Lookin' sharp... literally
. These two images look really nice, but there's something that bothers me about them.
These have no depth of field in these. Usually, in a photo, the lens is focussed at a particular distance, and everything that's closer or further away is out-of-focus. Our eyes have lenses too, so the same thing happens there. Field of depth becomes especially important in images like this, where there is no ground or horizon. As long as two objects overlap, it's easy to tell which is in front and which is further back. But consider, for example, the little fighter positioned in the middle of the second screen, under the "R". Is it far back, flying somewhere under the big ship, or is it actually that the size difference between the two ships is so huge, and this ship really is about to fly into the big ship's engine exhausts? The green bullet next to the small ship would seem to indicate that the small ship is probably much further back, but I just can't tell. Similarly, I can't tell if the fighter in the bottom left corner is about to blast that asteroid into pieces, or if its bullets are gonna fly above it. That afore-mentioned bullet near the small ship seems to indicate that the bullets fly above the asteroid, but again, it's hard to be sure, because for all I know the fighter could have moved five metres down between shots.
The same goes for the first screen - the ship in front looks great, don't change it - but the ship behind it should be at least slightly out-of-focus, so that we can tell that it is indeed far behind.
The one other thing that bothers me is the style of the outside frame. It looks really nice... and if you made it gold instead of steel, it would look perfect for a Victorian-era game like Martian Dreams
. I know, this is probably a conscious effort on your part to refer back to the 19th century as the most pioneerish period in history, but it just feels out of place in the 27th century.
For the record, I very much disagree with Bob about the first image. If you were making a Star Wars game or something, yeah, it would be a ripoff to make something so Priv-like... but since this is supposed to be Priv with different ships, I think that image works perfectly. It works precisely because everyone knows the composition was taken straight from the original.