How do you go about incorporating backgrounds into your comic?

Aleksei · Sep '22

The same than @JoblessInUSA!
I have been learning to use sketchup for my backgrounds, because the warehouse its so useful!
When that fails, I go to clip studio assets, and/or search for some free 3d assets online.

I mostly use them to position my characters in the scene, and then forget about it unless the character moves from where they are, or the camera needs to show the background for the action to be understood -like opening doors, reclining in chairs, dropping in a bed, etc.

Here is an example of what I do, Everything done by me in 3D, except the lampost, and then I extract the lines on CSP. I should detail more, though.

RedLenai · Sep '22

I use the Sims 2, I like to play home design on my free time while also being able to use it for work, not to mention that since I have a huge haul of Custom Content, I can make very personalized backgrounds for characters and such

My main rule tho, is to have the 3D background so I can place the models to later draw the characters and make them blend with the area a bit more. I also do the lineart of the background if I feel it's needed, and as well, I provide shading and lighting.

It'll depend on the focus of the chapter, sometimes these are mostly characters talking so I focus more on their faces or other aspects, maybe where they're standing or sitting, but I like to provide some background shots as well for the setting.

arxianfall · Sep '22

They are 3d but i'm making an effort to not make it look 3d.

Scarlet_Cryptid · Sep '22

Oh I draw in all my backgrounds, just like everything else, since I'm doing this on dead trees with color sticks. (Paper and markers).

For good or for ill, and with few exceptions, almost every page has multiple panels with background, unless it really is just a couple of heads talking. Sometimes the background is a little... phoned in here and there...

but other times I wonder if maybe I should tone it down a little.

XiuLyn_12 · Sep '22

Yesss! I'm one of those comic artists who avoid drawing backgrounds!
When I first do my comic, I use real-life pictures, turn them into black and white, and call it a day!
It was a mistake on my part since it does not look natural.

I started using The Sims for creating a house recently, and CSP helps me a lot with my laziness in drawing backgrounds.
I'll stick with those 2 for a while, haha.

Lensing · Sep '22

Backgrounds are important for me as a reader and as a creator.
They are not over or underrated, there are just different kind of creators and readers and
what they like but I do think that they got less important for online comics compared to
printed comics. All comics that I read as a kid had backgrounds in every panel except
close ups and that´s what I like as a reader and creator.
Panels which show more than a close up and have no background look weird and empty to me.
The background can be minimal once it´s established, I also don´t care if the background changes
from panel to panel, I don´t care if a lamp appears and disappears in the background, I also don´t
care if the perspective isn´t correct

I use every tool available to make backgrounds, I sometimes use the sims, different architecture apps
like sweethome3d. When I draw nature scenes I usually take reference from Asterix books because
I like the way how Uderzo draws trees

igneriss · Sep '22

I just draw them with pens like everything else in my serie but I try to make it as easy for me as I possibly can. My backgrounds are quite simple and I use a lot of shapes that are easy for me to draw but add more detailed look.
Most of the panels on a page in my comic have backgrounds, though usually only one panel has it more detailed. I feel like after estabilishing a scene in one panel I can get away with very simple backgrounds like 'here's some random lines in the background but you already know it's a forest' or 'here's a random line but you already know that's a floor', stuff like that.
And I use 'disappearing backgrounds', so sometimes if a background has already been shown before, I just draw it in half of the panel Or panels get gradualy less and less background. Somehow it works.
I try to not leave too many panels without any background, because with a b&w comic it can look very empty. So I try to find a balance on a page.

Here, the scenery is shown in the first two panels, so other panels in that scene will get away with just part of a window as a background:

We're losing background:

I like drawing forest backgrounds...

