November 2014 Video Tutorial -- The Importance of Backgrounds!

[Gare]

Wow!

I absolutely love it, Maya!

The colors, the feeling of depth and space (no pun intended). Is this the beginning prelude to the motion picture "Still Life Wars"? With Darth Vase, Lemon Sykwalker, and Princess Lime-a?

Never mind me: the work is great, I'm just in a head where everything looks like planar polygons.

[Gare]

@stygg—


I have been fooling with this all day and finally discovered why there's something "off" with your gallery composition.

It's the perspective. You determined the perspective by the ground plane. The walls must follow the floor, like this:



If you were to draw a ceiling to this room, you'd immediately see the problem. From a level eye view, perspective takes hypothetical horizontal lines at eye view and then grades them, mirror fashion both upward and downward. Here's my guy scene with the same perspective lines. See how differently the frames are angled?



I'm not sure how to put it exactly, but a view of a room even with a little forced perspective (this room is definitely a little on the wide-angle camera lens side), needs a baseline, the middle ground in this case, from which perspective lines approach the viewer and separate both downward and upwards.

I've attached a Xara file with a progression of this perspective thing in it.

We've both learned something from this ambitious adventure, stygg!

My Best,

Gary

[Crow Haven]

Wow!

I absolutely love it, Maya!

The colors, the feeling of depth and space (no pun intended). Is this the beginning prelude to the motion picture "Still Life Wars"? With Darth Vase, Lemon Sykwalker, and Princess Lime-a?

Never mind me: the work is great, I'm just in a head where everything looks like planar polygons.

I'm glad the new episode worked out thanks Gare!

Stygg's room perspective idea has been great to explore -- rather tricky too! Stygg, you've helped us all!

[csehz]

Well, I tried a new background for the flower vase this time...

Interesting composition Maya, I associated not to the Star Wars but to a great past game named Neverball

Also like Stygg's tries, inspite of the fact as Gare mentions that the pictures on the wall can not have parallel lines to each other, slightly they should tend meeting in vanishing points. But that imperfection somehow makes the viewer to think, so maybe could simply stay like that as it is

[stygg2003]

Thanks Gary once more for your help and guidance, and to all you gals and guys for your valuable feedback, I'm glad it prevoked interest to everyone and Maya, that is one great image.

Stygg

[stygg2003]

Hi everyone, just an update on the image I was working on. Using Gary's files I think I managed to get the pictures perspective right The shadow of the girl is a copy, flat fill then split so I have two shapes, top half, bottom half I could give transparencies to. I also, to empasize the direction of the lighting, cloned once more the girl, flat fill black with a linear trans. so the right side of her is slightly darker. Not to sure what to do with the pictures shadows, leave them as drop shadows or make my own? All advice and suggestions welcome

Stygg

P.S. sorry to drive you all mad with this image

[csehz]

The shadow of the girl is a copy, flat fill then split so I have two shapes, top half, bottom half I could give transparencies to. I also, to empasize the direction of the lighting, cloned once more the girl, flat fill black with a linear trans. so the right side of her is slightly darker.

Both tips are great thanks for describing that

[Gare]

Stygg, what you also did was you are telling us visually that she is not as close to that right wall as she was originally. If half her torso was cast on the wall, she'd practically be leaning on it.

I think you have an image you should be very proud of.

At the same time, csehz has a good point: your original has an unsettling quality about it that took me a long time to decide why it was doing that. Which meant that I spent an above-average amount of time looking at and admiring your work. How good does that get?!

Make this a tip, everyone. Isometric (AKA orthographic) projects of a scene aren't realistic because the parallels of objects in the scene never converge, but this is a great "non-perspective" in manufacturing and architecture to force equal visual emphasis on all parts of the drawing.

But if realism is your goal, you need perspective. Contrary to popular belief, Leonardo DaVinci did not discover the artistic effect of perspective. It was Filippo Brunelleschi, an architect, who died in 1446, six years before DaVinci was even born.

Use the two effects together and you'll get one amusement park fun house of a composition!




TGIF everyone!

It's Party Night (for those who do that sort of irrepressible and irresponsible thing)



-g

[mwenz]

I might have missed this by only sparse reading of the thread...sorry if so.

When I need to do perspective (my case is usually sides of buildings), I use a blend between two lines.

Screen shots using a fake interior. Here's was a couple walls. Added a line at the bottom and at the top, blend is 7 steps.



Didn't like the perception of the walls, so I extended one for the demonstration.



Then moved the top line's left-hand node to the top left of the wall and the blend "recalculates."



You get the idea.

Mike


Oops. Forgot to add that I usually move those blended lines to the guides layer by cut and paste in-place...

[mwenz]

Geez. And I keep forgetting things.

Once the blend is moved to a guide layer, you need to convert to editable shapes else the blend itself won't show.

As penance, I have added a picture. Now I gotta get some work done.