(2235) Background drawing!

Today's note:

I crunched four days of work in one post because it was a pretty flat day. I drew a lot of background images; definitely not what I'm good at hahaha but my character art style is just so, so specific that the beautiful royalty-free or public domain background images can't do it, sadly. I could have saved like a week of work if I were to ignore this, but I really, really wanted to have the character art style matches the background art style.

My background drawing method are the following:

1. redraw the 3D models I build, though I'm still not good in this so I just stack some blocks to resemble walls and some objects, and then add the details myself.
2. redraw from photos that I took, or from various public domain photographs. This is very tricky because it's not easy to find the ones with that perfect angle to show the story I want to tell. Many times, I extend it myself.
3. redraw from royalty-free images which licence specifically say that the provider of these images allow "retouch/editing" the purchased images. For example: Minikle.

I've been following lots of background artists on Twitter who share their timelapse videos... They draw from scratch... OMG... I want to do that too... But I think I want to lean more on the 3D approach. Since I think it's super duper useful if I can build the scenes for my VNs, and then rotate the angle of the same area or room, redraw it, and it would work perfectly!

In Pippa and Your Phantasmal Problem, I mostly used method 2 and 3 for background drawing. I got some public domain photos from pxhere.com, sketched some details over it, and redraw everything on top of the photo and the extra sketches. I also bought one background from Minikle and redrew on top of it so it can match the character art.

Sneak peeks:

Ms Ester's living room. It's supposed to be really fancy! (Background is WIP)

With all of the detailed ornaments, fancy wooden tables and furnitures, real flowers decorations – I surprisingly loved working in this background!!

First meeting with Pippa! :D (Background is WIP)

This background took quite long because there are so many details I removed from the original reference, and I had to be creative in filling the empty spaces. Not as fun as Ms Ester's living room, but it was a nice one as well. I remember drawing this while listening to the news that was playing on someone else's PC.

Pippa wants cherry pie! It's a nod of Pippa the Witchy's cherry tree! (Background is done)

This is a redraw (retouch? edit) of one of Minikle's background, but I excluded a lot of details from the original. I wanted a solid wall behind her, I just needed the seat and the table. I could probably have done this myself but I don't trust my sense of perspective lines...

A 24h library that MC and Pippa visit!! This background took me whole 2 days to draw ;-;

For future's note: I hope to not write another scene in the library hahahaha... Drawing this was incredibly tedious. Especially the books. I almost wanted to boot my Windows to open CSP only to draw the row of books, but I have so many unsaved stuff open in my laptop... I can't be bothered to save them all hahaha.

So, I took a shortcut. Work smart, not hard! (nevermind it's still hard...)

I use layer style and apply black stroke to create lineart of books silhouettes instantly. When I'm done, I erase all the white colour with color to alpha feature.

Drawing thousands of book is now faster hahaha...

Of course, with the angles of where the books are facing, it may not always work. Sometimes it's distorted very weirdly and it bothers me a little bit. But, let's move on, shall we? :D

The background drawing took me so many days, I (want to) believe that it's all worth it! 💪

See you!
- Konayachi