Intro to the Making of week 9: 20/11/17: Backgrounds and environment:

Our next mini brief of the intro to making of module had now commenced and this was focused on backgrounds and illustrations specifically the background art that we see in animated movies or even video games. Our task would be to create a background piece over the next two weeks so that then using After Effects we could play with them in terms of the multi plane idea that we covered last weeks so that we can see the relationship between the backgrounds in storyboards and layouts. I knew a few things about background art and some of the artists but I realised that this session could help me further my understanding and even give me some perspective for my own side projects.

Annabeth drew our attention to a slide show depicting some experts in the field of background art in animation from films and well known animated series such as the work of Ghostshrimp aka Daniel Bandit who is well know for his work on the animated series Adventure Time what Annabeth said we needed to focus on was that the background artists does exterior and interior layout environments as viewers like to see whats inside this very well drawn building or what may lie hidden inside it.

Examples of Ghostshrimps work in background art.

One other thing that Annabeth pointed out was that the backgrounds were not the size of the screen but are stretched out or zoomed in for close up shots but the main element was thinking about building the high resolution within the background image.

We were then shown a new form of perspective drawing that I had not yet come across before and this was forced perspective or as its otherwise known four point perspective.

example of four point perspective

This was a very curved form of perspective as the street that we looked at seemed curved in presentation and even looking slightly cartoonish this was clearly something I would need to look into for future references in the course/module. Going further into the slide show we were then shown some artwork that seemed very familiar to me in terms of the colour and layout and thats when Annabeth began to tell us about the background artist named Maurice Noble who's work was noticeable in the classic Looney Tunes show, thats when it came to me that this was the very artwork used in the classic Looney Tunes cartoon before the use of digital technology in television series.

Example of Maurice Noble's work from Looney Tunes 1950

Example of his process in background development.

We were also shown a piece on the slideshow that showed his process of doing his background art (as shown above) from what I could tell he seemed to sketch it out first then began to add colour and backgrounds to the piece in pencil to be finally cleaned up with what I assumed was paints given the time this was done in. This was truly an inside look to how the art of my favourite cartoon series was done in the old times of animation, as I do have a heart for the old ways of things. Annabeth said there was a book that described some elements of the artist that we may want to consider looking at in the future so I decided to see if I could find the book and see if it would be of viable use, the books title Was the Noble Approach which from the sound of the title was poetically wrote.

We were then shown an element of background art that I did recognise and this was called Air perspective which was relating to the relation ship of background, mid ground and foreground. The idea being that as we create a feeling of distance the foreground elements, would begin to fade towards the colour of the sky and this was where the element of the time of day comes in since in background art I knew that the same background would appear in a scene at different times of the day such as dawn, morning, noon, afternoon, evening and night.

example of day colours

example of noon colours

example of evening colours

example of night colours.

The key elements were contrasts and lightness in the composition and the depth of the colour palette that we use in our work and as we worked on the elements the background colours would be strong and get lighter as they get further away. One other element was simplifying the backgrounds as we go such as making distant city buildings silhouettes in a further distance or in front of them add small windows in the near mid ground buildings and the level of detailing and modelling. When working in After Effects with these types of backgrounds we needed to prioritise the drawing in the foreground elements as this would be the sky moving in the foreground when animating in After Effects to create an essence of the clouds moving behind the scene.

There were different elements of the time of day one of these was the sun and moon and there were different lighting effects that create the elements of shadowing. Shadowing on objects and people was an element that I personally was having difficulties with and Annabeth said that perhaps this may help me and looking at the power point slides the shadowing had to do with positioning within the room or the angle the light is coming from. The key to this particular element was a touch light shining it at different positions to capture the shadowing of that object or person. Examples of how light affects it were shown to us in the slide such as the moonlight creates a local tone or silhouettes within a background piece or the sun having an overcast effect pending on its positioning. Other lighting elements included candle light which created the feel of point light in a room in the dark night illuminating a spot on the ground. 

We then looked at more examples of background artwork one of which was the background art of Disney's Sleeping Beauty done by background artist Eyvind Earle who according to Annabeth's research worked in terms of high contrast and detail within the artwork and styling of the scene adding a touch of realism. I recognised this art from an old Disney Documentary presented by Walt Disney himself when he was doing television programmes back in 1958, which I learned whilst doing my research for Animation context. 

Background art from Disney's Sleeping Beauty done by Eyvind Earle

Annabeth mentioned a book that was focused around one of these elements when working with contrast and details and this was called setting a scene written by Frazer Maclean, which was yet another book to consider looking at later on after the session. We then looked at background art which again sparked a memory in the back of my mind and we were then told the name of the artist and the show this was done for and it was Hanna Barbera's  Scooby Doo, which I was told was done using inks and watercolours and I always assumed it looked digital but I was reminded by Annabeth this was done in a time long before Photoshop came into the picture and this did explain the painted like quality of the background piece, the artist who produced this work was Walt Peregoy, who looking at his work was very good in the field of mix media and it never made me consider the use of inks with watercolour paints.

