Original subtitles

Hey, what's up, guys?

Welcome back to my pixel art

tutorial and today's lesson.

we will be drawing a background together.

For this exercise.

I want you guys to use any photo of a background that you've taken

If not, any background photo you've found online

that you find interesting is fine too.

Today I'm going to draw

a photo I've took in Harajuku on a rainy day.

I took this 2 years ago.

When I first visited Japan,

it was really gloomy and rainy that month

and a really memorable day.

So I already have a thumbnail sketch

prepared from

from all the thumbnails that I did last time.

I drew this one a while ago,

but I figured you guys would want to see my approach to this one.

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This is the drawing from my series called beams

and it's all about pixel backgrounds.

Hopefully I'll be able to compile all the artwork

and make an art book soon.

For this drawing, my canvase is around 400x225px

and this is the type of resolution that I like

to stick with

and it's also fitting a 16 by 9 ratio.

So it'd be nice for like a wallpaper

that fits on your screen.

The first thing I start to do

is the line art to refine the rough sketch.

I did earlier.

lowering the opacity of the rough sketch

helps when you draw the line art on top.

I also added my own subject

standing at the top of the stairs

to create a visual interest

and have the focal point for the piece.

So as I'm doing the liner

I'm looking at the photo and comparing details.

I'm so used to drawing without perspective lines

that I just jump straight into sketching.

But if I were to start from perspective lines,

it looks something like this.

So as I'm working on the lineart

You noticed that I'm making a layer for each part

and this background is a bit more complex

than what I usually do.

So I'm going to break it down

into more manageable parts,

to not get overwhelmed.

This ties back to when I was talking about

different planes in the last video.

For this drawing

I have around 6 different parts

the main building

the stairs

the fence

the garage.

the background buildings and the sky

I like to put them in their own folder

to keep it organized

and this method is also really common

when I was working in animation and video games

and for good reason too.

I'll organize it from Back to Front

the back being the sky

and the front being their garage.

So I know which planes are on top.

Sometimes we even have to draw

parts of the buildings that are hidden

since they might be moving

but for this exercise

since it's not

it's fine to leave it as it is.

So now that we finished the line art

I start to add the base colours on one layer

and figure out the general colour and lighting.

I dragged over the photo and drop it in.

and the colors are honestly pretty dull in my picture.

So I'm going to adjust them a bit

for the sake of my dry.

Using the Hue saturation and levels window

by pressing CTRL + U and CTRL + L really helps.

Play around with the sliders

and see what kind of effect you like.

I also use the gradient map, adjustment layer over here

and you can also play around with the layer modes

over here, too.

I'm aiming for a cold feeling on a rainy day.

So I have to emphasize more of the cooler colors.

The lighting is coming from the right side.

So most of the faces on the left side

should be in the shadow.

The reason why I wanted to do

an exercise from my photo first

is to get you used to the eyedropper tool.

For beginners,

this is really useful.

If you don't know how to pick out colours yet.

Eyedropping(hold ALT) your photo will get you a better idea

of what colors to use

and how to use it.

You can hold the ALT key when

you're using the pencil tool

and it can select the color of your hovering

your cursor over.

Although ok, big warning

eyedropping color for a color

doesn't always translate to a successful dry.

Sometimes the colors are flat

and it's up to us to emphasize parts of the background

to read properly in pixel form.

It's more of a rough blueprint

to get an idea of how to approach it.

Once I have the general colors,

I start to render out the rest of the scene.

I tackle each component outline step by step.

I want to focus on the stairs first

since that's the focal point of the drawing.

I want to add a lot of details.

So I added some Grime to the side of the staircase

and it makes it looks more age from water damage.

I also start adding the tile patterns as well.

It's a really distinct quality in Asian cities.

I use the magic wand tool to instantly

select the staircase fill

and add more detail into it

and it makes it a lot easier to color

without overlapping the tile lines.

Afterwards I start working on the main building

adding shadows and some more texture

and detail to the face of it.

Since the background is overall

more of a cool color

I decided to have the windows of

the building a pinkish tone

to complement the green/blue colors of the outside.

It also makes it more warm and inviting to go inside.

The face of the building is made of concrete.

So I do

my best to replicate the texture

and the patterns of the holes.

the holes do

a really important job

by reinforcing the establish perspective

and it makes the whole building look more convincing.

So since I'm mostly done the main building.

I go back to the staircase again

and this time I work on the railings.

I put the railings on their own layer group

since the railings are going to overlap each other.

So I make a layer for each railing.

I'm also going to put potted plants along the staircase

and behind the railings that I'm making.

So this way

it will be a lot easier to manage.

Again,

following the perspective already-established

I start off with one color

and once I get the angle right

I can add more details.

Drawing metal is very reflective.

So there's always going to be a strong highlights,

a shadow and a reflection underneath.

I outline the railings as well

so it stands out from the background

just 4 tones and metal can be rendered.

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Afterwards, I finish drawing

the details of the main building

and I add a tile pattern to the upper areas.

These patterns help create visual interest

and it's a refreshing change from

the plain concrete walls

that we had before.

I make this area a lighter and cooler color

because it's farther away

and it helps

separate the foreground

and background of the main building.

I feel that

if we left it all to one set of colors

for the main building.

It will look really flat.

And that's the opposite of what we're trying to achieve.

We want to create more depth.

Next up

I work on the garage.

