Transcripts
1. Introduction: In animation,
creating backgrounds is important because we need our animated characters
to stand within a world. Hi, my name is Toniko
Pantoja and I am an artist within the
animation industry. I worked on production such as, How To Train Your Dragon 3, Croods 2, Kipo and the Age of the Wonder beast amongst others. The importance of having
a background is to give our character
a world to live in, a world to interact with, and just to establish a
stage for them to perform. In this class, we
are going to paint background specifically
for animation. First, we're going to
talk about perspective and understanding
the horizon line, the one-point perspective and
the two-point perspective. Then we're going to move towards grabbing our inspiration
and references. Then coming up with
sketches to come up with different compositions, layout, stages for background,
and how to get that fully finished with color,
lighting and shadows. I'm going to be using Adobe
Photoshop as a software, and you might need
a drawing tablet. If you're ready to start painting backgrounds,
let's get started.
2. Getting Started: Hey there. We're
going to be making a background for our
characters and animation. Backgrounds are
highly important. Think about it like you need to build a world that
a character lives in or let's talk about in a film production
type of sense, you need a set for your
actress to perform. So an animation. We need to draw out and
build that world that our characters are going to
be living and breathing in. By the end of this class, you're going to have a finished
background that you can use for a character animation that you've done previously. This class is for
anyone who wants to learn how to make backgrounds or anyone who wants
to learn how to design sets and just scenery, and an introduction to
environmental conceptualizing. So will learn this process step-by-step and I'll
walk you through it. I'm going to first talk about the importance
of the horizon line, one-point perspective,
two-point perspective. Then after that, we're
going to research inspiration and references of the types of backgrounds
that we want to do. From there, we're going
to rough thumbnail, different types of backgrounds, whatever seats best for, let's say, your scene, your background in an
animation point of view, maybe matching your storyboard. Then after that, we're going
to clarify those boards with cleaner drawings until
it's ready for coloring. I'll talk about how I color my backgrounds using Photoshop. What you will need is, of course, a computer. I'm going to be
digitally painting. So a computer would be
a good requirement. Some of you might be painting
things traditionally, but I'm going to be
using a computer. As for my drawing tool, I'm using a display tablet, meaning this tablet
has a screen. You can also use normal graphics
tablet where it's a pad and you're using the
screen as a reference. As for the software of choice, I've used Adobe Photoshop
for my backgrounds, for animation, just
because I can set layers. I can have foreground elements. I can have background elements. Photoshop is great for that, especially when it
comes to compositing. Get your station ready, get all your setup ready, and let's get started. We're going to make backgrounds.
3. Understanding Perspective: So before we actually start painting backgrounds
or making backgrounds, I need to talk about perspective and vanishing points
and horizon lines. And these are
important because they keep the backgrounds grounded. So I'm going to make a
new layer and I'm just going to draw our little
viewfinder, our screen. This is just going to represent the size or the
illustration size. So the horizon line is also
known as the eye line. It's where the ground
and the sky meet. So I'm going to write that
down, sky and ground. So the reason why
this is important is also to keep
everything consistent, especially if we want to place our character
in certain spots. But if I move the
horizon line up or down, so if I move it up, it's as if we're looking down on the ground more
so than looking up. And if I move the
horizon line up, it's as if we're looking up
or more towards the sky. And with that sky or
with that horizon line, now we can start figuring
out our perspective points. So I'm going to do a little demo on the
one-point perspective. So the one-point perspective, imagine that you're in the middle of the alleyway
and you're looking straight down towards
the alleyway. It's where everything
is going in the same direction in terms
of the angles of the walls. So I'm just going to
show you what that looks like using the
one-point perspective, then I'm going to indicate
that vanishing point. So in a one-point perspective, it's just one point. And in Photoshop, I'm going to select a line tool so I
can draw straight lines. So you're going to click down and hold on the
