Just a short little tutorial/progress thing with this background for a friend~ and under a thing cause it’s gonna be long OTL

May as well go through everything, so first I have the storyboard I was working with

it’s a little faint, I added the grid just to line it up a little better. While I sketched out the full background I looked back to a bunch of reference images for plants and growth, this also helped with the colour later

from here I worked in groups, doing the front-most objects, front floor, mid range and back.

after the lines were done I laid down flats, the shading for this was slightly structured gradients rather than strong shadows unless the area was entirely in shadow.

here is everything else coloured. Frankly this isn’t quite the best example to use for a functional background as this was a test, not something I’ve tried to make a focal point with. When I am trying to do that I’ll either use overall gradients, focal colours or objects to highlight what I want. I show some of the colour stuff here (stage 5). One thing I have tried to stick to here is that there are a limited number of base colours so that nothing overly sticks out. There are 5 swatches in all, 2 green(plants and ground), 2 blue(concrete and metal) and pink/red.

after I’ve shaded it all and got any extra bits I might want
 I make a series of either colour overlays or level adjustments to fix any weird contrasts or bring it together.

Another thing I have started to do is make greyscale versions of my work (greyscale, NOT no saturation) this highlights any bits that might be sticking out, it’s also a good and easy thing to adjust, as then you can reapply it to the original image as either an overlay or luminosity layer.

and here is the finished thing with the characters in their rough positions. I’ll be remaking this background later but with more focus put on the colours as the green is a tad too much for me, I’d be following the process in the link way back where I splodged colours around until I felt like it was balanced enough.

I hope this was kind of helpful~:D

Good news! I got a new computer~ :D so hopefully in a week or so I should have everything all back and running and can get back to doin stuff~

Bad news! it uses Windows 8~ I feel like throwing my chair out the window~:D haaa~

_{seriously though this OS is so incredibly infuriating I can’t even feel the joy of having a new computer, why does this even exist OTL I can’t access anything…or at least not easily…}

Uh, just letting people know that my computer is kind of dead…well, dying…it’s in a condition where I’d rather not turn it on. So I may not be online as much or be able to get as much work done until I get a new computer (it’s likely that I will still be active cause I always seem to find a way around it, this is just in the event that I can’t). For now I’ll just be pinching my family’s computers ^^’

So yeah, in the event anyone wanted to contact me you can either send an ask or an email to chicinlicin@gmail.com…I don’t think anyone would really need to contact me about anything though OTL