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Hello everyone.

Havtza here.

Today, we're going to talk about designing backgrounds.

Now being a background designer is a specialized job

in the animation pipeline,

because you will only draw backgrounds and not focus on characters at all.

The backgrounds in animations are

kind of special, because unlike frames

which only project on screen

for a fraction of a second,

the background is going to be held

for a long period of time.

So the background needs to be a good drawing

with many details

as to make sure that it looks good

so that it is still aesthetically pleasing,

even though we are looking at it

for a long period of time

in comparison to the frames.

Even within the role of background designer,

there are special

kind of roles that you can take

as part of the process.

In general, the main background designer

is the person who's going to make the overall style

of the background and animation,

since there are going to be a bunch of people

making backgrounds

for each scene in your project.

And there are also the background artists,

which are the other people

making the backgrounds for the project,

who can be divided into rough sketches, layout sketches,

which are just cleaner lines,

sometimes even liners,

if your production is big enough

and you have background colorist

and a lot of people adding background effects and lighting,

which will later be used in compositing.

All these types of jobs that you can have

within the role of being a background artist,

are usually being combined together.

So even though there are different types of works

that you need to do,

you will usually do all of it

as a background artist,

especially if you work

as an independent animator,

which makes both the design,

the actual backgrounds,

the storyboards, which indicate

which backgrounds

you need to make in each scene,

and the animation itself,

so you can’t get away from it.

You need to know every part of the

background creation process.

Usually the job of the background designer

comes first in the pre-production stages,

because you are dictating

the overall style of the background art

that you're going to have for the project,

but the work of a background artist,

unlike a background designer,

is something that comes later

in the production after the storyboards.

Because of the background artist, you're going to need

to match the actual background

to the perspective

which is drawn in the storyboard

with the character in mind.

In this lesson, I'm going to focus more

about the background designer job

and how we're going to

induce composition to create

nice looking backgrounds and find

how we're making the right

composition, lighting and aesthetics for our scenes.

And in the next lesson,

we're going to decide

how we're going to

actually use perspective and details

to showcase our backgrounds,

and how we're going to color them to use

for the individual scenes

within our projects.

So let us begin.

The first step to designing your background

is actually choosing

your composition guidelines.

The composition is something that we do

to focus the eye of the viewers

and the viewer's attention

on certain areas or points on the screen

while keeping the overall shot balanced

and esthetically pleasing with good proportions.

There are many guidelines to

how we can composite.

The composition guidelines

are going to depend

on the actual canvas size

that you're going to use.

You see that a lot in illustration

where you have

different points of focus depending on

where you put your characters,

or your background details

or any stuff like that

when you're drawing for an illustration.

Now, in animation,

there are plenty of guidelines that we can use,

but it's actually a little bit easier

because we do have

a standard size for our background.

So the type of guidelines

that we can have are pretty standard,

and are universal

in every type of production

that we're going to make.

There are many ways to compose your image

in a pleasing manner

with the aspect

ratio of the standard animation,

and once you understand the base rules,

you can play around and combine the guidelines

to get more interesting compositions.

Once you're familiar with them,

you can also completely break

the composition guidelines

and create something

that is more unique to you,

depending on the type of scene

that you're trying to make,

especially if you're not showing a full

view of the background and only showing parts of it,

such as when you're trying to use

a close up or something like that,

which needs to fit more for the perspective

of the actual animation,

then the overall look of the background.

Here, I've been drawing some common guidelines

that you see a lot in the industry,

the most basic being the first,

which just divides

your screen and gives you

a bunch of points of focus.

The cross and the X guidelines,

which kind of give you

center composition,

while still giving you

simple guidelines to divide

the overall screen.

A central triangle or a circle,

which again highlights a certain area

on your screen

which you can later use to divide it.

An S-curve,

which usually gives more depth to your composition

if you're trying to use it

with interesting layers.

