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akitsukino
Jan '18

I find backgrounds both rewarding and draining. Rewarding in the sense that the world I've created for my characters is starting to feel more tactile, but draining in the sense that it takes forever and can feel very cold and detached drawing a number of straight and then diagonal lines (and then the torture that is having to redraw them when you notice something is wrong). Considering the style of my characters is pretty simple, I think it would be best to make my backgrounds simpler as well. I draw from references every now and again and I always have trouble with finding what details to keep, but also deciding what to scrap. I've tried seeing how other artists tackle these kind of problems.

Artists like...

Tyson Heese

75

Fabien Mense

19

and Gobi

14
make do with such simplistic designs. Everything still comes out so appealing and right for the story. It feels like something very obvious thats flying over my head.

For instance, what would be a good way to simplify something like this?
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https://www.pexels.com/photo/aerial-view-of-skyscrapper-656184/4

Any advice or resources or links on good ideas for doing this kind of stuff would be appreciated.

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    Jan '18

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dawgofdawgness
Jan '18

I really suggest looking at Elevikin's work, her backgrounds are very expressive but are "messy" enough to have a unique style.

she basically uses shapes and blocks in color to give the buildings depth, I think there's some color theory involved but I have no clue :grin:

but yeah, that's about all the advice I can give you (since I struggle a lot with backgrounds too), simplify it down and add the details on top.

BraniAndNess
Jan '18

In the photo example you gave, all the buildings are very far away so you could get away with drawing pretty much only the lights for the detailing! That's what I'd do :slight_smile:

I find that to simplify backgrounds, you have to go with the main structure over any textures. Textures can make buildings look very flat and put noise that's not really serving a purpose to your image. Try to look for the parts that are sticking out or sticking in. For instance if you draw some simple windows that actually dig into the wall, with a little awning over it and a good roof shape that's not just a square, you'll find that the building is already interesting and you really don't need to draw every single brick to make it work. Find references that show a unifying style that can give a distinctive feel to a location, like Spanish inspired or old stone houses for instance, find a strong style like that will instantly convey personality to your location. When you're designing a background, think about ways to make it express its personality enough that it could stand on its own even if it didn't have a character in it. For example if you're drawing a child's bedroom, we should be able to tell it's their room even if the child isn't in it. But that also applies to cities and lanscapes, ask yourself what kind of place it is and try to convey that atmosphere. Don't forget some greenery if needed. ...All that is going to give more to your backgrouns so that you don't feel like you need a ton of details to make it work :slight_smile:

trace
Jan '18

Personally, for far-away backgrounds, I find emphasizing on the thick lines of the background effective, then add some details like lighting, overall background color (color of the sky according to the time you want to indicate is occurring in the panel), some tiny parallel lines to emulate windows, etc. For close backgrounds, though, I'm afraid I don't have any idea on simplifying them - you'll have to draw in every little detail if you want the reader to feel how much your character/s is/are a part of their current environment.

VibrantFoxRegular
Jan '18

Lately I've been trying to dive into some tutorials provided by the etherington bros4 (thanks to character design references3) and they've got a good batch of ones on background, for example:

Typically, like @dawgofdawgness mentioned, it comes down to basic shapes and blocking out what details are important to building a setting without being too complicated. Which is especially useful for avoiding a bit of that background drawing stress. Though I'm definitely trying to work on implementing it myself.

More often then not I've noticed it comes down to where you want to draw your readers focus and what parts of an image are important to a scene or not. If the backgrounds too cluttered the reader cant focus, to little or none and it feels like your characters are sitting in the void. Often times I like to look at the way certain films or tv shows lay out a scene, especially certain cartoons because the carryover feels a bit more natural from animated to comic panels.

One person who I think executes backgrounds quite well is Said in Seed:

But I hope you're able to find some useful tips, backgrounds can definitley be a pain to figure out ;> <)

shazzbaa
Jan '18

Like, there's no one way to simplify a background. How do you simplify anything?

