Save Time By Reusing Backgrounds

Ocean liners have served as the backdrop for many intrigues, adventures, and romances over the years - some of which have been captured on film.

Imagine going to all the trouble of painting an ocean liner only for that paint job to serve for just a single voyage.

Now while you’re not likely to engage in much ship painting, you’ve probably created a few backgrounds only for them to be use once and then forgotten about.

In this article we’re going at how you can get the most out of a background you’ve gone to the trouble of creating, and how you can use that background for repeated cartoons.

Let’s look at an example featuring Percy the Pelican perching on a shop railing.

Here are the three main ideas we’re going to cover in this article:

1. Use the background exactly as it is.
2. Zoom in
3. Alter some details

1. Use the background exactly as it is

Here’s the background without any characters. Let’s look at a couple of examples where I used it exactly as it is above.

Percy appears again alongside a friend and Felix the fox.

Here we have a couple looking out at the ocean. What do you think she might be saying?

Over To You

What character/s could you draw on this background?

2. Zoom In

We’re now going to use the same background without any alteration, but to zoom in on one section.

Is there any particular part of the background that you could zoom in on?

This works bestfor backgrounds that have a bit of detail on them.

However, this can even work with more simple backgrounds, such as the above example.

Here’s Percy again.

Over To You

What character could you put on this background?

3. Alter Some Details

I’ve now modified the background to look like a railing by the seaside. The railing itself is still the same, I altered the ground swapping on the wooden planking of the ship’s deck for a concrete path. I also added a stormy sky and waves.

Here’s Suki and a Schnauzer.

Over To You

What characters could you add to this background?

Summary

We looked at three main ideas in this article:

1. Use it exactly as it is.
2. Zoom in
3. Alter some details

Some Additional Backgrounds For You To Use

Continuing with the nautical theme, here are three backgrounds you can try using for your own characters.