VIOLET

Mateo and Kazue were close, but when Kazue came to the compound and met MC/learned how close Mateo and MC were, she grew very jealous and wanted both of them out of the way. Mateo was dead to Kazue once she realized that he loved someone (besides her). 

Depending on the BG, I have a couple different ways of going about painting them. I use CLIP Studio for all of the BGs/art in general because you have access to so many custom brushes, and you don’t have to worry about paying all those weird Photoshop/Adobe fees. 

INDOOR/HEAVY PERSPECTIVE:

For indoor BGs, I first make a sketch of roughly what I want the BG to look like. CLIP has a built-in perspective ruler, so I use that to draw lineart over my sketch, and all of the lines are snapped to the appropriate perspective. The ruler is a lifesaver, which is why I recommend CLIP for BG art.

After that, I pick out a color palette for the BG. What I find easiest is to find an image or photograph with a color palette that you like/similar to what you are picturing, and color pick from that. You aren’t copying the image you’re borrowing from, just looking at the overall palette. (IE: In my process video, I color-pick from a dress.)

From there, I block out the main colors used in the BG - walls, ceiling, floor, etc. These are the main colors, so I try to keep them balanced.  

From there, I use free/creative commons textures for tiles, wood, concrete, etc. I keep a folder on my computer with these textures. Do NOT use textures from google images or Deviantart - look for sites that specifically host textures that are not copyrighted/use creative commons.

I then add shading, small items, and light to the BG to give it life. 

Here is a process video for painting indoor BGs.

OUTDOOR/SCENIC:

The outdoor BGs in CC are nature-based, so I don’t use perspective lines as heavily. DW did require a lot of perspective because it is based in a city, which has a lot of lines and defined shapes.

My process for the outdoor BGs is less specific. I start out with a blobby painting that blocks out the shapes/composition of the BG.

For example, here is the starting painting for Pepper and Mint’s village.

Yeah, it’s kind of ugly lol. The idea is just to block out the composition of the image. For scenic images like this, the main rule I remember is further away = less contrast, closer = more contrast.

From there, I just start with the furthest parts of the painting and work forward combining painted shapes and layers of textures. 

Eventually, I arrive at something like this...

Make no mistake, this is hundreds of layers of painting, textures, more painting. It’s a slow process. 

I don’t have a video of my own to show you, but I highly recommend watching speedpaints by concept artists on youtube. Jordan Grimmer does some beautiful work, and I learned a lot from watching his videos.

Overall, just keep practicing!! The first BGs I ever made for DW were pretty bad, but I kept working at it!