A. Phillips - - Layout and Background construction

The following images outline the steps I take in Flash to construct my movie backgrounds.
This example is from my work on the upcoming Brackenwood movie "Waterlollies".

Step 1: Storyboard - - Here's how the storyboard looks. When starting a new movie, the first thing I do is storyboard it directly into Flash scenes using a Wacom graphics tablet. These very rough scratches are the foundation for every scene, and I use this as the starting point.

Storyboarding is a loose process, and the only real labour involved is in laying out the scene and thinking about the composition. As you can see, there isn't any effort gone into the drawings themselves, beyond rough indications of what's going on in the scene. This makes storyboarding more flowing and imaginative, than labour intensive.

Step 2: Cleaning up foreground elements. This is the first stage of the drawing work: laying down the very first pieces of detail that will be seen in the final piece. I usually start with the foreground elements and build towards the back of the scene. Here I'm starting on the foreground grass, and the last thing (as you'll see later) will be the sky because it's at the very back).

I'm using Flash's onion-skin here, so that I can see the rough artwork underneath while I create the foreground grass on a new layer.

Step 3: Filling elements with colour. As I create the basic detail of a background element, I close it off with a border of lines and fill it with colour. In the image below, I've applied a gradient and have started to manipulate it. The area of grass that I've filled here is the third layer from the front of the scene. The foremost layer is the foreground grass, the next layer will be the character, and this layer (the filled layer below) is the grass that is behind the character. I've started work on this later so that I can visualise where the character will be sitting.

I won't be finishing this layer just yet. I've just filled it with colour to give me a better idea of how to finish the foreground grass, and where the character will be sitting.

Step 3 continued: I've drawn a border and filled the foreground grass now and am laying down a base gradient from which I'll later grab colours and add texture to the grass.

With both layers now filled with their base gradients, this is the best time to optimise the artwork. It not only cleans up the line, but it also decreases the file-size. To optimise the linework, you first select the drawing, then go to Modify > Shape > Optimize... (Flash MX 2004).

Step 4: Adding texture and form. What really makes this stuff stand out is texture. You could leave it how it is, and yes it'd be adequate.. but to go the extra mile (usually meaning longer hours) you could add some texture to the grass by adding shadow and highlights. Sure it's time-consuming.. but when you're done you'll have something that'll grab people's attention and hold it there. Especially being the foremost elements in the scene, it's important to me that I give this grass some realism. There won't be so much work gone into the more distant elements.

That's the foreground grass pretty much done, so I'll now do the same with the other level of grass, which is still looking quite flat at the moment. While I'm adding the detail to the grass, I constantly toggle the visibility of the character layer, so that I can see where he's sitting and how best to compose the grass detail around him... you could just place random grass around him, but you're going to get a more satisfying and visually pleasing result if you actually think about where you're placing the blades of grass, and what works best in relation to the character and the other grass... or maybe that's just me.

Step 5: Other elements, working toward the back of the scene. At first I created the bush behind the grass, but then I decided it would work better in front, so after I finished creating the bush (in much the same way as I created the grass, i.e. outline with rough detail, base gradient, then shadows and highlights) I moved it to sit in front of the far grass layer.

Here you can see the scene coming together with the character (still in rough form) sitting not just on, but *amongst* some very lush looking grass. Each time I complete an element of the scene, I'll onion-skin the rough again to see what's next.

And that's how I work through a background like this one. Starting at the front and working back, always using the rough to remind me of what goes where and how the shot should be composed. Here's the final step:

Step 6: Completing the remaining elements. Here is the finished background, with the character rough hidden. The bright green guides show the edges of the movie, and when you're working on a new background they clearly indicate the movie border, so that you know to draw your elements beyond those edges.

This entire background (without the character rough) is 54k in file-size. The key to keeping the file-size down is outlined in Step 3.

I Hope you've found this useful.. check the site now and then to check on the progress of the new Brackenwood movie "Waterlollies".

- Adam Phillips