All language subtitles for 08 Background Design Part 2 - Construction And Perspective

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Hello everyone.

Havtza here.

This is the second lesson about backgrounds,

and today we're going to focus about the actual work

that a background artist does.

So last lesson, we talked a little bit about how the background designer

is responsible to creating the overall look of the backgrounds

that the other artists are going to replicate later on,

and how as an independent animator,

you have more control

and can actually decide on all the things

within the background and the art style.

We also tried and create a bunch of thumbnails

using different base perspectives and basic shapes

and give them all depth and focus using lighting.

In this lesson, we're

going to actually create good perspective outlines,

divide our background into the actual final layers

and use coloring and texture

to create a final finished background product.

We can use the thumbnails

that we've done in the last lesson.

Just choose one of them which looks really nice,

but not too complicated,

and try working using it for this lesson.

With the final lesson,

we focused more about quantity, then quality,

because we want to try and understand

how we’re creating good perspective

and good proportions using the composition lines.

But now we want to actually focus

about creating a finished looking product,

unlike just understanding the base behind it.

So in this time, we're only going to work on one or two backgrounds,

depending on how experienced you are with the process.

And again,

we don't really want to stress too much about it.

If you're new to creating backgrounds,

if you've only done characters up until now, it's okay

to just use basic shapes,

and if your perspective is still unclear,

that is fine.

We're going to work on that a lot in the storyboard

and the actual animation lessons.

So it's good to have an understanding

on how to create perspective

and how all of these things work.

But remember that with these kind of things,

it's good to just practice a whole bunch

until it comes more like a second nature.

Start with doing it with cubes and simple shapes

and then slowly add more details

to your backgrounds.

You don't need to have too many things right now.

We just want to focus about adding

colors, lighting and creating

clean lines art for this video.

So if it's not aesthetically pleasing

that is still fine

and you will be able

to create new backgrounds for your final product animation in the later lessons.

If you are experienced,

you might want to create

some more details,

more perspectives, more lines, more textures,

anything that you're not really used to do.

We’re just going to go over the techniques

on how I do things

and what we need to keep in mind

when creating our final product.

Okay, with that out of the way,

let us begin.

Last lesson I touched

about the idea

of the background artist

having multiple roles

when creating a background.

I specifically talked

about being a layered artist and a colorist.

So in this section,

we're going to focus about

being a layout artist.

Now, the layout artist is the person

who is responsible to making sure

that the construction of the background is correct,

that your using the right perspective,

and that the proportions and composition of everything is correct,

as well as separating each layer

on their own.

Now, when your separating layers,

you have to draw the things behind them as well.

So if you had a thumbnail

with composition with different layers,

you now want to actually

create a different layer

within the Procreate software.

Just completely go and draw a different layer

and create a complete

drawing of each one of them,

so that when you hide the first layer,

the ones behind them are still a complete drawing,

and they're not just, you know, blank.

We're going to do that

just because if we want

to have the character interact

with the environment

or if we want to use camera movements,

we will need this layer separated.

It's also easier to work on each layer separately,

especially if you don't want to go

out of line or want to add special lighting effects

on a specific layer,

which will make it harder to do

if they're all on one illustration.

So for the sake of convenience,

for the first step,

just go and separate your layers

into actual different layers,

if you haven't done this already.

Now, as a layer artist you want to correct your perspective.

This is actually something

that is quite individualistic,

because even though we have

perspective guidelines and perspective grids,

in some shots and in some instances in art style,

you don't actually have to make the perspective completely perfect.

Even though we do have the tools for it,

it's not entirely necessary

and might even sometimes look weird

depending on how you're going to animate the character,

because we're not using 3D environments,

which let us move the camera however we want

and have the perspective

correspond to the character.

A lot of the time, if your character moves in the scene,

it might have slight inconsistencies,

which will create an overall weird look.

And what we actually want is for the background

to work with the character

and not for the background

to be completely correct,

and then the character will look weird on it.

