Xmas BGs

Here are some backgrounds from the Christmas short, which by the way is also on Vimeo now with the audio synced up properly. The Youtube encoding seems to have delayed the sound by a few frames, which isn't a huge deal but results in less snappy timing.

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Evolution of a Background

The third Fester Fish short, which will probably be titled "Fester Makes Friends," is still a few weeks away from completion, but I did promise to post some work from it at some point.

So here's a little step-by-step run-through of how I've been doing the backgrounds for this cartoon... First I do a loose sketch of the scene, sometimes just using the storyboard panel directly.

Then I do a loose color guide in Flash. I didn't do any color guides until this latest cartoon. Before, I would just draw the background and then mess around in Photoshop until I found some color scheme that I liked, but now I'm planning them more carefully in Flash while I can see how the characters fit into them, so that they stand out as much as possible. Although it's an extra step, it ends up taking less time in the long run because I don't have to make as many changes afterwards.

Then I draw the clean linework, and export that from Flash.

Finally I open up Photoshop, paint in all the flat colors from the guide and then start adding gradation, textures and sometimes highlights and shadows if I'm feeling saucy.

Look out for this and many other equally exciting backgrounds in the next Fester Fish cartoon coming soon. You goan love it mo den waffles. And ah KNOW you loves you some waffles.

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Digital Background Painting Class

Yesterday I completed a two-week intensive Digital Background Painting course at school, before classes start full-time for Year 3. It was really fun and I learned a lot of Photoshop tricks. I'm also working on more Fester Fish cartoons, and some other smaller projects, but I don't have much I can show yet except for this work from the Digital BG class...

This drawing might be familiar to Fester Fans.... It's the usual 'Fester's house' establishing shot, only now I've finally created a daytime version. Now I won't have to keep using that awful attempt at a pre-sunrise version, seen in Fester's Nephew and Fester Goes Fishing.


And during the final class, we were told to do a night-time version of one of our paintings, so I did this:

So now I have a daytime version, a night-time version... and if I REALLY need it, that stupid early-morning version. During the course, the teacher gave us a bunch of really cool Photoshop brushes, which seemed like they might be good for imitating that early Hanna-Barbera look...

The drawing itself was done in about 30 seconds, so obviously it sucks, but I'm pretty happy with the colours and textures. I really want to do a cartoon with more of this abstract, flat, "modern" kind of background design.

And finally, finishing the in-class assignments early + messing around with crazy cool Photoshop brushes = "Fester A Go Go."


Blah. I know this stuff isn't that exciting, but I just don't have a lot to post at the moment. I'm busy working on the actual cartoons.

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