An L-shape,

which is used quite

a lot in low angle shots,

the golden triangle,

which is good for both depth shots

and some type of high or low angle shots,

and a central perspective,

which is usually used in

very neutral shots

where you need to make sure

you have good perspective and composition.

This composition guidelines can be used with

or without perspective,

and in any type of situation,

both in natural

and manmade environments.

They're only used to give good proportions

to your scene though,

and don't actually dictate

the perspective of the objects in it just yet.

You will later need to fit the objects

in your scene to the perspective

that we're going to choose,

and we'll be doing that

in the next lesson.

Once we've chosen

the composition guidelines

that we're going to use

for the background,

we want to try and sketch it out

and give us some better

understanding on how it's going to look.

Now in animation,

you don't actually have a lot of time

to make the backgrounds

because you want to focus more

on the overall animation

and character design and character movement.

And basically you don't have a lot of time

to focus on your background,

especially as an independent animator.

So for that,

we want to be the most efficient

that we can be

when creating our different shots

and the background designs.

Now, usually we’re going

to make the shot perspectives

within the storyboard,

just to make sure that it fits

well with the animation.

But with cases

where we only focus

on the background, such as right now,

or when designing the overall guideline

for the project,

if you want to have

reference for yourself,

then you need to focus

on making good thumbnails.

Now thumbnails is the idea

that you'd make a lot of quick sketches

with very rough shapes,

very rough compositions,

just to test and see what looks balanced and what looks nice.

This is the stage where you're going to add

a small amount of details

just to make sure that you would know

where kind of everything is,

and you try to make it in

correct perspective,

as much as you can

without actually using grids.

A lot of beginner artist are using grids straight

from the beginning,

which is very limiting.

This stage, you're only at the testing point of your background,

so you don't want to commit

to a single perspective just yet.

In order to experiment

and have a better understanding

of how we're going to design

the overall background,

you need to just try and play around

with cubes and basic shapes and volumetric shapes

as we've done with the character design,

to make sure that you're

using the right proportion

and have a nice composition.

Also, the stage where you're going to play around

with your composition guidelines.

So it will be a shame

to just add the perspective point straight away.

This is also good for beginners,

because you just need to draw a bunch of blobs.

Try and make them look as if they

overlap on top of each other and give some idea of depth to your background.

So for the sake of this exercise,

you can just choose a topic

that you want to try

and create the background from,

and try and play around with it

to try different perspective

or different amount of details,

different composition guidelines.

See how you can make it look more interesting.

Also, try and draw a bunch of different subjects

to play around and try more natural shapes,

and more manmade shapes,

just for the sake of the exercise,

especially if you're

more experienced with the process

and want to try and add some more details.

Again, for this part,

only focus on basic shapes

and try and give them volume

in a way that kind of makes sense.

If it doesn't look very well to your eyes,

just draw a completely different thumbnail.

Don't hang on each one of them,

try and make them in as little as 5 minutes,

and if you're a complete beginner

maybe 10 minutes per one of them.

Even though

we are using the composition guidelines

to give us better proportions

to our background,

that does not mean

that we can ignore the perspective,

or the depth of the background.

When you're sketching your thumbnails,

you need to think about

how is the overall background

going to seem the most natural

and interesting.

The eye is going to be attracted

to points of high contrast,

and it's going to follow the lines

of the objects in your scene

to the convergence point on the screen.

This means that

if you want to guide the eyes

of the audience to a certain point,

you should place the objects

and details in your scene

in a way

where you have the highest contrast at the point

where you want the audience to focus on.

Be it by having a lot of details

at that point and not so many details at any other point.

Or, on the opposite side,

having many details in your background

and leaving areas

where you have blank spaces.

This is actually my preferred method,

because you want to have

the detailed background,

but also you need to remember that

your character is going to appear on it,

and you also want that your character will be

at the focus point of the scene.

So it's better to leave your character

in a blank space

and have a lot of details in the background,

then to have a lot of details

behind your character,

which creates a situation

where your character

is hiding all the details

and the background itself

is blank and boring.