...but hate interiors, I simplify them as much as I can:

bam, disappearing background

something like this is 1 minute background and that's enough

I'm happy how this one turned out, though it was more difficult than I first expected:

TheLemmaLlama · Sep '22

Drawn by hand - and pretty often Though to be fair, I'm kind of using my current series as practice for drawing backgrounds, since I want to eventually make a comic where the worldbuilding is a big deal, where the setting is unusual enough such that I can't get away with portraying it with standard 3D assets while still doing it justice (I guess I do also think more like an animator than a comic artist, since I like my work to have an immersive, 'cinematic' feel)

So my priorities are kind of different

Oh yeah totally; it's much easier to fudge backgrounds in black and white Idk if it's even possible to omit backgrounds in my 'colouring style' without it looking weird (since the lighting from the environment informs the colours) XD I wouldn't call people shallow for preferring (even exclusively) full colour; B&W is literally harder for some people's brains to process; but it's not like one needs to throw readers under the bus to acknowledge the importance of creators' enjoyment and comfort

TheSingularitySeed · Sep '22

I never took the time to learn 3d models so I just do mine by hand. And I only started doing backgrounds at all once I started this comic lol

I start with a master file that's a rough sketch of the background scene with all the colors and go from there.
There's usually a couple bg per page with varying levels of detail.

I use a lot of reference photos and lots of perspective grids eek

But I do try to free-hand as much as possible because it's faster.

It works since I mainly do nature backgrounds. They're super fast because you can make a lot of mistakes between panels and nobody notices lol

I might end up learning modeling once I do more city scenes...
City scenes seem painful.

toonben · Sep '22

Didn't use asset because it would make the background feel out of place. I go the old-fashioned way by drawing the backgrounds from scratch with Clip Studio's Perspective Ruler. I use Google Maps for drawing real world settings or Google images (or photos) for fantasy settings.

Lady_T_Musings · Sep '22

All y'all up in here are beautiful and disgusting with these epic backgrounds, and to y'all like... "I'd rather not" preaching to the quire hahaha." I only draw bgs if I feel it's necessary to show where the characters are in a scene, otherwise Van Gogh mystic tripper bg it is. I tend to draw characters to fill a space though, so oftentimes there ain't even space for a bg :V (that's a me problem I know, it also affects word placement haha).

Modeling all your bgs before starting is brilliant. I made a whole a$$ map for the lands, then was feeling hella smart by drawing out landscapes for each nation and the people that inhabit them lands and was like aight, "now I'll work on the Institute and the MCs home... hmnn, this a whole lot of grid to fill in". So I tried Sketchup, but like making everything from scratch in 3D was a bit much for me, then I found https://planner5d.com/#_=_1 and it was my savior. You can design in 2d and then pop it into 3d and it was a blessing

This model helped me make the scene below

Junah's home in the woods.

@RedLenai yoooooo the sims 2 was where I use to model my characters for posing, but I should have spent more time modeling interiors as they had a ton of fantastic features for doing that haha!!

Now Cityscapes are a whole other beast. Architecture is not my forte, and though I can do an organic background recreating them heifers is a pain :V. I have a city reveal coming up soon in my comic and I worked on it for weeks, it sure ain't perf or even great but wanted to move on already so got to a point I was satisfied that it showed what I needed and let it be.

I do wish I had spent more time capturing multiple angles of scenes and designing specific scene backgrounds over all these overarching landscapes I did though :V. That would have been way more manageable for me and easy to sub a background into a panel over having to refer to the location and come up with something fitting on the spot bringing my drawing flow to a sputter. Well at least I did do something for the land, so that does help when it's time to come up with something over completely being at a loss.

Lensing · Sep '22

That does sound like a pretty new fashioned way to draw backgrounds though

OohitsEli · Sep '22

I tend to take a more stylistic approach, but whenever I need to draw important and establishing shots the backgrounds as more coherent, or at least that's the best I can describe it. I draw all of them by hand and don't really think much about them tbh

Out There (animatic, Chapter 1 pt 4)

(ok I know that isn't really a page but it's part of my comic so point still stands)

Llyrel · Sep '22

I'm a big fan of Alessandro Barbucci's work as well as French graphic novels with all their incredibly detailed backgrounds, so about 5 out of 6 panels in my pages (if not all of them) have a background. Fun fact, now that I understood how to use Procreate guidelines, I actually love drawing them and tbh they're the least time consuming part for me :'D

That said, I do use shortcuts to save time. Unless I'm working with simple shapes, figuring out the correct proportions for everything still requires time, so I'll usually make sure to rebuild the exact scene I have in mind either in CSP or The Sims 3, complete with characters. Then I'll set my Procreate guidelines to match the perspective of my 3D screenshot as closely as possible and use those to draw. The final result is pretty similar to the 3D model, but with some variations:

For the cemetery scenes, I drew some assets and then recycled the crap out of them. For example... see this statue?

I swear to God, I only drew it ONCE and then pretty much never, EVER bothered to redraw it again (save for one panel where it was shown from above) XD all I did was using resize/distort/adjust colors. Same goes for the trees and bushes you can see at the cemetery. I have like... 3-4 hand painted assets I keep rearranging in different ways over and over again :'D

margodraws · Sep '22

I draw them by hand! Most panels have a bg, unless they're just talking head panels. Suffering builds character, right!? Haha but for real, I want to experiment with some 3D reference in the future, because I had a hard time keeping things consistent from panel to panel. I made a set in Planner 5D for my most recent scenes, and it was very helpful if limited. I've had Blender for ages; it's just a matter of putting in the time to learn it properly.

Whatever I end up doing in the future, I'll probably always only use 3D as a base for hand-drawn details. I like clean lineart, and I haven't yet seen a 3D render that got it quite right.

river121693 · Sep '22

I hand draw mine but I do look up a lot of references for general composition and perspectives. My rule of thumb is 2-3 background panels per page.

TedGravesArt · Sep '22

Everything in my comic is hand drawn, including the backgrounds, with just a perspective grid. A lot of artists use 3d to shortcut past the perspective, but 99% of the time it's much faster just to do it all by hand for me. Here's a breakdown of a typical wide shot from Heaven Hunters:

Perspective

Sketch Layout

Inks

Flats

Lights

Post and polish

My internal rule for drawing backgrounds into a panel is if the character is aware or focused on it, it needs to be drawn in, no exceptions. I also lean on visual storytelling a lot, so environments tend to have a ton of information and world building crammed into them.

N1ghtm4r3 · Sep '22

i draw it as i go along , i rack my brain with how i think placemnt would go

KennethLopezJr921 · Sep '22

I work in greyscale so I dont have to worry myself about having a background in every panel (this can also apply to my colored episodes. But when I do, I always draw them out. I dont think there are any 3d modeling programs for photoshop plus I feel that me drawing the backgrounds is more efficient than if I were to use one of those programs. For me, backgrounds can be quite fun to make in most cases. A lot of the time I wont use a full on grid layout, mainly because I'll already have some basic idea of what I want the perspective to be (and also because adding something like a horizon line can actually complicate things). That's not to say I wont use perspective lines for guidance though, but no horizon line in those cases.

For backgrounds, I'll usually reference google maps since my series takes place in an irl setting. But for certain locations, I'll use a set replica of said locations that I made in Minecraft right before I started working on my series. For example is one of the main character's houses which appears in episode 7. And the replica is far from being some hallow shell. It has an interior with multiple rooms and details such as couches and where paintings are. It really comes in handy when I was drawing the scene inside the house since I didn't have to worry about going off a vague image of what I wanted. No tracing involved btw. Would be impossible especially for the Minecraft replica sets.

I always try to go for a simple but detailed approach to backgrounds. There was a time where I my backgrounds were very basic and baron without any detail. This was the case when I was drawing pages traditionally, as I knew that any background Id try would be ruined when it came to inking (I hate inking traditionally). But with episode 5 and onwards, I switched approaches. I dont want to make my backgrounds so basic that their on the border of lifeless but I dont want to go overly detailed on them, mostly because I cant. Too much detail in a drawing is too much for my brain to handle and it can lead to whatever Im drawing or whatever Im looking at becoming unreadable because of how overwhelmed I get. I have to tie that fine line when drawing backgrounds weather it be a large city scape, crowds or train tracks, it has to be detailed enough to look good by simple enough to understand.

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How do you go about incorporating backgrounds into your comic?

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