How to Make an Animation: Backgrounds

in this video we'll learn how to create backgrounds for your animations we'll cover some simple techniques regarding parallaxing and talk about how to best work your background seamlessly into your animations let's get to it [Music] hello everybody and welcome back to tiptup and welcome back to the how to create an animation series last episode we learned how to take our storyboard and turn it into an animatic so if you haven't watched that yet you can do so here if you have watched it awesome today we'll talk about backgrounds backgrounds are a chance to express your animation style in a more detailed and intricate way we all know having textures shading and complex shapes in your animation adds so much time to the workflow but as your backgrounds are mostly static you can use this as a chance to really express yourself without too much impact on the delivery of your animation today i'll break down my thought process on how i created this indoor background for just add water we'll cover what to do about shots that require a moving camera and how to situate your characters into the scene naturally now if you struggle drawing backgrounds i have an existing video on that which you can watch here in this video like we've done in the rest of this series we'll focus on how it fits into the animation workflow so to get started look at your animatic this will give you a rough idea of what backgrounds you'll need per scene you might think it's one per scene which sounds obvious but if there are any changes in camera angle or something like an extreme close-up you might find it better to redraw the background with a bit more detail so you can retain the same style in each shot in this scene for example we clearly need a wide shot background of the scene but when the camera moves into timmy we might find a simple shot of just the window with more detailed items on the window sill might work better next determine if your background needs to be larger than your canvas size for example currently when we move to the extreme close-up of the dyno we can see the edge of the existing background sketch creeping in additionally at the end of the scene when the camera briefly shoots up to follow the dyno growing the background needs to move down so we might need to include more of the window and potentially even some of the roof so that's a potential of three backgrounds for this scene wide mid shot of the window and an extreme close-up of the window too to save time and because it'll be mostly covered by the dinosaur i'll just reuse the mid shot of the window in the extreme close-up of the dyno no one will notice or possibly even care if they do if i show the same low detail bottles and candles and things from the wide shot in the mid shot that might be a bit distracting so it's worth redoing that one two backgrounds then both of which need to be a different shape to the canvas namely taller in the wide to accommodate for the upwards camera motion and probably square in the mid shot as it'll be rotating around and we need to cover all angles so let's get to it [Music] for the wide shot we'll need at least three layers because of the parallaxing we spoke about in the last episode wall bath sink and toilet but whatever software you're making your backgrounds in i recommend keeping it as non-destructive as possible and putting everything you can on its own layer this makes things much more flexible later on and you can always duplicate and flatten to just three images upon export firstly i need to extend my sketch to include the additional information such as the window and top of the roof so i use that as an opportunity to refine the whole sketch once i'm happy with that i need to choose a color palette this animation is funny joyous and silly so i think lots of bold bright over-saturated colors will help with that i'm using a brilliant color palette by gigantic the link to which is in the description but if you have trouble pairing colors i have a video on that too which you can watch here try to pick a palette that suits the mood of your animation and then just dive in first do a quick color sketch of your background colors have a very heavy visual weight so you'll want to make sure your colors are drawing your audience to the correct part of your background if you don't know what visual weight is watch this video here i want everyone looking at the bath other aspects like the camera movement and the fact that the character is banging in the middle of the frame help direct the viewer's eye but doing a quick colour sketch to determine what best leads the viewer's eye towards the bath really helps obviously the bath is white so darker walls floor and objects will help add a good amount of contrast to the image drawing the viewer's eye to the center okay i'm roughly happy let's move on i want a lineless style for this animation so i'll start out with a block based color on whatever object i'm drawing first in this case the bath as that's the most important thing in the scene once i'm roughly happy with those block colors i'll go and add some accent lines where we need differentiation between elements like at the edge of the bath's rim or details on the tap usually i'll just use a brighter or darker shade of whatever the base color is after block colours are done i like to add a new layer on top using a clipping mask so it only draws in the layer beneath i'll usually set this to overlay mode then using a white brush for highlights and a black brush for shadows i'll add some basic shading to my object i do it this way so i don't have to worry about color in the next step which is to add some texture using a texture brush at the moment i'm loving this watercolor style brush that i can't pronounce in procreate i'll do a general light wash over the object again on its own layer set to overlay [Music] then i go back with a coloured brush on its own layer and add some actual colored shading and highlights which the two overlay layers make really pop everything gets put in its own folder and i do the exact same process for the rest of the objects when it comes to drawing the next background don't be afraid to move things around a little in order to create a better composition in this shot you should definitely be able to see the bath at the bottom of the frame but it doesn't add much and it would be visually distracting so i removed it it's my animation i do what i want same thing with the bottles on the shelf if they'll all be covered by timmy shift them about a bit so everyone can see your hard work if it works for the shot of course once you've got your background simply export it in the various layers you need or just take the source file into your animation software if it supports that and then test it in your animatic with adobe animate i can just replace the contents of each symbol i made easy and that's all there is to it like i mentioned before if you want details on how to actually draw backgrounds check out this video which focuses on that but in the meantime make sure you've liked and run the notification bell and leave a comment saying which part of the animation process you'd like me to cover in this series just so i don't miss anything important the next episode will cover some animation tips and tricks i've done plenty of detailed animation tutorials before that i'll highlight in that video but this one will focus on some little tips and tricks i've picked up along the way to help make the animation process smoother after that there'll be an episode on exhibition showing the best free and simple ways to get your animation out there into the world so if there's anything missing in that list that you want to see covered let me know in the comments below and i'll see you next time on tiptup ah these delightful and lovely members support me every single month because they are beautiful people if you want to be a beautiful person as well you already are don't worry about that if you want to support the channel you can do so at the join button below [Music] remember to subscribe for more tips tricks and tutorials thanks for watching

Channel: TipTut

Views: 867

Keywords: how to make an animated short, how to make an animation, animation process, how to animate, animation, animat, animate, adobe animate, how to, animation for beginners, beginner, script, storyboarding, scripting, how to write, how to draw, tiptut, adobe flash, procreate, frame by frame animation, different, animatics, storyboards, animatic, story board, story, board, backgrounds, back, ground, how to make

Id: bfgSVS_nFvE

Length: 8min 5sec (485 seconds)

Published: Mon Dec 20 2021