Extended Practice: Environment Design

As the narrative was already very personal to me, I thought it would be a nice touch to make the setting authentic too. I decided I was going to base my environment design on the field where I remember flying the kites with my sister to begin with.

Initial Sketches of Ackworth

In order to get started with background design, I went out for a walk around where I lived and sketched the environment. I took a drawing I was particularly pleased with, and worked colour into it on Photoshop. As a stand alone piece I was happy with how it looked, but when I placed my characters into the environment to test how it looked, it wasn't what I expected. It felt too bold, and the characters felt lost as a result.

Digital Background Design

Testing Digital Characters Against Background Design - Rough

I had tried digital drawing as I thought it would have been easier for me to work with, but because I wasn't happy with the characters in the space, I started working with watercolour like I had originally set out to do. I made sure to refer to the work in my Studio Ghibli art books for reference when painting, but tried to keep the style my own. I tried the watercolour backgrounds with both a fineliner outline, and without.
I very much prefer the watercolour backgrounds, and they were much quicker to produce and just as pretty and detailed as the digital backgrounds. Though I think I prefer the backgrounds that have the fineliner line work, and in future will be using this style for all of my background design. I think this will suit my characters the best, as they too are going to have a slight outline.

Watercolour Backgrounds

I am going to pursue the watercolour backgrounds, though I am not going to make them as detailed as the last one. Despite it being my favourite out of the pieces I have made, it took too long to produce and I don't think the characters work as well in this environment. I prefer the pieces that are washed out, as this makes the characters stand out, allowing for the audiences attention to be focused on them.