504 - Backgrounds

Here are most of the backgrounds for the film:

• My main issue I had with painting these backgrounds was matching them up to the same style as the vertical slice. In the vertical slice I had a looseness and sketchiness to both the drawing and paint, that I feel I haven't been able to recreate in these. I ended up painting these backgrounds a lot later than the vertical slice so I couldn't remember my exact process. 
• I feel that these BG's are a bit too paint-by-colour and could have been a lot more energetic. I think I ended up getting bogged down by thinking about it technically rather than treating each BG as a painting in itself and being more free and creative with them
• I also found it hard to match the colours exactly as well. In my vertical slice, I ended up making it too washed out, so I painted over it with blending mode layers to give it that saturation. With these, I went straight for the more saturated look, which made them look flatter
• Despite this, I also ended up adding adjustment layers to increase the saturation of certain parts. One aspect I find really hard about digital painting is choosing the right colours, brightness and saturation. I always find I end up having to add blending mode layers to tweak these, which makes the paintings look more digital. In future, if I want to create a very loose painterly look, I'll need to practice my colours a lot more
• As each BG is split into layers for depth, I painted them from back to front so that I could fix my mistake from the vertical slice of having some layers be too transparent. I found that I actually prefer it more transparent as it had a softer feel. I think I achieved that with the further back layers, but as they get closer to the FG I think they're too clean and bold
• My last problem was that I had a lot of trouble painting the trees and branches in the BG's, they needed to be less saturated and contrasting than the main branch that the bird sits on, but due to that they ended up looking a bit muddy. The redder branches worked better I think.

• I ended up painting the FG elements very simply, as I knew that they would be blurred for a depth of field effect, therefore I didn't need to waste time with details
• Additionally, I painted the layers further back much more loosely and simply to create that manual blur/softness I had in the vertical slice, and I think this was successful

Overall, I think that despite the BG's not being as loose and watercoloury as I would like, I still think they work pretty well. I definitely found it a challenge painting something so seemingly chaotic, whilst still thinking about lighting and composition, but that ended up making it quite fun and I learnt how amazing the colour variation option for brushes is on photoshop.

I also learnt that I really enjoy paintings more loosely than with previous style BG's, and especially with using a soft brush and lots of layers. I may try and build on this style in the future.