Of course, it's the job of the animator

to match the character to the perspective,

but we're going to see later on that

for some camera movements,

we're going to have layouts

that has really weird perspectives

and sometimes don't actually follow

a single perspective at all,

so it's better to actually

treat each part of your background

as its own element and try to create a perspective

which approximately works together

just with an understanding of cubes

and how we place them on the scene,

then stress about creating perfect perspective.

It's also important

that you're not limiting your art style

and composition with the perspective,

so make sure that the background itself looks nice.

Anything else beside it is just something

that is going to make the quality

of your background and animation better.

But it's not completely necessary

to create good backgrounds.

That being said,

we still want to know how to use grids

and correct perspective as much as possible,

especially when we're making stationary backgrounds,

as we're going to do right now.

So after we used basic volumes, shapes and values to understand

the general proportions

and placement of objects

in our environment or thumbnails,

it's time to sketch them

with a little bit more construction in mind.

For this, we need to understand perspective goals.

So perspective refers

to the way that an object

will seem to change its shape

depending on the position

from which you look at it.

In animation,

we take advantage of this phenomenon to create the illusion

of a 3D space on our screen,

even though we actually create

a 2D drawing.

To do this,

we will be using the perspective rules

and our tools will be the horizon line

and the perspective points.

The placement of the horizon line is decided

by the height and angle

from which you are looking at the scene.

Basically, where you're going to place your virtual camera.

The lower horizon line on the screen, the closer the camera is to the ground

and the object in your scene

will be seen from below.

While the higher the horizon line is on the scene,

the more from above

your going to view your environment,

and every object in your scene

is going to be seen from a top view.

Having the horizon line in the middle is a more neutral perspective

and where most of your shots are going to be seen from.

Now, it's important to remember that

the horizon line is the base guideline

on the entire perspective of your scene.

Because no matter how

many additional perspective points

you're going to add,

just by placing the horizon line

at a certain area of your screen,

you're going to create conditions

from a certain angle.

So if your horizon line is high or low,

you're going to need to know how to animate

and how to understand that certain angle and perspective

for every object in your scene, including your characters.

So for the sake of this exercise,

I recommend beginners

to add the horizon line somewhere

in the middle of the screen.

While for more experienced listeners,

I recommend you to try and play around

with the angles that you're going to be using

for the background.

Of course,

if you already have a certain

thumbnail from before,

just stick to that one, as I've said.

But again, if you feel like you've chosen

something just based on the aesthetics

and you might not feel comfortable

with a certain angle right now,

it’s okay to switch to something different

just to make the exercise themselves easier.

So the horizon line will determine

the central plane on which every action

is going to take place on.

You want to make sure that you understand

and match your perspective to that plane

and that every other prospective point

is going to connect to it.

A perspective point is basically a tool

that lets you measure the correct

height of every object in your scene.

Basically, every line that

comes from the perspective point

represent a certain height.

For every object that touches that line

that's coming from the perspective point,

it’s going to be the exact same size.

You need to take this into consideration

when you're designing your background,

because you want to add your details

in a way that makes sense.

A lot of the time when people design backgrounds,

they don't take into consideration

the relative size of object

in an environment.

A lot of the time you will see doors,

which only reach to the middle of the wall

with windows that go above it,

or small small windows or big doors

or you will see mistakes

in sizes of tables, chairs, utensils.

You will see stuff like trees the size of mountains.

A lot of the time,

people just go for what looks good

and not what makes sense.

And then when you add your characters into the scene,

suddenly the entire thing starts to look weird.

So when you're adding your perspective points and your details,

you need to make sure

that the relative size itself is correct.

This is an especially common mistake

when you're creating your background

without any consideration to perspective

or even just when you’re thumbnailing really quickly without

paying much of attention.

And then when you add the perspective point,

you see that suddenly small details in the background,

are as tall as a streetlamp

or something like that.

First we had a thumbnail

which is all good and well,

and maybe even the perspective

is mostly correct,

but now we want to make

sure that it all makes sense,

that we are going to add our

perspective points and grids,

and just fix everything

before we create the final line out.

