Heh, when I read the description before viewing the image, I thought to 
myself "Oh no, this might ruin the image, which were perfect in its 
simplicity before..." However, when seeing it, I actually really like the 
background hills, very much to my own surprise! It is really well executed 
and adds to the feel the image already had.

The only thing that bothers me is the paths in the background. They follow 
too obviously a crackle pattern. Well, that's not the problem actually. The 
problem is that they don't look natural, and I think this would have been my 
impression no matter if I had known the crackle pattern or not. The paths 
are too dense and they don't look like they have evolved naturally but like 
somebody painted them onto the hills. I don't know if there is any pattern 
that will make them look natural or if you'll have to hand paint them as 
well, like the paths in the foreground.

Other than that, it's perfect!

Rune
-- 
http://runevision.com

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Trevor G Quayle wrote:
> This is looking really cool.  Kind of surreal cartoonish.  I like the roads
> going all over the place.

Good, cartoonish/non-real is what I am aiming for. :-)

Regards,
Tim


-- 
aka "Tim Nikias"
Homepage: <http://www.nolights.de>

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Rune wrote:
> Heh, when I read the description before viewing the image, I thought to 
> myself "Oh no, this might ruin the image, which were perfect in its 
> simplicity before..." However, when seeing it, I actually really like the 
> background hills, very much to my own surprise! It is really well executed 
> and adds to the feel the image already had.

Same thought here. I was wondering if a background would add or distract 
to the foreground scenerey, which is why I kept it so simple: not too 
much detail to *really* distract, but enough to show that this sign-mess 
isn't just a single thing, but a recurring point in life. I've been 
thinking about a title as well, and "Decisions" seems nice so far. Maybe 
need an adjective to narrow it down, but once I find a title, I'm 
probably also finished with the image. That's how it often goes when on 
an experimental route with an image and idea.

> The only thing that bothers me is the paths in the background. They follow 
> too obviously a crackle pattern. Well, that's not the problem actually. The 
> problem is that they don't look natural, and I think this would have been my 
> impression no matter if I had known the crackle pattern or not. The paths 
> are too dense and they don't look like they have evolved naturally but like 
> somebody painted them onto the hills. I don't know if there is any pattern 
> that will make them look natural or if you'll have to hand paint them as 
> well, like the paths in the foreground.
> 
> Other than that, it's perfect!

Thanks! I was wondering about the paths, too. I added some turbulence on 
top to break up the straight lines, but it's obviously not enough. I'll 
experiment some more on the texturing side before I take serious steps 
in attempting to procedurally/scriptly generate paths.

I'm not 100% satisfied with the background signs yet either, so if I end 
up writing a script, maybe I can implement placement of the 
signs-bushels as well...

Regards,
Tim

-- 
aka "Tim Nikias"
Homepage: <http://www.nolights.de>

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Tim Nikias wrote:
> Thanks! I was wondering about the paths, too. I added some turbulence on 
> top to break up the straight lines, but it's obviously not enough. 

I think it's more that paths naturally follow where someone wants to 
walk. Random paths are going to be "wrong" no matter how you perturb 
them, because paths by their nature aren't random.

Paths leading from cluster-of-signs to cluster-of-signs would make 
sense, altho obviously harder to do.

-- 
   Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)
     The primary use of XML is as a technique
     to avoid documenting your interchange formats.

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I really like it. The background massively improves the image, to my mind.
And, especially for a hand-modelled figure, that poor lost guy looks
particularly good. As to the paths looking too much like crackle, have you
tried an agate pattern? The middle of the color map (0.45-0.55 or whatever)
can look nice and stringy without the cell-structure that crackle produces.
It might not work, but could be worth a look!

Am jealous of your impending MacBook Pro. The screens on those machines are
phenomenal - I'm sure this is the main reason for their relative expense.

Bill

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Bill Pragnell wrote:
> I really like it. The background massively improves the image, to my mind.
> And, especially for a hand-modelled figure, that poor lost guy looks
> particularly good. As to the paths looking too much like crackle, have you
> tried an agate pattern? The middle of the color map (0.45-0.55 or whatever)
> can look nice and stringy without the cell-structure that crackle produces.
> It might not work, but could be worth a look!