Rectangle Tool and hit Line Tool and
then you're going to make sure to switch shape, this setting from
Shape to Pixel. And the reason for
that is so that it acts more like a brush
than a vector shape. And with vector shapes, it's going to load
up all these options for masks and we
don't want that. We just want to treat it like
we're painting something. So now that we
have pixel set on, I'm going to draw a bunch of lines all vanishing to
this vanishing point. Now with these lines, we have a reference or a
guide to draw our walls, to draw our floors, and to keep everything angled
to this vanishing point. So on a new layer,
and by the way, it's making a new layer, make sure your layer
window is open. So go to Window, Layers, and there should be a tab here where you can
see all your layers. Press this plus sign
over here to create a new one and I'm going to show you that
with vanishing points, and if I just draw let's say the sidewalls of our alleyway, we can now use
this guide to make everything feel a
lot more grounded. And notice how our walls are going towards this
vanishing point. Now we have a reference of
drawing our windows towards the vanishing point so it
keeps everything solid and grounded and consistent. That's an important word. So we can have our character
walking on this plane level. Now I'm going to do a demo of
the two-point perspective. So what that looks like is
imagining we're at a corner of a street and we're looking at the other
corner across the street. So I'm just going to draw
my horizon line again and now I'm going to
indicate our two points. So you can put this anywhere. I like to put them really far apart because if
we put them really close, we're going to get
a fisheye effect. I'll show you how I usually
do a two-point perspective. So let's say I choose one vanishing point to
be somewhere out here, and then another out here. So this is one and this is two. Next, I'm going to
draw some lines. So now from here we can get
more dynamic backgrounds where let's say we establish
the top of our building. And again remember, at anything above the horizon line means
that we're looking up. Anything below the horizon line means we're looking
down on the ground. And that is going to affect the way we draw our buildings, matching the horizon line. So now we have a bit of depth. And depending on what
you're building, right now I'm just
building a few boxes, let's say I want to
build a little shack right next to this. I'm going to indicate a vertical line to figure
out the height of that. And to get this side of the wall or the side that's
facing towards the left side, I need to reference
vanishing point 1. So you can even draw a line if you want to
to help with that. But I already drew those lines, so I'm just using the
references that I drew earlier to help
me guide through that. And then if I want to get
this side of the wall, the walls facing to the right, I'm going to use vanishing
point 2 as reference. So now if we want to have our
characters walking through, maybe this way or that way, at least they feel
a lot more grounded and the scene feels
a lot more solid. So using my vanishing points, I can just finish the
rest of the background. And again, anything facing left, I'm going to refer to
vanishing point 1. Now, something that I really want to quickly show
and the reason why I spaced these vanishing
points so far away is if I put
them really close, you're going to get
a fisheye effect. Or if we're talking
about like camera, if the lens is super short. So let's say I draw
my background and I put two of my vanishing points
very close to each other. So even something like
this is quite close. So if I draw my lines, now we're going to get a really exaggerated
foreshortened corner, a really foreshortened
background. So notice how everything
just feels really cramped. So again, if I were to draw my buildings
using this guide, and by the way, I
hold shift to either draw straight vertically
or straight horizontally. Notice how everything
now just feels so much more exaggerated. And in most cases, I probably don't want
something like this where it's just way too stylized. So if you're doing backgrounds, make sure your vanishing points are far away from each other. So I recommend you need to practice one-point,
two-point perspectives. Another practice that you can do is take live-action pictures or real-life pictures
and trace over it to find those vanishing
points yourself. Reverse engineering a picture, that's another way to learn perspective or
understand perspective. Now, I want you to practice
this so that when we talk about backgrounds and
illustrating backgrounds, we now have a foundation on how to make those
backgrounds feel a lot more solid and feel
slightly more technical. So join me in the next lesson. We're going to start thumbnailing and
taking inspiration for background ideas and just to figure out what
background we want to do.