Most backgrounds are only going to use

one, two or three perspective points.

Typically, each perspective point

will create an additional plane

to the first plane created by the horizon line.

I'm going to show

pretty simple examples of one, two and three perspective points

with really basic shapes and layouts,

and not a lot of details.

Feel confident in your skills,

you can have many more details

and many more layers,

and if you feel like you're still a beginner,

you can just work with cubes, spheres and cones.

The point of this exercise

is just to make sure that you can

place and work with your perspective grids correctly.

Last, we want to have our thumbnail and sketches

with as correct perspective as possible,

and then we're going to match the grids to it,

because we want to make sure that the composition is still balanced

and that we still follow

the overall idea that we had to the scene

and not limit ourself

with the perspective grid

straight from the start.

Starting with one point perspective,

this will usually be placed

inside your screen,

because every object in your scene

is going to point forward that point

and create the illusion of depth.

This is actually very simple to use

and this is where most beginners start.

Detail in your scene

is going to follow this guideline,

and the only thing you need to keep in mind is just to make sure

that the spacing in the horizontal plane

makes sense.

Basically,

the closer something is to the camera,

the bigger the spacing of the vertical lines

are going to be,

while the closer something is to the horizon point,

the smaller the spacing

on the vertical lines are going to be.

You need to make sure that your spacings

are even if you have something

that is repeated, such as buildings,

or signs or roads,

or you want to make sure

that the randominzation of the sizes

in your scene

is still sticking to the idea

of having smaller things closer to the horizon

and bigger things closer to the camera.

Because even if you're drawing something which is natural,

such as trees or rocks,

you still want to create the illusion

of depth, views and correct perspective.

So you need to make sure that again,

your perspective doesn't create weird situations

where smaller things are big and big things are small,

just because you didn't stick to the one point perspective

with the height measuring.

Next, we have 2 point perspective.

This basically adds additional plane

to the one plane

that the first perspective point creates.

This basically lets you draw better cubes, essentially.

And by drawing better cubes,

you can have better understanding of volumes.

Same as we did with the three quarter view

of the character design in our previous lessons.

Basically, this is the jacked up version

of the one point perspective,

because now you have easier time

to create correct volumes

and not just correct planes and heights.

With this, you need to be careful

that you actually create

the correct perspective

in your base plane.

So we need to make sure that you place

your perspective points

in the correct spacing on the horizon line.

You can actually check yourself,

by placing one perspective point in a way

that matches your rough sketch

and then shifting the other perspective point around

until you create a plane

which looks correct

with 19 degree

angles in the squares

or by just having the lines of the other perspective point

match your composition.

The nice thing about

using Procreate to add the perspective grids,

is that you can actually shift

your perspective points outside of your screen.

So even if you want to create almost parallel lines,

you can just move your perspective point

way out of your canvas

and create the correct perspective grid quite easily.

This background that we see quite a lot in animation,

is this three point perspective.

An additional plane to our cubes

and let us see them from above or below.

And directly lets you play around with high angles

and giving us more varied looks to our animations.

This perspective is quite tricky,

because you will also have to animate your characters with that perspective.

But unlike one and two perspective points,

which have a somewhat neutral perspective, which is easy to understand

and animate on,

having a three point perspective can become quite tricky

if you're not familiar with it,

both to animate with a grid on.

So you need to make sure

that you understand

what you're doing before

choosing this perspective.

I specifically recommend practicing a lot

drawing backgrounds and cubes in different perspectives

before moving on to characters

because they too

are made of volumetric shapes,

which you will be drawing a lot in the backgrounds

with these perspectives.

Later on when you're trying to animate

with a three point perspective

or even a four point perspective,

which is completely deformed,

you will not be matching your character to a specific grid,

but to the actual details

of the backgrounds around them.

Important to understand the overall simplified

shapes of your background

and how to show them

in different perspective

before trying to animate your characters at that point.

