Background Blitz: Seashore (Winner!)

[CaptainD]

Wow... I was going to vote, but there are such good entries here that I genuinely can't decide between them at the moment.

[WHAM]

Idea: Selmiak
Atmosphere: Wheela
Design: Anian
Composition: Anian
Functionality: Anian
Technique: Anian

Generally speaking:
- I really like oil rigs and other oversea platforms as an idea for a game environment, so I liked Selmiak's work
- Anian's BG drew my attention with its "clean" look and how the details stood out thanks to the flat colours
- Snarky's work reminds me of a 3D render turned pixel-art, which is an accomplishment to itself, but didn't float my boat this time
- I had a hard time figuring out Sane Co.'s piece. I think it's mostly because of the way it's the least traditional entry when considering game backgrounds.
- Creamy's piece made me feel the perpective was off somehow, I'm no master myself, but it just felt to me the entire scene was somehow bent or twisted
- Wheela, last but certainly not least. This piece was ALMOST my vote for all categories, but Anian and Selmiak's works just barely topped you this time due to the reasons listed above. Shame, I really think this background was beautiful, so it pains me to not give it more votes.

[Tramponline]

Wow... I was going to vote, but there are such good entries here that I genuinely can't decide between them at the moment.

Darn! Same thing here, CaptainD. Just realized I caught myself staring at each scene for about 10 min, while trying to weight the pros and cons
for each respective category. There're just so many 'pros' and so little 'cons'!

Strong competition this time around and seriously beautiful scenes, guys!

Idea: Snarky         
Atmosphere: selmiak
Design: Anian
Composition: Anian
Functionality: waheela
Technique: Anian

Uhh...seriously, that wasn't easy at all...

edit: After Snarky's elaborate comment I feel the need to explain my descisions a little:

Idea Snarky's rendition is the most original in my eyes. Not a 'traditional' sea shore per se, but a beautiful off shore view of a rather surreal landscape. For me, the most unusual approach out of all entries and therefore best idea. The addition of those seemingly derelict posts in the water enhances that already eerie atmosphere even more.
     
Atmosphere Selmiak nailed the atmosphere category in my opinion. I looked at every entry for for the same amount of time and selmiak's scene sucked me in the most. Pure gut feeling and very personal, I admit.

Design Had an incredibly hard time voting for either Snarky or Anian here. Went with Anian's version in the end, because literally every element in his scene appears crisp, clear and rendered to perfection.

Composition Again Anian, since his scene elements seem to form the most harmonic entity and all focal points are very distinct.

Functionality Saw wheela and Anian head to head. Anian's image is lacking clear entry points and because of the bumpy beach, it'd be more difficult to put a proper walkable area in. Chose wheela because I simply loved that viewing angle, high up and open, but clear entries/exits at the same time.

Technique Once more Anian, since his scene seems to be the best rendition in the respective chosen style, with Snarky as close 2nd, as those rock formations seemed at tad too blurry in my opinion.

@Creamy Until WHAM mentioned it, I never assumed Creamy's pic was supposed to be in perspective at all. It simply seems to me to be a more painterly, art-like approach. Would work perfectly with a kind of Dadaistic game setting. Maybe Creamy would be so kind as to enlighten us?

@Sane Co. Love the shadow of that bench. Keep it coming.               
         

[Anian]

Nice turnout, nice entries, nice nice nice
Idea: selmiak
Atmosphere: wahela
Design: selmiak
Composition: Snarky
Functionality: Creamy
Technique: wahela

Snarky, is that a 3d render paintover? That sea really has an unusual texture.
Wheela, nice entry to hide your voyeuristic past. 

[Stupot]

Some gorgeous entries all round.  Pats on backs.

Idea: Snarky
Atmosphere: Selmiak
Design: Snarky
Composition: Waheela
Functionality: Creamy
Technique: Waheela

[CaptainD]

Hope no-one minds, just thought it would be helpful to be able to see all of the entries together (this is for me as much as anyone else!).


Selmiak:

[imgzoom]http://selmiak.bplaced.net/stuff/beachscene.png[/imgzoom]

Creamy:

[imgzoom]http://creamy.unblog.fr/files/2012/04/bad-moon-on-the-rise2.bmp[/imgzoom]

Sane Co.
[imgzoom]http://i.imgur.com/MQupdeJ.jpg?1[/imgzoom]

Snarky:

[imgzoom]http://i.imgur.com/3bTlkyb.png[/imgzoom]

Anaian:

[imgzoom]http://i.imgur.com/rYOBLua.png[/imgzoom]

Waheela:

[imgzoom]http://i.imgur.com/tmafeey.png[/imgzoom]

[CaptainD]

So, my votes...

Idea: Creamy
Atmosphere: Waheela
Design: Selmiak
Composition: Snarky
Functionality: Anian
Technique: Waheela

Seriously, every category took a lot of thought to reach a winner in my mind.  Breathtakingly good entries, I really hope we see them in games this year or next!