4. Researching and Thumbnailing: In this lesson,
we're going to be researching for our backgrounds. I think research is
important because not only do we want to gain inspiration of what
we're trying to do, but we also want to have
a little understanding of what we're trying
to accomplish. I might have an idea
of what, let's say, an armor looks like or
what a place looks like. But if I really want to
get the specificness and the more accuracy
of something, I want to reference it. By looking at references, I'll probably find things that I didn't even consider that makes something authentic and that's an important word that
we're looking for. In another previous
Skillshare class, I did a character design
class and I want to utilize the characters that
I designed from that class as inspiration
for these backgrounds. I want to show you what
those characters are. These are the characters
that I'll be using. As you can tell, we have medieval
Japanese characters. We have a samurai, we have a wandering Ronin, and for some reason, we have a robot. In this context, the robot is a time traveler that ended
up in medieval Japan. The background that
I'll be using is set in medieval traditional Japan and the scenes that I'm thinking is more on the rural
side of things. The reason why I'm choosing rural elements is because
things like nature, things that are more organic
are much more fun to draw. They're more expressive and they don't require
so much planning. It's a great start if you're just trying
to do backgrounds. I'll have some
elements of stuff that is traditionally
Japanese medieval. For these backgrounds,
I'm looking for a Japanese shrine
in the forest. I'm going to type
in Japanese Shrine and I'm going to just
put forest for now. Then I like scenes that feel a bit haunting
and atmospheric. I think this could be a
really fun scene to try and paint an actual house
or an actual building. This is something
that's pretty good. When I'm looking at
references for backgrounds, I'm thinking about color, I'm thinking about lighting
information and composition, and I'm also thinking
about just the mood too. Some of these images have
very well-lit or very sunny shrines and then
some are more foggy, atmospheric, or just dark. It's good to get a bit
of variety just so that you can gain a
bit of inspiration. Now from this, I can
start thinking about compositions and I can thumbnail my backgrounds
on the side. I'm going to do
that in Photoshop. I'm going to hit "New" and
I'm just going to create a new file based on
a preset of a paper. I'll show you different
ways on how to do a thumbnail based on different approaches
that I've worked with. I'm just going to draw a frame. I think it's a good start to figure out where your
horizon line is. I'm not going to think
about vanishing points. I'm going to try and eyeball it. We have a shrine
or an arch of one. Again, just eyeball
the idea right now. I do a lot of sketching
outdoors or drawing. So I can have a sense to make my small thumbnails feel
a bit more believable. We can tell that because this
is above the horizon line, we're looking up on this shrine. Then we have, let's say
stairs going down this way. Or just to create
visual interest, I'm thinking, you know what? What if we just continue
this path that we have just to make it more
visually interesting? The way I think about
composition and visual interest is think about where you want to lead the eye. I like to pretend
I'm in the scene and I'm thinking I'm
walking up the stairs. I want to think about it
that way where I'm making these big shapes and I'm
drawing them in a specific form or way to lead the eye. All of this is just going to be things on the site like trees, rocks, bushes, and
everything that's organic. Above here we have our sky. But according to the
references that I find, it's always surrounded
by leaves and trees. I'm just going to
indicate that by shading. That's one idea of a thumbnail. I'm going to put one. Another one that I can do, and this is something
that you can try too, is just doing it based on shape. What if, let's say, I don't really have
anything specific, but I have an idea
of the composition. You can draw with a
really thick brush if you wanted to just to play around with
shape language and all that. I'm thinking,
you know what? Maybe there's a waterfall on the background and then
there's a shrine here. It's all alone in a rock
and then here's our ground, and here's some rocks and
trees far in the background. Maybe you're someone that
also thinks about it in terms of just really bold
shapes and compositions. If you want to, you can
even just use values. Values just describe
brightness levels, things going darker and
things going brighter. You can even do some low-key toning just to be able to find the
compositions that you want. I would say just keep
playing around with them. I'm going to keep making
a few more because I don't really have
a super clear idea in what kind of
background that I want. Here, now let's do
a thumbnail where we're following a very simple
one-point perspective. I'm going to draw
my horizon line. Maybe we're looking down
on the ground and I'll just draw a line like
that and I'll draw a dot. Then I'll just roughly sketch
out my vanishing points. There was an image
that really inspired me for this approach. I'm looking at this picture. I really like us looking down and things
vanishing downwards. It's a very straight
head on composition. I just got inspiration
from that. We're looking at a
pathway and then maybe we're highly above
the shrine or the arch. It's below the horizon line. We're really high up at
this point if we're looking down on the shrine. Then over here are
just rocks and concrete and just more rocks all going towards
a vanishing point. This is just like our road. Maybe we can make it a bit more organic by putting
a bit of asymmetry, decorating with broken paths, maybe some overgrown leaves, and then this whole
area is surrounded by trees and nature. What if maybe
instead of a shrine, we have a little shack or a little house and maybe
we're looking up on it. Let's put our horizon line down. I'm going to put my vanishing
point somewhere outside of the box that I made and
try to grid that out, try to draw our vanishing
lines towards those points. Then using that reference, now we can maybe draw
the top of our house or our little building using our vanishing points as a guide. Maybe it's sitting
on a bunch of rocks. The great thing
about boulders and rocks is that I don't
have to be super precious about
things like angles and being really technical. I can still draw
very organic shapes and still get away with it. It's good to think
about horizon lines to indicate if we're looking
up or down on an object. Think about that stuff. I think I'm going to wrap up
my thumbnail drawing here. I might go with number 4 because that could be interesting to do. Now I want you to explore
thumbnails around 2-5, just to play around
with composition, to experiment with
your vanishing points and your horizon line, and to experiment with shapes, different compositions,
and different layouts. From here, we're going to select one thumbnail
and use that as our main reference to figure
out our rough drawing and to figure out what this
background actually is.
