Five: Backgrounds

'Backround' is not an acceptable alternate spelling of 'background.' Thank you.

Comics have to take place somewhere, right? There are thousands of backgrounds ripped from games online, as well as some custom backgrounds. Don't use two-tone backgrounds (most of BnG uses these). That tells your readers you're lazy and don't feel like making, editing, or even just finding a 'real' background.

Following is a demonstration of a few different types of backgrounds:

A. White Space

Here we have Miarin floating in the middle of some sort of vast, utterly featureless and purely white area. This is known as 'white space,' and is to be avoided at all costs. There's nothing there to alert the reader to where the character is. There isn't even a floor.

B. Two-Toned

Well... we know where the ground is, now. But a two-toned background (so named because it only has two colors) lacks detail. The reader could assume that the character is outside, if the green is grass and the blue is sky. But she could also be inside, in a house with bad decor. In that case, the green would be the floor and the blue would be the wall. Two-tone's lack of detail prevents it from being an effective method of making backgrounds for a comic. Also, many readers of sprite comics see two-tone backgrounds as the lazy way out. This will cause people to stop reading your comic. It's best if you don't use two-toned backgrounds.

C. Simple Scratch

It's actually fairly easy to make your own backgrounds from scratch. (The one above is a recolor of my generic room background, found on the last page of this tutorial.) This background isn't all that far removed from two-tone, but it is far more detailed. The floor is made of blue and white tiles, and the character is standing in front of a blank, light blue wall, which is shaded as if the light is coming from above. This is by far the best way to go.

There are thousands of ripped backgrounds online as well, which usually look good, as long as you use them correctly. As with sprites, never resize a background to anything other than a multiple of 100%. Generally, backgrounds look best when they are resized to the same ratio as the sprites you use on it. When editing a background, don't use neon bright colors; that sort of thing hurts people's eyes.

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