[Haggis]

Some great entries here, not easy to make these picks.

Idea: Snarky
Atmosphere: Sane Co.
Design: Anian
Composition: Waheela
Functionality: Anian
Technique: Snarky

Criminal that I have no votes for Selmiak and Creamy. Creamy just lost out to Snarky in the technique category and Selmiak was in the running for pretty much all of them. I really like Sane Co's entry, be interesting to see it in a game of a similar style and with a bit of animation.

[Snarky]

- Snarky's work reminds me of a 3D render turned pixel-art, which is an accomplishment to itself, but didn't float my boat this time

Snarky, is that a 3d render paintover? That sea really has an unusual texture.

No, it's all hand-drawn from imagination (and yes, it was a pain). I paint everything in black and white initially (except the sky in this case), usually with a light, dark and medium shade, and use gradient maps for the color. To give the sea a reflective effect I inverted part of the gradient (cf. the "materials" section in this tutorial; though of course a proper artist wouldn't need to rely on a Photoshop trick for the effect; if you compare the earlier version you can see how it looks without it). The reflections are just loose wavy scribbles with some strategic erasures, overlaid at 50% transparency. Shadows are done similarly, but before the gradient mapping. Scaling it down hides a lot of sins and turns them into "texture."



OK, my votes:

Idea: Selmiak
Atmosphere: Selmiak
Design: Waheela
Composition: Anian (this was a hard one to pick!)
Functionality: Anian
Technique: Waheela

Lovely entries all round. I wish I could make the kind of crisp pixel art Selmiak, Anian and Waheela submitted, but I have to feel my way around the objects with the brush, sort of sculpt them out of light and shadow in order to find the right shapes and shades.

I don't mean these individual comments to be presumptuous, just know that I would personally like to get feedback:

Selmiak: Lovely romantic scene, great color choices. Like WHAM, I like the tropical offshore rig as a concept for a setting. To improve it further, I'd try redoing the clouds (particularly the big plume on the right, which I'm not even sure is a cloud), clean up the glimmer on the waves (avoiding crooked lines), and probably try a more conventional dark-at-the-top, light-at-the-bottom design for the sky.
Creamy: The purple color scheme gives the scene a great mood. A couple of things to think of are perspective (horizontal lines should point towards the horizon, but your roof points away from it), and realistic lighting (e.g. where are the house and the foreground plants lit from?). One thing most people don't realize is that at night, in the absence of artificial lighting, the sky is almost always lighter than any other part of the scenery. You wouldn't have a mostly black sky and a blue ocean.
Sane Co.: Congrats on your first entry! I think pencil drawing is a great way to practice, and a viable medium for game backgrounds in itself. But it's maybe not best suited (unless you're an extremely skilled artist) to rendering texture. I have a bit of a hard time understanding the black part that I guess is the ocean, and the white "holes" around the reflection of the stars. Maybe it would be better to just focus on getting the outlines down, and doing any shading in a softer, simpler style?
Anian: I really like this sort of washed-out, blue and green-tinged color scheme. While almost all the other entries feel warm, this one has much more of a cold feel. I think it suggests an overcast, possibly rainy day, though, so maybe make the sky cloudier? Love all the stuff in the scene; more than any of the other entries this feels very obviously playable. Only "complaint" is I'd have liked to have a better sense of the exit(s).
Waheela: Well that's just gorgeous. I'm very jealous of your waves. Compositionally, I'm not quite sure what part of the scene is meant to be the focus (I find the spotlight-bright moons (?) in the sky distract a bit if you try to keep looking at the people), but this would be affected by animation and stuff, so it might not be a problem in the right in-game scene.

[Anian]

Kind of funny, because my background actually was 3d in my original sketch http://i.imgur.com/Cg9ZtOs.png
Basically everything was done over in the painting, but still.

[WHAM]

Anian you clever bastard! I do the same thing!

[Bulbapuck]

Fantastic entries! I'm stunned.

Idea: Waheela
This was a hard one, but Waheela's piece was very classical while keeping a mysterious look. Very nice indeed.

Atmosphere: Waheela
Creamy was a close second, I love the atmosphere of nighttime scenes.

Design: Snarky
Another close one. But those colors compliment eachother very well, and the entire landscape was esthetically pleasing and interesting.

Composition: Anian
Originally I was gonna go for Waheela or Snarky here, but Anian had a very simple piece that worked very well and got my vote in the end.

Functionality: Anian
This was the only clear winner for me. Out of all the entries, this one is the easiest to implement in a game.

Technique: Selmiak
I had no idea who to vote for here, but it would be awful if I gave no votes to Selmiak's beautiful sunset.

[Creamy]

Many great pictures, I don't feel like voting.

--check--

[Ilyich]

Lots of great entries this time round - difficult to choose from, but lovely to look at.

