Making backgrounds, process.

~ Thanks so much to Beacon for directing me to a site that will convert stills into .gifs :)

So I've had a few people ask me about how I do my backgrounds, so I finally have a couple of examples from WIPs, one is the background for my current tag sale and the other was a gift background that I made for another player who was having a sale at the time that didn't have a background so I did one for practice for her using her
tag example at the time.

I don't usually have an actual plan, and I start alot of stuff that I never finish probably for that reason. I find a tag that I like to work with and start playing around. I usually do my backgrounds in three sections, foreground, middle and the background but I don't always go in the same order about which I do first. I also don't do a background on its own, I find the horse that fits it first then make the background around it.

I always try to pull my base colours from an actual photo if I can, especially with grass, it can come in so many colours but if the base colour is off then it just looks terrible. which you can fix sometimes with an overlay after the background is done but I like to try to tie it together without an overlay colour since it can mess with colours for recolouring later. My characters live in a foresty area by a larger body of water so that's kind of my comfort zone. I need more practice with other things. And I have a really hard time with grass which is something I'm trying to do more work with. I also need to work on depth and perspective but hopefully if I keep making these gifs each time I work on a background it'll be helpful to me down the road.

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So now I'm curious, how do others approach making a background?

Last edited on 2017-04-16 at 12:34:17 by Forevermore

I've never tried a signature like it, though it is something I would like to give a shot with.

the background that you make are very appeasing.

Always nice to read how other artists approach things :D

I do my backgrounds sorta similar to you, in the sense where I usually just wing it XD Though I never draw the horse first. I like to imagine a background and then see where I can fit the subject into it. I find that I always seem to work front to back in my backgrounds, foreground, middle, then background. Then after I go back and add in details all over if needed.
And yesss, colour selecting from photos is ♥ My grass would look so horrible if I didn't use photos for the colours XD
I have been meaning to make a little background tutorial of how I do things but I haven't really made any tags lately!

My latest background would be this one if you don't mind me posting c:
Animating took foreeeever XD
I will admit there was a lot of cheating in this one.. a lot of copying and pasting of things XD