[D'rek]

I'm looking for someone to draw/paint/create a lovely background for my timeline project, to be added in as early as the soon-to-be-released timeline v5 and continue foreverafter. I'm open to your own creativity, though it does have to be fairly backgroundey, and I also have a bit of a crazy idea invoking changing season landscapes that I'd probably try and explain in PM if someone's interested.

Full credit will, of course, be added in the title block or anywhere else you like.

If you've never seen my timeline, here's a snippet:
 timeline pre-v5.jpg (59.58K)
Number of downloads: 72

[Hetan]

D'rek - just a question here regarding the background request as a little direction helps.
There are plenty of background images on the 'net and you won't want anything too busy as it will detract from the information you are trying to portray. So perhaps you could put forward some idea of what you want?

[D'rek]

 Hetan, on 28 February 2010 - 11:55 AM, said:

D'rek - just a question here regarding the background request as a little direction helps.
There are plenty of background images on the 'net and you won't want anything too busy as it will detract from the information you are trying to portray. So perhaps you could put forward some idea of what you want?

I don't really have a specific request in mind - obviously it can't be too busy or vivid lest it make the timeline too hard to read, but I'm really quite open to different creative ideas. The one thing, of course, is that I think it will need to be repeatable horizontally, since drawing for the entire length of the timeline would be silly and the timeline is bound to get elongated or shortened after tCG comes out.

The idea that I did have, which is a wee bit crazy is to have a panoramic-type landscape, with the ground up to the horizon under the timeline then non-busy, mostly empty sky behind the timeline and above the timeline clouds and weather. The ground section underneath transitions from flowery/grassy (spring) to desert (summer) to some kind of autumn thing to snowy (winter) and then back to the spring bit. The weather/clouds in the sky above the timeline similarly transition from snowing to raining to sunny to windy for the seasons and repeat as well. But, the two are off-set from each other by half a year, the top one showing northern hemisphere seasons, while the bottom shows the southern hemisphere seasons. Then I'd line up the timeline to the seasonal transitions so at any given point you could look up and down and see what season it is in each of the hemispheres. Confused yet?

Anyways that^^ was my super-ambitious idea, but like I said I'm open to lots of ideas. Furthermore I should point out that there are some boring-er sections of the timeline, especially at the far left, that have lots of open space for more interesting things than backgrounds, like a battlefield or a dragon or a giant plunging warren hole of chaos!


As for pictures on the net, I couldn't find any that I liked. And then I thought, well maybe I could make it more malazaney by recruiting local talent and maybe they'll even be able to put some malazaney imagery into it!

Hope that helps!

This post has been edited by D'rek: 28 February 2010 - 04:18 PM

[A Demon Llama!]

Got Photoshop recently and felt like messing around, so i tried to make a background for you. Its out of some pics i found on the net that are modified somewhat. I tried to do that seasons thing you mentioned although it looks somewhat off and i didnt know the size you needed. Maybe youl like it or maybe not. Anywho, here:

[Sinisdar Toste]

quite a beautiful scene, but i think it looks to washed out. just my opinion but the white overtone could easily be pulled back on and the colours saturated and contrasted more.

[A Demon Llama!]

Yeah, i also have this with its original colour, but i made this one kinda opaque so youd be able to see the writing and whatnot in front of it. I think any darker and it would be difficult to read the print. Also, we dont want to draw the eye to the background too much. Or so I think.

[D'rek]

That looks bloody awesome, DemonLlama, great find and great 'shop! I'll put it behind the timeline and upload the pic to show you the result soon as I get the chance, but I'm 100% confident that this'll look great. As Sinisdar says, the overtone (or whatever you call it) makes it hard to see the seasonal thing (but from what I can make out it does look just like what I was going for). So, your mission should you choose to accept it, is to make a version that is vivid on the bottom and fades to this overtone-effect in the middle, then goes vivid again. I'm so excited now!!!

[D'rek]

Here's a preview with that image in the background:

Zoomed in:
 preview1.jpg (483.57K)
Number of downloads: 26

Zoomed out:
 preview2.jpg (511K)
Number of downloads: 28

[A Demon Llama!]

