Backgrounds #3

The last part of the posts dealing with the backgrounds. This time I will explain my process regarding all the backgrounds of the second part of the animation, which mainly consists of forests.




References
As always I started out by searching for a few references:

One of the biggest inspirations for this part of the animation was from episode 11 of "The King's Avatar" (全职高手). I really admired the artists and animators for including such detailed and interesting backgrounds for just a 20 minute episode. I actually wanted to include detailed backgrounds like this in my animation, but I quickly realized that my drawing skills weren't really up to par and it would have taken way too long. Nevertheless, a large part of the look of my backgrounds was taken from this. 

I already uploaded similar images from the background of the Digimon Adventure series. Both this series and my animation deal with their main characters being thrown into a fantasy world, which is why I thought taking inspiration from this would be fitting. I thought that I could use a similar washed out art/colouring style to represent a kind of otherworldly feeling in the different world. 

I really would have liked to incorporate something like this into my backgrounds but, to be honest, I mostly forgot about it in the end. I kind of used a similar style while colouring, though, because of the brush I was using.

This references mainly acted as an idea on how to create depth in a forest.

This reference acted more of a direct reference than the others, since I tried to incorporate it into my image nearly identical, because I though it would make for an interesting obstacle and set piece for my animation.

The last few references were photos I took while travelling around New Zealand. I tried to base some of the composition and leading lines through the trees off of these photos, which I will explain further when talking about the sketches.

Ideas and Sketches

Here are the aforementioned sketches.

I started out with some very simple sketches. These should act as a basis for any future sketches, as well provide me with a general direction to go to regarding e.g. the animation and movement in the scene.   

I then moved on to move detailed sketches, where I tried to define a more coherent composition.

Drawings

The actual process of drawing the images in Photoshop often involves even more sketching and creating layer upon layer to get the colours right. 

Creating the backgrounds was interesting for me personally, because I rarely work on images without lineart, so it was a rather rare experience and occurrence.

I will go over the backgrounds in order of their appearance in the animation.

I have split this background into two parts, a part in front of the character and the part behind the character. I did this after I realized that my character would hide part of the trees after standing up, which I thought shouldn't really be possible. 

This was actually the first forest background I drew. I used the reference image with the tree loosely hanging between rocks here, but I tried to not copy it completely and simplify it too. Nonetheless, I ended up redrawing it later on, since it didn't fit the style of the other backgrounds anymore. Furthermore, after comparing the old and new images, I realized that I mostly used cold colours in the old one, which convey a more distant feeling than I intended.

Even though there is generally less detail, I prefer this version due to its more vibrant colours. Furthermore, I found some interesting Photoshop brushes emulating watercolours and foliage, which brought about a more interesting and complex texture. To add variety to the colour scheme, I exchanged the flowing pink in the trees for a bright orange.

The second image is the foreground, since I wanted to try and create more depth in my image. The bushes even further in the front support that idea as well, in addition to framing the shot.

This one basically has the same procedure as the other images. Moreover, I tried to create a sense of depth here as well, but this time just by using perspective lines. In addition to this, I also tried to frame the image with the trees and other elements of the shot.

The last background of the animation. I had two layers here, the cliff and the actual background, in order to move the cliff separate from the rest when the character is running up to the edge.