Help me w/ this damn Shining Force III Wallpaper...

[GaijinPunch]

I'm a bit stuck here... I'm no artist, and no jack about negative space and all that good stuff. I did have a few extra hours to kill b/c I was too lazy to go out today.

SO.... lemme know what you think of this wallpaper. Even if you're not into Shining Force, you might be able to give a hand. Just wondering if it needs a little more cowbell or not.

Basically, the logo I'm not 100% sold on, and also not quite sure about having the characters slightly lower than the middle.

http://www.classicgaming.com/japangaming/gomi/sf3.jpg

800x600 jpg at the moment.

[Drexel923]

Looks pretty cool to me. I like the logo, but I think it needs to be larger. That should help balance the top and bottom a bit. Other than that I like it.

[GaijinPunch]

Hmmm... interesting. I'll play with that.
I purposely shrunk it down (2-3 times) b/c I thought it was hogging the picture. Let's see what the others say... I need to crash.

[maxlords]

Actually, I love the logo size. I see a lot of little dirty spots around the characters and the logo that could use some fixing though. It needs cleaned up but it's a very nice color scheme (mellow on the eyes) and well done :D If you don't touch it up, I'll save it and touch it up myself in Paintshop Pro!

By the way, why does it save a weird zip file as well when I save just the jpg?

What I want now is a nice SF3 wallpaper like that that's all on the right hand side with minimal stuff on the left cause I keep all my icons on the left!

[GaijinPunch]

Thanks Max.
I thought I cleaned it up, but could've missed stuff. I think I know what your'e talking about, but might have you point it out.

I was thinking of making a wallpaper like that, but you need a nice picture to start with that's right-oriented... doesn't always work out that way.

[WiseSalesman]

In general, I really like the design layout. Even though I haven't played the shining force games, I think it's a GREAT wallpaper.

Only comment I'll make; assuming this is for your website, and not for personal use, PLEASE try to design it for at LEAST a 1024x768 resolution. That tends to be the favored resolution for windows PCs these days, and upsizing an 800x600 can get really ugly.

[Ed Oscuro]

I like the layout, and...

...well, I know this is a bit trite and trendy, but is there any sort of a "mesh" texture found in Shining Force 3? If this was for, say, Phantasy Star 2 I'd suggest putting the battle screen's mesh background in there.

Anyhow, the background color doesn't really work too well. It's a logical extension of the grayscale strip with detail in the middle, but it's really rather bland. I'd personally go for something a bit closer in color to a normal Windows background, 'cuz the boxes around icon names will be colored green or blue (usually) and the gray would make them stick out pretty sharply. Not to say that coloring them would cancel this out--just that the gray might make this effect more pronounced.

[sisko]

It's an excellent design! I only have one suggestion.

Make the background a different color. Maybe a light sky blue or something. This would give it contrast with the scene running through the center and make it so you can read icon text too.

If you find that it draws attention away from the center, you could always adjust the contrast of the scene to make it a bit darker, either that or make the scene a darker blue. (Create a new blue layer, adjust opacity until you like it)

[GaijinPunch]

Thanks for the info guys. In answer to the queries/comments:

1: I usually release 1280x1024 and 1024x768... I'll be adding 1600x1200 for this one though. You can see my other wallpapers at Japanese Gaming, in the bonus section.

2: If you read #1, and go look at the other wallpapers, you'll see that I usually use a light blue, etc. Using something other than a gray-ish color can turn off a lot of people. I'm thinking of releasing this in a package. One size, with like 4-5 colors. Bandswidth usually isn't a problem these days. I generally like to keep it Earth tones, but that's just me.

3: The mesh thing... I don't think there's mesh anywhere in the games... at all. There was another illustration that I thought was better to go in the background, but the tint was so far off from everything else, I scratched it and went with an inferior illustration (IMHO).

I'll finish it up this week and post the results... maybe asking for more input.

Thanks!

[Ed Oscuro]

Another problem with the "mesh" thing...I'd forgotten that the wireframe in Phantasy Star 2's battle scenes is psuedo-3D, which doesn't really fit with this at all. Beyond that, I was thinking that putting in a grassy terrain texture would achieve the same goals I had in mind as well, but it would be a good deal of work.

[WiseSalesman]

heh.....always knew that was your site but didn't know you made the wallpapers. If that's the case, I actually have a few pieces of your work in my backgrounds folder right now. Lunar Silver Star Story, Fausette Armor, and Emerald Dragon.

[GaijinPunch]

Ed... I'm always looking for ways to stick a grid in (a la my sig) but not sure how it would look in this wallpaper. Ya know... gotta watch out for much cowbell.

SalesMan:
Kewl -- glad to see that someone's downloading them. The Asuka one is the latest, and I couldn't resist b/c it was so damn easy. I did it really quickly. This one took quite a while actually...cutting everyone out was tricky. I assume the final product will be done by the weekend. I'll make another post when they're done. So far - I like this one... a lot.