How do you keep the foreground and background from blending together?

[IndigoShirtProd]

I have my character lineart and background lineart on separate layers. The background lineart is all in the same color, regardless of the colors of the objects in the background. The shading is one multiply layer for the background and I use another blending layer (usually hard light) to unify the color scheme of the background. In my art style, a thicker, black outline surrounds the characters, so even though the interior lines of the character are colored, the black outline forces the character to pop.

A good way to force the background back is to use a blending layer. As long art the background flats are separate from the character flats, you can use a blending to further consolidate the colors and make them look flatter. You can also desaturate the background colors. Now you can can do this with a blending layer or by hand. Limiting the color palette of locations is a good idea and make the color schemes monochromatic or analogous. You can also make the background completely lineless.

I think your issue with saturation. I also had this problem in my first chapter. Take the time to limit the colors you use and also desaturate them as well.

[aqua03]

@IndigoShirtProd

Ah, cool. Thank you so much for the advice! I'll try to keep that in mind going forward as I experiment with Chapter 1 as I figure out the art style going forward.

@silverraven0

Thank you! I'll keep that in mind as well.

[Eageali]

Atmospheric perspective and gaussian blurring are lifesavers! things farther in the background get a little more misty and blurry. Other than that, I think backlighting on the characters helps distinguish them from the background (though I don't normally do that). on days that i feel particularly lazy, I just slap a black or white outline around my central characters haha.

Color theory is also super important. In sunlight, lighter colors are also warmer. In moonlight, darker colors are also cooler. I included an example of how I do backgrounds below.

[Shanny8]

I agree with @silverraven0- vary your line weights for the background and use thinner lines; that will help your characters or the foreground art stand out more.

[lil-sea-salt]

ctrl paint is a great free resource that has great tips for digital painting. it's a bit overwhelming as it's huge, but you'll find it a godsend.

[aqua03]

Oh yeah, I should really get back to CTRL Paint some time.... I started with them a while back but never quite got around to finishing up with them for some reason a few years ago.

[nostalgicroxas]

To add on to what @Eageali said about gaussian blurs - the freeware "paint.net" software has that blur and a few others you can use and control the "distance" and direction they're coming from. So you can pretty freely deform something.

Gaussin below for example

It also has distortions available like Pixelate so you can "censor" something lol

[Lucca_Vendramel]

Easy! All of my backgrounds are lineless. This way they contrast with the characters, which have a lineart!

[aqua03]

Neat. Any tips on how to make Lineless art?

[Lucca_Vendramel]

Use layers for everything that has a different shade/color and that is a different object. Put the sketch layer above the color layer, and do your best!

[aqua03]

Cool, I'll try that some time then.

[Temteno]

I dub Lucca_Vendramel: having foreground lined and background lineless does wonders. It also makes (at least to me) drawing quicker and easier as I don't have to focus too much on the background.

It's important to also make sure that the values on your foreground "pops up" compared to your background. For example, the colors on the background can have closer values but making the foreground's values clearly more darker and lighter can help.
You can keep track of your values by filling new layer with black, dragging it above all the others layers and then changing the blending mode to "color". This way your whole page turns into black and white and shows if the values are too close to each other.

[darthmongoose]

I use a combination of techniques for Errant:

• Finer line art that's often less tight than on foreground figures.
• Soft shadows and textures, highlights are soft (drawn with partial opacity) rather than hard, contrasting the hard cel shade and strong highlights on characters
• Much lower saturation on colours, they tend to be quite greyish or brownish.
• Colours constrained to a fairly narrow gamut rather than using the wide palette of poppy colours used on characters. Usually all the colours in an environment will be blue-ish or purple-ish etc. throughout the scene. Characters don't follow this rule in Errant.

[Boyle]

I'm no expert, but I'd suggest using thinner lines and making the opacity slightly lower than the character's. That, and consciously placing your enviroment so that the places in which the characters will stand are clearer and less full of details.

It's not much, but I hope it helps.

[Eightfish]

On this page I tried to make my characters stand out by useing an overlay later to make them a different hue.

Puppeteer :: Page 28 | Tapas

[spadesart]

i found a gaussian blur works well with my style, and lately ive been doing lineless backgrounds to save time.

i think trying thinner lineart would work best with your style, though. having partially thick-lined and partially lineless backgrounds risks drawing the eye away from the characters.

[aqua03]

Ah, good idea on both ends. Thanks for the advice! I'll probably doodle up a few test drawings to see how it looks.

[Cavechan]

I do black and white pages and oftentimes add a white outline around the characters so they pop from the background a bit. It's a common manga technique.

[Nono]

The key is value, also contrast, not just color. Also as other people have said, different line weights help too.

But usually you should try to separate the composition of an image in layers of different values. A common example is when you see a picture with mountains far away in the distance, you see less detail in them and they look kind of washed away compared to the things in the foreground.
Here's a good video on the subject of values:

[Darth_Biomech]

The way a friend of mine explained it, the background should be separated from the characters by the contrast and the value of colors. Easiest way to check that is to put the whole picture in black and white and see if the characters pop up against the bg - usually they need to be noticeably darker than the background (Or brighter, if it's a dark scene).

Also please don't overuse blur. It's handy to simulate depth of field, or when you want a generic background with no details, but in every other instance it makes me want to check if my glasses are clean.