Still, if you feel confident,

by all means go and try and practice that,

because it will be very useful

to creating cinematic animations later on.

When creating clean lines and details in your background,

there are two main things that you need to consider.

First, is the distance of the object from the camera.

As I mentioned in the last lesson,

the closer an object is to the camera,

the bigger it will be, and the more space

it's going to take on the screen.

In order to keep the composition interesting,

show details,

and create interest in the background,

we want to have more details

when drawing objects closer to the camera.

Basically, the closer

an object is to the camera,

the more detailed it will be.

By giving more details

to the foreground elements

and giving less and less details in the midground

and background levels,

you can create more depth your shot,

the same way that we did with values.

This also helps you save time

because you will usually only

see the shot for a few seconds

and you don't want to waste a lot of time

and energy on small details

in the background, which will not be properly seen.

The second thing we need to consider

when detailing and cleaning our background,

is that same as with values,

the amount of details in a certain area can create contrast,

which creates a focus point

that draws the eyes.

This is the concept of blank spaces

where areas with many details

contrast with areas with low amount of details

and create a point of interest.

This is usually where you're going

to place your character actually,

because you want to make sure

that they have a clear contrast

with the background.

So if your character design itself is very complex,

you want to put it in an area

without any details in it,

so that it can be properly seen.

While if you have a character design

which is very simple,

contrasting it on top of an area with a lot of details,

it might be more interesting for the composition.

You can also take advantage of the fact

that the amount of details create contrast and direct

the eye of the viewer

to certain points of contrast,

which point in a certain direction

or area on the screen.

If you are at the point where you’re trying

to create a specific background

for a specific shot with your character in it,

consider detailing your background

in the way that creates focus directly onto the character

and not just creating a nice looking background

which is convenient to use later on,

and not completely matches your character.

But we will see more of that in the storyboard

and actual final product stages.

So you don't have to be worried about that right now.

When you're cleaning up your background,

the quality of your lines

is actually pretty important.

Unless you, of course,

are not going to use

lines in your final background.

The thickness and the amount of details

in the lines itself

can actually give additional

depth to your background.

In general, I myself

don't like the look of completely straight dead lines

and having line thickness

or squiggling in the line itself

can give your background a lot more details

and a much more organic feel,

especially if you're aiming

to draw something

which is natural, such as rocks or trees or vegetation in general.

And you don't want to have something which is too rigid and static.

Still, by making a base

with the animation assist tool

and then going over it with a free line,

you can have the best of both worlds

and just have a correct perspective

with nice looking lines on top of it.

If you're aiming for a lineless background,

you still might want to create your

base line in that method

just to make it

so that you're not only looking

at completely straight lines,

which don't give a lot of room

to additional details

and textures within, on top

of which you're going to apply your colors.

Now that we have the actual layout

and line art follow backgrounds,

it's time to actually colorate.

So before with our thumbnails,

we had the overall

look and depth of the scene

using the values.

Now we want to add colors

in a way that matches this atmosphere

that we've created before.

A lot of people actually struggle quite a lot

with choosing their colors,

and effects and textures

in the backgrounds that they are creating.

And this is because

the properties of colors

are not something that are very intuitive,

but we do need to understand them

in order to make sure

that we choose to correct colors,

which match what we’re trying to create

and which are actually going to be pretty

and look nice with each other.

In order to choose the correct color,

we need to actually consider the three characteristics of color itself,

which our hue, saturation and brightness.

The hue of the color

refers to the actual name of the color.

This is basically

what most people think about

when they are asked about color.

This is basically calling your color

yellow or red or blue or green, etc.

Saturation is the amount

of pigment in that base color.

Basically

this is how pure a color it is or how gray your color becomes.

Brightness refers to how much black or white

is mixed into your color.

This also actually affects

the color saturation

because the brighter

the color is, the less saturated it is.

Each one of these aspects will determine the final color

that you're going to actually

be using on your background.

This might be surprising,

but each hue

actually have its own built in value.

