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humansbgone · 2 years

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(This is content for Humans-B-Gone!, a sci-fi series about giant bugs. Watch it on YouTube here: https://youtube.com/c/humansbgone )

A special treat this week: A behind-the-scenes! Someone had wanted to know how I do backgrounds, so here's how I did this one.

Even though the characters are cg models, it's not practical to model background elements unless they're animated or the characters actually need to interact with them. Besides that, I'm going for a traditional cel-shaded look with the aesthetic, so I like the way painted backgrounds look better as a rule. So, I've taken a leaf from old movies and will basically do painted mattes for backgrounds. (Doing models for characters and hand drawing for backgrounds is a little inverse of how these things are usually done, but since my backgrounds are squishy organic plants and my characters are bugs with rigid exoskeletons, it works out better this way!)

Usually, I can get by with making backgrounds just textures on flat planes in front of or behind characters (or add them later in compositing), so basically like painted cels floating in a 3d space. However, when the camera moves, parallaxing flat planes alone isn't enough to cut it. This is especially the case when a character is standing on a background. Not only will the flatness of the background stand out with a character in front of it, but if the background isn't close enough to their feet, they'll look like they're drifting in space over it!

So, for shots like this one, I'll compromise and make a very simple mesh with the background texture projected on it. Here's what this background looks like from another angle:

Now, let's see how I did it!

You can see that the mesh it's projected on is very simple, no raised parts or actual lighting--just the lighting from the painting itself. Additionally, the doors and "roof" above them are still flat planes. Hopefully, the flatness doesn't stand out too much in the final camera angle!

To make this background, I started off with a mock-up in Grease Pencil. This is a tool in Blender, the 3d modeling program I use, which lets you basically draw in a 3d space. This was very, very rough, and done just to figure out camera angles and animation (the doors have a one-frame opening animation, and the spider stand-in moves forward):

Next, I brought in Rose's model, and made simple cubes for the doors. The doors were set up with a simple rig, so that when I made the final doors I could still use the rig's animation. (Rose looks kind of weird because *all* her facial parts are in place at once--usually the bag under her eyes or the cheeks are used separately, and you'd only see an eyebrow furrow for the side of the eyebrow facing away from us. Also, her abdomen hair hasn't been rotated to match the camera angle, and I didn't turn on the solidify modifier for her line art.)

After I'd established the key frames for Rose's movements, I made a *very* rough background, just so I could set up the basic mesh and make sure the camera angle looked right. The textures were cobbled together from existing backgrounds--the pink backdrop is from an earlier shot in this episode, the big roots were taken from the roots the roach walks in front of in episode one, and the doors were made from the roots the soldiers are standing on in the the "Pest Control" promo!

Here's what it looks like without the textures and with vertices visible. You can also see the rig for the doors, and for Rose herself!

Once I'd finalized the animation, I decided it was time to finally finish the background. (Normally I try to get these done after I've established key poses instead of waiting for the whole animation to be finished, but there were so many backgrounds with such fiddly camera angles that I dragged my feet on it this time.) The meshes had to be tweaked a little, but mostly it was just a lot of painting, which didn't take too long.

In case you were wondering, here's what the image files for the background textures look like on their own:

I hope this was a fun look at the way I do things. Maybe it'll even help you with projects of your own!

Be sure to let me know if you'd like to see more behind-the-scenes stuff like this in the future!

As for the progress update--making good time! All animation is finally done, and now I'm working on backgrounds like the one you've just seen! This was one of three big, intimidating backgrounds with complex parts. Once the other two are out of the way, the remaining backgrounds will be much simpler and can be mostly marathoned. If all goes well, I'd give an estimate of just another two weeks until episode two's release!

#humansbgone #humans b gone #3d #background #painting #behind-the-scenes #animation #tarantula #spider #rose

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