/ic/ - Artwork/Critique

[Anonymous No.3333683]

Where do you get the stamina to draw backgrounds in comics?

I could draw characters all day long but backgrounds are a pain. Also because I got to use perspective to set up everything every single damn panel, is that right?
Or are there any shortcuts?

Thanks for the answers anons.

(Don't recommend the photos with filters)

[Anonymous No.3333688]

>>3333683
>Also because I got to use perspective to set up everything every single damn panel, is that right?
you mean setting up perspective guides? perspective is something that the more you practice and get used to it, the more you get an eye for it and can just wing it without guides.

[Anonymous No.3333693]

>>3333688
Is it alright if the perspective is not acurate?
Do most people just eye ball it?

[Anonymous No.3333697]

>>3333693
accurate*

[Anonymous No.3333698]

>>3333693
of course. you don't literally see in a perspective grid. things are a bit warped and rounded. depends on the piece and what you're going for of course but yeah.

[Anonymous No.3333708]

>>3333693
>Do most people just eye ball it?
yeah most do, although if they're not well experienced with perspective the inaccuracy will be much more obvious. you won't be able to tell at all with someone who's good at it though.

[Anonymous No.3333712]

We'll I got some other problems when doing backgrounds that may be retarded but hey, why not ask.

>Do I have to use ruler for everything? If not why background in pic related seems so straight everywhere.

>How do I make the lines so solid? Mine usually change thickness and look kinda wonky.

>Because I move the ruler so much around it starts to stain the paper, how do I get over this?

>When doing everything with accurate perspective, do you just measure every single thing with the vanishing points? Every single box and book? It takes so dam long.

>What materials do they use? Fine liners only?

>When making really tiny lines like in the handles of the chair in pic related I screw up, they are not parallel to each other, and they are curves so it's even harder, how do they not screw up?

[Anonymous No.3333716]

Probably by being interested in the backgrounds, I can't say for sure but if you're devising the picture yourself you should be coming up with a complete image, including backgrounds, that you like and want to draw, so I guess that might just mean making sure you consider the background before deciding what your scene will look like, rather than just the character. That said I don't know any of the specifics of your situation, or even general specifics of what stuff like this entails, so as far as I know you're just given an idea or story you have to draw and just happen to enjoy drawing characters enough that you don't need to come up with the idea yourself. It's possible giving more information would help me or others help you, or maybe it wouldn't. I don't know, I don't even know if drawing backgrounds is relevant to you, maybe you don't even draw at all, maybe you aren't even human. Who can say, really?

[Anonymous No.3333720]

>>3333693
If it looks fine then it is fine. Wing it if you want, if the result isn't acceptable then you'll know right away. If winging it doesn't work then just get anal about setting up grids until you get good enough that you don't need them.

[Anonymous No.3333722]

>>3333683
Professionals don't waste time drawing backgrounds. They can use clip studio paint ex to turn photos and 3d models into an image like your picture.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ItnQPPWnvSk

[Anonymous No.3333725]

>>3333716
I like doing stories, I sketch the layout of pages real quick and all that. When doing so I always think of what is in each panel, who is in there, and where they are.

Having backgrounds is super important in some instances so I reaally need to do them so that the panels have the impact I want.

Here is an example of something I did. Has a ton of errors and I downgraded the quality that I was first aiming for like 5 times.

[Anonymous No.3333728]

>>3333722
Yeah I know, maybe I'll use it sometimes. But this thread is not about that.

[Anonymous No.3333754]

>>3333683
Do it in one panel as an opening shot and then do white or some other abstract background for every other panel since they already know where they are. If you want it in every panel and are set on hand drawing... just do it once and paste in photocopies, lol. Don't be the bitch that takes 11 years to get out three fuckin' books, lol.

[Anonymous No.3333791]

>>3333754
Yesss. I know that it's fucking stupid to not use filters sometimes because it will eat a fuck ton of time.

That being said answer this anons.
>>3333712

[Anonymous No.3333805]

>>3333683
How about tracing over photos?

Even if you end up making a lot of modifications from the original image the perspective will be less tedious.

[Anonymous No.3333809]

>>3333805
Hmm, may get the job done in some instances, I'll take a note on that anon.

[Anonymous No.3333838]

>>3333728
Then you picked a bad image for your OP.

[Anonymous No.3333858]

>>3333809
very bad advice from a crab with no real skill

[Anonymous No.3333891]

Maybe most people wing it, but professionals use grids to make sure they are right. People who draw backgrounds see the same thing you might in characters, there's way more stuff you can put in a background compared to a character. In a video game, it's like decorating your sims house with cool stuff vs decorating your sim with cool stuff. Both can be fun.