Walt Peregoy's background artwork for Scooby Doo

We were also shown artwork of other known background artists such as the artist behind the art of Studio Gibli's Howls Moving Castle and Princess Monopoke two of my most favourite anime films named Kazuo Oga and the point of looking at his art was to get another perspective on the matter of the elements of a background piece in terms of distance and Air perspective, I've always found his style to resemble that of a painted form which was what I assumed was correct despite the fact that the film was dated around 2004, I still hold true to my possible theory of analysing art.

Kazuo Oga Background art Howls Moving Castle Studio Gibli 2004

We then looked at modern elements such as the artwork of CBBC's reboot of Danger Mouse done by Alana O'Brien who worked at Bolder Media to produce the artwork. This moved us to a new element that this particular artist used in his work and this seemed to fit around what In was learning about concept art that every artist has their own unique style and approach. Her element was a copy and paste element, whilst the remainder of the background was drawn and rendered digitally she placed in images of real life elements taken with a camera in this case it was the phone box. This was a real surprise to me and I couldn't see it at first until Annabeth explained how this was possible, this told me the artist was a very skilled expert in misdirection within art and even blending it into the background art itself making it look like it was drawn with the rest of the artwork.

Background artwork of Danger Mouse 2016 done by Alana O'Brien. 

This brought us to the matter of textures within backgrounds such as this and that we needed to start picking up on the matter of background textures within elements of the artwork. We could acquire textures from a website called Textures.com which I recognised from my College work experience at TT Games in Wilmslow as when working in Maya on elements like buildings or even metal doors this would be considered an element that could go where our own art skills couldn't reach. Some of these elements were incredibly expensive whilst some were free to use, so it's becoming clear that we began to see the connection to the game department in this animation course. This brought us to our two week task, of creating a background piece ready for the 4th-6th December and there were a selection of themes that we could use in this task;

• A lone castaway's shelter on a mysterious tropical island.
• A remote mountain top castle, base of a secret experiment 
• A derelict alien outpost on a strange moon.
• A magical cabin in an enchanted forrest.

In this task we were free to play around with the genre of the scene settings based on aesthetic style/material or time period be it modern, or old years and time of day. There were multiple things that we needed to deliver several outcomes for this mini brief task;

• 1x exterior landscape scene layered file in photoshop for playing with in After Effects, file format: PSD 6000X3000px 72dpi 
• 1x colour interior room concept art flattened image, file format: Photoshop file 1920x1080px at 72dpi

These ideas and suggestions seemed promising and I could sense ideas forming in my mind but I decided to do the derelict alien outpost piece as this related to something that I wanted to try and do for galaxy based artwork as I had recently been working on doing galaxy nebular art using Photoshops distant cousin Clip Studio Paint/Manga Studio 5 and tutorials I found on Pinterest, I was progressing well in two of my pieces and was slowly improving in terms of presentation as shown below.

Nebular attempt 1work done by A.Montgomery

Nebular galaxy attempt 2 work done by A.Montgomery

Galaxy Nebula attempt 3 work done by A.Montgomery

Nebula attempt 4 work done by A.Montgomery

This project sounded like a good idea to put what I've learned to good use. Annabeth told us that we wouldn't be doing this today in the lesson but we could spend the time researching our themes for our illustration pieces to get an idea of what we would be working with and as before with the character design element of the module we could use Pinterest to conduct our research. So I logged in and began my research into derelict alien bases and found a lot of space themed work in illustration and art and so I made a board based around this theme. I decided to include real life elements by looking into derelict buildings specifically generators, and stair cases giving me some ideas for interior and exterior work in a base like environment even control rooms if I wanted to go even further. I gathered the best images into mood boards created in Photoshop to A5 scale to go into my journal for this module. see below

Research boards for alien bases and derelict elements from Pinterest .

I took what I had and began sketching out ideas and rough sketches for my idea in terms of setting and location I even wrote a backstory behind this base and what had happened to it. The idea in my mind was an abandoned alien mining outpost that was destroyed whilst mining a rare element as the aliens mining it got too greedy, and ultimately cost most of the crew their lives, explanation in sketch;

Rough sketch and backstory 

Looking back on this session I would think that I've learned a lot in terms of background art and even a few new secrets from the world of the original background artists that I may explore for my own projects in my illustration work. I was also looking forward to this task of doing background art as it presents the opportunity of using my knowledge of digital illustration and art, to good use in this manner of concat art in this module. I feel like I've gained more insight into this section of this module and even given me some things to think about in terms of books to look at for inspiration and further knowledge. I was looking forward to playing with these in After Effects and may even help me in one of my fan comic side projects I'm planning to do for my tumblr blog.