Backgrounds and Layouts

One of the things that drove me bonkers on Ruby Rocket was that there was almost no opportunity to properly compose the screen. I did the storyboards absolutely as fast as I could, often reducing the background to just a couple of slashes to perhaps indicate that something was back there. There was supposed to be a "layout" stage where the backgrounds and character poses would be tightened up before finished animation and backgrounds would be done. Didn't happen, and I was left trying to figure out how to squeeze the animation into cluttered and ill-conceived backdrops so that it could be seen. (This is all on me, and not a reflection of the terrific background work I got!)

We have an opportunity now to correct that mistake (and others). For many scenes, I'll ask for a background layout sketch, something simple and complimentary to the character animation. I'll drop those sketches into the animatic to make sure it's all working before doing a finished painting.

I'm looking for a fairly simple and cartoony style for the backgrounds, but also painterly, not flat shapes filled with ugly flat colors like you'd see on Family Guy or The Simpsons. (Funny shows, but hideously ugly!) Here's some inspirational examples:





Ruby Rocket backgrounds were very detailed and elaborate and I want to get away from that with Ultrafoot. I'd rather see attention paid to design and color, not a lot of detail. If you're working on backgrounds, imagine you have to make 20 of them in a month. That mind set should help keep the backgrounds peppy!

I could talk a lot about what it means for the background to compliment the animation, but the selfless, cartoon loving John K. has done it better:
http://johnkstuff.blogspot.com/2008/06/bg-layout-tips-for-nate.html
http://johnkstuff.blogspot.com/2006/10/eager-beaver-1946-functional-beautiful.html
http://johnkstuff.blogspot.com/2008/07/organizing-bg-layout-elements.html

And if you're up for even more, here's just every post he made with the label "composition"
http://johnkstuff.blogspot.com/search/label/composition

John K. is basically providing an animation production master class for free!