[Anonymous No.3333976]

>>3333683
use shortcuts like ready made perspective grids and 3d models

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yqqj07WnQqs

[Anonymous No.3334051]

>>3333976
Great shit anon, thanks.

[Anonymous No.3334053]

>>3333976
what program is he using?

[Anonymous No.3334109]

>>3334053
From the looks of it, either Manga Studio or Clip Studio.

[Anonymous No.3334468]

>>3333683
Consider the arrangement of the page first. The best mangaka make use of architectural elements in a loose way.

[Anonymous No.3334470]

[Anonymous No.3334472]

I'm not certain how much perspective goes into Mitsuba Takanashi's work, it seems more like arrangement to me, but the environment is always convincing.

[Anonymous No.3334476]

A shoujo mangaka.

[Anonymous No.3334479]

Higashimura. Now in comparison, a Western comic artist would have made this page very difficult for themselves, but if you can stop and think of the arrangement of the page as a whole, you can implement perspectives that make sense.

[Anonymous No.3334482]

Araki. I'm not sure if he's using the kabura pen to get those even lines for his backgrounds, but I think the art in 'Cool Shock BT' is amazing. It looks retro but it has a modern arrangement.

[Anonymous No.3334483]

[Anonymous No.3334484]

[Anonymous No.3334485]

>>3333712
I usually use fine liners for bg and brushes for characters. This way I can make use of rulers and make my lines consistent while still keeping organic elements lively and interesting, the difference in line work also helps them pop out more.

[Anonymous No.3334488]

[Anonymous No.3334489]

>>3333722
Whenever I see someone use obvious filtered photographs it just instantly takes me out of the story. It's fine to use as a supplemental background behind characters I guess, but when the the entire focus of the panel is the view, and the artist didn't bother drawing any part of it... that's just lazy and insulting. At least have the decency to try and pretend it's hand-drawn.

[Anonymous No.3334619]

>>3333809
>>3333805
A lot of manga use photo tracing or even filtered photos. Anime too. Not saying I like it, but it’s accepted in the industry. But those guys put out 18-25 pages a week. Manga software like Medibang has user generated backgrounds for use as well.

[Anonymous No.3334682]

>>3334053

Clip Studio.

It's the software with the best perspective tools right now.

[Anonymous No.3334692]

>>3333693
Yeah, bro. Perspective, itself, is merely a guide. Things like lens distortion and fov can disprove the validity of perspective, anyways. There are three important things you must learn from perspective practices. The correlation between distance and convergence (things get smaller as they get further away), the visibility of surfaces based on vantage point (top or bottom?), and relative size of objects via projection (should a person be taller than the door he stands next to). All this stuff becomes second nature after some rooms have been drawn.

[Anonymous No.3334730]

>>3333722
>>3333805
Are there any good programs that can filter a color photo for a color bg without making it obvious?

[Anonymous No.3334736]

>>3334730
Not really. It takes some overpainting to make it be not obvious so you still have to rely on skill/technique.

Below you can see CSPex's color photo to linework and 3D models to linework as advertised by the company itself. You can do similar stuff with filters in photoshop.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UqNOZ0PR1gA

Pretty low effort to just use that.

[Anonymous No.3334752]

>>3333722
Then they are not true professionals. Even mangaka who rely heavily on photo contouring, spend hours editing, hatching and tweaking everything so that it comes close to what they had initially envisioned. And that's only for one single panel.

Besides using 3d gives you that cheap look and is instantly a throw off. Better to do it yourself and give it a personal tone of your own style

[Anonymous No.3334759]

>>3334752
I don't see much difference. They still rely on photos for most of the real work. What you are describing is just polishing. If a "mangaka" really spend that many hours on a single panel's background then I question their skill since why would they then need to use a photo in the first place.

But maybe it's because the people we're talking about are just there to make someone else's work look pretty?

[Anonymous No.3334760]

>>3334730
it's always gonna look obvious, for professionals it is, and definitely for hobbyists. You can't just copy paste a photo contour and call it a background, It needs serious work and solid fundamentals to build a proper scene.

And you don't want to end up on a "artists who trace" slide

[Anonymous No.3335030]

>>3334736
>>3334760
I understand that. I'm just looking for software that can give me a nice start and then I can build over it. My art is character portrait focus but I'd like to have some more interesting background composition behind them.

