Screenshot Saturday - Dec 21 (Patreon)

Bit of a shorter one this week, as I've got bogged down working on the roof tiles. I've learnt  a lot and made good progress, but it has been extremely time consuming! 

I started out by applying the new shingle texture to the roof, and attempting to make it look decent with a bit of shadow burning and what not. I then eventually reached the realization that this texture was simply too detailed. It looked OK close up, but at the resolutions it would actually be visible in game it was just a blur of confused detail. What to do? I decided to rethink, using the new texture as a base upon which I could draw a more simple shingle roof with a brush.

First step was just crushing all the color out. 

Then I tried layering some highlights, adding an edge and so on, to capture a feeling of size. Again, the idea was to make something that looked good at a distance, rather than looking great close up.

I was fairly happy with the results at first, but then I could begin to see that they were -still- too detailed for 50% view of the image, which would be the most common zoom level in game.

In a final act of desperation, I simply used the smudge tool on the layers I had built up. Finally!  nice clear bit of shape, even at 50% zoom. It does need some shadow work, and a bit of color tweaking, but I actually have a good base to work from now. 

Getting to this point... a stupid amount of time to be honest. But I did learn a bit, and I think I am now on track to getting something quite nice.