5. Rough Sketching Your Idea: Now I have my thumbnails
done and ready. It's Japanese shrine force. I've done multiple versions
of it as you can see. By the fourth thumbnail, I've decided this is the one that I want
to move forward with. I like the composition, I like the setup for it. What I'm going to do is
using the Lasso tool, I'm going to select that piece and make sure you have the layer selected with the drawing. I'm going to hit ''Edit'' and ''Copy'' and then
I'm going to make a new document following
the same resolution. I remember using 8.5 by 11
inches, the letter one. I'm going to be working
in a landscape. I'm going to have to
rotate it clockwise. I have to rotate
it by 90 degrees. I'm going to image, image rotation 90 degrees
clockwise or counterclockwise. We don't really have
a drawing there. Then I'm going to create
a new layer and then I'm going to paste my thumbnail. I'm not going to do anything
like this where I fill the page completely with the
thumbnail because again, I want to be able to see
my vanishing points. Using this, I'm going to shrink it down and
I recommend you to use a pretty big
resolution because we're going to be zooming
in and out a lot. Again, it's really up to you, but I like to keep
things spacious. This Canvas size
right now sits at, and I'm going to
look at the pixels, 3,300 by 2,550 pixels, I can work with this. I usually work larger because maybe I want to do 4K or 6K, but let's work
with this for now. From here, I'm going
to create a new layer and this will be my
frame or my viewfinder. Then I'm just going
to try and draw a rectangle matching this. You can even hold Shift
to draw those lines. I'm forced to draw only
vertically or horizontally. Everything inside this box is going to be our
actual background. Now I'm going to
create a new layer, and this is going to be
our horizon line, horizon. I've established in
the rough thumbnail that the horizon line
is somewhere near the bottom so this indicates
that we're looking up. Maybe move it a bit
upwards. There we go. I'm going to turn down the opacity of my rough
drawing and to do that, click on the layer
with the rough drawing or rough thumbnail and
just turn it down. I want to make
sure I said I draw my grid or my perspective lines. Using the line tool again, I'm just going to keep drawing. You can draw it freehand. I will just select a brush. I like to hold my pen like this just to allow me
to be loose still. This is how I get more
loose and fast drawing. I'm still doing that
and I know that this structure is sitting on
top of a bunch of boulders. I'm just going to lightly
draw a bunch of boulders and you can use reference of actual rocks and
things like that. But right now, I'm
just going to lightly draw rocks as I think of
how it will look like. Now if you're using a mouse or if let's say you're not
comfortable drawing with a pen, you can also use a line
tool like I did for my perspective lines and
just click and drag. Maybe set the width of your line here if you're looking
up the weight and then just click and drag
just so you have a rough idea of the
background and then I'm thinking there's going to
be some road that matches with the vanishing point and
maybe it just keeps going. Maybe we have a bit of steps. I'm just going to draw a
very basic path for that, and the style that I'm going for is grounded because
of the perspective. But I'm also thinking about making it more
graphic or stylized. By this point, because
the shapes are organic, I'm not too worried about making things
match the perspective. Unless I'm doing
something that's like a building or a house or anything with like
straight walls, that's when I'm thinking about perspective and
vanishing points. We have a little
structure on the top, and I'm just going to draw that. I think it's best that
I have my references on the side just so that I can
have something to draw with. I really like the shapes of this one or
maybe even simpler. Let's go with something
simple for now. Let's go for
something like this. I'm going to make it match
