Texture or Hand Drawn?

[MidZM]

I'm having a bit of a dilemma, I don't know whether to use Textures or hand draw my background like I've always done.

Textured:

Hand drawn:

(Not the best but it's one of the few times I've drawn brick besides the top recent one)

Given enough time and work I could probably make the texture work, but I want to know if it's even worth it? I feel like the texture takes away from the scene instead of actually adding onto it (The top scene when finished will actually have a black window, I'm just using it as a reference atm)

[spadesart]

The hand drawn one looks a little more well integrated into the style than the texture one. It's better to always be very careful with textures, they're more of a finishing touch than a replacement for some things.

[thekinginthesun]

Hand drawn is always more pleasing to the eye. I know it's kinda painful when it comes to brick walls, but textures, 90% of the time make brick walls look flat. It's like the bricks are actually wallpaper. Your backgrounds look good, so I would say stick to the hand drawn and try to put a liitle texture here and there bellow the hand drawn layer with opacity 20% or 30%.

[MidZM]

This actually helps quite a bit, while I don't think I'll be integrating actual textures into it I will try to get better at drawing the brick parts of backgrounds (As well as the other parts) to accommodate my style but still make it look aesthetically pleasing.

[saerel]

Yah, hand drawn looks way better.

[MidZM]

Here's the updated image with full shading detail and the proper background.

It look MUCH better then it would with that brick texture behind it xD (That is if your computer is properly calibrated... My main monitor brightens it for some reason while my Cintiq monitor displays it properly...)

[Jabbage]

Something that I've found useful which is either a cheat or a neat little trick depending on how you look at it is to create my own textures and then distort them into shape when I'm dealing with tricky perspective shots. For example...

Here I made a texture of a flat wall and slotted it into place as needed. It might not hold up to too much scrutiny, but by the time it's coloured and part of a larger page I think it works pretty well. You could try something like that as a timesaver that won't break your style.

[genjiOtori]

The problem with textures: it mostly doesn't go well with one drawing style and it mostly looks dead and flat. I experimented with textures too and in the end realized that most of the work goes into hand-drawn stuff. You can make extra shiny effects with textures but to make it look good in the first place you need hand-drawn elements.

When I do backgrounds I draw them by hand and put some screentone textures over it, e.g. for athmosphere and then - again - manipulate them by hand. In my example I drew the forest and grass by hand, overlayed it with screentone gradients and then put white waft of mist over it by hand again. This way you can make sure your characters and backgrounds are in the same style.

[AliceHoffmannArt]

I prefer your handdrawn background as well.
But! If you do need bricks like these often, there is a solution: Drawing the texture yourself!
If the resolution is big enough, you can transform it any way you need, there might just be a need to adjust the line thickness. Your software should usually have a function to add an extra outline, like the layer styles of Photoshop.

[VikiKuli]

I would say I prefer hand drawn in general just because it looks more natural in the style. But I completely get using textures, because it is MUCH faster and efficient. I would say in your first example, the texture is pretty naturally integrated. Perhaps just evaluate how much time you would like to put on a background and decide whether to use a texture and hand-drawn from there

[DMBrigman]

As others have said, the hand draw textures look like they match with the piece better. I second the idea that if you use bricks a lot then draw one tile-able section of bricks and manipulate it into perspective as you need, so you get the best of both worlds.

I would also like to mention, that although it is painful, viewers often just glance at backgrounds. With that in mind you don't have to draw every last brick or blade of grass, just enough details for the viewer to know that it is a brick wall, their mind will fill in the rest. Your perspective and detail is great on the second panel you show, but with so much detail it loses the focus on the character in the panel, so don't be afraid to put less detail in things that aren't important or farther away.

[MidZM]

When you say 2nd panel do you mean the 2nd picture or the third picture? If you're referring to the 2nd picture, the main focus in that panel is not that specific character, it's actually on all 4 characters, I only took a perspective shot to show off the bricks in that panel, this is the full panel.

[DMBrigman]

Yes, I meant this image. The comment still stands as the character on the right gets lost in the details of the background. Seeing the whole panel my eye is drawn to the bricks because they are the most detailed and "interesting" looking thing on the page.

[MidZM]

Under normal circumstances I would add a white outline around the character to make them pop (And I still might, idk) but I didn't because of 2 Manga's I read called Btooom and Tokyo Ghoul, They both use levels of detail that are way up there but at the same time they rarely use any way of separating character from background like Naruto and One Piece do.

Examples:

While the Btooom one isn't the best I could find the Tokyo Ghoul: Re one there are scenes like that all the time where characters and backgrounds are one with the shear amount of detail in the background.

I might do something to make Moto (The armored figure on the right) show out a little more but it'd have to blend well with the scene.

[hushicho]

I personally believe -- and work in this way -- that it's best to use both and just be able to judge where they are most effective. Ultimately, most panels don't hold the eye for a massively long time, and fine details are often lost unless it's a major panel designed to catch and hold the reader's attention. Because of this, I don't think it's necessary to put a huge amount of effort into non-focal points of less major panels; for maximum efficiency, it's always good to know which visuals matter and which don't matter as much. It's also best not to overcrowd panels with more detail than they can handle, which can risk making the intended focus disappear into the elaborate background. I've noticed that as a trend in some of the modern mainstream superhero titles, where some of the artists overdo it with background detail and as a result it's impossible to tell what's actually important or even going on.

Programs like Clip Studio Paint do allow for easy creation of your own hand-drawn textures and materials, as well as brushes that you can make from whatever images you want and set up as you like. I recommend it, and I use it myself; plenty of the brushes I have made in Clip Studio Paint, I have made to add ease and efficiency to my life! It's a more certain way to make textures and materials seem integrated when they're graphical in nature or patterns you want to blend: draw them yourself, very well, once, and make them into a material.

A small amount of detail, coupled with judicious use of screentone, can also make a huge difference. Even minimal accenting, combined with a bit of screentone for a feel of texture and color, makes things come alive on the page!

[DMBrigman]

In the examples you have provided, in the first set, the artist has added darks to the characters in front causing them to contrast with their background and pop against the details of the background. In the bottom example the artist made sure to carefully place darks to lead your eye to the figures in the center as well as fade back the darks in areas that would interfere. You can also see the they added some subtle texture to the walls but did not over render so it wouldn't muddy up the focal point.

This is not to say detailed backgrounds are always bad or always good, but one should plan and consider how best to tell the story. Each artist above knows how to integrate detailed backgrounds while still making characters the focal points. These strategies are ones you can use too.

If you were to color the bricks in darker, and lighten up the window, it would help you character in white stand out more, like the other characters do against the background. Conversely, you could erase parts of the bricks to leave more whitespace so it give the lineart around the character room to breathe. In general, viewers focus on things in the center, areas of color contrast, areas with lots of detail, faces. It is great you are looking at examples, now comes the hard part of figuring out all the tricks the artist used to make their panels effective.

[MidZM]

I took your advice and made the shadows on the brick darker and lightening the windows, I also but a light white blurred outline around the character, idk if it helps but it didn't take away from the color at least xD

[DMBrigman]

It reads better to me
Good job.

[MidZM]

Thanks, I'll keep this in mind for my later pages when I'm dealing with night time scenes like this one.

Thanks for the help

[Bobler09]

Yeah, the last one looks much clearer and easier to read! Keep that going.