need to do that from? Photoshop? Or would GIMP be good enough?

I'm also having trouble with finding a picture of a home for my characters. I know that I'm never going to find a castle made out of a giant Campher tree, but I don't know how to draw such a thing, either.

[Sin]

Examples:



Original:

[twilightguardian]

Thanks a lot sin!

[renkenjutsu]

True. Though what program would I need to do that from? Photoshop? Or would GIMP be good enough?

I'm also having trouble with finding a picture of a home for my characters. I know that I'm never going to find a castle made out of a giant Campher tree, but I don't know how to draw such a thing, either.

I find that GIMP is good enough to do anything provided that you have the patience to deal with it

[DaFool]

I find that GIMP is good enough to do anything provided that you have the patience to deal with it

GIMP is good enough as a photoshop replacement and is compatible with PSDs.

The reason I'm using Photoshop though is that

* I've gotten used to the PS layout of things and am more intuitive in it.
* Most of my work now involves dozens of layers, and I have to categorize them into layer folders. I'm not sure about the latest version of GIMP, but last time I tried, it did not recognize folders for layers (and as a result everything showed up visible as one big humongous mess).
* Some filters and plugins for Photoshop have the neatest effects, though I never bothered to explore what GIMP had to offer.

[Jake]

The GIMP is technically a good enough Photoshop replacement and is compatible with older PSDs.

The reason I'm using Photoshop, though, is that:

- The GIMP's UI makes me want to fly to wherever the developers live and brutally murder them with cooking implements.



Seriously - if you've already got used to it, or if you give it a go and find it's perfectly usable for you, then go for it. However, if you start to find it frustrating, please don't confuse "the GIMP is an incredibly frustrating piece of software to use and I should stop" with "creating graphics on the computer is frustrating and I should stop".

[Mikan]

before

after

This background is free for taking. You don't need to credit me.
I took the photograph and altered it in photoshop myself.

And while unrelated, I wish the forums had a separate thread for sharing backgrounds and sprites only.

[denzil]

This background is free for taking. You don't need to credit me.
I took the photograph and altered it in photoshop myself.

I tried to play with the background a bit. I hope you don't mind.

[Mikan]

hmm..
Did you do a brightness/contrast adjustment, and then poster edges?

[denzil]

hmm..
Did you do a brightness/contrast adjustment, and then poster edges?

No, the pastel effect made it look this bright. I used Paint.NET, it has nice set of filters.
How I did it: duplicate layer, Effects->Artistic->Pencil on upper layer, set blending to multiply, Effects->Artistic->pastel on bottom layer, Effects->Noise->Median

[Mikan]

hmm..
Did you do a brightness/contrast adjustment, and then poster edges?

No, the pastel effect made it look this bright. I used Paint.NET, it has nice set of filters.
How I did it: duplicate layer, Effects->Artistic->Pencil on upper layer, set blending to multiply, Effects->Artistic->pastel on bottom layer, Effects->Noise->Median

Ah, neat. I'll be sure to try it out.
Photoshop is a wonderful photo manipulation program, but no matter how much I manipulate a picture, it still looks like a photograph. lol
I guess that's why they call it "photo"shop and not "new art"shop.