Some time ago I was watching a video about DooM level mapping3 and after getting back to constructing my comic I realized something – why does almost every discussion here is focused on characters? Character is just one of the cogwheels in a story-telling mechanism so why does everyone always focuses on that rather than other important aspects like world logic, environments and action choreography?
Why do I mention DooM in the first place? Because its levels are essentially an amalgamation of everything you need to have in your work – a mixture of specific and abstract designs which provide creative freedom but serves a particular purpose, a choreographed action based on character’s and monster’s traits and most importantly, a quest – a specific set of objectives which provide a sense of progression for the plot and action itself. Constructing a DooM level is not just about drawing random walls and placing monsters and ammo, it’s about handling many critically important aspects of a story at once, balancing, refining and converging these aspects while choosing the one right path from an endless number of possible solutions, something that, according to artists, is extremely easy and can be done in “less than a week” regardless of length and complexity.

Anyway, practically every topic I see here is always about characters, character's grandma’s maiden surname, character's armpit hair color, character's favorite socks length, character's favorite junk food, character's favorite Chia Pets, character's favorite sleeping pills, how many hours a day your character spends watching paint dry, the first time your character kissed its own elbow (“sfw only” of course!) and many other extremely interesting topics, yet nobody seems to acknowledge the fact that even if you have the most “interesting” and/or “relatable” character in the world, you will not be able to make a good story if your character has no purpose and has nothing to do; general plot and script only sets a general direction of events but once your character sets foot on the ground it’s the world logic and environment that determine its actions and consequentially, the actual “meat” of the story.

When people are talking about environments and backgrounds they tend to call both of them backgrounds but these two things are different: background is, just as the name implies, is a backdrop behind the characters and just like in a theatrical play is not (or minimally) interactive while an environment is something that surrounds the characters and plays a critical role in a story when characters actively interact with their surroundings. There were several discussions on how “detailed” your “backgrounds” should be but nobody seems to acknowledge that environment is not just a decoration that you can skip whenever you like and replace it with a gradient limbo, it’s an essential part of the story-telling mechanism and a separate “character” which tells its own story via environmental story-telling.

As for the action scenes, there were also a few discussions here and again, I see people demonstrating their characters in one panel shooting… Umm… Somewhere off panel followed by a panel of someone else being hit… Umm… Somewhere else and we have absolutely no idea where these two characters are in relation to each other, what’s going on around them and what’s going on in general, not to mention another half a dozen characters politely waiting for their turn just outside the frame. Even the original DooM comics, both the “Rip and Tear!” one and the DooM 2 RPG comic, have exactly the same problem in that regard.
Just as Civvie said in one of his videos, properly built action scenes must be as unbroken and clear as possible, and in order to do that you have to have a properly built and thoroughly planned and tested environment and not just a rough script of what your characters are supposed to do and a gradient backdrop.
And on a separate note, why the hell do you even have an action scene if your main character have a 100% accuracy rate and so much plot armor that it can take an artillery shell to the face and survive without any meaningful consequences? This is not a power fantasy, this is a juvenile fantasy because I’m not talking about specifically constructed semi-abstract “game” logic here, I’m talking about world logic that is supposed to look more or less «realistic».

So, here’s some of my thoughts as I’m slowly gathering data about environment and action scenes construction and I’m genuinely surprised that most of the information is scattered all over the place and no-one seems to bother, but is your character’s eye color more important than its actual traits that can only be depicted in action, are endless close-ups more interesting than fully constructed environments with spatial depth and atmosphere and the last but not least, why the hell do we need to sit through thirty pages of history lesson infodump if none of that dump will play any actual role in your story? I genuinely don’t get it.

First of all, let’s make a few things clear:

• This topic is not about a universal rule which must be applied in 100% cases and I have never said that it should, it’s specifically about constructing action scenes and establishing shots where creating a fully functional environment is a requirement because it determine action sequences, create a much more natural flow of events and make your narrative clear and coherent by providing proper context. If your comic is just a gag strip with two characters in front of a backdrop talking to each other then of course you don’t need an environment because it will add nothing to the narrative and is not needed for constructing sequences.

• Environment is not always interactive so of course it can also act as a non-essential backdrop and of course you don’t need to reconstruct every single detail every single time but only if skipping it doesn’t critically affect the narrative and spatial perception.

• Working around your limitations and cutting corners is always essential in any complex long-term work, but cutting corners should not harm the final product more than is absolutely necessary; there is a big difference between being efficient and being lazy.

it's easy to complain about a community; it's a lot harder to actually push it in a new direction.

