Glacier Background

And jsut another closeup of another part of the background to see the area and how it would looke when animating it as the size of the backgrounds are all 2000x4000.


Close up of the ship. Didn't have it so much in the snow at firlst but that didnt show that it was buried there for a while so that's why I decided to add the snow and ice around the ship. Also I tried to add that the ship is frozen and covered in ice which I hope you can tell.
Also, I added the reflection of the mountain in the water to make it look more like water/ice as it never did to much at first.

And now removed the ship and added the clouds which are also moveable incase he wants to animate the moving across. But yeah, this is now the finished piece and have sent him the photoshop file so he can still tweak anything what he doesn't like but I tried to give him some more freedome with this background incase of the option of viewing layers and hiding them.


Completely removed the left mountain as this is also an option (although my work on the mountain would almost be for nothing), but I do think that this also works.


Looked at the sky and what I could do because I think that the clouds I used for both other backgrounds wouldnt have worked good for this background that I am working on becuase of the type of clouds that are normally in these cold placed.



Just added the water and the mountains in the distance and added some ice onto the water to keep the icy look to it.




Adding the stranded ship now


I moved the mountain behind the 'ground' layer to see how it would look this way which I do find to work more and this I think gives Ben the option between the previous background and this one as I find that it gives more space to animate.


Just to check how it looked withought the sketch in the background.


Just added some tones to the 'mountain' layer over the gradient giving it a little more texture to it


Added the mountain now with a gradient for a base on another few layers but over the 'ground' layer so it fits together as the mountain disappears slightly behind the ground layer.


What I did here was completely draw the ground on a several layers (seperating the colour,line and tone) but having it infront of the mountain so that I can see everything of the ground instead of just the visible area just incase I think of something else to do with the image.


Here is a sketch of what I have planned using the idea of the mountain on one side, having the ground and water in the shot and the stranded ship. However because the animation (i'm guessing) will be done that they are on the landy/ice area, I put the water much further in the background behind the ship hopefully giving Ben enough room for the aniation.


Just another angle and how it could fit into the background that I will be working on.


Thought about having it on an angle since it would have been stranded there for quite some time.


Thought about adding a stranded ship in the background so looked at some ships that are strong enough to travel thought these types of places and that already do.


Same as previous but from a different angle. Just thinking about the mountains on on side and the perspective of the mountain.


Same as the previous showing the combination of water, ice surface and mountains but I like this more as the mountains are on the sides of the shot and the smaller ones further in the background.


I really like this image as it shows part mountains, ice surface and water. Also that the colours here are mostly blue and white. One problem I would have with creating a background that looks like this is the ground as its not smooth but made out of very sharp pieces of ice.

Ocean Background

The final. Just added two more bolts of lightning so when its animated there won't be two places that the lighting appears now.


Added the clouds and lighing on seperate layers hopefully with enough freedom to move the clouds around and show the lighting when required.


I didn't like the colour of the sky so decided to make it less saturated and I prefferend this clour as its not so strong and jumping in your face as much.




Painted this background again and trying to keep the atmosphere with these colours. (I'm really not good with sky painting and such).


(NOT MINE. This belongs to Ben who I'm creating the backgrounds for). His blog - http://wonchopmonkeyman.blogspot.com/
Anyway that's the image he drew and from this is where I got the impression that it needs to be quite dark and thought to work quite near to the brightness of this work.


Trying to keep it quite dark as a stormy atmosphere and also I kind of got that from the image he drew of the octopus character and the colours on it seemed quite dark so thought I'd go with the dark look.


Sketched out the entire background that would be in the scene including all the lighting bolts however having them all on different layers so it is possible to switch on the lighting whenever he wants to.


Thought I'd go for this more cartoony style of waves wich would then allow me to have them all on seperate layers again and hopefully be able to animate them moving along.


Here is a quick painting I did of the waves but absolutely hated it as I found it so small and especially with the possibility to exaggerate in animation, and also to the style I "think" Ben is aiming for it might not fit, plus it wouldn't be able to animate as it's more a stationary image.


Found that the light within the clouds are also important to have the lightning looking as natural yet powerfull as possible.


After seeing the previous image I looked at lighting on it's own and how it actually looks.


This one is more focused on the one wave rushing in, the lighting and the clouds and thickness of them. This shows that the thickness of the clouds alone show that it's a storm so thought I'd keep the focus on the clouds asmuch as the waves in the water.


This one I really like becuase of the distance out into the sea and that you can just make out the shapes of the mountains and land in the backgrond. Again though the waves are far to small and doesn't show any signs of a storm.


I just like this one as it has that one wave centred horizontally.


I'm required to create a background of a stormy sea/ocea view so looked at diferent photos of seas/oceans in a storm. Here is one that I liked because of the mist and darkness, however it lacks the huge waves that I think Ben wanted.

Hills Background

Just got some feedback and was told to lower the saturation on the hills a bit to make it less sunny so here it is... hoping it's more to his liking :\


Added the clouds (also on seperate layers for animating).


This is it with the background added from Art Rage.

I painted the sky using Art Rage 2 as I thought the paint affect would look quite good rather than the effect Photoshop creates using the brush.


Just continued the colouring and added the paint really.. nothing new or different from the original plan.


Just adding some colour to the hills and keeping them on seperate layers to they can be moved around if needed.


Here is a sketch that I got from Ben's animatic so kept it the same and basically started working on it in Photoshop to add colour.