to one of our perspectives, our vanishing point,
Number 2 over here. I'm going to still
roughly sketch it out. I'm not yet really
precious about the form, but I will do a little
rough sketching to give me an idea of the alignment and the
shapes that I'd like to use. Now you can see that I'm using the perspective lines that
I made earlier as a guide. I know that I want these two stands to be even with each other
or to match each other. I want to make sure that they're on the same line
or the same plane. Anyways, I'm being
very rough right now. It's fine because
I really just want to get the shapes done and ready before we
clean it up even more. If I really wanted to make
this dimensional and as thick, I could give it more depth using one of
my vanishing points. I can revisit this bit later on. I want to figure out the
trees in the background. Sometimes I like to use a different layer to focus on different
parts of my background. Again, I'm being rough. I'm going to be
really loose just to draw out shapes for what
the trees could look like. Sometimes I had to flip back and forth to see what made the previous or the first
take really good. I noticed that it was a bit more elevated. Let's see again. I noticed that it felt a bit more uniform like things weren't
just poking out, like maybe I can add a bit more structure to make it feel like
it's all connected. I'm just going to keep adding more information so that when I feel ready I can
start tidying it up. Once you've done a rough that
seems reasonable to you, that seems like something
that you're satisfied with, then we can move forward
with tidying it up with more bold strokes or
even with straighter lines, not a sketchy and more precise. I'm going to continue
flushing this out, and once we're ready,
and once you're ready, we can start tidying the
drawings up in another layer.
6. Creating Your Clean Lines: Next I'm going to make this joint a bit more tidier and a bit more cleaner. Let's begin. I'm going to turn down
my rough drawing layer, let me rename that rough. My reference is still open, so I can still have
a reference of how I want the
background to look like. Then I'm going to turn down
the opacity of my rough. To do that, I go to
my Layer window and I select my layer and turn the opacity down
on the upper-right to, let's say something
relatively low, like 10%, at least
I can still see it. Then I'm going to
create a new layer and this will be my clean. In animation terms, there's a stage called tie down, which is right in-between
clean and rough. But for this case,
I'm just going to go straight to a clean-up stage. There's so many ways
you can do this. For organic shapes like rocks, I could just draw it by hand. As you can see, I am
being more gentle, more careful, and just a bit less messy and
gestural like this. I'm being a lot more precise and deliberate
with my strokes. One habit that you
might want to try and do or practice is just to make a single
stroke for one thing. You can tell that I'm
still being rather loose, meaning that I'm not overly
describing my drawings, meaning that I'm not drawing
every texture or drawing every part of the drawing. I'm still keeping
it rough and loose. Again, looking at the
references that I found online, and I notice there's a
sign on top of here. I'm just going to
make those shapes. But I'm also going to
play a bit and maybe add a bit of a roof or a small
structure on top of it, just to create more of a interesting shape language. Then I'm going to keep going. Now I'm just going to draw
the trees in the background. Again I can always
switch back and forth. When I erase parts of the trees, I'm not affecting
my other drawings and when it comes
to my reference, I've loaded multiple references, so I can always flip back
to the reference that I want for a specific tree
that I'm going for. If you want, you can draw in
the textures of your tree. I encourage you to keep
cleaning up your background, your rough drawing,
into something that's a bit more clear. Join me in the next lesson. We're going to color
our background.