But even if you are going to choose

either of these options,

you need to make sure

that the rest of the background also points

to the focus point.

To do this, make sure that your object in your background

are made out of lines

that all point to the same areas on the screen,

or that they all frame

the same areas on the screen.

This can be done using perspective

or by using parallel lines

to follow our initial composition guideline.

This will allow you to frame certain areas on the screen,

or point to them.

Lastly, another important thing

to remember when creating your thumbnails

is that you want

to have variations and randomness

in your background.

Don't want to draw the same objects

in the same sizes over and over again,

because nothing in life

is actually that consistent,

not look very interesting

or aesthetically pleasing.

Unless you're specifically going

for a very mechanical

and clinical look.

If you’re drawing smaller objects,

you can make some variations

in their placement and groupings

with their overall numbers.

If you're going for bigger objects, consider

changing their spacing

or angles in relation to each other.

You can also create variations

by adding different amount of details

or different types of details

in different object in your scene.

And don’t think about smaller details

at that point in your thumbnailing.

But you want to make sure

that even your bigger areas

and your initial composition

still has variations

and interesting looks to it.

While keeping all of this in mind,

try and make the perspective correct as well.

At this point, try creating perspective

only by the layering

of the different objects in your scene.

You don't need to think about complicated angles just yet.

You need to make sure

that same as with our character volumes,

you use the correct amount of overlap

to create depth

and

that the size relation

between the objects

in your different layers is consistent

and looks rational in a way

that actually creates depth between them.

In independent animation, you would

usually only use your background

for one single shot,

and it will be created

specifically for that shot in mind.

So it will have predetermined perspective,

and you wouldn't be able

to play around with it

once you decide on that background.

But because you are an independent animator

and you are the one

who is deciding the overall perspective and look for each shot,

you will have more freedom to experiment straight from the beginning.

So with the same way that we did basic thumbnails,

just to get an idea of our environment and scene,

we want to try

and use the composition guidelines

to give more interesting shots,

because

the way that we're going to make it stand out,

especially if it's a very short animation

that we do independently,

is to make the shots themselves

more interesting and varied.

So try and take the same kind of shots

and compositions that we've done before

with the thumbnails,

and look at around and switch

the perspective and angles of camera.

Try and use it with different composition

guidelines and with different subjects

for the sake of the exercise.

With this kind of perspective compositions,

you want to really focus

about making sure

that your composition doesn't feel flat.

So for this purpose, we're going to use

three main techniques.

The first one is a change in side relative to the camera.

So in that stage, you can kind of

take your simple objects

that we've used to the main composition

and just shift them closer

and further away from the camera

by enlarging them or making them smaller.

You can also try and reform them a little bit

to create a difference in angles.

Of course, the further away the part is from the camera,

the smaller it's going to be,

and you want to make sure all of the deformation

points to the same direction.

This we're going to do later on

in the next lesson

when we're applying perspective to it,

but still try and get it as correct

as you can when doing the thumbnails.

If you are a complete beginner,

try and do that with cubes or circles.

But if you are more experienced, try

and give more interesting shapes

straight from the beginning.

The next way we're going to show depth in the scene,

is by having

layering of the objects within your scene.

So in our minds

we already know what things are small

and what things are big.

We want to try and play around with it

to give the impression of something

that is further away from the camera.

You know, if you're drawing a house

and it's small in the screen and a person drew a tree, which is closer to us,

it's going to look like we have more depth in the scene.

We want to try and shift the

things in the scene,

in the different composition guidelines

to try and give more depth to the overall scene.

Last thing that we're

going to use in our thumbnails to show depth,

is values.

Values is where we're actually starting

to design the overall

look and atmosphere of the scene

and this is where we're going to add

the lighting and later on the colors.

First, let's define what are depth and values.

Depth is what we're going to do

to create an illusion

of a 3D space in our 2D drawing.

