Backgrounds #1

Because I don't draw the backgrounds in Toonboom, I wanted to go over my process in creating them a bit.

First of all, I always start out by looking for references, more often online or in my reference folder (with several hundreds of references I accumulated over the years), in order to get a feel and idea on the kind of background I want to draw. Sometimes I already have a certain image in mind. Then, I will specifically look for detailed references to get things like the texture of certain objects right or to draw with a more coherent composition (although more often than not I'm still unsure of how exactly to go about finding a good composition). 

The following are some references I looked at for the city backgrounds:

Then I usually proceed by sketching out some ideas, sometimes digitally and sometimes by hand. This time I chose digital sketches, since I needed the reference of my character and her animation in order to make her fit together with the background.

  

 Then I proceeded to actually draw the background digitally. I tried to make the background look as bleak as possible, which is why it is kept relatively simple and, above all, dark.

 

For the other scenes in the city I merely reused the background by e.g. rotating it or stretching and zooming in, in order to lessen my work load just a little bit. This works well, since the backgrounds are meant to look repetetive to support the general tone of the first half of the animation.