Moho Forum

it's OK. Always think of your intended audience ...

Arr, thanks thanks!

Hope your project's going well, slowtiger Keen to see it at some stage

What "job" does the Sun hold in the show, it seems he is the "wise" character. If this is the case, and the song is a "teaching" song, then it fits perfectly. But if the Sun hold a different "job", him singing might not fit very well. For children, it confuses them when characters flip "jobs". If you look at Jim Henson's shows you see great examples of what I mean as far as "jobs". Each character has its specific "place" in the show and characters are very one dimensional.

Just my two cents. Hope it helps.

Thanks

Now I'm thinking about the background.

See, I can keep the background as it is, but it kind of jars with the main action and I find it may be a bit distracting.

Here's what I already have:




Here's what I'm considering:



or




or

I like the last one myself.

Thanks.

I made that in Photoshop. It's a bit tricker to reproduce that in MOHO.

As a side, I made THE SUPER AMOEBA BROTHERS:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rkWHWUkbE7s

Mike

Another earlier test:




Managed to achieve this result with MOHO:

The last one is really good. Be careful to use different sizes of element, this alone will help a lot.

Mike
I actually like the first one the best as I believe the shapes integrate better. I didn't like the scalloped background foliage in the later ones as it introduced a rather different shape from the characters. I really like the little rounded hills as they echoed the characters giving them the sense that they belong in this world and are an integral part of it. Perhaps you could just alter the colours to not be as saturated to push the hill into the distance. I didn't like the saturated green stripes at all (sorry) in the last version. The last version also gave me a sort of lifeless feel a bit like a desert island rather than a lush bountiful "happy" place.
Anotny

The point is to pust the background father back, which is difficult in a 2D enviorment.

When I've painted pictures and had simular problem, the solution has always been to change the contrast between the foreground and background. To either lighten or darken the background depending on what the forground looks like.

In your case, I would suggest to keep the background as you originally drew it and just lighten it a bit. You'll have to experiment a bit to get it right. But Photoshop should make this easy.

The best of luck to you.

F.C.Snow

Thanks.

I duplicated the background layer and changed the layer blending to Overlay. Looks like a more contrasted layer:



Some other examples. The contrasted image is in the top-left.




Compared with the normal layer:

I suppose the lower left would be the most conventional method of pushing the background away however I quite like the lower Right version as well, It certainly has the most definition between the fore and background elements. It does give the impression of a night cruise to the island and maybe a little incongruous with the sun bopping around. However here is Australia our mountains and hills usually go a deep violet blue in hot sunny weather.

With the top left, my feeling is it still blends a bit with the characters. Have you tried removing the middle island to see what the triangle character looks like surrounded by sky rather than a hill with a similar coloured building on it.

The top Right looks a bit like snow to me.
Hope this is helpful.
Antony

I always found this the hardest part of design: to choose colours which work well together and let the characters stand nicely before the BG. I already mentioned the lessons on John Kricfalusi's site several times, they're great! Let's see if I can put something from those lessons to good effect.

1. The palm tree trunk is nearly the same colour as the float character, and the leaves have the same bightness value as him. You can always test this with your eyes half-closed: if different objects appear as one mess, you need to change something.

Solutions: Just put the palm more to the left behind the yellow triangle ... this also improves the overall composition and adds some nice tension. Additionally, you could make the tree trunk a bit more blue-ish.

2. The hills should keep that nice green. Try to keep it saturated even when you make it lighter.

3. Heavy, in the first screen, should be a bit more saturated as the BG elements, ut IMO it is OK the way it is right now.

4. The path on that right hill is too bright. Try to keep all elements of one hill within a smaller range of brightness, so you can reserve the full contrast to the characters. Again, half-close your eyes to check.

Thanks.

Don't know if I'm moving forwards or backwards with this thing anymore.