This is done primarily by creating good drawings

with good compositions

and good perspectives,

but it is also done by using camera angles

and layering within the scene.

When we're designing our actual background,

which is going to be used within the animation,

we're not going to create it

as a single illustration,

because in real life,

when the camera moves,

when the character moves,

the distance of an object

from the camera

is going to affect

how quickly or slowly it's

going to move in relation to the camera

and the characters.

Another thing you need to remember in animation

is that when your character

is moving in a 3D space,

you might want to move it in front

or behind certain objects on your screen.

So you need to make sure

that you have them separated,

so that you can cover or show

the character as necessary.

This is something that we're going to focus on

in the next lesson.

But it is important

to keep that in mind right now,

when you're designing your thumbnails

to know where each layer is separated.

A value, on the other hand,

is the terminology

for using different grayscale tones,

which are basically just gray colorings.

Dark is being black

while the bright is being white,

and the entire gradient shifts of your color

from white to black

with all the different shades of gray in the middle.

The gradient shift of your values in the thumbnail

will create the illusion of depth

when applied to the basic shapes

of your composition

in a way that makes sense.

So let's see how we combine

both layers and values

to create depth and focus within our scene.

As I've said before,

you will need to divide your layers

into distinct distances from the camera

and separated them to create certain camera movements.

These distinct layers

have different names

depending on the distance

from the camera.

Each one of them will usually be represented

with there own value

and any details

within that certain layers will adhere to that central value,

while still retaining there own

local values around them.

So this sounds kind of complicated,

but basically it means you have one color of gray

in one brightness for each layer,

and then you can have small variation

within that color of gray

to separate different details in that layer.

You don't want to have too many shifts

in that certain shade of gray,

because then the overall depth of your scene

is going to be less

realistic and less cohesive.

In general,

you can separate these three

distinct layers into three labels.

First, you have the foreground,

which is the area closest to the camera.

Next, you're going to have the mid ground,

which is of course, the middle range.

This is where usually most animation

is going to take place,

unless you have some certain specialized shot,

such as close up or partial close up

or something with extreme low or high angles,

which don't tend to have as many layers

because you don't see

a lot of the environment

around the characters.

And lastly, we have the background layer.

This is kind of confusing

because both the overall background

and the background layers are called background,

but when you've seen that in context,

it’s pretty easy to understand.

In general, the actual background

is the furthest away from the camera

and it will have the smallest amount of movement

and the smallest amount of details

because you're not going to be seeing a lot of it.

You might also find something

of an additional layer called overlay,

which is when you have multiple objects

which are in the same distance from the camera,

but obscure each other.

You might need to separate them

to different layers

when producing the background,

if your character is interacting

with different object in the scene.

You might actually find a different variation of overlay

where you have something which is extremely close to the camera, which completely blocks

the view of the scene.

Again, this needs to be

separated to a different layer,

and you also need to make sure

that the obscuring object

is completely readable,

so don't go and put something

just at the edge of the screen

to make it smaller

and a way which looks incorrect

or just not very understandable.

Also, when designing your different layers and overlays,

you need to make sure

that you're not creating too many tangent,

where you have multiple lines

combining into a single dot

because this is not going to look very aesthetically pleasing

and you might risk

dividing your layers into something

which shows a lot of the line art,

which kind of creates

unintentional points of focus.

So in general, you need to make sure

that you have enough space

between each part of your background

and details,

even when you are using overlays,

just to make sure that

the entire composition doesn't feel too

crowded and uses too many lines.

Now that we settled on a certain thumbnail

and kind of added the basic shapes

and size and created depth using some understanding of perspective,

you want to actually give it a depth

and atmosphere using values.

So as I've said before,

we're going to use values in the thumbnailing stage to create depth.

At this point,

you don't want to use too many values,

using just three or four values is going to be enough.

You want to have a large range.

Don't use something that is too close to each other,

or don't go and use like a whole bunch of grays,

which are close to each other,

which don't give you a lot

of understanding of the depth of the scene.

