Moho Forum

I really wanted to try something different but I SUCK at backgrounds, seriously I suck hard BUT I've managed to make my first background to an 'acceptable' level in my eyes.

The first two layers were me trying to get a decent ground style until I got to the trees on the third layer and cheated cos I'm using a picture for reference. I ended up using the dropper then filling in the colour before copying and pasting into my actual scene. I liked the effect so I decided to stick with it and was pleasantly surprised with the results.



What do you think?

I like it. Pretty exceptional. I'm having difficulty determining whether or not your large green portion just above the yellowish portion is part of the foreground or distance. Is it supposed to be attached to your peninsula? If not, you may want to make the green part more definitive around the edges so it doesn't seem like it's part of that peninsula. Aside from that, excellent shading, especially with the water and the clouds

Thanks for the advice. It's all attached with two lakes in the middle. The picture I used for reference might give you a better idea of what I'm trying to do.

Hmmm, I'm no mastered artist, but I think you should make that left hill more variable in coloring. Establish different shading for different distances. The downward slope looks good, but the lowest level is very difinitive as it wraps around so I would try making that lower level a seperate layer of a darker shade of green and try to get that to show up in your background.

Thanks I'll give that a go and post my results!

EDIT:

Muuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuch better. apply that level of effort and detail to the foreground and you'll be golden.

tysm for your help!

That kind of detail in your landscapes is extremely impressive for ASP alone. For you to think you suck at backgrounds, you now have this picture to prove yourself otherwise. Don't ever sell yourself short. There's always a way.

You're making me blush now lol.

I've mostly drawn by hand and I've always been really critical of my work (doesn't help when I ask my bf for his opinion and all I get is 'it's a picture).
I did most of the background in GIMP before saving each individual section and layering the pictures in ASP. It's the first time I've used either for this kind of work so I'm still a little nervous but I'm hoping once I've got the intro worked out for my series it'll give me a lot more confidence in my ability with both of these programs.
It's also my first project and I've been trying to get it off the ground for over a year, first it was a game but I have no idea when it comes to programming so I thought film it instead but I don't have enough money to buy the equipment or have enough friends for the characters. I almost gave up until my bf's brother mentioned he had ASP and thought I'd give it a go, this is kind of a last chance for me to get this dream to come true so I'm putting a lot of pressure on myself atm to get this done.

That was done in GIMP?!?! I have that and wouldn't even dream of making anything that well done. What's your secret?

cheating LOL!

It's a matter of finding the right background, I used the photo I found on Google putting it on the base layer then open up a new layer. Use the dropper tool on a section then the filler tool and fill in the section. Select the 'fuzzy select' tool and select the section you just filled in. Copy it and then paste to the new layer and anchor. Do this for the amount of layers you want.

For the shadowing I just played around with the dodge and burn tool making the entire hill lighter before switching to the burn tool. Don't be afraid to play around with the Highlights, Midtones and Highlights choices in the tool options too so you can get the look you want.

To get the dark atmospheric look of the scene I simply made a transparent layer in ASP going from an opaque black to fully transparent. I'm hoping to play around with it a little so when I get around to animating the scene becomes dark as the zombies come into the shot from below the screen.

EDIT: Forgot to mention, if you can't do the 'fill, copy and paste' option then try playing around with the 'oilify' option under 'artistic' in the 'filters' tab

I usually have trouble with the "open image" option so this looks like some advanced stuff to me. I'll give it a go though, it's an interesting technique!

Danimal wrote:I usually have trouble with the "open image" option so this looks like some advanced stuff to me. I'll give it a go though, it's an interesting technique!

Do you mean the 'open image' option on ASP? I'm having a problem with that atm, everything was fine when I saved it but now it's just not working for some reason and instead of my images I've got a 'broken image' texture. Really hoping I can rescue it

CraftyGrafty wrote:Do you mean the 'open image' option on ASP?

I was actually referring to my beyond novice standing with GIMP.

I've not had problems with images in Anime Studio. I use image layers and they plop right in and stay when saved and reopened.

Danimal wrote:

CraftyGrafty wrote:Do you mean the 'open image' option on ASP?

I was actually referring to my beyond novice standing with GIMP.

I've not had problems with images in Anime Studio. I use image layers and they plop right in and stay when saved and reopened.

Tried reopening it three times with no luck, thankfully I've still got the original GIMP images. I might wait till I've finished everything else for that scene before redoing it.

I'll make a step by step tutorial if that would help