The details Merez added were nice... maybe too nice. Details make the trees look closer, therefore smaller, therefore less-threatening. I prefer the original for the same reasons I like your rendering of the fox on the boat, both are really quiet and eerie.
This is pretty awesome. Very nice work,and I like the subdued colors you've got going, while still maintaining contrast. Keep it up!
So I took off the title. This is kind of what I was thinking about before for coloring but didn't end up doing. I made the fox (and the door too) a subtle brownish and smoothed/changed the angle of the light rays too. I started doing aa on the trees but quickly gave that up. Maybe this'll be the colored version that I mentioned before. I have another edit I tried out that's almost all black with the idea that the viewer would interact with the image somehow to turn the lights (light rays) on. In that version the fox is just a pair of single pixel eyes and turning on the lights reveals it. The building is visible though and you have to open the door to access the switch for lighting the forest.
Try out all you like :). I believe you don't need to make the scene more greenish. Good luck making 100 more!
I hadn't really considered that. I was thinking about either doing all completely greyscale, or all a muted greenish grey like what I ended up with, or all a slightly stronger and more obvious green, or having the darker values be bluish green and the lighter values yellowish green. A big goal I had was a theme of a mysterious forest. To me I view images with muted colors as "quiet" (literally being almost mute) and outright greyscale as "silent" (or completely mute) which I thought matched the idea of mysteriousness, as rather than the image projecting itself out to the viewer (like when a person is speaking and taking what was internal and externalizing it into words for the one they're speaking to) the image is passively open for the viewer to enter into and explore for themself. Looking at it now I think maybe I should have stuck with a just slightly more obvious green, since it's kind of hard to tell it's not just greyscale, but maybe not.
Since I plan for the fox to be recurring I think I might have it colored like that at some point, especially if I do something animated that has all muted colors and then after a few moments the fox walks into the scene and redirects the viewer's attention.
Maybe instead a scene like this, or even this one, could start out nearly greyscale like this and then once and action is taken to enter the forest the colors intensify slightly in a few stages and the fox gains its own color like that.
So serene! I feel like that fox may offer some mysterious leaves for a price..
Still, thanks for that link, it made my day (or rather night). Good luck with your own project.
I was thinking an interactive webpage, with things to click on the image and places to go. The one I made in the past was small and non-linear.
The site I linked to before isn't something I made, just something that in the past I had made my own project based on. :)
I love it, I love it. It will be some sort of game/interactive webpage made from this picture?
BTW I must post this here - you sir made the BEST webpage (anasomnia) in the uniwerse.
Yes, very atmospheric.
BTW, listened to Simon and Garfunkel's version of Scarborough Fair and was immersed into the picture even more.
Really good and effective. For some reason fox's pose doesn't feel right for the whole composition. I would prefer her being relaxed, sitting or something. But this is just a subjective nuisance.
This is a very nice piece. Merez had a nice point about the details, however your original version feels a bit more mysterious due to the silhouetted effect of the trees in the background and the pitch black foreground which is not illuminated by the light rays. This allows some question on what is in the foreground and what is in the background flattening the image, which is a nice effect. The choice on which one is more visually appealing is simply a matter of perspective, just don’t be afraid to try something new if its out of your comfort zone. With that said, there seems to be a lot of back story involved with its creation and after looking how you did it on your blog, your approach is quite unique as well. Overall a very interesting work of art, and a great beginning to a project.
Those details look really good. I had considered adding highlights to leaves and various faint light rays, and maybe some foliage farther back in the background, but I felt that the dense concentration of varying pixels at the center of interest would draw attention there more strongly if the areas outside the focal point had fewer details and were reduced to basic shapes, kind of similar to how peripheral vision works. :)
Normally I avoid text, and I think this is actually the first time in many years that I've added any to anything pixel art or not, but in this case I was thinking in terms of having this be the title page of a project. Have you ever seen 99 rooms? I had to make a (much smaller) project similar to that years ago in school. This is an opening room to the Bewildering Forest. :)
The art was perfect. Deserved my favorite, but why not more detail?
These forests are lovely. The foliage is pretty much perfect. The text at the bottom kinda wrecks it though, imo.
Nice job! I like all the tones showing levels and to top it all off there is a fox!
So beautiful and serene! Amazing...