Background Blitz : TRASH

[Creamy]

BACKGROUND BLITZ - TRASH

Dumps appear in a surprising number of adventure games.
Maybe because many point and click heroes are unrepenting scavengers?

Yet landfills/ junkyards would certainly be one of the last choice of scenery for an artist.
Sure, it's easy to have a forest or a castle look beautiful. But how do you make an heteroclite amount of discarded things look nice or simply readable?

The location is a staple of SF but nothing prevents you from showing us earlier polluted places.

Deadline: Sunday, October 11th.
Voting criteria:
Concept - your background should tell us something about the place you have depicted.
Playability - does it have clearly defined walkable areas, things to interact with, etc?
Artistic Execution - does the image convey the wanted atmosphere? What's the feeling of the place?

Let's get trashing.

[VampireWombat]

Nice. I'll definitely try to find the time and remember to do an entry.

[Jack]

Have an idea for this...

[milkanannan]

Awesome theme ~ I’m in 

[DBoyWheeler]

Got my entry ready finally.

I decided to go with a simple junkyard.  At least, this is my attempt at one.

Spoiler

I sure hope that Internet Archive links work.

[close]

[milkanannan]

You can probably guess the game that inspired this:



Btw I have no idea why the car is melting

[Creamy]

Only three more days before garbage collection!



Rusty but tidy.

You can probably guess the game that inspired this:

I'm drawing a blank. Is this a crushed robot on the left? And a parachute on the right?

Btw I have no idea why the car is melting

Metomol maybe?

Spoiler

[close]

[VampireWombat]

I'll try to remember to do something tomorrow or Saturday.

[Sinitrena]

The cages on the northern gate of the city are the last place any thief would want to end up in. The gate just leads to the forest and the charcoal burners hut (and maybe one or two bands of robbers have their hideout here too), so this seems to be the ideal place to get rid of the city's trash. The rubbish heap is filled with all kinds of domestic waste, including, but not limited to, rotting food. It smells abysmally here. Nobody knows why a farmer decided to store his pile of straw here.

[imgzoom]https://s2.imagebanana.com/file/201009/2s12TfCM.png[/imgzoom]

[milkanannan]

I'm drawing a blank. Is this a crushed robot on the left? And a parachute on the right?

Oh I thought the style looked similar to the chunky EGA graphics of SQ3. (I'm not suggesting my skill is anywhere near that! Just thought the thick outlines and limited spectrum sort of looked like it.)

Yes, a crushed robot. The 'parachute' is supposed to be some sort of glistening chemical pool that's draining into an open sewer. I'll keep practising in upcoming blitzes. I was kind of going for a junkyard from the future or from another planet.

[milkanannan]

The cages on the northern gate of the city are the last place any thief would want to end up in. The gate just leads to the forest and the charcoal burners hut (and maybe one or two bands of robbers have their hideout here too), so this seems to be the ideal place to get rid of the city's trash. The rubbish heap is filled with all kinds of domestic waste, including, but not limited to, rotting food. It smells abysmally here. Nobody knows why a farmer decided to store his pile of straw here.

That's a really nice entry! Question: what brush effect are you using on the tree trunks? I have seen this used in other submissions, and I think it looks cool.

[Sinitrena]

Thank you!
It's pretty simple. I use paint.net and my version is in German, so stuff might be called differently in other programs and my translations might be off.  I use the brush tool with a light brown colour and not too large a size (max 5 or so pixles) and set the colour setting to multiply (thus getting the darker brown). Antialiasing should be on. And then I just do a couple random vertical strokes, in some places more and in others less, to get the different shades of brown.

[Jack]

Didn't get to finish mine tonight.

[Jack]

[Creamy]

Nice entry. I find it easier on the eye that the one you posted for the 'Houses' blitz.
And the description really sets the mood.




Our local Brad Bird strikes again!

----------------

Time to start voting now that it's October elev...err...fourteenth.

Let's pretend that I gave VampireWombat additional time to enter 

1) DBoyWheeler 2) milkanannan 3) Sinitrena 4) Jack

Voting criteria:
Concept - your background should tell us something about the place you have depicted.
Playability - does it have clearly defined walkable areas, things to interact with, etc?
Artistic Execution - does the image convey the wanted atmosphere? What's the feeling of the place?


Voting will end on a rainy Tuesday, October 20th.

[Sinitrena]

Concept: The composition of all three of my competitors is fairly similar: A straight view on the trash; a composition shared by the examples given in the first post and more or less all scenes in games, I can think of, where a waste dump or scrapyard shows up. That said, I think Jack's scene depicts the most intruiging picture of those three. How long has this place been used as a dump for it to have apparently miles and miles of iron and why is it collected in small piles with a lot of grass in-between instead of in one large pile? Why is there, among all the homogeneous stuff, one old toilet and a robot? Intresting and intruiging.

Playability: Again, the composition is so very similar of all three, but I think milkanannan's offers the most distinct elements and most things to interact with: the trash can, the car, the crowbar (?) in the red stuff in the foreground, the blue water seeping towards the drain.

Artistic Execution: Jack. It looks kind of beautiful, though some more distinct elements would be nice.

[Jack]

Our local Brad Bird strikes again!

I don't know what to say. 

Also, I'm going to start looking forward to Sinitrena's reviews, if I'm not careful.

I'm voting milkanannan for Concept, Playability & Execution. It reminds me both of the EGA graphics in classic adventure games, and the graphics from the early AGS legends (but better). It seems a place where you are likely to find some interesting things to borrow.

[lorenzo]

Concept: Sinitrena. I think it's the most original interpretation of the theme, and I liked the story behind the image.

Playability: milkanannan. Lots of objects to interact with and rubbish to put in your inventory.

Artistic Execution: Jack. Your renderings always look beautiful. I like the contrast between the serene atmosphere (blue sky, green grass) and the dirty piles of rubbish.

[Sinitrena]

Also, I'm going to start looking forward to Sinitrena's reviews, if I'm not careful.

Was I just complemented on my voting?  That feels weird. 

[milkanannan]

Concept: Jack
Playability: Sinitrena
Artistic execution: Jack