Re: misao's wall. the color gradient does help unify the border with the bg, but it is still too "structured" (as justin says) for me. i tend to shy away from "neat" stuff like uniform borders, perfect symmetry, and whatnot. that's my bias. it's up to you if you want to speak the extra time and effort to give non-"neat" stuff a go. :P

re: my wall. haha, speaking of disliking "neat" stuff... -__- one might wonder why i'm doing something so centered and symmetrical in its layout. i blame the two-panel image for not leaving me with much choice. xD;

anyway, it might be my slowness but i'm having a little trouble understanding the specific position of the text that you are talking about, justin. do you mean "across the center" as in over and on top of the two people? or do you mean "framing" as in on either side of the two people? .__.

well, here's the original "more panels" idea i had. it turned out kinda weird so i didn't keep going. but since justin brought up more panels, even if it's not exactly like this, i thought i'd stick it up.

@ asa: Yea, that's going the direction that I was suggesting with the panels. The thing with adding the panels in with different character profiles/scenes is that it fills in the empty spaces, and it give a more cohesive feel to the whole wall. Plus, there's more involvement with the characters in the wall, since there's more opportunity to see them.

I understand you want to go for a minimalist look, but minimalism works because it provides vivid or stark contrasts, something that's missing in your first draft due to the subject matter, not because of any failings on your part. Once you add the panels in and add the supporting elements, the wall will cease to be minimalistic in many senses, but I argue it's for the better.

And with the text placement, I meant across the center of the wall, but on either side of the two main panels. You might have to reposition the smaller panels so they don't get in the way of the text, but it really depends on what style you make the text and the size of the text. Your wall is looking brilliant so far :)

Mmkay. I'll do the borders at the corners then. And i'll try and make a 4:3 rez as well. ^^
@Tsu: If you prefer without borders, i'll post in a borderless version too when i do get it up in the gallery. ;D Oh and incase the borders does'nt work. xD

@Asa: Ooh i like the additional panels, and how it darkens towards the sides. Yup you should stick with that idea, and now i don't think you need any text anymore. ;D

Argh, walling during a slump is so hard -- even though there is an idea to go on, i lack the motivation to even open photoshop. >__> however, i did manage to force myself to do a bit of work. so here's the update.

the panel number, size, and positioning have yet to be finalized, but unless i add a small image of fuyumine (the man) to balance out the number of pictures of naoto (the girl), any other additional panels will be blanks for the sake of composition. i'm not quite satisfied with the layout as of yet, so i'll probably play around with that more.

any thoughts?

and i likely won't be adding text. it's not that i favor this wall being textless...just i have NO idea what the text should say. o__o i know the emotion behind these images, the background story, and all, but i can't put my finger on an appropriate phrase. D:

@Asa: The composition looks good so far. It has a nice balance to it. My only suggestion for now, is for you to make the box on the right side more like the box on the left side. Color-wise i mean. It's like that squarish box with the square patterns on the right side has a kinda gradient to it. Which is rather pale, and makes the squared pattern on it appear to be kinda blurred. I think it would be good to do the same color style as you did on the box on the left side so that the squared patterns would be more visible. I hope you get what i mean. xD But other than that, it's looking great.

Now onto my seemingly never ending wallpaper in progress. D:

I've done certain variations of the borders and tried to blend it in with the whole painted smooth background. But that's really hard to achieve, and this is the best i could do. =(

Top left and bottom right border design.

Top left and right border design.


Im not really liking either one, so there's a high probability that i'll just post either the borderless and textless version, or just a borderless version.

asa

i lack the motivation to even open photoshop. >__>

Yeah me too. .___.

@ asa: The layout looks good so far. How about you make the manga panels 'pop' a bit? Make them brighter, and less faded than the supporting panels, but keep the faded effect noticeable. I think it will provide nice contrast against the dark, and 'fill' in the bg a lot better. Of course, you also have to keep the faded theme going to, so it might require some adjustments.

I haven't touched photoshop in over a month and a half. Though i mainly blame classes >_>

@ chibi: I like the version with the designs at the corners better, but I also kind of like it without the designs too. I guess the whole border design in general didn't work out to well =\ Either way though, I can't see anything else that needs fixing or adjusting.

Ok well i've submitted it in the gallery. Thanks again to everyone who helped me. ;D

Didn't really have time to edit much so this is a very quite update. added a few rectangles and took into consideration both suggestions (image panel brightness, blank panel pattern). didn't play with arrangement yet.

I still think the patterned box on the right needs to be slightly more darker. About the other boxes, well i think the box on the far top right side needs to be pulled in more to the left. (Nearer the rest of the boxes). Besides the things that i mentioned, i think it already looks good. Just needs some more proper arrangements with the boxes.

Ok, i have to be honest with myself and say that i'm unable to keep going with the other panels version. i really can't find it in me to like it one bit. o__o (i mainly think that because i get a strong sense of that "wind-blowing-dust-drifting-not-a-soul-in-sight-but-us-in-this-vast-land" type of loneliness. filling it up just takes away what the void manages to communicate.) and when i don't like it, i don't want and don't know how to fix it.

so i went back it to, removed the side panels, shortened the main panels, and went for the text idea. i wasn't able to articulate the mood of the vector very well, so pardon the awkward phrases. and yeah, the right side is a little messy compared to the left. :/

I prefer the text version. Not so messy and distracting, besides, you have a thing for good typography :D the current version looks ready to be used imo.

P.s. what an angsty wall ^^

It's a shame that you didn't like the previous versions, but I guess it couldn't be helped. The text works, though i'm not too fond of the use of the word "divergence" as part of the main text. It sounds awkward, and rather forced. A word that is simpler would do the trick, even though you won't get to show off your diction =P

I digress though. I'm picky about grammer, especially word choice. The font for the main text works well, though I don't think is stands out as much as it should. Try changing the some of the fonts of the background text so to fonts that aren't similar to the font of the main text. Doing that will probably help out.

Thanks dee x3

@justin: i know. i didn't like the panel idea to start with, but i tried. forcing myself just didn't really work. >__< and i dislike the use of "divergence" too. i was just stuck for the right word. let me explain. the idea is that the two of them used to walk the same path in life, but they've reached a fork in the road where they must go their separate ways. more like the guy dies but yeah... ^^; "fork" sounds stupid, "crossroads" is unsuitable, and the only word i'm left with is "point". i didn't choose point because it sounds plain. but i'll see if i can come up with a better word :]

and

I'm picky about grammer

i'm picky about spelling. jks >xD so many people spell it wrong for some reason or other :O
-----
update:


i settled for "farewell". and i changed the font for "towards my tomorrow" and "towards your yesterday".

I need help with colors (guess who's color blind) and this:

What is drawn in that painting? I don't know how to color it :s

Original scan

@ asa: Text makes a lot more sense now :) Plus 'farewell' is a classically beautiful word to use.

@ dioma: Nice vectoring. For the thing that you don't know how to color, maybe it's some sort of stylized portrait of a person? Dunno. But filling it in with a purplish pastel color could work to keep the theme of different primary colors for all of the art frames.

The coloring is nice, and you brought out the ukiyo-e stylized art very well with the pastels and the texture. However, as far as I noticed, whenever things get hectic, ukiyo-e art tends to use brighter or more vivid primary colors on the character to make them stand out from the clutter of the environment. Whatever the aspect that the artist wanted to emphasize, they usually did so by coloring that aspect contrasting the background in brightness or just hue and tone.

That being said, I would change the color of the yellow part of the character's kimono, since it's right next to the same color and tone part of the umbrella. I would also suggest bringing up the saturation a bit in the main character's clothes, facial marking, lips, and nails.

In regards to just color diversity, I would have the curtains (?) on the left side of the wall a different color and hue than the rice-paper wall. What color though, I'm not too certain...perhaps a blueish color?