7. Adding Color: Color is important
because it can help describe the time of the
day or the type of mood, or even expressive
stylistic choice. Colors are more romantic, colors are more earthy. Again, that's all
really up to you, but I think has
really helped sell the world for your
backgrounds and you're set. How do I select colors? Well, I can actually choose
colors from the color wheel, from the color swatch. In Photoshop, if you click
your color selection, you can choose your colors
this way. But you know what? Let's say, I can't
choose colors right now from imagination and that's
fine. You know what? I'm going to heavily rip and steal colors off
from my reference. I'm going to turn pictures of my references into
color swatches. I'm going to click my image from my folder and drag
it into Photoshop and it's going to create a new layer and put
it into Photoshop. I'm going to zoom out
because this picture seems pretty high res. I'm going to shrink it down. I'm thinking of
another background that I really like the colors. I know I want some deep
reds or some vibrant reds. The reason why I'm selecting
something like this is because red is such
a strong color. Notice how it just
sticks out with all that green so I
want some of that. I'm going to choose one more. I really like the dark
colors of this reference. There's many ways that
you can break this down into very simple colors because
I see this and I'm like, there's so much colors in
each of these pictures. When you import your image
as layers in Photoshop, it's going to turn it
into a Smart Object, which is like this whole layer, we can make changes without applying big changes
to the image itself. What I'm going to do is I'm
going to right-click on the layer and you can tell from the icon that this
is a Smart Object. I'm just going to
right-click on that and hit rasterize and this
will allow us to edit it. I'm going to
rasterize this image. I'm going to turn this
image into a color palette. Something I learned
in school as a filter called crystallize or
you can use mosaic. It should be under pixelate. Yes. If you go to
pixelate and you go to crystallize and you can see that now it's turning my image into
little triangles. I want to make that bigger. Now it feels like its
own color palette. The reason why this
is important for me is I can select the
eyedropper tool. It's up here, or you
can hit I. I can just select the
color that I like and pick it out and just
use that as my color. Next is this one. Another way you
can turn this into a more simplified color palette that I personally like
is I go to filter, I go to filter gallery. One of my favorite ones is called cutout and
as you can see, it's simplifies the image to only a few levels
of color and value. I want to maybe bump
it up to maybe eight. Actually no, seven was good. Make it more simplified
so I can see the colors. Again, fidelity just describes how close you want
it to be in terms of the detail of the image and then the simplicity is more about
how many colors there are. Cool. Maybe something like this. Actually I like that. I can still see a resemblance
of the image. I'm going to hit
"Okay". That can also be another color palette. For this one, I could also just do
a normal pixelate, mosaic, just like
another censorship tool. Now I have my color palette. Under my clean drawing, so the clean foreground
and a clean background, then I'm going to start
making big shapes. I like to start with a neutral
color for the background, so I'm going to select the whole thing and
the layer below using the rectangle tool and I'm going to choose
something that's a mid tone, so a mid tone green. The reason why I
choose this is because it's the dominant color of all the references that I'm
looking at and it'll be the dominant color
of my background. I realized that some
of my clean lines, some of them are green. I just want to turn it
into complete darkness. Select that layer, go to
image, go to adjustments, and go to brightness and
contrast and I'm going to turn down the brightness so
everything feels dark. You can even turn
on legacy mode, which is an older version
of how Photoshop dealt with this option and it's a
lot more exaggerated. I'm going to turn that down. I'm also going to turn this
one all the way down too, crank it all down so
I can see the lines. You can grab the Lasso Tool
or Polygonal Lasso Tool. But let's start with
the Lasso Tool. With my tablet and
the Lasso Tool, I'm going to focus on the
foreground element here and I'm going to start
selecting everything around it. By holding Shift
on your keyboard, you can actually start building things the
more you select. By holding Alt, you can deselect stuff. Instead of having
to think about, I got to get this all perfect and got to
do it in one go, you don't have to. By holding Shift, I can do
that one step at a time. Right now I'm just
focusing on the ground. Then from here, I can even select a color of
my choice here. Maybe something more earthy. Let's go for something
here for now. What I can do also is
select random colors of my green and start
brushing away. To me. I like to feel it out like, up here is the grass and then I look at my color palette and
the background go, maybe this part is going to be rocks or something
maybe lighter. Maybe down here,
it'll be more rocky. There will be rocks here