When you look at a tree you want to draw in the foreground, what do you do with clumps of thousands of leaves? When you want to draw a cat from a reference photo, what do you do with all the fur? The advice I've given to friends has always been to reference Shapes rather than Details, but how that manifests is going to depend on how you personally draw -- whether you use spot blacks or hatching or little scribbly line details or simple blocks of colour -- all of those are fine abstractions to use, depending on what you're comfiest with (which is more or less what a "style" is -- what abstractions are comfiest for you?).

Those ideas don't change when it's buildings. You still have to find the basic shapes of light and shadow and the basic shapes of the form, the same when you're drawing a tree, the same when you're drawing a dog, the same when you're drawing a human.

I do notice that all the artists you're pulling from aren't drawing "backgrounds" so much -- they're drawing environments. There are buildings in the foreground of those illustrations that then move further back and become less detailed. By contrast, you've chosen a reference photo that cannot really be an environment in that way -- it's just a backdrop. So, yeah, if you learn how to draw buildings in that sense -- as a backdrop to an unrelated scene that's happening in the foreground -- I think it would be natural to struggle with figuring out how to make that fit in with the same style you use to draw characters. Those two things literally don't fit together.

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Photos like this are still skyscrapery, but it has a more human scale. You can put a character in this. You have to draw buildings that are closer, and then buildings that are farther back, and then buildings in the "background."
For me, this kind of reference helps me a lot more when I'm trying to understand environments; I personally find it difficult to take anything of use from the "backdrop" type photos. When I was learning to draw the style of architecture in tuscany for my comic, the huge city-wide panoramas of a thousand tops of buildings weren't as helpful until after I'd sketched some reference of buildings in a more human scale, so I could understand them more solidly and have a better feel for their shapes and important details.

If you're using a ruler for this, it might be good to put down the ruler for a bit and sketch. Sketch out scenes and environments from references without using any ruler at all. It's easier to steer yourself away from getting caught up on details when you're sketching out a basic form, just trying to get the right shape of it and make it look nice as a sketch -- it's a lot easier to start to get a feel for what details you need.
Those illustrations you're studying weren't the result of staring at a reference really hard until something clicked -- they're much more likely the result of so many studies of similar elements from references that the artist really had a feel for how to sketch out the components of a city by the time they drew these -- the designs feel simplistic and "right for the story" not because you're missing something obvious, but because those artists have taken the time to become comfortable.

scythe
Jan '18

This is a bit like asking, how to I paint like Da Vinci. There's just no way to quantify it. And I should know because I'm in the exact same boat as you, and have been struggling with this issue for years.

The only method I've ever come across that works is to voraciously look for and study artists who work in a similar style and see how they do it. There's just no hard and fast rule, other than you'll simply have to build up methods of simplifying detail for everything on a case by case basis. I found a method that works for me with bricks, crowds, skylines, landscapes etc., but I'm constantly running into things that I simply have no idea how to best draw at a distance, and the only way to solve that is either by trial and error (and who has time for that) or by referencing how other, better artists have handled that exact subject matter in their own work.

Good luck, this in my mind, is super advanced comic art level stuff, and is something that probably everyone struggles with, with regards to balancing between how to put out quality backgrounds and physical time constraints.

MissMagicGirl
Jan '18

My own comic is very simplistic. Most of the time I will use only one color as a background. But then once in a while I will show a detailed background just to give the reader a sense of the setting. It works well for the style of my comic but some comics really need detailed backgrounds at all time and thats when I can imagine it gets more complicated....

Examples from: https://tapas.io/series/magicadvisor4

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Kamikaze
Jan '18

I have two words for you: Atmospheric Perspective~!

When you're drawing backgrounds the cool thing is you don't have to go into hella detail because atmospheric perspective makes things further from the eye seem less distinct and faded. Think of that image you always see of mountains and how the stuff in the very back is usually blurrier, less detailed and almosted faded in color space. Once I learned about that it made a WORLD of difference in my own background artwork.

Here's a little article with exercises that may be helpful! :slight_smile:

Haku
Jan '18

I find drawing the silhouette of that background first, then breaking it down to some details (JUST enough to indicate detail, but not too much for over detailing) works pretty well. A strong silhouette of a city skyline is very recognizable, so is a tree, a castle, a group of houses, villages, etc. Establish a strong foreground, middle ground and background, and with things further in the BG, the less detailing there is :slight_smile: