Playing round with L4d Posters Options

[MonkeyFiend]

Since my sad life revolves around coding, its nice to play with arty-farty programs once in a while... so since the SDK for left 4 dead isn't out yet, I thought I'd have a mess around with a campaign poster, since if we do get some maps out we'll need to make one:



and I know theres some bad brushwork to the left of francis, but having a low attention span, I got bored and decided to work on some mods

[fido77]

looks good monkey!!!

[Magik5]

not bad at all, may have a go at a few of these at weekend

all though i have to point out the sm logo sticks out a lot at the bottom

[=R6= Raile]

pretty good.

you want feedback?
or just showing off?

[MonkeyFiend]

was mainly just seening how easy it would be to make a poster - mainly just cutting the figures from other posters and saving the layers for future use.

I was going to make the dead by dawn text bit a rounded orangey gradient at the bottom, like a sun dawning but got bored and gave up to do something else.

Apart from this and the bad brushwrok next francis - where I just got lazy, any other feedback would be good

[Magik5]

are the buildings etc screen grabs from the game?

as for the text, imo its a litle soft, and perhaps a slight stroke would improve it a little

rest is pretty nice tho =]

[=R6= Raile]

well I'm about to get picky, as it's already probably as good as it needs to be,
and I already think it's pretty good, but here are the first things I'd say if you wanted to push it further.


now either you can match the people to the background, or the BG to the people, but personally I think the BG is better so would match the people to the BG.

match the blacks by taking some blue out of them on the people. the BG has less blue.
after matching them, i'd lift the BG black levels a bit. some of the buildings are pretty far away, and look like they have darker blacks then the people. atmosphere would prevent this in real life. oh and the shadows of the people. hmm i think they aren't quite matching up with the BG shadows of the buildings. i'm not sure, did you put those in? or was it just kinda dark on the bottom half of the BG the way you found it?
match the highlights, specifically louis. needs more red in it. probably a little less blue aswell. that BG explosion is making the whole image orange. check the white markers on the street. they are going orange. they aren't as bright as louis' shirt so he shouldn't go that orange, but more towards that.

oh and maybe bring down the highlights on louis. he's a bit blow out. nothing in the picture should have higher values then that explosion. i dont think louis' values are, but they are close. probably too close.

i'd say it's all about matching the levels of the two elements on this shot. everything else looks good. you just need to work on the black levels and the highlights and then it will really sit them in there. midlevels look pretty good (although that might need adjusting once the black levels and highlights are adjusted, would have to see it.)

haha ok i'm really being picky.. but i'm at work, and we sit in a big theatre and pick eachothers work apart all day.. but sometimes small adjustments to blacks and highlights can really sell that last little bit

[MonkeyFiend]

nope, the building are mishmashed from other places, the ground is from karkand

Agree with the text, I was going to add a sharpen on the edges once I made the dawn gradient at the bottom, but never got round to it...

[=R6= Raile]

hey upon you just saying that, the BG looks pretty resonably matched up. with the exception of the left side, as you already said
shadows in the FG curb on the street i'd make darker tho

[MonkeyFiend]

I'm sure I can just click on autolevels and that will fix everything

[=R6= Raile]

hey well do you want to be a coder for the rest of your life or what??

[MonkeyFiend]

I don't suit berets or listen to Jazz, so wouldn't fit in with with you fairy artistic mincer types

Real men can code ASM!

[=R6= Raile]

wait when did i say i was a real man?

and yeah there's a scary amount of french at my work

[Magik5]

asm is for pure, unconditional geeks.