FlippinDingDong
Collection
Deviation Spotlight
- Sep 21
- United States
- Deviant for 12 years
- www.youtube.com/user/FlippinDingDong
- He / Him
Obligatory Twitter plug
Why is this so hard
huhwhatwhereami
Profile Comments 42
That Gex animation you made was really fantastic. I don't know if you'll respond to this but, do you have any tutorials or the like for how you made the traditional looking backgrounds in it? I've tried to do that many times on my own, but they never end up looking right.
I don't have any tutorials unfortunately, because I'm usually making it up as I go. I do have some tips that stood out to me when making them though:
- Find a source background that you can reference (like, from an actual 90s cartoon). Study it HARD and try to find out whatever that artist did to give it that specific look. I took an unholy amount of Bonkers and Rescue Rangers screengrabs for reference and I studied them like I had a quiz in the morning.
- Sample colors from these screengrabs, too. Find shots with similar color/lighting to your background, screengrab it, and pick the colors from it. You'll never get a more authentic looking color scheme than the one that you're literally using for reference. (of course, you can modify the colors too, but it doesn't hurt to sample them as a base color starting point).
- Don't use black outlines. In fact, these backgrounds tend to not have any linework at all (which also helps to make the characters stand out on them better). What I would do is draw out the linework for the background, paint it in on a separate layer, then either remove or color over the linework to hide it. If you must have visible linework, blend it in with whatever colors its touching (for example, if your black line is running across a red object, the line should be a dark red).
- Remember that these were hand-painted. Making them super clean and sharp will stand out immediately as being too "modern". Try using very soft brushes when painting in the shadows/highlights to try and mimic that painterly look they have. Masking off certain areas is a must for this step. Don't be afraid to cake it on heavy, either. Some of the shadows in my BGs have 5-6 layers stacked on top of them to get the look right).
- Finally, add the SLIGHTEST touch of grain to it at the end. You'd be amazed how a grain of only 10% opacity amplifies the authentic look of a hand drawn background. (10 is an arbitrary number, it'll be up to you to determine how high or low to take it).
Hope that helps, that's about all I can toss out. Good luck!
Thanks! This helps a lot!
Hello there. I like your Gex as Saturday Morning Cartoon animation reel. You nailed it as if it was a childhood experience on TV. ^^
Also, "I'm hungry damn it!"
