Star vs the Forces of Evil: Backgrounds

Character design is obviously my main focus, although the idea of character animation is interesting too, but one thing I want to try to explore more in the future is backgrounds and other parts of visual development - one thing that I feel SvtFoE does really well. Justin Parpan is one of the art directors on the show, but also creates a lot of the backgrounds himself.

One thing that I really love about the backgrounds is the simplicity. A lot of animated shows use beautifully painted backgrounds which look great, and there are a lot of hybrids, or shows like Steven Universe and Craig McCracked shows like The Powerpuff Girls that use flat backgrounds with brushes that give them a more painted effect, and I really enjoy those in animation. However, the SvtFoE backgrounds fit in with the characters much more, in my opinion - they are in a similar, flat colour style which makes for much easier interaction with and integration of props within the background - as opposed to flat colour props awkwardly placed in a painted scene. I haven't seen too many shows do this, recently at least, and especially as Star interacts with so much of any environment she is in, I think it works really well. I feel like this would be a great place for me to starts with looking at the background part of visual development; the simplicity means that I can focus on design without having to worry about the rendering as much, and  it should work well with the sort of characters that I like designing.

I also love the colours - there is always a lot of variation within colours, but the proportions of colours are done very well. There is a lot more orange/red kind of tones in the top image, with smaller bits of blue/green to complement it rather than overpower it. The opposite can be said with the second image, with most of the house being green and the smaller details being orange tones. The second image is slightly less saturated as well compared to the first image, as indoor lights are generally a lot less bright than sunlight outside. The background designs for this show demonstrate a great understanding of colour theory and lighting, which is one of the reasons that it is so effective. I should definitely take that into account and try to study this further this summer.