That’s not the point, the point is why people are overly focused on one aspect of a story-telling mechanism instead of focusing on several more important aspects which are much more difficult to handle. I get it, people are endlessly chewing character traits because it’s easy, obvious and pretty much self-explanatory but that is also my point – what’s the point of endlessly discussing the same obvious things when there are much more difficult, interesting and important topics to handle?
Again, not everyone needs a proper action choreography or complex narrative construction but I highly doubt that 90% of authors here create gag strips or make their comics in a Watching-Paint-Dry genre which have essentially no plot and where nothing is going on.

Anywho if someone has the idea of creating entertaining and educational threads on the topic - by all means, they are welcome to do so, people will be happy to learn something.

Hmm, it’s actually a lot harder than it seems because when I try to fit all of my notes into a topic it quickly becomes a ten page essay so let’s try to make something succinct:

So the topic of the day is:

What is your method of planning and constructing an environment?

Following the video I’ve mentioned at the very beginning, it was said that you can just start drawing random shapes and eventually it will magically transform into a complex level with an interesting walk-through, properly balanced combat and everything but in my experience this is like saying that if you want to fly a commercial airplane you just have to hop into the cockpit and start mashing buttons, it simply doesn’t work. In my experience the most efficient method is something like this:

• Establish the general world logic that will determine character’s and enemies traits and behavior.
• Establish the general type and style of your environment such as a tech base, a dungeon, an open or semi-open environment.
• Establish the general type of combat which is actually a pivotal point for the whole thing: long- and middle range combat require long empty spaces between elements, combat against many dumb enemies like in DooM require many interconnected areas so your characters can be attacked from many different angles and elevations, combat against sentient enemies when characters and enemies are roughly the same require many loop-arounds that will allow characters to maneuver. Close-quarters combat can be drastically easier to construct because characters will be right next to each other most of the time, however, if you are planning to create a stealth sequence you will have to spend a lot of time planning routes and hiding spots.
• The next most important step is to construct a quest – a set of Resident Evil type puzzles that will guide your creativity as well as guide your characters around the area. For example, your characters pass a closed door so they’ll need to find a key, then they find out that they need a generator to power up the lift which requires a battery, a duct tape to cover a security camera, a rope to descend somewhere and so on.
• Construct a principal scheme by using a pathway method: add basic rectangles for rooms and corridors that will establish the general walk-through for your characters, add markers for key items and events.
• Design each area separately and treat each area as a micro-quest: what will happen in this room, how combat is going to unfold, which items to place and so on.
• Replace and recombine areas into one single level. Modular design is a key because it allows more freedom without having to worry about adjacent areas and you can always change the flow by repositioning areas.
• Finalize the layout and add details.

In reality you have to handle all of these aspects at the same time and converge them together; this topic only covers the general process of construction without diving into the process of choosing which particular elements to use for your designs. This is one of the many things I have encountered during my research.

Topic number two:

“The dreadful first (and oftentimes the last) room”: How do you choose elements for your designs?

“Oh just look at references and do the same!” - we all heard that stuff a million times and I think at least some of us have already found out that again, it’s like mashing buttons in an airplane cockpit, it never, ever works unless you know exactly what you are supposed to do. If you “just look at references” you will inevitably copy all or most of their elements, consciously or not, and what about random and insane stuff like Ren and Stimpy or Twisted Tales of Felix the Cat, how do you construct something that doesn’t have any clear references at all? In reality my research went something like this:

• First and foremost you must learn to analyze things – that is, to disassemble references into elements and study how and why these elements work.
• If there are many references, consume as much as you can, break them down into elements and form a pool of elements in your head. Later when you’ll start constructing your own stuff your head will automatically pick elements from that soup and recombine them into something new. Every time someone says "I just start making random shapes!" in reality is never fully random, they're just using their subconscious to pick and combine elements.
• If there are no clear references, analyze good and bad examples and then try to figure out a design pattern – a set of elements that makes particular work what it is. The original DooM, as strange as it may seem, also falls into this category because there are hundreds of thousands of drastically different maps so the best way to analyze them is to figure out their general design patterns.
• Use randomizers to guide you – there are 2D and 3D inspiration generators which output random splats or shapes, you can also be more specific and use Inkscape’s Spray Objects tool to do the same but with more flexibility.
• Randomizers can also be tremendously helpful when you have to design many similar things like sci-fi machinery – you can use some primitives or form a kit of elements and do some kitbashing, I prefer not to use someone else’s kits but it’s still a legitimate way to do it.
• Sometimes you just have to sit down and doodle some random splats yourself, it may not serve well as a randomizer but it will help you to tune your head into the right state.
• Use iterative workflow as much as possible but if something doesn’t work at all put it aside and save it for later.

So as we can see, in reality “Just look at references!” is a multi-step process and while everything I’ve described may seem obvious, there are lots of people who use references just for copying\tracing\remodeling without even trying to properly analyze them. Copying\tracing is a very important part of learning process but once you need to design something of your own, direct approach will only allow you to make a copy or something very similar to the original while proper analysis will give you a basis for constructing something more or less unique.