2D Background Project: A New Inspiration

In my last post, I said that I wanted Indre Bankauskaite to be my inspiration for the naturalistic environment of my background project. However, it turned out that their work was to stylised for the shot and that I couldn't use them. I was rather hoping I'd use their art, but I wasn't sure what constituted as a naturalistic artist at first. It turns out I should chose an artist who actually tries to replicate real life! So life drawings…for environments.

I decided on Stepan Fedorovich Kolesnikov since I really like his almost-sketchy drawings put together with only a few shades of colour. The winding trees he paints are also good for the trees I'll be drawing in my background shot.

The paintings above are my intimidations of his work (even further above). I was using watercolours since most background artists use watercolours to blend everything together in the background whilst the character animation stands out. I'm still not sure whether it would be better to use watercolours or acrylics to intimidate Kolesnikov's work. 

As you can see, my watercolour skills aren't up to scratch. I've always liked painting since it's a very therapeutic hobby, but I know it's not something I'm talented at. Some of the brush strokes look too messy and first painting looks like it's been blended too much. I like some parts of the second one, but it's still lacking.

I went on to practice my watercolour skills still in the style of Kolesnikov, and ended up with the paintings above (and one pencil sketch). I feel myself getting better at painting, mainly because I used colours that I enjoy blending with. Kolesnikov's colours are quite subdued in his work, but I decided to try using shades of red since I like the combination of fiery colours. My favourite pieces are the mountains, mainly the one with patches of red on it, as I feel like it instantly tells me where the mountain resides: in a hot area where not much green is seen.

I even tried drawing and painting in a city environment to see if I'm better at that! The shading on the pencil drawing is good and I do like how I painted the lamp, but the block tower became a mess and I didn't enjoy painting it.

IN OTHER NEWS!

The thumbnails for the 2D background project are done and so is the storyboard of the shot I will be making! For the project we only have to make one background and some character animation for one shot, but it was deemed helpful to look back on thumbnails for a whole scene based around the shot. The scene shows two children, who press a button on a control panel to turn the environment into a beautiful landscape of nature. The girl (who is going to be animated in the shot I'm making) turns to see a bicycle against a tree, which reminds her of an alien boy she knew, and cries.

In the thumbnails, the area highlighted in pink is the background shot for my project. The storyboard itself shows in more detail how it'll look in the end. The areas that are outlined in black indicate the character animation (the girl, birds flying, trees blowing in the wind). The camera will also pan across the shot, from left to right.