Well, I'm back from my honeymoon and I've got a little Halloween treat (very little, some would say) to start off this spooky week! Check out the News section of the Nearly Departed website. Hopefully I'll have more tricks and treats throughout the week.

cool idea john :lol: nige gets printing

Cool! If I wouldn't have to sneak into my roommates room to print things with his printer I'd be printing right now. I guess it's cool to hang it on the wall, too.

Whats holloween all about anyway? :?:

LOL... Noodle, it's great hving you here on the forums with us. I am continually learning about our cultural differences... both those of yours that I have no knowledge of, and those of ours that you're not familiar with. Funny – I never considered that a Wikipedia article would be needed to describe what Haloween is! We all grew up with it here and it's just second nature.

Well waddya know... according to that wiki Halloween originated over here; turns out we're a bunch of pagans and I never even knew! :D

halloween is very similar to a holiday in Judaism. It's name is: Purim. also, it has a different meaning. but we wear costumes as well. :D

I've updated the gallery section of the Nearly Departed website with a couple new backgrounds and some more development art and sketches.

Me too
Hey - Congrats! I just got back from my Honeymoon as well! Kind of a late one though - We got married in July... Nice mask! So how are you doing your backgrounds on paper then scanning them in?

I do rough sketches of the backgrounds, then I do tight pencils at about 11" x 8.5" or so, then ink them by hand. I scan them into Photoshop and color them at 300dpi I so. That way, if any of the backgrounds were to be used in any printed material, they won't print all pixelated, or if I wanted to change the resolution of the game I wouldn't need to recolor everything. For the final game I save them at the size they'll be (800 x 600 pixels at 72dpi).

The ceiling is just lines drawn with a ruler (though the jpeg compression might make it look like there's a texture.) The other textures are either made by Photoshop filters or by manipulating textures from modeling packs and free stock photo websites.

ink
You say you ink them in before you scan t hem - but do you use a special ink pen? How do you get the nice various line widths? I do rough sketches of the backgrounds, then I do tight pencils at about 11" x 8.5" or so, then ink them by hand. I scan them into Photoshop and color them at 300dpi I so. That way, if any of the backgrounds were to be used in any printed material, they won't print all pixelated, or if I wanted to change the resolution of the game I wouldn't need to recolor everything. For the final game I save them at the size they'll be (800 x 600 pixels at 72dpi).