[Anonymous No.3335061]

>>3333683
If your backgrounds are just throwaway garbage to fill empty space that you hadn't planned for, you're a bad comic book making person. Give everything a purpose, that way you have a reason to be invested in drawing all of it.

[Anonymous No.3335133]

>>3334752
>mangaka who rely heavily on photo contouring, spend hours editing, hatching and tweaking everything so that it comes close to what they had initially envisioned.

https://youtu.be/ITUvOpfYGEc

You can see this here starting around 14:50.

[Anonymous No.3335139]

>>3333683
you should read that comic Even a Monkey Can Draw Manga, it has a lot of behind the curtain stuff like this

[Anonymous No.3335180]

>>3335061
It's not that, backgrounds have high importance sometimes in my layouts.

>>3333712
answer em' anons.

[Anonymous No.3335210]

>>3333722
Simply not true if you check art streams of profesional comic artists they often use reference but ive never seen them use pre-rendered backgrounds

[Anonymous No.3335214]

Draw your characters on clear plastic and overlay them is one solution. Also speak to someone

[Anonymous No.3335215]

>>3335214
That used to use letraset, there's bound to be a work around

[Anonymous No.3335220]

And looking to Yoshihiro Tatsumi, he didn't repeat the same interior exactly. Once you've drawn it once in a strip the reader doesn't need as many visual clues so you can focus on character movement or different angles and get away with broad brush strokes in a manner of speaking

[Anonymous No.3335223]

>>3333891
>tfw am always bad at decorating the house and character

[Anonymous No.3335226]

>>3335223
Me too, I'm hopeless at skirting boards

[Anonymous No.3335233]

>>3335223
>>3335226

i use references from specialiced publications like
http://www.ebook777.com/california-interiors/
http://www.ebook777.com/art-deco-house-style/

search in the page for the style you liked

(sorry por el inglish)

[Anonymous No.3335238]

>>3335233
I gave up on references imagination is more fun (on a personal note)

[Anonymous No.3335257]

>>3335210
Really? Check out a manga named Goodnight Ponpon as an example. It's all background qualities like image. To me that looks like a filtered photo with with characters drawn in and a quick pass where a few things got outlined in black.

[Anonymous No.3335276]

>>3335210
>>3335257
It is, Asano used this technique in Punpun and refined it in his works after that, see >>3335133

[Supernal No.3335316]

>>3333683

Just like regular figure drawing, the same rules apply. Once you get used to creating the objects and setting up the perspective, it'll come as natural as anything else. Think of it more as 'Environments', of which are important with respect to their relation and semblance to the primary subject matter; sometimes the environment itself is the primary subject and is all you see.

[Anonymous No.3335346]

>>3335180

Architectfag here. What you'll want to look into is Drafting Tools. The artist of the OP's pic most likely used some kind of raised acrylic ruler; it prevents smudges when lining in the perspective and details.

>materials
Look into a drafting led and a led pointer. Both shouldn't run you more than $10. Think of it like a mechanical pencil but large, and you can sharpen the tip to a razor point. Use a non-photo blue led to draw the perspectives, and then use fineliners like microns or copic nanoliners for inking.

Now if you really want to get pro with backgrounds (which are architecture), you can make your process much, much easier by using something simple like SketchUp to block out your perspective ahead of time. Build the very basic elements of your scene (For OP's photo, it would just be two wall planes, a floor plane, and maybe some boxes for the furniture roughs).

Grab a screenshot of the view you want, and then throw it into PS or GIMP to turn the black lines cyan/non-photo blue. Print it and use it to build your scene without as much manual perspective drafting.

This seems to cover it well:

SketchUp Basics: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mJCpC971XLk

For Comics: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZQ3tTAwPKrs

[Anonymous No.3335353]

>>3335346
How else to learn more about architecture? Any recommended books or resources?

[Anonymous No.3335390]

>>3335346
>led
triggered

[Anonymous No.3335399]

>>3335353

It's hard because it's a pretty broad field comprising everything from amateur sketching to professional, licensed practice. More than just drawing, you study history, construction, manufacturing technologies, law, sociology and theory while in school, so it's difficult to get a solid and accurate knowledge of the field without a formalized education.

THAT SAID, Francis Ching's books are the gold standard for beginning to seriously study architecture; "Form Space and Order" is available for free online: https://archive.org/details/FrancisD.K.ChingArchitectureFormSpaceAndOrder3rdEdition

Another good one by him is Building Construction Illustrated if you are wanting to get into the finer details of structural anatomy.

[Anonymous No.3335450]

>>3335238
you usually miss like 70% of details that would make the background look great when not looking at reference for it.