and then maybe over here, it'll be more muddy. Now, I guess I'm going to
move on to the shrine. I can clean this
up if I want to, but I want to think
about the shrine. Remember, if I turn off all these layers and
turn on my paint only, this is what it looks
like without the line art and without any other
layer attached to it. I notice this thing
is transparent, so I'm just going to
fill that out quickly and maybe just add a bit more texture
or just color. But even without line art, we're getting something that
feels a bit more finished. I'm going to click or hold down my Lasso Tool and
select Polygonal Tool. Something like this
is useful if you're, let's say painting with a mouse. Instead of having
to sketch it out, I can just hover my
mouse over part and tap it once I feel satisfied
with where I'm landing. Check it out. I'm basically
creating the shape and the silhouette for
this little structure. Because I know
there's some holes and openings on this building, I'm going to hold Alt to subtract a selection of
some of this structure. Then from here,
once I close that, I'm going to select
my paint bucket tool, select the deep red color from the shrine,
and hit "Enter". Now we have a shrine or the building with shrine
and I can even add some of the colors from
the cut out tool that I use where I can add a bit more rust or I can
add a bit more aged wood. But I feel like that
could be distracting so maybe even something more subtle or maybe a
lighter pink could do. Again, this is just for
now and we're not really thinking about things like
shadow and light yet. We're just thinking about what
this thing will look like if there was no
light and shadow. It's plane mirror color. But looking at the
background now, notice how the red
just sticks out. That's what I want. I'm going do the same thing with the structure in some
of that shrines. I'm nearly done with
this background. Now, I'm going to
continue adding a bit more color to
the far background, and I want you to do the same thing with
your own backgrounds. Join me in the next lesson. I'm going to continue
flushing out my local colors for my
backgrounds and once we're ready to add more
specific lighting and shadow information using Photoshop's blend modes
for their layers, then we can move forward.
8. Adding Lights and Shadows: In this lesson now, I'm going to start
applying light and shadow using Photoshop's
layer blend modes. Now this part can be really, really fun because I
don't really need to do so much effort in thinking
about my color choices. It's really just about
big shapes and playing around with just opacities
and things like that. As you can tell, I added a bit more detail or a bit more colors
in my background. I'm going to create a new
layer and I'm going to select a relatively
bright color. Let's go for something
not too bright. I would say, let's go for
our light green and then I'm going to change my
blend mode into something add or screen. You know what, I'm
going to choose Add. What this does is now
with that when I draw, it's like I'm applying an add blend mode
to it and I want to show you a bit of
that blend mode because let's say I draw normally and this is what
the normal color looks like, now with different blend modes, you can use that same
color to dark in it. You can use that same
color to lighten it. I'm going to maybe, I'm imagining in some of
these backgrounds there's little spots of light hitting the scene because
of the leaves in the trees. We see like little dots or a little specks of really
strong geometric light. You can create a new layer. Select the Lasso tool
to make a big shape. Maybe have a really big
dramatic light that looks like this
or in that shape. I'm going to choose a
different color though. I'm going to choose
maybe something like this and then I'm going
to apply a screen. Let's go for something. This is so dramatic,
but let's say linear light and it
looks too bright, I'm thinking about
those light rays. You can even turn it
down with the opacity. I could even use
the Lasso tool to define more and more
lighting information, more geometric way. Let's do that very,
very quickly. Okay, and then I want to show
you something really cool. I'm going to do that. What you can also do is
with this layer selected, you can hit Filter,
Blur, Gaussian Blur, and then crank it up so it
feels there is a bit of a gradient C. Then I'm going
to turn it down a bit. Now personally, I prefer styles that are a
bit more opaque, not as something like this, but again, you can
always fix it. Hand-drawn style
if you wanted to. Sometimes you can use pen
pressure sensitivity. What I mean is by hitting this button up here
next to the opacity, I can draw based on
my pen pressure. Instead of just drawing without the pen pressure
for the opacity, the lighter I draw,
it's more transparent. The heavier I draw, it becomes more opaque. Again, the same thing
can be applied. I'm going to turn
this down a bit. The same thing can be
applied to shadows too. Let's say I want some
shadow information on the ground so I can select my lasso tool and
fill the contour. Let's say, I want
some shadows here, I want some shadows down here. The way I'm thinking about shadows is based on the surface. If the surface is facing away where the light
is supposed to be, that's going to be
