
Forest Landscapes: Putting it All Together
By Rio
So you've learned what there is to know about each individual
aspects of a forest; trees, shrubs, grass, and rocks. Now
let's put it all together!
Putting it All Together
If you've read through all the Forest tutorials, there was
a common theme that repeated itself which was basically:
"Work in layers - background, midground, and foreground".
Use the same concept when putting together your forest background.
Take this picture to the left. As with most CG's, they are
done on layers. Can you dissect the image between front,
middle, and background?
........
Give up? Answer:
Front: Tree and grass
Middle: River and bridge
Back: Forest and shrubs
Let's get a closer look into each one:
Foreground = Midground
= Background
If you look closely at the background image, there's another
set of layers going on between the slew of tall trees, young
trees, shrubs, grass, and general foliage. That is what
you have to achieve if you want a believable background.
Also, if you're very astute, you'll notice that the foreground
image is much more detialed than the other background images
which are mainly silhouttes. When drawing your backgrounds,
make any plants close to the viewer as detailed as possible
while leaving those in the background as general drawn shapes
or color.
For example, if you were drawing a manga, you'll have
to rely on tones, and black and white to distinguish the
difference between the fore, mid, and back-ground.
For far views like the first image above, things in the
distance are lighter in color than those up close. For close-ups,
though, the opposite is true. Those close to the viewer
is generally lighter and darkens in the distance.
This
here is Deleter tone #SE-1039. Notice how they used a far-view
color scheme with the foreground sporting a dark tone color
and the farther background in a light-colored tone. Also,
the closer tone has more detail with the leaves than those
afar.
Summary:
Foreground - detailed
Midground - between detailed and generally shaped or colored
Background - general shape
Color - light to dark from foreground to background or vice
versa depending on your view.
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