Making the background images

Backgrounds are a big part of the Fixer and when development started I went through a lot of testing to see how I should go about making them. Since I don't have a background in 2D artwork I knew from he start I couldn't just start to draw them, so I looked into other methods where I could get what I needed. My first test was to take photos from the internet and trace them while making the image look a lot more cartoon like. You can see some of my first attempts at the mall. Both the mall interior and exterior are sourced from photo images. This method proved to be a pretty poor path to take as I had to spend hours looking for the correct image I would need. So many that I found would have the camera too high and the perspective would look wrong, or have different camera settings leading to different fields of view... It was just bad. And to top it off, it took me a couple of days just to get one image done once I had found an image I could work with. While I could have probably reduced that time a bit as I improved, it would have still been an unacceptable timeframe. 

So I decided instead that I should leverage my background in 3D. I could position the camera where I wanted it to be and have a consistent field of view. The first test using this method was the residential area and the results were pretty good. Since then I have used the same method for every background image. There are some variation between images as my drawing skills have improved, but overall they allow for a very consistent style. 

First thing I do is place my camera rig in a scene and start blocking things out to get the shapes and space as I want it to be. For something like a room this is a 3 second task but a larger street takes more time. Once I am happy with the space, I will add the details. In many instances this will just be simple block shapes but some of the interiors need a bit more detail in them. As you can see from the image below, I don't use any textures and stick to just the shape of things. 

Certain scenes absolutely need to capture specific elements in them and can sometimes be hard to get them all in. In such instances I have had to take some liberties and do things you might not see in real life, but generally the trade off is more than worth it. 

Here for example I need to capture the idea that lots of people are sleeping in cramped areas. But if I just stick 50 beds in the scene then it would require a massive room and that amount of beds would just look horrible in a drawn image. So instead I have tried to make it look like a small part of a greater whole by having a lot of the room to Sammy's left open but out of camera shot. 

Haven should also look like a slum since that is what it is. So I have added lot's of "broken" elements like the uneven floorboards, damaged ceiling and walls as well as junk littering the place. I need to be careful to restrain myself though as then I run the risk of the place looking too ugly and being unpleasant for the player to look at. So a balance needs to be met.

Once I am happy with the scene, I then render it out. In this case there are 3 things I want. I want an image that shows only the lights I have added to the scene, an image that shows only the ambient occlusion (shadows in corners/deep areas) and a simple colour map so I can colour pick areas in photoshop and paint only that area.

Since I have made quite a few backgrounds now already, setting them up in photoshop is a fairly quick process. Once they are set up I will hand draw the cartoon lines. There are some ways I can automate that in the 3D program but I I wasn't a fan of the end results so I stick to doing them manually. In a scene as complex as the one I am showing, this can take as much as 30 minutes, but simpler scenes are a lot quicker. 

Then I do a basic colour pass. Some places should be bright and clean and the colours should reflect that, whereas Haven is a run down and dirty place so will have a lot more earth tones and fairly desaturated colours. It's good to make sure to nail down the colours before pushing on with the details.

In some backgrounds, the basic colour pass is almost enough. But a place like Haven is pretty dirty so it needs to look as such. But again we shouldn't dirty it too much or the view will just be unpleasant to look at. I need to do just enough to sell the story and be sure not to go overboard. Some grime is added to the walls and other areas, texture to the floorboards and other objects that need them and a bit of extra lighting and shading added to the more complex objects like the sleeping bags, metal and pipes.

The end result ends up something like this.