darker and I'm using a more opaque cell shaded style and you can even describe a bit more by adding a bit of shapes. I'm using the Lasso tool to select those shapes
before I fill it. Okay. Maybe there is
some back here too. Oh, yes, I forgot to
apply that to my shrine so I think everything under the light is
going to be darkened. I'm going to select those. Things like under
the roof or under a plank that will help
describe the light. I'm going to choose
maybe a darker color for this or a mid dark, let's say something like
this type of brown. I'm color picking. A warmer type of
brown can do maybe just something more
subtle like a gray brown. Then I'm going to select my pink bucket tool and
hit one of the sides. But now we just
get these shapes. With the blend mode I can use it to add a blend mode
like multiply. This is actually a tool
or a technique that a lot of studios use when it comes to
painting backgrounds. Then even though it's opaque, I can go back with
my eraser tool and start cleaning things up or maybe even just
adding more gradient C, describing the form of bit more, just customizing it
just a bit more. Or maybe I can select
my brush tool again and start painting some more shadows manually to get
something more specific. You know what? I'm going to wrap this up
pretty soon actually. I can even add some to
some of the stairs if I want to really give
it a bit of depth. I can even adjust how intense the shadows
are using opacity. But one thing that
I want to show is, let's say, for this one, I want to make it bloom
or give it that radians. I can select the layer
with this blend mode. With these white blotches, I can duplicate that. It's going to intensify it, but that's not the point I want. What I want to do is go to
Filter Blur, Gaussian Blur, and just give it a bit of that bloom just so that
it feels like there is light shooting off of it to give it that
sense of atmosphere. This is why I really love using Photoshop's, blend modes. You can find different
types of brushes. You know, there is a lot
of brushes for textures, there is a lot of
brushes for that too. I can select to multiplying and maybe hand draw some
of those layers. Let's say I create a new layer and I'm going to
go back to my normal brush and I'm just going to draw a
silhouette or maybe a shape. Maybe a little tree. That's it. Yeah. Maybe a little tree and give it a bit of
leaves and all that. Maybe darker leaves will do and just a bit of
something like that. What I like to do in Photoshop, let's say I need to
make many trees, but I'm just too tired
to draw all the trees. I can duplicate this tree and then I can enlarge
it if I want to. I can skew it and distort
it so it feels a bit, there i's a bit more variety. Maybe distort might be better. I'm going to distort
it just to give it a bit of variety and then I can hit Enter and
I can just from here modify it to make
it look like it's a completely different painting. Maybe darken it a bit. I'm doing this in
a separate layer, but the same thing goes with
the texture on the road. I'm just going to draw
a really flat texture. This being the road and then
I'm just going to give it a bit of patterns and bricks and what it looks like if
I'm looking at the pathway, looking at it straight down, maybe give it a bit of different varieties in
terms of the rocks. I'm just adding a
bit more texture in detail on this path and
then what I can do is I can select this drawing or this little layer that
I did hit Distort and I can make it match to
the perspective of my ground. These are alternate options
that you yourself can do. Even though it
doesn't look as good, I can always turn
down the opacity, use a different blend
mode, adjust it a bit. Maybe it could work with a
bit of darken or multiply. Turn it down. It
really is just about experimenting and
playing around with it. I think what I have is pretty close to finished background. Maybe the light, the line
art that I had earlier, it's probably
distracting to me so I can probably select
my clean lines, turn down the opacity so it
feels a lot more painterly, it feels a lot more universal. Last thing I'm going
to do is I'm going to wrap up my
background painting, make it even more
polished or finished, and then I'm going to
actually save it into an image and bring that
image into Adobe Animate, where I'll put it right below
my character animation, just to see my character walk
around in this painting.
9. Final Thoughts: Hey. You've reached the end of this class of
painting backgrounds. Right before we wrap up, I really want to show
what I just did just now. In a previous class, I animated
a character walk cycle, and now I just quickly imported that background into my
animation to see how that looks. Now we have a character
walking around in our shot. I can always animate the
camera if I wanted to in Adobe Animate
just to track it. But there we go. It's a character walking
in a background. This is the point of
this background class. It's me painting a background
for our characters to walk and live,
and perform in. We've created a world
for our characters. I want to see your
finished backgrounds, your finished paintings and
finished colored backgrounds. Please upload it to
the project gallery. I'd love to see it. Keep on going, keep
making worlds, keep making places for your
characters to live in.
Toniko Pantoja, 2D Animator, Character Designer
