The Other Side - Rendered Background

These are the rendered backgrounds for my animation and they were drawn and coloured on photoshop using a variety of brushes. I realised that if i want to make the plants shift and move with the interaction of the character i was going to have to add them in separately in the animation while i animate, to make the plants seem more natural.

The first scene is an establishing shot which shows the hole in the tree where my character lives. While drawing this i tried to show difference in lighting on the tree as well as the detail on the bark I found drawing the image too be more enjoyable than colouring because trying to get my lighting right was frustrating as well as finding a good colour for the bark and sky.

The second scene is probably one of the most full and complicated scenes in the sense it has so many components (the bush, tree, fence, sky and grass) with the tree i had to try and get the hole a realistic size as well as the markings in the bark to at least be similar in placement. the colour of the bark was difficult to replicate as well. On the fence to make it look like wood, i made a separate layer and lowered the opacity of an image of wood to give it a texture. I would of liked to of given a bit more idea of shadows on the fence and bush but i realised it would be quite dark from the shadows which i didn't want.

With the third scene I needed a background and a fore ground on two separate layers as my character passes through the two sets of grasses. Like with the tree bark, i had to get the grass the same colour in each scene which was also difficult. i wanted to make the grass move as my character passes through however i don't know how to do this at the time with the animation.

This is the most dull looking background but has the most to add. i had to leave a path for the character to walk through as it hits the flowers and pushes through the grass, i think this scene will result in the most time consuming to animate as there is a lot of secondary action and overlap.

I really like the pond image as it adds a new aspect to the constantly grassy and green images and I'm going to have to make a slight variation on my animation work and think with much more fluidity with the water splash and the interaction of lily pad on water. I'm looking forward to animating the impact of the jump of my character.

The coming final scenes all take place in a blackberry bush, and so i had to have a variety of thorns leaves and berrys. As all this takes place inside the bush i made all the features darker than what they initially looked like.

With the final scene, like with the third scene i had to separate the hedge from the garden as well as getting the light passing through the whole in the bush.
I found making the backgrounds time consuming, difficult and interesting, as they were something i hadn't done much at all, i enjoyed drawing them but when i was getting to the end, drawing the blackberry bush three times in a row it was very repetitive. i feel like my backgrounds fit with the style of my character who will look natural in this landscape but i would of liked to of made the backgrounds more realistic but i still need to work with backgrounds and digital paintings but thats just the future for practice.