2200AD --- DEMO RELEASED ---

[mugenjohncel]

Actually, who really loves drawing backgrounds? Unless you have a quick and easy way to do it (such as using 3D rendering or photo tracing), I don't think I've read anyone explicitly state they love doing backgrounds. (More like, it's a pain to do).

*ehem* I do! (I mentioned several times already)...

...goes back to work.

[Jake]

Actually, who really loves drawing backgrounds?

Well, some people (just to pick one at semi-random) seem to have enjoyed it well enough...

To misuse another analogy, I don't like driving. To me, it's a thing that gets me from place A to place B in less time than walking or cycling and more cheaply than taking a taxi. I enjoy riding a motorcycle, and I enjoy kart racing, but I can't understand how anyone could enjoy driving a 1.4 Honda Civic over a hundred miles of motorway.
But still, some people really enjoy driving, even on the public roads, in not-particularly-special cars. To me, it's a necessary chore, but it seems not to everybody. Some people don't like motorcycles, and I don't really appreciate that properly, either.

[PyTom]

The anime fanart is somewhat biased against backgrounds, and towards character art.

I mean, think about it. If you go to an Artist's alley, you can see people selling sketches of character's heads. The more talented artists might sell manga books (some quite good), or complete paintings... but you never see someone selling just backgrounds, since the market isn't there.

I'll point out that if you go to http://eng.dlsite.com, and search "background", you'll get a couple of collections of background art. You'll also get some games that are decidedly Not Safe For Work, and probably illegal in a number of countries, so be careful.

[Jake]

The anime fanart is somewhat biased against backgrounds, and towards character art.

Well, this make a lot of sense; anime and manga-style art is heavily skewed toward portraying emotion over portraying realism, and characters portray emotion a lot more readily than backgrounds do. I was talking to a friend a little while ago who doesn't really like western comics at all, and he could only really articulate it as 'too many lines'. After talking it through and looking at examples, he really meant 'too much detail on the background'; he was finding the BG detail distracted his attention from the character and made the whole scene 'busy'.

(Myself, I 'quite like' drawing backgrounds in the same sense that I 'quite like' drawing more or less anything... and similarly, doing too much of it gets really tedious after a while...)

[YuMMz]

To get back on topic a bit

I just played the demo and while short it definitely peaked my curiousity. From an artist's perspective, the character art is top-notch. I agree with what has been said here that the background art appears a little subpar due to the detailed character art. Having said that though, I would recommend that if you do have to skimp somewhere, make it the background art since it is the least necessary.

I enjoyed the one music track in the demo and it kind of drew me into the story.

The music and art helped me to overlook quite a few grammatical errors. You probably should have someone edit the script once it is finalized so that the story can really have it's maximum impact.

All in all, a very sound first demo. Great work!

[teankun]

Nice demo. Loved the art. So what is the status?