Help me with lighting please!

[Grifter730]

Guys, I desperately need help. Whenever I paint something, I can never tell the type of pallette that I should use, and how the lighting affects the image. I did this image in Painter, but as you can see, the lighting really sucks. Can anyone tell me what I can do to improve the color pallette of this image?

http://www.skycastlestudios.com/mirror_small.jpg

Riki

[Laconic]

Im not sure about the colours - i dont know any more than you there.

lighting - decide your light sorce(s). Increase the contrast, make the lights lighter and the darks darker.

The alcove's with the candles - the ovals are wrong for the angle you're viewing at.

What is the concept?

Laconic

[Grifter730]

Basically it's a background for like a game. You know, like those RPG games where you move characters around and stuff. I can't get the lighting right though :(

[franz]

Dude, fix the perspective! I'd say the horizon is way too high for the kind of view you want. And you have mirrored the image, that won't exactly help if you want convincing lighting.. There's shadows with no visible light sources all over the place, why do the knights cast a shadow, do they have a lamp behind them? Same goes for the columns on the upper level, how can they be illuminated from behind if there's a wall behind them? The stairs don't make sense either.. Every step has two sides yet most of the steps in the image have only one value - the sides that are facing us should be darker/lighter (probably darker here).

Basically pick one main light source first and then stick with it.. And don't bother with details & secondary light sources until you roughed out the larger shapes.

[Grifter730]

So where should the horizon be...?

As far as the shadows go, like I said, I have no clue on how lighting really effects the objects. I just figure that the light source comes from the candles on the sides, and one light from the ceiling, which isn't being shown. I figure the candles would make the shadows for the knight's armor...? Or would it be going the other way...? I really don't know, that's why I'm asking.

About the details. Since I draw the image first, it's already detailed before I color it. Should I just erase the pencil/ink lines with paint and redraw the details again afterwards? Seems like double work. I'm new at painting digitally obviously, so anything you can add would be great!

Can anyone do some quick perspective fixes? just a sketch over the original would be great if possible. Or maybe do a basic rough lighting concept for the picture? The idea is that the room really is supposed to be mirrored. The image will be used as a background image in a Flash website, and it actually is called "The Mirror Room", because I'll be adding mirrors in the room using Flash. I really mirrored the room as part of a play on words more than out of laziness. Like I said, any additional help and pointers would be much appreciated.

[franz]

Uhm, I'd say fix the linework first and worry about lighting later.

http://www.poncholounge.com/port/sm1.jpg
There's no real horizon line, what you have is a horizon area :)

http://www.lateralscience.co.uk/perspective/perspective/25.jpg
Read up on the 'cone of vision' - the lower part of your image is too distorted. In the upper part of the image we're looking straight into the room, yet on the bottom we're close to looking straight down..

http://www2.evansville.edu/studiochalkboard/chlk/lp-diminish.gif
Don't forget about diminuition.. Those tiles on the upper walls are quite off

http://www.poncholounge.com/port/sm2.jpg
You could/should switch to a two-point-perspective instead of one-point and introduce another VP like this.. Might make more sense for the kind of view you're doing (camera on the ceiling)

[Grifter730]

Wow, I'm wondering if shrinking the image makes it easier for the perspective point to be more of an area instead of an exact point. I went and fixed all those lines before starting to paint on it. Is there an easy way to fix the lines without having to repaint the whole thing?

Thanks for those perspective images, all of them helps me understand your point much better. In regards to the two-point perspective, does the perspective distortion from Photoshop work? Seems like that's what you did, and it seems like it created the 2nd point perspective just fine (assuming that all the lines were straight to begin with).

If there is no "quick fix" to this, I may just create that 2nd point perspective with Photoshop to make this as good as it can get without too much work. Before I start painting on the next one, I will post it here first. I will have the next drawing done by Monday night, I hope I will get responses before I have to finish coloring it by tues or wed. This is the second one I've done, and I'm still trying to learn. Thanks again for your input!

[Erik]

No, sorry. No easy tricks there if it is so many lines to correct. If you had just one you might get away with it... Shrinking will do something but the image will simply become harder to see so it won't really help you. You can however work really big, then shrink a little. There's always going to be some perspective error if you do the lines by hand, so try to be really precise and then use the shrinking trick just a little.

The photoshop trick: i'm curious, could you post the result?

The only trick i can think of is foreground objects. They obscure part of the image and make it harder to see perspective errors. But they obscure part of the image...

The thing Franz did on the left and right sides of the picture could be solved by having foreground silhouettes of for instance sculptures like the ones in the image in stead of the straight black areas, as if you look out through them. Will be a little awkward though...

And please don't mirror your image... It will be boring if it's so symmetrical. Try a viewpoint a little to one side or make at least the statues and decoration assymetrical.

One last pint: fix your circles. I have no time to draw a proper one here but the circles in your painting have all become elliptical. Circles in perspective are quite hard to get right, and you can't just rotate a computer generated ellipse either! Handdrawn circles will often become bulged, elliptical, whatever this takes a lot of practice.

But keep it up! The idea is nice and i am curious on how the mirrors will work!

Quickest fix i can think of: take a 3D program, lay out the vbasic shapes for the room (and yhe circles!) and find a good camera. Then work from the shot you did and color that. That works really really fast!

[Grifter730]

I probably will just do that perspective fix using Photoshop. There's really no reason to put anything in place of the black areas, because this will be a panning image. Instead of having the black areas, I can just crop the image at its narrowest points.

Is there some sort of a guide on how to draw circles in perspective...? I have no clue how they're supposed to look at any sort of angle.

The mirrors will just be rectangular mirrors that are floating about in the room. It's hard to explain why there are floating mirrors in the room without giving anything away, but I'm not allowed to speak anymore about it than that :(

I have a question. My next image will be a 2-point perspective shot. The room will be much like this one, in that it's a view from somewhere at the top. If you take this image, and you move the top perspective point to somewhere on the top right side of this image, and take the second perspective point in the right side towards the bottom of the image, will my vertical lines be all parallel to each other?

Another question, would it be okay if I used Photoshop to do flats and basic comic-style shading to an image, and then bring it to Painter to clean it up? Or is mixing the two techniques a big no-no?

I seem to be trying to solve two different problems: perspective and coloring. Thank you guys for all your input again.