Undergrowth

I was going to save this one for later, but, man, what a magnificent painting! (Sorry for the delay; I contracted something from the Chinese food from the restaurant near the Plaza. I have no idea how I'll stay alive after the Chinese government succeeds in its plans to take over the world, as my stomach doesn't handle Chinese well at all!) So, back to the pretty colors.

Brilliant, isn't it? Another work of van Gogh, and part of a series. I have decided to focus on this one, because I got the opportunity to see this one up close, and it was the cues in this painting that I admired.

Although, honestly, it's hard for me to remember most of them. So, while I think of things to point out, let's look at color.

In a painting centered on plants, you shouldn't be surprised at the amount of green in this picture; it's a yellower kind of green, as opposed to a bluer kind of green. In fact, I'll bet that if you look in a large enough crayon set (perhaps the one in the Mac OS X Color Picker?) you'll even see this kind of green, neatly labelled "Forest Green" or "Pine Green" or something similar. And, since this is a real forest in a real temperate area, it's got lots of yellow grass, too! A bit ruddy here and there (I cannot explain this, but I'm sure that with this color set a bit of red would do nicely in your level), but straight on the mark! I feel like I'm at the Bükk already, wading through a forest full of those watchful trees with those weird eyelike formations on their trunks. Anyway, the point is, if your forest is in a temperate area and it has sunlight worth a damn, IT HAS GOT TO HAVE TALL GRASS. REALLY. I'm not making this up; it ruins no color scheme, and it looks very realistic. I prefer yellow.

We are not done with colors yet! Direct your attention to the trunk. Look reeeally carefully. What colors do you see? Brown, darkish, for certain sections of the trunk... green, for the ivy clinging to it (good trunks have ivy!)... and, what's this? PURPLE

That's right, boys and girl. Zuh. Purple! Why, why, why? Our trunks back at home fail to have purple, don't they! Well, this is the screw-you-this-is-a-painting kind of purple, the one that lurks in the shadows in the corners of your memory. The kind you find, for instance, on unripe plums, practically speaking. Anyway, this is a purple put there with artistic license, and its presence makes it all the better. Why? It's practically the color opposite of the green! Okay, not really, because green's opposite is red, but tone down the hue a bit, dial down the saturation to the level of the green, tweak the brightness, and there we are! Artistic little purple shadows on the other end of the green spectrum. Forwards is yellow, while backwards is purple. Tidy, no?

Okay, now we can talk about design. Down to up! This painting is divided into three layers on one side, and two on the other. The two on the left aren't really layers at all, so we'll be ignoring them for the moment. The bottom of the painting is encompassed in large by the green bushes. They are very pervasive, yet they are sparse in some areas; one can clearly see the dirt underneath. The lesson learned? Lots of bushes, pretty high (I think this amounts to one or two blocks' height in Super Mario World. This would do very conveniently on Layer 1, rising up from the ground around our hero. One or two blocks' height, I said. Then, directly above it, for a brief period, we have our yellow grassyness; this should probably extend a block or so above our bushy undergrowth. I have a feeling that, if using such crazy things as a static Layer 1, it would be prudent to place this high grass on Layer 1, behind our bushes, extending out for a bit on either side of the bush. Otherwise, if using a scrolling Layer 1 (I see no reason for this, as forests generally don't scroll that much in the immediate background, but do as you like), then it should probably go as some ExGFX attachment to your bushes. Just a thought. Now, above that, we have a fairly light and bright forest canopy, á la real forests. However, notice that the light drifting out from beyond the leaves is not blue, like some ingame forests I have seen, but rather green, like it is in real forests. So, remember, palette masters: backgrounds in forests are green! Oh, and the canopy goes on Layer 1. That is all.

About the other side of the paiting: it's a trunk, yes. You should probably put those pretty far apart. And not show their tops. Maybe have a blocky trunk on Layer 1, and have leaves in front of it on Layer 2. Interesting stuff.

So, a summary: real forests have yellow! And purple! And use green as a background! And they should have many bushes, more grass, and not quite as many trees. And the order (bottom to top, viewer's perspective!) is bushes, grass, canopy.

I hope you enjoyed this ms every broadcast, and see you soon! Hopefully regularly this time!