Getting detailed building backgrounds

gearsofrain 2015-11-21 05:21:24 UTC #1

I'm a pretty new comic artist here, and in general have little experience with the technical side of manga/webcomic making. I always wondered how people made those really photo-like backgrounds for their webcomics--the buildings and objects look really realistic...and not exactly hand-drawn. Some examples off the top of my head are: "Girls of the Wild's" by Hun/Zhena, "Nightmare Factory" by Snailords.

While I like the authenticity of just drawing out my backgrounds from scratch, incorporating these more "tech-savvy" skills (er...at least tech savvy to me anyway) is something that I always wanted to learn

AnnaLandin 2015-11-21 07:54:20 UTC #2

I can't speak specifically for the examples you mention, I can only speak for myself - for my comics in general, and for Grassblades in particular.

1.) Photo-references. I have a metric TON of photo references:

Yes. I have an entire subfolder in my reference-folder devoted entirely to stairs. I collect these obsessively, cross-reference them, place them in easy-to-find subfolders for when I need them. In the chapter I'm currently working on for Grassblades, I have a subfolder of reference photos of carpets. Yes, carpets.

I study these and use them either as direct references or as inspirations for designing things. They help me get things like perspective and proportions right, AND they help me get a level of detail that is otherwise difficult. If I think "I need to draw a house", it's very easy for that house to come out looking fairly... standard? You know, four walls, a roof, a door and a couple of windows - the reference photos help me add things like roof tiles or whitewashed walls or decorative details that make it look less like a box with windows on it and more like an actual house.

2.) Plan stuff out. So say I've got a panel where the characters are going to visit a palace. Cool! The palace is going to be in five panels, and we're never going to see all of it at once - but we're going to see several parts of it, and it needs to look like a coherent place that fits together.

So I design the whole layout of it, even though I'm only going to draw some bits of it. That way, I can know that if the characters move to the left here, they'll see this particular thing in the background - and when they climb the stairs here, they're going to enter a hallway that looks like this - and so on.

3.) Some people use pre-made backgrounds. They take a photo of a real place, and then throw enough photoshop filters on it for it to look as if it was drawn, and use that. I know that Manga Studio comes with a few pre-made 3D backgrounds. I know you can buy screentone sheets that have pre-made backgrounds already on them, that you simply paste onto your page and then draw in your characters where they need to be. It speeds things up a lot, and I know it's a method used by some manga artists, to keep up with the demands of the punishing publishing schedule of manga.

I'm not here to debate whether this is a legitimate method or not - I'm just going to say that I prefer to draw my backgrounds by hand.

gearsofrain 2015-11-22 00:06:52 UTC #3

Thanks a ton for the detailed reply. IT does make a ton of sense for some artists--especially those who publish 10-15page webtoons on a weekly basis to use pre-rendered backgrounds. A follow-up question for your second point: You say you design the whole layout of, say, a palace. Would you just draw out the entire building/its interior and use that as your reference? If you did, I first of all want to say I am in awe by your dedication--it's literally a whole artistic work on its own. Secondly...how would you have the time and energy (this question being more of a rhetorical exclamation than an actual question)??

somvi 2015-11-22 00:34:42 UTC #4

You might want to also check out this thread for some process sharing on backgrounds in comics.

The use of 3d models and photos is pretty common even in professional works. Regardless, being knowledgeable about perspective really helps blend things together. Gantz and Sun-Ken Rock are two notable manga examples where photos are used extensively in the backgrounds and some interior shots.

chjio 2015-11-22 01:52:23 UTC #5

LOL I tried clicking into those folders

AnnaLandin 2015-11-22 07:23:05 UTC #6

It depends! I don't draw EVERY setting, but I do draw the important ones - specific shrines or residential houses or palaces and stuff that the characters are going to spend a lot of time in - and when I do, I do it only as sketches. Here, I'll give you an example:

This is my layout sketch for the Watanabe palace complex that shows up in part II. As you can see, the sketch is pretty rough, and aside from some shading on the rooftops, there's no colour to speak of. Since the characters only spend a little time indoors, and most of the palace scenes involve them walking across the grounds, I didn't do an interior sketch - instead, I just kept the exterior sketch in mind while drawing the interior shots.

I always make sure to keep these design-layouts simple. They're only there so that I don't accidentally put the wrong end of a building in the background of a shot, or mess up how many floors a particular house has.

Hahahaha! XD The answers are a.) the design-sketches are very much sketches and therefore don't take an enormous amount of time, and b.) I'm a workaholic who does little else but draw.