Don't add too many value variations within a single layer

because right now we're still in the thumbnailing

and we want to get the overall depth of the scene.

So don't add different values

to different details that you have

in your thumbnail sketch just yet.

This will come later on

when we're actually going to decide

on the lighting of the scene.

There are two ways

that we can create the illusion of depth

using simple values in the thumnailing stage.

Basically, you can either go from

dark background to light foreground,

or from bright background to a dark foreground.

Each one of them has a distinct impression,

which they will give your scene,

even if both of them give the illusion of depth.

We have the bright background and dark foreground.

You will get an impression of an open space

and this is meant to replicate

the real life phenomenon

of ambient lighting.

Look, in real life on the horizon,

you will see that the closer an object

is to the horizon,

the bluer and fainter it's going to get.

I shot in mountains

or in large flat areas,

where they just gradually become bluer

and disappear into the horizon.

Replicate this effect,

we're just going to slowly shift our greyscale,

for the value of the sky,

which is again, white,

because we're using the white backgrounds to dark foreground.

The second shift is from dark background to light foreground.

This creates the illusion of smaller space

and gives a more menacing or

a calm atmosphere,

depending on the amount of gray

that you have in your scene.

This is meant to replicate the effect

the darkness has on our vision

where our field of view is more limited.

The way that we're going to play around

with the grayscale within

this light or dark based background

is going to create

the overall atmosphere of the scene

in combination with the lighting.

But you need to make sure

that you're not working with

too limited of a range in your grayscale.

So when deciding on the shades

that you're going to use in the thumbnailing,

make sure that you have

a good range of darks and whites,

so you can create enough of a contrast

to create the idea of depth.

You also need to make sure

that each distinct layers

with a different distance from the camera,

has enough contrast to be clearly shown

when creating depth in your background.

Depending on your lighting situation,

you might not even need

to have a chronological order to your grays.

Just having a logical separation of background,

midground and foreground is enough.

Now that we have our basic composition

and understanding of the scene,

some interesting perspective

that we try to give it

and an idea of the depth

and overall atmosphere in it,

using the basic grayscale thumbnailing,

we want to actually focus

the eye of the viewer

on the correct details within the scene.

So at this point

you try and create more variation

in the lighting

and the values in the scene

to point the eye of the viewer

to the correct

areas on the screen,

especially the ones that we used

within the composition guidelines.

Our brains and eyes are wired to perceive contrast at first glance.

So the way that we're going to create

these points of focus within our scene

is by making sure

that the highest amount of contrast

is going to be where we want the eye to focus.

This usually means that we're going

to design the entire background with the idea

that it's going to point to a single area.

In that area,

we’re usually going to place our character

because we want to make sure

that they are distinct

on top of the background.

But we also want to make sure

that the entire background itself

has good composition,

which help us focus on the character.

So to do that,

we're going to use different lighting and

local values in each layer.

Since a background is going to be more detailed

than the actual characters,

you're usually going to have multiple different objects

in the same area within the scene.

So if you want to

focus on a certain object in that area,

the lighting is going to help you quite a lot,

because it's going to create different contrast

and different areas of values,

which helps combine

the different elements

of the background together

and separate the character from them.

First, you have to decide the general

lighting of your scene,

which will decide its overall mood.

We've done this before

with the general values that we added

with the dark or bright background.

Once you have that,

you need to emphasize the important details using lighting.

In this example, I'm going to

show you how we're going to emphasize

a certain character or background detail

by using the values alone.

So with the setup of the scene,

while both characters are shown to be in the same distance

from the camera with the original value.

One character naturally stand out more since

it's more contrasted with the black background.

But let's say I want to make the adult character

pop out more.

To do that,

we're just going to create the lighting in a way

that creates more contrast on that character

in comparison to the background.

Now, the overall background is pretty dark,

so by adding light directly to the character,

we can make it stand out way

more than the one beside it.

