Guest Room VN Background by ange-la-ange

I haven't been here for forever ahh! Here's an updated process for one of my recent background styles. This is for Heart of Thorns, an otome VN currently in production by Ichigo no Kokoro productions.

#firealpaca #background #photoshop #digital painting

Sketch

The starting sketch in Photoshop. Planning out the general layout and furniture.

Perspective Sketch

Moving into FireAlpaca now. And now the perspective fun begins! I set down some vanishing points roughly based on my sketch, then draw out the box for the room. I use a character sprite to feel out the scale of the room. (Note relationship between the sprites and the horizon line.) It took me a while to figure out this clone sprite trick, but once it's set up, it's easy to drop into any other VN background with the same horizon line position.

Perspective Sketch

Using the sprites as reference, I block out the furniture bounding boxes. I kinda use the ground grid as a starting point for figuring out all the furniture footprints. There's a shift in the composition from the corrected perspective. Also, I keep some extra margins around the final framing for better judging foreground objects. Hence the black border haha.

Lineart

Detailing begins! I use the FA pen tool set to a size of 1.8

Lineart

Here's the finished lineart after many painstaking hours ;v;

Rough Colors

I bring the lineart layers back into Photoshop and start planning out the color scheme on one layer.

Painting

I separate out all the individual furniture/item layers and start to refine the lighting and shading.

Final Colors

Here are the final colors after I finish painting all the individual items and layers.

Additional Effects

To bring the colors and final look together, I add some multiply and overlay layers. I use a soft brush to create the bloom effects around the windows. Finally, I add some adjustment layers for the tweaking the saturation and color balance.

Comments

jojostory Grandmaster of Comments

Holy cow, this is impressive!! I really like the trick to use people as a reference for scale to make sure the objects in the room are the right size, I'll definitely have to try that sometime.

Does FireAlpaca have perspective tools built in, or did you draw the lines and place the sprites yourself?

ange-la-ange Member

jojostory Thanks! I borrowed the trick from a friend who does 3D modeling work haha.
And sort of. Recent versions of FireAlpaca have 3D tools for setting up simple cubes and grid planes. It was a bit clunky when I tried it out, but I'm hoping it will become more user-friendly in the future. :P
I've been using FireAlpaca's line snap guides instead. There's a Radial Snap, where you can position a vanishing point on the canvas, and a Vanishing Point Snap, which will calculate a vanishing point from two lines. For a two vanishing point piece, I'll set up both types so it's easy to switch as needed. The spacing/placement of the grid lines and sprites is guesstimated based on that.

starmasayume Commenter

Wow I applaud you, this looks great! Backgrounds are still a struggle to me, especially perspective and getting items to look right. I really like seeing your process for everything. Your lineart is so clean and detailed and the final colors really brought everything together.

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