I chose darker

and more saturated colors

to help push it more into the foreground

since the garage

is the closest object to the viewer.

It's mostly in the shadows

since the roof is covering over

and only a sliver of light can be seen.

I render out this

electric box and drainage pipe in the garage

and these details really bring it to life.

afterwards

I start working on the fence

this part really solidified the perspective

and structure in my drawing.

The fence help determine the scale

and the distance of how far everything away is.

The fence chain links are only two pixelstick

in the foreground

and as it starts to trail off into the distance.

It's only one pixel thick.

I also decided to add an air conditioner

on top of the garage

cause I felt like that area in general

was missing something

and an air conditioner is something that

I really like to draw

so I added to most of my drawings anyway.

All right, onto the background buildings.

The buildings in the back

are cooler and lighter in color.

It helps separate the background and the foreground.

I modified the background from the photo

and I wanted to add a giant red billboard

to create more visual interest.

I made an ad for a sushi

with a picture of a squid and a fish.

And afterwards

I just use the poly lasso tool to fill in the area

for the windows

following the perspective.

Now that we have that done

we can start working on the potted plants

on the staircase.

Plants and any kind of foliage

really help break down the monotony

and straight edges of buildings.

It introduces more organic shapes and lines to the mix.

I only use around three colors to start

from dark to light

kind of like layering on the leaves

to have the shadow in the back

and highlights in the front.

I also add some more foliage

hanging off the building as well.

to create more of an overgrown feeling.

All right,

so I'm just about done every component I've listed out.

We just have to check back on each plane

and make sure everything stands out from each other.

You want everything to read properly.

The buildings in the background can be pushed back

just a bit further and space by making it lighter.

So I add a new layer on screen mode

and put a mask on top

by pressing this button.

So the Mask function is basically a non-destructive way

of adding and subtracting your layer content.

If you select the black and white mask

that you created,

any white parts means

that the layer content is applied.

Anything black means it isn't applied.

You can only use a black-and-white brush to add

and subtract on the mask.

So I add white to the parts where I want it lighter

in my drawing and create a gradual

gradient effect from the bottom up.

All right, and lastly

the figure and focal point in my drawing.

Since this is the first figure

we're drawing in the course.

I'll slow it down

a bit for you guys to see.

Because we have the proportions of the scene

already defined

we can scale her to the surroundings.

So we have the pillar, a menuboard,

and the railing nearby as a good point of reference.

I want her

to be standing at the start of the staircase

so she'll occupy this space here

based on the surroundings.

I usually start off with

blocking a silhouette of approximately how big

I think she'll be.

A human body is around six and a half heads tall

so I can scale it like that.

I can use the menu board as a marker

to where the height of her head should be

and the railing is around

where her elbows and torso end off.

I find it useful to take pictures of yourself

or have someone take pictures of you

doing things to get

a good idea of how human body scales

with its surroundings.

I wanted her to hold an umbrella

since it just freshly rained.

From there.

I render out the rest of the clothes and details.

I knew that

I wanted her

to stand out from the rest of the background.

So I gave her a white and yellow dress.

It feels really summery

and the yellow really helped

make her pop out too.

Along the way

I'm adding more details to her

and giving her more distinct features.

Since she's standing on the staircase,

I put her layer behind the railings

so she looks in place.

After that

a couple of final details and it's almost done.

Now for the magic

using levels and gradient maps,

these adjustment layers can really help

unify the colors of your piece.

So first

I'm going to play around with the levels

and you can find it here.

The RGB mode helps adjust the light and the dark.

And you can play around the sliders to see

what preference do you like.

The individual channels like R, G, and B

adjust the individual colors

and I recommend playing around with the sliders

until you find something that you like.

I chose a more cooler

blue green look by using the R slider.

The R slider

basically controls how red or

how cyan your canvas will look.

Afterwards

I try a couple of gradient maps, you can make one

by clicking this button.

This is one of my absolute favorite tools to use

and it can really help you when you're first

starting out a drawing

and you're not sure about the colors yet.

I'll show you guys what I mean in the later video

but for this video,

I'm just going to use it as a final adjustment

to unify the colors.

Gradient maps are basically filters.

You're given a bar of color

you starting off with two colors

that color on the left masks over the dark tones

and the color on the right masks over the light tones.

I usually lower the opacity of the layer to around 30%

and go through all the layer modes

most of the time

I stick with darken and overlay

to get the look that I like.

So I recommend experimenting

with all of the layer modes

and try out different colors as well.

This time I use a green and red palette

to boost the cooler palette

that I already have.

With that, we have our background finished.

This one took around five to six hours

judging from the recording time.

At last Minute, (I) made

her hair silver grey instead

because it pops out more for the background.

This was more of a challenging piece for me as well

because it utilizes a lot of perspective,

which I don't usually do

so this was like a really fun

exercise for me.

Thank you all so much for watching.

I'm trying to cover the tools I use gradually

so you don't get too overwhelmed.

These are ultimately just

supplementary tools for convenience.

You can just make pixel art

with the pencil tool and eraser

but showing you

these tools will help speed up your process.

Let me know if there's anything I missed

and if you have any questions for me.

I can't wait to see what kind of backgrounds

that you guys make.

In the next chapter,

we're going to be going more in depth

about developing your own color palettes.

And making artwork with unique colors

using different techniques.

See you in the next one and take care.