[Anonymous No.3335456]

>>3334109
>either Manga Studio or Clip Studio

The absolute state. Literally the same program anon

[Anonymous No.3335521]

Op, if you don't like doing backgrounds, then I second the anon that posted the manga scans.

Set up your scenes like >>3334468, so that you don't have to draw so many detailed backgrounds. You will probably also find your compositions improving too.

You can also go the route of just drawing or modeling a bunch of generic backgrounds and reusing them. You could model a bedroom in Sketchup >>3335346, and then now you have a bedroom from multiple angles you can use.

There was a webtoon artist that looked like they would reuse a 3d background a lot, and I thought it looked really cool. I know some webtoon artists seem to use photos like >>3335257 too.

Remember that you can work smarter and not harder. Just because you use techniques mentioned in this thread, does not mean you're cheating or cutting corners.

[Anonymous No.3335539]

>>3335316
>Once you get used to creating the objects and setting up the perspective, it'll come as natural as anything else.

That's a myth. Obviously you get better at it and won't make any more beginner mistakes, but the act of drawing backgrounds will always remain hard fucking work and is annoying as hell. Overwhelming detail never gets easier to draw, no matter how good you are. You still need a tremendous amount of patience and just grind through it.

[Anonymous No.3335623]

>>3333683
just work smart and start with an establishing shot. Ic always overcomplicates shit

[Anonymous No.3335688]

>>3335623
>just draw a bookshelf and call it a BG!
Found the hand hider.

[Anonymous No.3335707]

>>3335688
found the photographer

[Anonymous No.3335710]

>>3335688
but thats a background

[Anonymous No.3335767]

>>3335710
Hand inside pockets are also a pose.

[Anonymous No.3335816]

>>3335767
at least you draw something and not anything at all

[Anonymous No.3335867]

>>3335816
Drawing a bookshelf and calling it a BG is like drawing a face calling it a character.

Can you portray an entire story by just showing faces? I'm not signing up for that.

[Anonymous No.3335904]

>>3335867
this is true and I needlessly stretched the discussion. What I meant from the beginning is that starting with an establishing shot is always a good idea, especially since you can now be less detailed with the BG if you want and your comic is still clear with his setting

[Anonymous No.3335926]

>>3333683
consider collaboration.
i could draw landscapes and backgrounds all day and fucking hate drawing characters.

[Anonymous No.3336001]

>>3333683
You can draw characters all day long because all you've done so far is draw characters. Add perspective/backgrounds/architecture to your practice regimen for a few months and it won't be nearly as much of a bitch to do.

[Anonymous No.3336006]

>>3333683
lmao dude just use photos lol

[Anonymous No.3336118]

>>3335867
So what do you have to draw to call it a background

[Anonymous No.3336121]

Learn some basic 3D and paint over your renders. Don't be a dumb purist.

[Anonymous No.3336128]

just draw tall and ambiguous

[Anonymous No.3336162]

Artschool fag here. My teachers themselves ahve told us that it's important to correctly learn perspective, and hand draw things to get a feel for it.

But once you get okay enough at it, use 3d models or pictures for all the backgrounds you want. You don't have to prove to anyone that you know how to use perspective, just do it. Hell, if you wanted to, use the clip studio render thing on some pictures and draw/paint over them to make it look even more like a drawing. Win win.

[Anonymous No.3336176]

>>3336162
How about composition though

[Anonymous No.3336200]

>>3336162
teachers today are frauds

[Anonymous No.3338658]

>>3333693
In most perspective the vanishing points are so far off the page you have to eyeball it.

[Anonymous No.3338761]

>>3333683
Not sure about comics but what I can tell you is that working in animation backgrounds means reusing a LOT of the objects and scenes previously drawn. I assume a lot of backgrounds from comics work the same. As long as the perspective is similar. You should be able to reuse stuff and not waste any time.

[Anonymous No.3339559]

>>3338658
bloody THIS

[Anonymous No.3341652]

Manga has a tendency to use straight lines and flat shading for everything, but that's not the only way to do things.

[Anonymous No.3341654]

>>3341652

[Anonymous No.3341683]

>>3341652
>>3341654
this

[Anonymous No.3341718]

>>3334489
I guess you hate manwha then, right?

[Anonymous No.3342623]

>>3334489
This

[Anonymous No.3342688]

>>3336162

At minute 15 of this video:
https://youtu.be/dapJMoOLI44

The artist prints out a black and white picture and draws over parts of it to give it a natural, analog feel.

[Anonymous No.3342697]

>>3341683
Is Thompson calling him a chink?