Yeah, sorry its taking a while, but i wasnt home for a few days. Il get it done as soon as i can.

[D'rek]

 A Demon Llama!, on 07 March 2010 - 07:20 PM, said:

Yeah, sorry its taking a while, but i wasnt home for a few days. Il get it done as soon as i can.

I'm in no hurry. Thanks a ton!

[A Demon Llama!]

Alright. Sorry again that it took me a while. I was somewhat busy, not to mention I'm a lazy bum. I have a few images here. Maybe one of these will come nicely with that time line thingy. Theres one image where its realistic looking and one that is more brush strokes looking. If you need something changed - if some lettering is not visible or some other thing - tell me and I will make it lighter or modify fading. Also, excuse my image posting. I don't know if you can hide these bastards so they wont take up two full screens. Tried looking for that spoiler thingy, but I don't think i know how to use it properly.

[D'rek]

Looking sweet, DemonLlama! I've played with them a bit in the timeline and I think #1 (of the three above) will work the best - I like the vividness of it as opposed to the brush-stroked version and if there's ever some stuff becoming obscured because it's out of the foggy part I'll just increase the vertical page size. The only problem I've noticed is that, unfortunately, the seasons are in the wrong order! (Assuming, that is, that the flowers are spring, grass is summer, winter is snow and fall is dying orange grass.) I'm not sure what the source material is and how you stitched it together, but what do you think are the odds on swapping the positions of the snow and the orange grass? Or moving the orange grass to the left side of the shore and shifting the flowers and green grass leftwards if that would transition better...?

This post has been edited by D'rek: 10 March 2010 - 09:58 PM

[A Demon Llama!]

Yeah, I'm afraid thats not going to work. The source material kinda limits the order i can put things. As you can see i had to mirror the fall/winter one to transition it better. If i keep the order the same the pictures wouldnt make sense. Also, i dont see a way I can rearrange things and still make it transition.

[Corporal Nobbs]

Before you go any further with that, you probably should get permission from the original artist. I don't know if
you already have, but they get pretty uppity about people using their images without permission.
Just a heads up.

[D'rek]

 A Demon Llama!, on 12 March 2010 - 03:58 AM, said:

Yeah, I'm afraid thats not going to work. The source material kinda limits the order i can put things. As you can see i had to mirror the fall/winter one to transition it better. If i keep the order the same the pictures wouldnt make sense. Also, i dont see a way I can rearrange things and still make it transition.

Well the only other thing to do would be to double it all, but that makes a tree-transition issue from winter to spring. Crudely done in Paint, it looks like this:
 post-10061-126836564032.jpg (315K)
Number of downloads: 10

With that in mind, it seems likely I won't be able to use this as the background if I want to get the seasonal transitions thing, but on the other hand it's a great showcase of what I'm looking for if I can get an artist to make me up something!

 Corporal Nobbs, on 12 March 2010 - 09:25 AM, said:

Before you go any further with that, you probably should get permission from the original artist. I don't know if
you already have, but they get pretty uppity about people using their images without permission.
Just a heads up.

This is true, but I want to make sure this going to be even possible to do. Afterwards if it looks like it will actually be workable then I can contact them about that and if they say no I'll at least know it's possible and can start looking for another similar pic. Which in this particular case will probably not be the case since this one is more or less not going to work, but the same applies to whatever I end up actually using.

This post has been edited by D'rek: 13 March 2010 - 10:23 PM

[Morgoth]

you really don't need to do much with the original picture in order for it to be your own product and thus free from copyright

[D'rek]

 Morgoth, on 13 March 2010 - 01:02 AM, said:

you really don't need to do much with the original picture in order for it to be your own product and thus free from copyright

how's that?

D'rek, does not know her internet copyright law

[Vaine]

I assume you got permission from alexiuss to use that image?

[D'rek]

 Vaine, on 13 March 2010 - 06:03 PM, said:

I assume you got permission from alexiuss to use that image?

Or better yet you could actually read the thread you're posting in. I believe I already answered that issue above before you got on your high horse.

[Juli]

Can the full version of that timeline be found somewhere? I tried searching for it but nothing came up.