Comic Genesis Forums

whenever i look at anime, DANG those people have got MaD sKillz @_@!!!

I have to say, I am NO background drawer, sure i can draw a table and chair (a really crappy table and chair let's just say) but the rest looks like complete and utter junk. or it just looks unreal. does anyone have any advice for me? my setting is in hong kong (like tokyo, but different still) it has lots and lots of buildings...i know i should just go outside and study how to draw things, like sit there and copy, but for some reason i can't do that well.

does anyone know any background tutorials? or just have any advice on how to draw cool backgrounds?

There's no fast way in being able to do backgrounds well. All I can say is just practice, practice, practice. My comic my backgrounds suck monster ass but I try to do them anyway. Eventually I hope that I will be able to draw decent enough backgrounds.

Draw from photos. Takes LOTS of pictures. Take pictures of everything you see, from every angle. Draw your backgrounds from these photos and you'll have all the detail you could hope for.

Manga has it relatively easy because you can get screen tones of some of the cityscape backgrounds.

Lately, I've taken to applying a blurring (sp?) effect to my comic's backgrounds. It helps hide the fact they're badly drawn and with poor perspective, yet they're still there and do their job.

Well, those manga artists practice a lot. And spend hours and hours on backgrounds. The backgrounds/objects are the most detailed and complex thing drawn in manga/anime, so you'll need to work on them a lot.

The best way I learned to draw backgrounds was by practicing drawing from real life. I suggest taking classes, books, attending lectures on perspective, and so forth, but the best piece of advice I can give you is this:

Get a small (preferably digital) camera, and just go around taking pictures of buildings, places, landscapes, etc. These will be your best references, as they are real, the rules of persective apply to them, and obviously, you can use them for reference in drawing your own backgrounds. Especially important - take pictures odd perspectives that it would take a long time to learn to apply otherwise, and of settings more likely to appear in your comic. And then, after you've got all these pictures, you can either study them and learn by trying to draw them, or if you're a bit pressed on time, stick them in and use them in your comic.

I draw in something I like to consider an anime/manga style, and I know how demanding backgrounds are for that kind of style. Backgrounds usually take hours or more at a time. First I did them on the computer using corel Draw and Photoshop, which you can always do, but learned that it took even longer than it did to draw them by hand. Yes, at first they are boring and hard, and they suck. But as you learn to draw them, it will get better, guaranteed, and they will give a new kind of edge to your comic that blank space never could.

Draw from photos.

Trace photos.

Also, check out the Perspective Grid Sourcebook: Computer Generated Tracing Guides for Architectural and Interior Design Drawings by Ernest Burden, ISBN: 0-471-28866-7. It's an 11 x 14 book of grids from varying perspective that you can build environments on top of.

Here's a sample page:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/reader/0471288 ... eader-page

Not the best page out of the book, but you can see how you can build on top of it. Just extend the lines as need be .

Really handy stuff.

--Steve

thank you very much everyone, steve i will be sure to check that out!

There's no reason to hold yourself to traditional backgrounds. I couldn't think of a background once, so I just drew a blow-up doll leaning against a wall. There's no rule that backgrounds have to make sense. Draw war-torn Bosnia in the background of a strip about two characters falling in love.

Absurdity is awesome.

Backgrounds are a pain. Every time I try to draw one, I get lazy and start putting in as little detail as possible. It probably has something to do with my hatred of drawing lots of straight lines.


Though I am trying to gradually improve my backgrounds...

Do a couple panels that have no foreground, so you can concentrate on the background.

Also like the characters, it helps a lot to sketch out concepts and develop them before doing the actual background. For example, if they're in a house, figure out what the whole house looks like. This is especially useful for continuity.

i don't read a lot of manga comics so can't comment on that genre so much - but in most comics the background doesn't need to be in every frame - usually the first one, just to establish the scene and then subsequent frames don'e need to have as much or any detail...
that said, i'm a bit of a background freak myself. as everyone says, practice is the key!

I just tend to put some smudgy thing in with Photoshop. Easy and painless, but only if you like that style.

Look outside and try and draw. Not anything hard. In MOST Animes they have like 1 tree or woods. Try copying a picture and get better at it with just plain old practice.

I remember looking at sergio aragone's work those with a few hundred characters in them ... really good ... the characters become the background .. hope to do one myself one day ....

Sergio Aragones filled every available scrap of space. That's what made his artwork so active. It's not as hard as you might think to have that much detail. It IS hard to decide what to put in the space that you have. Where Sergio Aragones filled his spaces (and the no-man's land between panels) with little people a more realistic comic would fill it up with the "what's really back there." The problem with that is you need to know what's really back there to draw it. That's where references come in.

http://www.photovault.com/
This site has limited usefulness because includes a lot of areal shots that don't give you the kind of street level detail you need. The photos are also quite small, hiding the details. There are some really good photos in there but you must look for them.

http://web.inter.nl.net/users/anima/chr ... /index.htm
These are the Eadweard Muybridge motion studies. Great if you want to see how a body really moves frame by frame. There's still the size problem, though. These animated gives and SWFs are TINY. Still, you get animal motion as well as human motion.

I'm still looking for a good book on faces and clothing styles, especially uniforms and official vehicles.

An excellent reason to set your story in an area you're familiar with is the ability to take photos of said area and really place your characters. Maps are only good for travel. Description is nice but it leaves out SO much. Being there is the best way to make your readers be there with you. I wish I could do more of it.

Any advice on simple backgrounds? You know, not much happening, but something other than a plain colour, or simple gradient. I'd like to be able to stick a few idle objects in there without them stealing the focus or looking too crappy.

Hejhox wrote:Any advice on simple backgrounds? You know, not much happening, but something other than a plain colour, or simple gradient. I'd like to be able to stick a few idle objects in there without them stealing the focus or looking too crappy.

A horizontal line with a few dots to act as pebbles ... or just outlines with pencils to indicate objects like trees, boulders and stuff done right would be good

http://roughies.keenspace.com/
Steal other peoples' ideas.

thanks a bunch guys

I guess the key thing is to practice, which is something I'll have lots of time to do in the summer. hopefully I will improve