We can try different combinations

of lighting and backgrounds

to create different types of contrasts.

We also need to take into account

that the value groups

that we have with the background and the characters

are going to create different amounts of contrasts.

For example,

by adding a small amount of contrast with the background,

by just making it a little bit brighter,

we can even out the contrast and create,

focus on both characters.

While if I add light directly to the character,

which is on top of the black background,

the high contrast

of that character

in comparison to the low

contrast of the other character

is going to make it much harder

to see the other character,

even though we haven't actually changed

the contrast of that specific character,

just because the eye is going to focus

on the larger contrast first.

This is the part where

you design your scene in a way that draws

the eyes to the correct areas on the screen.

You can play around with different lighting situations

to give different contrasts

to different characters

or different layers within your scene.

When you have

an understanding on the overall

layout of your environment,

you can try and make more experimental lighting,

such as having your dark background with bright details,

and then your character is in overlay,

which again creates different kind of contrast,

or you can try and illuminate both characters

or only parts of them

to draw the eye to certain areas

which are important to the scene.

An important thing to remember though,

is that you don't want to have

too many points of focus on your screen

and want to make sure

that your points of focus

are connected to the composition guidelines and focus points that they create.

Because the whole point of using them in the first place

is to create a balanced

and aesthetically pleasing scene.

So if you do all the lines

in an aesthetically pleasing manner,

but then draw the focus to completely different area

by shifting the lighting,

it doesn't really help us.

So when you're adding

the lighting to your scene,

make sure that the areas

that you're going to focus on,

are sticking to the composition guidelines

and still show the actual

important details of the scene.

This is actually why

we only create simple thumbnails

and simple values

at this stage,

because we want to experiment

and, try and find the best

lighting and value situation our scene,

when designing our backgrounds,

and the overall look over the animations.

For this exercise, try and create the best composition that you can

using values, details and layers

within the thumbnails that we've done

in the beginning of the video.

Try and create as many as you can, as quickly as you can.

And don't think too much about them,

so that you have more experience

and see which ones stick out to you

after you have a considerable

amount of them.

Try and analyze what makes each one of them

look better than the other

and use these guidelines

to create the backgrounds for the next video.

It is important to understand your lighting situations

and how you're going to organize them,

before you are actually going to color your background.

Because when we're choosing our colors later on,

they're going to stick

to the lighting situation that we choose at that stage.

You don't need to have local values

and all the details just yet,

because first we want to have

the correct perspective

and the clean line art,

but at least have a good idea

of how you're going

to divide your layers into values

and what is the overall lighting of the scene.

If you haven't been following along throughout this video,

the exercise today is to create three different thumbnails

using different composition guidelines.

In these thumbnails,

you only need to draw the different shapes within your scene,

and you need to add your grayscale

to create either a depth or lighting effects.

In your final thumbnail,

make sure that the different levels

are made on separate layers

so that it will be easier

for you to continue and work on them separately later on,

as well as be able to composite them

in later videos regarding production,

if you know that

you want to use the background in them.

I recommend creating more then three thumbnails,

and if you want to up your difficulty,

try and create a complete thumbnail

within 5 minutes.

You want to make your thumbnails as clear as possible,

so don't thicken the line

or make it too sketchy,

and try to add different angles

within your thumbnails

while still keeping the perspective as correct as possible.

If this is a difficult exercise for you,

try and create different perspectives

using different cubes and spheres as a first step.

Finally, choose one thumbnail that you liked

and try and recreate it using different lighting or depth of field.

To summarize, in this video we've looked

at some basic composition rules,

how to apply them to simple backgrounds and thumbnails

and how to create depth

using different angles, layers and values,

as well as how to create different

focus points using lighting

and how we can play around with them

to create different types of compositions

and focus point in the scene.

In the next lesson,

we learn how to actually finalize your background

with correct perspective and how to add coloring

in accordance to the values and lighting situation.

Thank you for watching and see you next time.

Bye.