If you're unfamiliar with colors,

you might have thought that

just by selecting your colors

from the top area of your color palette wheel,

you’re choosing a bright colors.

But actually,

each color has its own inherent value.

As you can see here,

when I take the color wheel

and completely desaturate it,

you'll create a large scale of different gray colors.

Basically, the values are different

and as we've seen with our thumbnails,

the different values inherent to the colors

are going to give us different ideas

of depth and brightness,

and some colors will inherently contrast

more with each other

just by virtue of having different values.

It's also very useful to know

the inherent value of your color,

just to make sure that when you mix them,

you know that you're going to create

a certain amount of contrast

and that you're not creating unintentional focus points,

or on the other side,

don't have enough contrast

between the different layers

and details in your scene.

Let's talk about contrast itself.

As you can see,

how much an object pops

out of the environment

will depend on both its own value

and the value of the objects beside it.

You can see with this example here

that when I change the overall color

and blackness of the background,

some areas

and some circles are going to pop out

more in comparison

to the overall contrast that you have

when the background is darker or brighter.

When objects with different

values are close to each other.

The way that we perceive them

will be affected by value groupings

in the environment.

In simple terms,

the closer the value of two different objects is to each other,

the more contrast you will have

with the values that are different from them.

If you're looking here at the screen,

you see that when I create a dark background,

the white parts of the screen

are popping way more

than if I have a mid-range grays.

Because the amount of contrast

between the white to the other two values

is far greater than when I have a

mid-range in the middle.

So when you're choosing the colors in your background,

you need to consider

the inherent values in them

to make sure that you're keeping

the overall amount of contrast

in your composition consistent

and according to the thumbnail that we've done

and not just color to just look good with each other,

but affect the amount of focus

or depth in your scene.

This is actually quite a common mistake

and something that a lot of people don't understand,

and later get frustrated with

when they choose their colors

and suddenly their entire drawing looks flat

and they don't know why.

But when you're choosing your hue,

you need to

make sure that you're

choosing the correct hue.

You need to make sure that the hues

that you're choosing will work well with each other.

And for this, we use color harmony.

You might have learned before that

the three basic colors

are yellow, red and blue,

and that mixing them creates

every other color.

This is correct for traditional art

because these hues are something that you cannot create

by mixing other colors.

But due to the way that the screen works,

in digital medium,

the base colors are actually blue,

red and green, instead of yellow,

corresponding to the RGB profile that you usually choose

when creating a new file.

Actually this is something

which is quite important

if you're working as an illustrator,

as opposed to

someone who's just making digital art,

because if you're going to print your art,

you need to make sure

that the initial color profile that you're choosing

is corresponding to your printer.

Otherwise, you might have unexpected colors on print

and you wouldn't understand why

because on the screen it

looks a different way.

But assuming that we're only going

to be making backgrounds for animation,

which are only going to be viewed digitally,

you don't need to think about it

when designing your background

and choosing your colors.

A thing you do need to consider though,

is that the idea

of only three primary colors is basically a lie,

because for each primary color,

you have both a cold and a warm version.

The cold version is going to shift more forwards blue,

and the warm vision is going to shift

more forwards red.

Making it so you can basically create the base color palettes

with six colors, instead of three.

The reason this is important

is because the amount of contrast

you can get from your base color

will change depending on if you

combined cold or warm colors.

And the colors you're going

to get by mixing them

are also going to defer.

These combinations of choosing the basic hues

and choosing the cold and warm variation

are going to give us more or less contrast

and create the color harmony.

You always want to try and mix both warm and cold colors

when you're choosing your color backgrounds,

because if you're only going

to choose warm or cold colors,

the entire color palette is going to look a lot more flat.

Of course, I'm not talking about

just randomly adding colors from the opposite side of the color wheel,

but making small shifts in the base

color of your scene,

to have more variation and range

within the base color palette that you chose for it,

even if you're only going to use blues

or greens or reds

or yellows or any other colors.

You want to make sure that you have enough variation within that color range.

A nice thing about using Procreate

is that you have a built

in color harmony feature.

Using the color harmony window

to select your base hues,

which look well together,

is going to be very useful.

But still they're not going to be the final colors

that you're going to be using in your background,

because they might not necessarily fit the values

that you've decided in advance.

What we actually want to do to choose our final colors,

is take the hues that we chose, using the

harmony wheel window,

and then adjust them

to make sure

that they have the right value

and the right amount of contrast

with the other colors that we make

in our palette for the background.

As you can see here,

just because you've picked

complementary colors

with your color palette window,

doesn't mean that they will contrast in the right way

according to the values that we used for the thumbnail.

Just by changing the hue,

you create new combinations and new contrast

even if the colors l complementary

and look well together.

When I choose the final colors to my project,

I first select the general palette

using the harmony wheel

and then adjust the inherent value of each shade

through the saturation and brightness

in the value window.

Sometimes I actually use the value option

in the color window

straight from the beginning

and just mix the RGB profiles

until I get the right colors that I want.

An important thing

and actually a very useful thing

to remember when mixing your colors

is that when you choose colors from the opposite side

of the color wheel,

you create gray.

But if you put them together side by side,

you create the biggest amount of contrast you can have.

So by alternating with grays and saturated colors

you create a lot of depth and variation

in your color selection.

I generally tend to use

a very saturated color palette

because they draw the eye

a lot more than gray palettes,

and this is good for my social media views.

But if you have different aesthetics,

by all means you can go and choose

any other colors that work well,

as long as you keep the values correct

for the overall lighting and mood

that we chose in the thumbnail.

Straight from the beginning,

I'm going to tell you

that there is no one way to color a background.

It's highly dependent on your software,

your style, your aesthetics,

and even the overall aesthetics of your character,

because you want to make sure

that they all work

well together and create a coherent style

which looks good.

Any means

by which you can achieve this goal

are fair game when you're coloring your background.

There's no one method

which fits everything.

Especially if you're trying to create different

look to your background.

If you're going to serve something

which is more

low and futuristic,

you will use one brush.

And if you're going for a more traditional effect,

you will go with another brush.

So from the get go,

there is no one way

to color the background

and you can basically do

whatever you want with it,

as long as you keep your values

and the composition

and perspective correctly.

That being said,

there are certain shortcuts

that you might want to use

when designing your scene,

because the way that

the audience is familiar

with the actual real life

aesthetics and real life phenomenon

will affect the way

that they're going to perceive your scene.

So something like

the setting of the scene,

the lighting, the time of day

will affect your color choices.

For example,

a sunny day

will look completely different

from a stormy day,

and daytime will look completely different from the nighttime.

Each setting has their own associated value range,

meaning that the actual color range

will change to fit that,

because you might not be able

to use certain colors

because they will be too saturated, too dark,

have values which look unnatural

in the context of your scene and setting.

You want to use colors

which are familiar to your viewers

because certain lighting conditions

will automatically translate

to familiar association

that they already have

with their experience in life,

like night sky is black, sunsets are orange, cloudy days are gray. etc.

When choosing the base colors of the objects

in your environment,

you need to take into account

the value contrast between them.

You need to make sure that they both contrast

well with each other to draw the eyes

to the correct areas,

and that's the overall level of contrast

is being kept with the layers.

As we've discussed before,

with the local values in each layer,

in the thumbnail composition.

If you know that your background

is going to be used in multiple shots

in multiple lighting situations,

you need to make sure that your base

colors are somewhat neutral

and that the additional lighting

that you're going to add to them

won't change the actual

value of the color to match.

Up until now,

we've basically created our background with the idea

that there's only going to be used once

and in one situation for one production.

But a lot of the time you will see backgrounds

which are going to be used multiple times

in multiple scenarios.

You see that a lot with shows or with movies

which has the recurring locations.