Selmiak - excellent stylish palette and lovely quirky design. And I love the idea of having silhouetted characters on this background.
Creamy - the composition is on the simple side, but it's well balanced, and there are some really lovely colour combinations here. I like how the lone column immediately suggests Mediterranean, giving the background a much more particular focus.
Sane Co: Although not too impressive technically, it definitely has something going for it. There's a very nice melancholic feel to it, and I think it would work surprisingly well as a background, despite being a black and white pencil drawing (it's what makes it interesting, really).
Snarky: I really like the surreal feel of this waterscape. The water is rendered especially interestingly, with a nice impressionistic brushwork and a peculiar organic emerald colour. I think the cliffs could've used a stronger pass of reflected light to make this background really shine, but it's a very solid and interesting effort nonetheless. Also, I feel that the example picture of water reflection at 100% opacity looks like a Derain or Van Gogh painting and could've brought out the surreal quality of the piece even more, although I understand that it might confuse things quite a bit.
Anian: I wanted to compliment the excellent construction of the shape of the boat at such a tricky angle, and although the fact that it's based on a 3d model makes it slightly less impressive, it doesn't change the fact that it looks pretty darn great. A fine example of admirable use of various tools we have at our disposal in this day and age. The composition and colour choices are equally impressive.
Waheela: Very pretty, very romantic and very retro! A truly excellent and very pleasant background all round.

My votes:
Idea: Snarky
Atmosphere: Waheela
Design: Selmiak
Composition: Anian
Functionality: Anian
Technique: Waheela

What a fine Blitz this turned out to be, great job, everyone!

[Sane Co.]

Idea: Selmiak
Atmosphere: Waheela
Design: Snarky
loved the water, it looks great.
Composition: Selmiak
Functionality: Anian
Technique: Waheela
I liked all of the entries this month. I almost picked creamy for Functionality, but Anian's closely trumps his. They would both do well for use.

[selmiak]

This is really hard to decide, there are just so many great entries...

Idea: Anian
with Snarky beeing a close second
Atmosphere: Snarky
with Waheela a close second
Design: Waheela
everything is just pixelperfect, especially the waves, with Anian coming in close as a second, that little starfish is really cool, but at the masts of the ships are some odd pixels...
Composition: Snarky
Functionality: Creamy
Technique: Snarky
with Waheela beeing a close second, but snarkys background does it more for me.

[gameboy]

Wow, this Blitz turned out great! Excellent topic by the way.

Idea: Selmiak
Atmosphere: waheela
Design: waheela
Composition:Anian
Functionality: Anian
Technique: Snarky

I really dig Waheela's entry. It's tiny but it manages to achieve a style similar to what I've been trying to pursue all the time... but with far less colours!

Everyone else did great too!

[Snarky]

edit: After Snarky's elaborate comment I feel the need to explain my descisions a little:

Idea Snarky's rendition is the most original in my eyes. Not a 'traditional' sea shore per se, but a beautiful off shore view of a rather surreal landscape. For me, the most unusual approach out of all entries and therefore best idea. The addition of those seemingly derelict posts in the water enhances that already eerie atmosphere even more.
     
Atmosphere Selmiak nailed the atmosphere category in my opinion. I looked at every entry for for the same amount of time and selmiak's scene sucked me in the most. Pure gut feeling and very personal, I admit.

Design Had an incredibly hard time voting for either Snarky or Anian here. Went with Anian's version in the end, because literally every element in his scene appears crisp, clear and rendered to perfection.

Technique Once more Anian, since his scene seems to be the best rendition in the respective chosen style, with Snarky as close 2nd, as those rock formations seemed at tad too blurry in my opinion.

Thanks for the kind feedback, which I didn't notice until now. I agree totally that the my scene was too blurry; it's the one thing about how it came out that I was very unhappy with. But now I tried playing with some other scaling options, and find that blending bicubic and nearest-neighbor modes gives a much better result:

Spoiler

Original entry:
[imgzoom]http://i.imgur.com/3bTlkyb.png[/imgzoom]

Sharper version:
[IMGzoom]http://i.imgur.com/EuedPWl.png[/IMGzoom]

[close]

Oh well. At least I know what to do in the future.

[Kastchey]

I don't think there will be any more votes coming, time to do the honors... incredible amount of votes, by the way!

selmiak: 13 votes
waheela: 20 votes
Anian: 20 votes
Snarky: 14 votes
Creamy: 4 votes
Sane Co.: 1 vote

And since we have a tie, I'll cast my votes too:

Idea: Snarky
Atmosphere: waheela (with Creamy coming as close second)
Design: Snarky
Composition: selmiak
Functionality: Anian
Technique: waheela

..which brings us to:

Bronze trophy going to Snarky!
Silver trophy going to Anian!
And finally, gold trophy and the honor of hosting the next competition going to waheela!


Congratulations, and many, MANY thanks to everyone who participated and voted, you keep the competitions going

[Anian]

Such treachery, I shall have my revenge Kastchey, mark my words!

Just kidding, congrats to waheela.
Wiiiiiiiiii silvery.