Artists who build the environment in which a story takes place often set the tone and emotion of a production before any of the action unfolds. Morgan Noll, who works as a background and visual development artist in animation and games, tells us that she breaks her backgrounds down into three levels.
“One, what do I want an audience to feel while engaging with this piece? Two, what narrative elements do I want to inform the design of the scene. And three, what visual language works best for supporting those choices?”
Asking these questions helps her to form the basis of her design, which she builds on by considering how it will be inhabited, and what detritus that habitation will leave behind (see our guides to the best drawing tablets and the best laptops for drawing if you need new equipment for your own work).
“I try to keep my artistic choices informed by characters,” Morgan says. “I like to add extra scuffs and cracks to items that would naturally pick up a lot of human use, and to leave traces of activity like dust, notes, graffiti, scribbling, stains etc. to evoke a sense of history within a space – that it exists independently outside the moment it was captured.”
Space and shape are the key to background art
Focusing on the overall forms of the space she’s creating helps Morgan to get an idea of how it will be received by an audience. “I like to break things down into simple shapes and graphic impressions and then build them back up into semi-realism through these repeated graphic patterns and shapes,” she explains.
“I find this process helps me distil what the overall impact of an environment is and helps me better facilitate a sense of tangibility, which is really important for work that serves a larger purpose in bolstering a story, such as background art for animation.”
Edwige Stoll, an artist who’s worked on The Character of Rain, Arcane S2 and The Summit of the Gods, echoes this idea about the importance of the larger forms.
“Try to use a brush that’s as big as it can be, to the point that it’s uncomfortable to paint with, to make more expressive strokes,” he says. “If the shape you want to achieve can be made with one brushstroke, try to do it, and put intention in every stroke.”
Your guiding light, says visual development artist Eduardo Vargas, should always be the narrative.
“Every decision that we take when painting backgrounds has to serve the larger purpose of what the story is trying to say. We should always start with understanding the story as deeply as possible, and only then move onto executing the background itself. Once we understand the story, the lighting, mood and tone decisions will be easy to make.
Handing off background art
One of the most important things to do when handing off work is to make sure the files you’re passing on are well-organised, says Morgan. “When you’re a background artist, often you’ll be managing hundreds of layers. It’s good practice to make sure that all of your layers are named, grouped in accordance with respect to your foreground, middleground, background, and clearly separated for compositing teams down the pipeline.
It helps with creating overlays and underlays for character animation, it ensures that pieces of your background can be edited easily for any adjustments.” Most people find this work a chore, so Morgan uses an attitudinal tweak to get herself to do it: “It helps me to treat it like an exercise in care for my fellow artists,” she says.
As a background artist, you’re part of a team, and much of the job is about collaborating effectively with other artists working elsewhere in the production pipeline. Having worked on big productions such as The Legend of Vox Machina, Eduardo is well versed in the complexities that arise as work is passed around.
“Backgrounds have an interesting place in the pipeline because in many ways we inherit most of the boons and flaws everyone else made before us,” he says. “What’s most important is to understand that every mistake we commit and every mistake we don’t deal with will be equally inherited by the next team, which in most cases will be compositing.”
Being a good team player is about developing a strong sense of how the whole production fits together and your role within that. “As with most collaborative work, the key here is communication and understanding the process of animation well enough so that you can foresee problems before they happen,” says Eduardo.
“If everyone in the pipeline is aware of how what they do affects everyone else, then productions flow much more smoothly.”
Becoming a background artist
Getting a job as a background artist on a team working with an established IP is often a matter of demonstrating that you can deeply immerse yourself in that universe and pick up the style and art direction.
“Get comfortable with being able to break down a style,” says Morgan. “When I was working on Tales of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles adaptation, for example, I made a giant PureRef file of all of the feature films’ visual development I could find. I tried to really break down how the scribble-style worked, and when and how scribbles were applied.”
Morgan tells us she would do studies of small objects such as a clock or pizza slice, trying to replicate the style and “get it into my hands”. These types of studies are great to put into your portfolio to demonstrate your ability to pick up an established style. “It’s also good to keep in mind with your portfolio that you should really be assessing what the artistic direction is of the IP you’re interested in,” Morgan adds.
“How does the IP choose to depict organic elements like water or foliage? Graphically? More softly rendered? Do they use pure black for their shadows? Do they use line-art or are they lineless? Do they incorporate elements like scribbles or halftone? If you can metabolise these nuances and showcase them in your own style or artwork, I think that goes a long way for demonstrating your capabilities rather than pure observational drawing.”
Illustrator Bastien Grivet, who recently won an Emmy Award for his background design work on Star Trek: Prodigy, agrees that this level of study is the key to success. “When it comes to pitching yourself, the more you show that you know the universe of the studio you want to join, the more they’ll see that you’re capable of solving their problems,” he says.
“When Dungeons & Dragons asked me to join their projects, I had to spend the first two weeks learning 50 years of art history dedicated to D&D. You have to do your homework to truly capture the essence of the stories your environments must convey.”
In terms of workflow, he builds sets by hand in Gravity Sketch on Oculus and imports the geometry into Cinema 4D where he finishes the texturing, lighting and rendering, then finalises in Photoshop or Clip Studio Paint (see our guide to digital art tools).
Some background art tips
One way to think about background design, says Morgan, is that in a sense, background design is character design. “We’re all products of our environments and our environments also reflect a lot of our interiority back at us. This should be especially true for the worlds we craft because all of design is an informed choice.
“I try to always think about the person or people inhabiting the space. Thinking from a character lens ensures these choices are rooted in what I want the audience to learn about the people or their world. Are they messy? Are they self-conscious? Do they project wealth and power but you can see rental suit receipts peaking out under the rug? Look around at your own room. Take note about what your things say, or perhaps even hide about you.
“The most amazing thing about background art is that we get to think on this level, that every little scuff in a surface, or misplaced shoe, or crumb left behind in a scene is a purposeful clue to a fuller picture of a character.”
Cassie Jacobsen specialises in background painting and illustration. She stresses the usefulness of thumbnail sketches.
“Sometimes, I already have a clear idea for a composition, but not its lighting or colours, or vice versa, so creating thumbnail sketches and paintings is a great way for me to fill in those gaps and choose the strongest scene. It forces me to simplify and not get lost in details that might detract from the tonal goal.
Another tip is to paint scenes with neutral lighting first and then adding light and shadow via layer blending modes (like overlay and multiply).
“This was a game changer for me. Background painting can be such an overwhelming process, but I found that rendering each object without a specific light or colour scenario made the task much more manageable.”
The biggest error she sees is focusing on the outcome of finding a style over experimenting with tools and processes. ”Trying to hone in on your style too early can be limiting and even become frustrating when you hit creative roadblocks.
“When you allow yourself to experiment, try new methods, and get inspired by the things or artists you like and apply them to your work, you acquire skillsets that make you a more experienced artist. Your style will naturally develop and come through in your paintings.”
This article originally appeared in ImagineFX. Subscribe to ImagineFX to never miss an issue. Print and digital subscriptions are available.
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