Thanks for the suggestions, I'll try it!

> Am jealous of your impending MacBook Pro. The screens on those machines are
> phenomenal - I'm sure this is the main reason for their relative expense.

Hm, I did compare Laptops of similiar categories, and Macs aren't that 
expensive in comparison. What I do know though, is that a Mac will 
simply *run* unless something really is broken. And that's something I'd 
like a Laptop to have. Though I'm mostly annoyed how often I have to 
dabble at my Desktop PC when I update drivers and things go haywire, 
it's okay because I figure that *I* make the hardware choices, and maybe 
not the best ones, and how can you *really* expect things to work 100% 
unless you
a) do it completely yourself (aka Linux or such) or
b) its designed and cared for by a company (aka Apple).

And since I'm becoming a multimedia programmer, a Mac was a sensible 
idea to enhance my capabilities and experience with different systems. 
You never know what you might end up with, once I'm done and search for 
a job. :-)

Regards,
Tim

-- 
aka "Tim Nikias"
Homepage: <http://www.nolights.de>

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This picture has come a long way from where it began!

This is an excellent image.  I've not posted here for a long time because
I've been busy with graphic design, and this is the kind of image for which
people pay money to put in magazines, advertisements etc.  The image so
excellently describes the idea of confusion and the burden of making life
decisions in an attractive, cartoonish style. The background hills with the
fluffy clouds give it a very good feel.

If you wanted to try and get your art work in some publications, put that
mac to work rendering it in high resolution and see what you can get from a
stock illustration site.

The only thing I would suggest would be to change the color balance, either
to cool colors to give a cold and somewhat fearful feeling (perhaps by
adding a purplish fill light), or to warmer colors to give a more
optimistic feel (by brightening up the sun and shifting it to yellow/orange
a bit).

-- Kirk

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I just did some quick color-adjustments, adjusting the highlights to more
yellow and the shadows to more purple, and got this. Just my suggestion.

-- Kirk

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Attachments:
Download 'lostguy_18c.jpg' (406 KB)

Preview of image 'lostguy_18c.jpg'

Kirk Andrews wrote:
> I just did some quick color-adjustments, adjusting the highlights to more
> yellow and the shadows to more purple, and got this. Just my suggestion.

Thanks for the suggestions and the example!

Dabbling at the color-balance is often best done with post-processing, 
tweaking colors in POV-Ray (especially once the rendertimes skyrocket 
due to media, focal-blur etc) is very tedious, especially after a 
certain color-balance is already established.
The colors you chose are really more cartoonish and illustrative than 
mine, it definitely is nice. I'll experiment on that end 
(post-processing) later, when the image is done renderwise. Overblowing 
colors for example might look nice (as does glare/bloom), but I like to 
render at a good quality level whilst retaining all details, losing them 
later on isn't a problem, but if you don't have them, you can't get them 
back! ;-)

Regards,
Tim

-- 
aka "Tim Nikias"
Homepage: <http://www.nolights.de>

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Tim Nikias wrote:
> Bill Pragnell wrote:
>> As to the paths looking too much like crackle, have 
>> you
>> tried an agate pattern? The middle of the color map (0.45-0.55 or 
>> whatever)
>> can look nice and stringy without the cell-structure that crackle 
>> produces.
>> It might not work, but could be worth a look!
> 
> Thanks for the suggestions, I'll try it!

The agate-pattern didn't work out. Scripting an entire 
path-generation-thingy seemed overkill, I tend to do that only if I
A) Have that much fun doing it or
B) Can reuse it in later images/shorts

For this image though, it just seemed feasible to simply draw a map by 
hand, as I have control where the paths should go and can check they're 
placement in regards to visibility.

The current background is being rendered now, but will probably take a 
few hours. I increased the image-resolution for the background by 50% 
because I also hand-placed the sign-bundels in the background to match 
the style of the foreground, and their poles get lost unless I use a 
larger resolution or better AA. I figured a larger resolution wouldn't 
harm if I plan to render this poster-sized or such, but the clouds 
(scattering media) take their time...

I'll post the update later.

Regards,
Tim

-- 
aka "Tim Nikias"
Homepage: <http://www.nolights.de>

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