In these instances,

the actual lighting and overall value

and atmosphere of the shots

are not going to be determined

by the base color of the background,

but by the additional compositing

that we're going to add to the scene

and the later production stages of the animation.

I myself don't tend to do that a lot

because most of my stuff is one use only.

But it is important to have

a pretty solid understanding

of the base colors of your background

and the inherent values to them,

because you don't want to create a situation

where you're additional lighting source

will completely transform

the amount of contrast

that you have in the scene

just because you added a filter

which altered the amount of inherited value

that you have to your objects in the background.

This sounds kind of vague,

but basically

you need to remember that

if you choose one color for certain lighting situation,

it might create a different contrast

in a different lighting situation.

You want to make sure that every object

in your background is consistent

when you're switching the lighting situation.

Otherwise you might risk

making the entire background seem like separate locations.

The exception to this rule, though,

is when the light source

is in your background itself,

because it will have great contrast

when it's turned on and off.

You see that usually

with the entire atmosphere

changing from night and day.

Once you choose your colors though,

you can use any technique

you like to actually add the colors to your background,

the tools will create

a different impression in your style

and will changed overall look.

And I specifically like

to use a lot of layer modes,

because it gives you a large amount of freedom

to make many adjustments

to your background coloring.

You can also take advantage of the Procreate software tools

such as the brush textures

and the transform tools

to make it easier for you

to add textures and details

easily just by shifting your brushes around

and making sure that they match

the perspective of the objects in your scene.

The important thing

to remember when coloring your background

is that you're not actually creating an illustration,

but this is part of a whole production.

You need to test the background against your character

to make sure that the character's

style and colors work well together.

I usually just import my characters

from my character design folder to the backgrounds

and adjust the coloring of

both of them as necessary

until they look good.

This is something that I can do

because this is independent production.

But if you are constricted by your client,

you just want to make sure that you have

all the materials and time to create the best

composition and color choices

that you can,

while still keeping your client happy.

If there are other people

on the team though,

it will be their job

to make sure that the backgrounds

and characters work well together.

When making your final background,

you need to remember that

you need to plan the background layers

for the character and camera movement within it.

Your character is going to walk in front

or behind part of your scenes

and interact with objects in the environment,

and the camera movement

is going to reveal different details at different times.

So you need to make sure

that each layer is complete

and has all the necessary details

to make the camera movement

or character interaction that you want to have in the scene.

To properly move parts of your background around,

and make sure that your character

can interact with the objects within it,

you will need to make different elements

on different layers

as we've discussed before.

You need to separate your background, midground and foreground,

so you can move around your camera and characters without any issues.

You need to also create different layers to different objects

if you know that you're not going to shift

your perspective in the scene,

because if you want your character to interact with them,

you need to make sure

that you have a blank space behind the object.

Otherwise your character is just going

to duplicate the object in the background.

The exercise in this lesson,

if you haven't been following along,

is to take one of the thumbnails from our last lesson,

and actually turn them into a complete

background illustration.

In this exercise,

you get to experiment with your aesthetics

and the brushes that you use,

but still try and keep your colors

harmonic and correct,

and try and stick to the lighting effects

and values in your environment.

When you make this exercise,

make sure that your composition

stays clear

and that your scene still holds depth.

You want to add your details

with the correct perspective,

and try and make sure

that you don't have too many tangents

and that the spacing between the objects

in your environment

are aesthetically pleasing.

So don't add too many details

in the same small areas.

You want to have good readability and contrast

with your color choices and shape selections.

When creating your final background,

make sure that you separate

the different levels

of your depth of field

into different layers,

and that if you have any specialized universal lighting,

you keep them as a separate layer

to be added later and compositing,

as we’re going to use them in the later lessons.

To summarize,

in this lesson we learned how to find our perspective

and construct our background using grids,

and horizon line and and perspective points.

How to choose colors and

apply them to a scene,

and how to color and plan our background

for actual production.

Next lesson we'll start with actually animating

and go over the basic rules

to create the movement in animation.

Thank you for watching and see your next time.

Bye.