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Culturegasm: Drawing Backgrounds

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  1.  (559.1)
    to nickmaynard:
    that ottley piece is amazing, and this is in no way a knock on his work or your comment about backgrounds being more impressive than character work...
    but...
    i get sort of irked when people talk about art being 'impressive.' at a certain point, being impressed doesn't mean shit. i mean, this isn't running a 4 minute mile or lifting a car. it is drawing a city. i believe that, with any piece of art, whether it be music or writing or drawing or film, if your initial reaction is "wow, that's impressive," then the artist has failed (unless their goal is to impress someone, in which case...i hope it got them laid or at least a gold medal at the artist olympics). i want a gutteral reaction, something deeper than 'impressed.' like, when you hear miles davis play trumpet, it is so effortless and amazing, but so perfect...it might sound like anybody could play it, but it is perfect in its restraint or perfect for that moment.

    mignola's art comes to mind, i guess, because his backgrounds are hardly ever super impressive in the sense that they are detailed with perfect perspective, and to some people his art might look basic, but they are always perfect for the page, always well thought out...does that make sense?

    [/rant]
    sorry, it just got me thinking about art and...backgrounds...i dunno...
  2.  (559.2)
    Carney: As a low-level publisher of comic books I have to scan pages all the time. And as we all hopefully know, most comic pages are 11x17 inches in size. What most may not know is that to scan a single image at that size usually takes something called a "commercial scanner", which is very costly. Now, again, I'm low end, so I don't have thousands to spend on such a piece of equipment, but I got lucky, and now so can you. May I suggest the Mustek Scan Express A3. This scanner is pretty decent for scanning color work (if you know how to use it), but where it really kicks ass is in scanning black and white work like pencils and inks. You can't beat it for the price (less than 200 U.S.). Highly recommended for the "young buck on the come-up", to use the parlance of our times.


    Buyer beware... if you have a Mac, this scanner might not work for you.
    PC users... this scanner is very tempermental. Every few months or so it'll stop working completely and you'll have to re-install the drivers and/or leave unplugged for a week to a month. I've owned mine for about two years and over the past month it's stopped working completely. None of the usual fix-it methods work.
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      CommentAuthorPaul Sizer
    • CommentTimeFeb 9th 2008
     (559.3)
    I've actually gotten to like doing the occasional "establishing shot" background in more the manner of manga, where you get one REALLY detailed, expressive money shot which tells the reader a lot about where they are, and then you can go to very minimal references to those background elements through the rest of the scene.

    It's taken me a while to overcome my aversion to using photo-reference, as I also used to think it was kind of cheating, but truthfully, that fell by the wayside once I started eliminating dumb drawing mistakes in my work (not that I've eliminated ALL of my dumb drawing mistakes, plenty to go around folks). Depending on how realistic a scene I'm drawing, I'll always at least look for details from photos. For overly dramatic perspective (like most of the city shots in MOPED ARMY), I just pull out the rulers and triangles, set up those 3 perspective points and just go to town for the effect:
    ( I don't want to clog up the page with a really big scan, so here's a link to an example from my work: MOPED ARMY PERSPECTIVE SHOT
  4.  (559.4)
    that ottley piece is amazing, and this is in no way a knock on his work or your comment about backgrounds being more impressive than character work...
    but...
    i get sort of irked when people talk about art being 'impressive.' at a certain point, being impressed doesn't mean shit. i mean, this isn't running a 4 minute mile or lifting a car. it is drawing a city. i believe that, with any piece of art,


    I kind of agree. When I saw that image, I thought that, while it is very impressive, and it looks great -- stuff like that is more a matter of just putting your head down and doing it than anything else. It's practically math.
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      CommentAuthorTom Raney
    • CommentTimeFeb 15th 2008
     (559.5)
    There's a workaround available for the Mustek Scan Express A3 here.
  6.  (559.6)
    To davechisholm: I think you put it perfectly, impressive is fine if you want to show off and the ego loves it, but if the point is the story then being too impressive can take energy away from it.

    Risking sounding concerned i have to say, I get 'wow' reactions sometimes, and while it's nice on one level, it always leaves me concerned i might have over done it. Was talking to a writer/editor today about this, he was wondering why i was going into as much detail as i have with the work I'm doing now - it's a fair question, i have my reasons, trying to evoke an intense dreamlike experience - but it's always possible people will miss that and get caught up in the details. For sure if your doing it as a display of skill it's not going to help your work, maybe your carrier but only in a limited way.
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      CommentAuthorSalgood Sam
    • CommentTimeFeb 15th 2008 edited
     (559.7)
    Looked at that link - took my time to post this but wanted to add - still think what was being said about impressive having a down side is true but looking at that, given it's a superhero shot and all - i don't think thats a problem with that one. It's a very clean graphic line image, but really the detail drops out pretty early. Not really overkill at all. If i were going to try to think of something to critique i think I'd have more of a problem with the spotting of blacks than anything to do with detail.

    More on topic to the original question - big part of the how too for shots like that is the perspective, collected some good links for that over on PNP, think i can find them to post here....

    ok, yeah, these are perspective grid resources, come in handy for cityscapes.

    - Google is often the best these days in shear volume.

    - Someone else on the thread came up with this link,and suggested this book, which i've looked through on the rack and it's not bad at all.

    - Spherical Perspective - a brief tutorial [this thing is the best bit, download a copy for safe keeping]
    spherical perspective grid

    - This is really cool for messing with reality.

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